He swallowed hard. “It’s beautiful,” he said with a faraway expression. “It really is.”
No arguments tonight. No NAACP. No war. No politics. No Double-V.
They went through the gate and walked along the graveled walk toward the house together. Just warmth and friendship, that was all. She put her arm through his and he almost jumped, and he looked sideways down into her face, and he saw so much beauty and loveliness and happiness and contentment, it almost scared him to death. He would have to tell her tonight about Millie. Tell her he was a married man. It had gone far enough. Too damn far. She was so goddamn woman-ful—she and her Double-V. She was beauty, spunk, intelligence. She was—she was—He was a goddamn fool!
The front door opened onto a hall that ran the length of the house with rooms on both sides of it. She led him into the room on the left, the living room, and it was one of the most comfortable rooms he had ever been in, with large family portraits on the walls, of kinfolks past and present, and over the mantle-piece, a life-size picture of W. E. B. Du Bois, and an old-fashioned sofa in front of the fireplace and an easy chair on one side of the hearth and a rocking chair on the other.
“Sit down,” she said. “You think we need a fire? Is it cold in here to you?”
He sat on the sofa and stared at the hearth. “Not at all. It’s really quite comfortable,” he lied. He was everything but comfortable, but it wasn’t the chill that made him uneasy. It was the heat that he felt moving around in his collar and all through his body and the taste in his mouth and the tension moving around in his stomach and very much aware of his manhood now and the angry nearness of Fannie Mae. It was as if she had gotten all amongst him and inside of him.
She sat down beside him and she put her hand on his knee for the briefest second to attract his attention away from the fireplace that seemed to hold such a fascination for him, and he really jumped this time.
She said, “What’s the matter, Solly?” Her large dark eyes entirely black now and full of deep concern.
He said, “No—nothing. I’m a little tired and jumpy, that’s all. I suppose I’m just nervous in the service.” He forced a shaky kind of laugh.
“Too much brain work,” she said. “Joe Taylor told me. You do all the office work in the outfit. The first sergeant and the captain don’t do anything at all. You run the company.”
“Mr. Taylor is my friend and a good publicity man and a great exaggerator.”
“Modesty will get you everywhere, young man,” she said happily. And she got up and lit the fire in the fireplace, and came back and sat on the couch near him, facing the fire that was slowly catching on and crackling and spitting and moving into every corner of the hearth and coming alive and then all aglow, lazy and sleepy and comfortable. He could have fallen from the couch, he thought, and rolled up in the rug in front of the hearth and gone fast asleep.
He had the feeling she wanted to pursue the argument of the other Sunday evening, but neither of them wanted to risk it and spoil this night this moment. It was as if they had signed an unwritten and unspoken truce. No war tonight. Just peace. Only peace. And it was peaceful. The warmth in his face the taste in his mouth. He felt so at home in her home it was painful almost. Like the last time he was with her. It was strange the way he felt with her. A sweetish kind of nostalgia, as if he had traveled along this road once before in life—the same room, same fire in the fireplace, the same identical sweet-faced girl, same conversation—the warmth, the smell of the room identical. The same goateed Du Bois staring sternly at him from the mantel. He even knew what she would say next.
“We’ve had some mighty lovely weather for this time of the year.”
He had come all the way into town to hear a comment on the weather. This was the important matter she wanted to talk with him about. At least it was not controversial.
“It’s probably snowing back home,” he said.
She looked up into his face and it was all in the deep deep blackness of her eyes and in every slight nervous movement she made. She wanted to fight him love him have him. Pushing softly against the bosom of her blouse and on her dark red misty lips he saw it, there the challenge was, and felt it running all through his own body, and now was the time to tell her about Millie, his Millie, whom he loved more than all else in the world, he told himself. He had to tell her because now was the moment. All he had to do was to reach out and take her into his arms and—great God almighty! She would either go into his arms eagerly and never let him go, never ever, or this pretty country girl might jump and run from him far far away, but she wanted him, and the shamefaced want was plain to see and feel and taste, and he was ashamed of his want for her. He had to tell this dear sweet child about Millie, but he hadn’t the strength. He had too damn much manhood and he wasn’t man enough.
Maybe the thing to do was to ask her what it was she wanted to talk to him about, and then they would be off to the wars again. And this would surely break the spell they had cast upon each other. He cleared his throat and started to speak and chickened out. He didn’t have the heart to fight with her. He looked at his wrist watch nervously. “I guess I’d better be getting back.”
She said, “Shoot! I meant to fix you coffee.”
Before he could protest, she was gone just like that. A few minutes later she brought her parents in to meet him. The mother was a small woman who resembled Fannie Mae, her eyes, her mouth, her easy-going warmth, and the father, a medium-height, heavy-set man with a sense of purpose in the corners of his mouth and in the dark brown firmness of his narrow eyes. The father was principal of the Booker T. Washington High School, according to the Bookworm.
Mrs. Branton said, “We’ve heard so much about you, we feel we already know you. You seem like one of us. I declare you do.”
“You must have me confused with the Book—I mean—Joseph Taylor.”
“Oh no,” she said mischievously. “You’re Corporal Solomon Sanders and you’re the company clerk and you’re the brains of the outfit and you’re a very nice person. And a handsome young man. An NAACP fighter from New York. I know you all right. Fannie Mae’s been working at the camp about three months now, and there’s been two or three of them that came to the front porch with her, but you’re the first soldier ever to come in the house.”
He stood awkwardly before them, and he felt like an impostor, a two-faced two-timer, with his ready nervous smile that made him look like the bashful kind and more genuine than any other kind. “I’m afraid somebody’s been kidding you, Mrs. Branton.”
Mrs. Branton smiled at him and said, “Oh, I don’t think so,” and Fannie made a sign to her and left the room. Mrs. Branton said to Solly, “Well, do come back to see us whenever you feel like it,” and excused herself. “Going back in the kitchen to give Fannie Mae a hand.”
Mr. Branton sat in the rocking chair. “I reckin our little town is a real comedown for a big-city man like you.”
“I like the little I’ve seen of it,” Solly lied. “I wasn’t born in a big city, you know.”
“New York’s a fair-de-middling-sized town, I reckin.”
“I was born in Dry Creek, Georgia.”
Mr. Branton laughed and slapped his thigh. “Well I declare. You don’t say so!”
“Yes, sir,” Solly said, “Jacksonville County. Lived there the first seven years of my life.”
“Well, I do declare. And I was fixing to ask you how you like these Southern-style crackers. But I reckin you’re like the rabbit in the brier patch.” He chuckled. “I don’t care what anybody says, it’s a doggone shame to send you boys to a cracker town like this here to teach you how to die for your country. I’d just as soon do my dying right here in Georgia.”
Solly thought uneasily, there’s that Double-V again.
“Watch it Father. Sometimes you forget the position you hold in the community. You keep talking like that, Booker T. will be looking for a new principal after all these years.” Fannie Mae came back in the room with coffee and te
acakes.
“After all these years, I’m too old to get down on my knees to anybody but the good Lord. And sometimes I wonder maybe he’s white.”
They sat there drinking coffee. He could hear the mother moving around the kitchen. The father sat across from him, looking him over, sizing him up. All the comfort had disappeared.
The father said, “You have one more year in law school.”
Solly felt like screaming, I’m married! I’m not after your daughter’s hand. I’m not your future son-in-law. He said, “Yes, sir.”
The father said, “Good. The Race needs some crackerjack lawyers.”
Solly thought, there’s the Race Question again. They’d been ducking it all night long. He said, “We certainly do.” And let it go at that.
The father said, “Just telling the baby the other—she’s no baby anymore—just telling Fannie Mae. Colored man has to hit while the iron is hot. Can’t be marking time while these white folks shooting at each other, else we’ll have to start from scratch all over again when the shooting’s over with.”
Fannie Mae cleared her throat and started to collect the cups and saucers in a tray. She gave her father a look.
Solly thought, color color color! These people are obsessed with color. Don’t they know the world is bigger than the colored race? The father expected a comment from him. Solly said evasively, “You’ve got something there, sir.”
The father got another message from another look his daughter gave him, and he got up and said good night and followed her into the kitchen.
When she came back she sat down beside Solly and laughed nervously. “Don’t pay Father any mind. The older he gets, the more radical he becomes. It’s some kind of disease that gets progressively worse with him.”
“I like your father,” he said shakily. “And your mother too.”
“I’m glad,” she said in a quiet voice. “I’m very glad.”
It was quiet in the house, and he heard her parents going up the hall up the stairs to their bedroom. He heard the father clear his throat loud and significantly. They stared at the fire in the fireplace, saying nothing for the moment. Then she said, “It is getting kind of late, I reckon. I wanted to talk to you about the Thanksgiving party we’re giving for some of the boys.”
“The men—” Thinking of Bookworm and the pink-faced captain at the Fort Dix Reception Center. Such a long long time ago.
“The men,” she agreed. “Especially those a long ways from home—” She stopped and turned to him “I am glad you liked my parents. Especially my father. He doesn’t open up to everybody.” She stopped, she hesitated, then she ventured, “I’m also glad you’ve thought about what we talked about—” She paused again, uncertain. “And you at least halfway agree with me—I mean, you see my point at least. You admitted to my father.”
He grew warmer, and he stood and looked down into her anxious face. “I just did not want to argue with him.”
And God have mercy, don’t let her look at me like that!
She said, “I understand, Solly.” It was almost a sob of ecstasy, pure and sweet and everlasting.
He said, “You do?” And had a weird impulse to run out of the room and up the hall and out of the house and up the walk and on and on and never stop running.
She said, “Yes—yes. I do! I do!” As if he’d asked her did she love him.
He sank back on the couch next to her. “I wish I did. Sometimes I think the thing for me to do is to take the chip off my shoulder and forget I’m a Negro and just look out for Number One and use to advantage the little education I’m lucky to have, and go onward and upward or wherever you go, on the ladder to success, and work on those promotions like mad till the war is over. I for one am sick and tired of the cry-babies in my outfit. There’s a war against fascism or haven’t they heard about it?”
She shook her head and a quiet cry slipped unwillingly from her wet lips, “No, Solly!”
He stood up again and stared down at her belligerently. “And why not? We’re Americans first, aren’t we? Americans first and Negroes incidentally.”
“Are we, Solly?” He thought maybe she was going to cry but somehow knew she wouldn’t. “Is that the N-double-A-CP’s slogan up in New York City?”
“You better believe it is,” he said. “And we Americans have a common enemy and we have no time for family squabbles. We can settle them later.”
She shook her lovely angry head. “You can’t believe that.”
“What’s wrong with me wanting to be an officer, I’d like to know. Is that a club for white folks only? And Negroes should not even try to break down the barriers? You think I wouldn’t make as good an officer as some of these ofay ninety-day wonders?”
She shook her head as if it were in awful pain.
He chose to misunderstand her. “Thanks for the rousing vote of confidence.”
“When you’re an officer you’re against the men,” she accused him.
“Excuse me,” he said, “I thought the idea was that the men and officers were together—a team—with a common goal, but one that needed followers and leadership.”
She said, “Yes—all right, Solly. I don’t know—you get me so mixed up. Of course, you should be an officer. I know it—I want you to be one—”
He said, “I know one thing—I’m sick and tired of people who are supposed to be my friends accusing me of every kind of opportunism in the book and for selling out the Race.” He paused to catch his breath. “I know another thing—it’s time I got back to dear old Camp Johnson Henry.”
Then he looked down into her face and he said, “Fannie Mae” like a whisper, and suddenly he realized his mouth adored the taste of her name, just as his ears did love the simple music of her voice. His eyes drank in the deep sweet beauty of her face. Fannie Mae—Fannie Mae—Fannie Mae. It was not just the prettiness of her eyes, her mouth, her nose, the contours of her lovely face. It was far more than that. It was the deep and beautiful goodness greatness her beloved face exuded. He was a goddamn romantic, and he believed she was inside of her what her outside beauty said she was. He was a fool and he believed she was what she seemed to be. And he wanted her to believe in him. He wanted desperately for her to understand him the way he wanted to be understood.
She stood up. “All right, Solly. But about the Thanksgiving party, we especially want to invite the men who are far away from home, men like yourself. About fifty soldiers, and I want you to help me get up a list.”
He said, “Okay, you can count on me.” And they went out of the room and up the hall.
They were standing on the front porch now in the moonlight that was terribly disturbing, and he could smell the awful sweetness of the autumn flowers still in bloom and the nearness of her, dear Fannie Mae! There was a frown upon his face that was there without his knowing.
He said, “Swell, Fannie Mae. Fine. You know you can count on me.”
He thought, all this talk about the war and the NAACP and OCS is the farthest thing from both our minds. And as they stood there in silence there was that same look about her, her sweet curved mouth slightly open, moist and eager, and the same movement, the nervousness, and now was the time to say good night and be on his way, and now he would tell her he was married. He made himself tell her. Not now—not now—not this moment. Tell her the next time. Don’t spoil this precious unspoiled moment. He’d tell her right now. He’d make himself tell her about his Millie.
He said, “I feel very guilty about coming home with you. It isn’t right because—”
“Listen,” she said fiercely, “if you feel at all guilty, you shouldn’t ever come again. Joe Taylor doesn’t have any claim on me. He’s a nice fellow and I like him very much, but that’s as far as it goes. And it doesn’t go any further no matter how much you might want it to go for some reason I can’t understand.”
Yes, a part of the great guilt was Joe Taylor, his noble incorruptible militant friend, on Guard Duty, and Solly was the man that made up the Gua
rd Duty Roster, but that was not the important part. He had meant to tell her simply that he was married. “Fannie Mae—” The words were stuck like hardened glue inside his scratchy throat.
“You walk three blocks straight down Pine Street and turn right on Jessup Avenue and walk four more blocks straight down Jessup and you’re at the bus station. Good night, Solly Saunders.”
“I’m sorry, Fannie Mae.”
“Good night, Corporal Saunders.”
He said good night and turned to go, hating the weakness in him that he had so recently discovered.
“Solly!” she called softly to him. “Solly!” And he turned toward her again. “Be careful. Please be careful, and watch out for the police cars. They pick up our soldiers sometimes this time of night.” He came back on the porch and they were standing very close to each other, the perspiration misty on her dark red lips, and her long-slung body sweet and round, yet slimmer than a sapling, in the soft moonlight that cast crazy shadows onto the porch, and her nervous bosom pushing her blouse, and just reach out and take her into your arms and kiss away the arguments, the misunderstandings, the great nervousness and the tears that stand just on the other side of her large black eyes, but you’d better not do that. You’d better not touch those wet eager lips and strike the match and set aflame the almighty fire. Because her kind of all-consuming fire might burn you alive—burn both of you. And yet it could happen in a split second, a slight movement a reaching out, and it would be on. It would be on and on and on—and Lordy Lord—
“Maybe I should drive you to the bus station. Wait just a minute. I’ll get my keys.”
“Oh no, no—Fannie Mae—that isn’t necessary. I’ll be okay. Don’t worry about a thing. Hundreds of us come into Ebbensville every night.”
“Are you sure? Please, Solly, let me drive you down there. I really want to!”
He shook his head.
“All right then,” she said, “but do be careful.”
And Then We Heard the Thunder Page 14