“All right, get aboard,” the driver said.
“But these men were here before us,” the serious-faced white soldier said.
“That’s the colored line,” the driver said. “They get on last. That’s the law.”
Solly found himself pulling for the white soldiers to stand up against the cracker. Stand up for your rights, goddammit!
Don’t let that cracker push you around. Here were two white soldiers who knew what the war was all about. He felt a kinship with these men.
“It isn’t fair,” the white soldier said staring at his friendly-faced buddy.
Solly was almost glad he stood there, just to see and hear this happen.
“I don’t make the laws, pardner,” the driver said. He reminded Solly of Rutherford. Long, tall, and skinny and a big gun gleaming in its holster.
“You boys gon get on or gon get left?” the driver said to the two white soldiers.
They stared at each other and the smiling-faced soldier said, “What the hell. What can you do? We’re in Rome, goddammit.”
And they hesitated for a couple of moments longer and then got quietly on the bus.
And the white soldiers kept coming, while the mean-looking colored soldiers stood in line with chips on their shoulders, and finally the bus filled up to standing room only, and the motor sputtering and coughing and sounding off, and the door closing and the bus pulling out of the station now without any Negro soldiers aboard, and he felt that if he had a gun on him, he would shoot the tires full of holes and then just train the gun on the bus and pump holes in it from front to back and he wouldn’t give a good goddamn who got hit or how damn many. It had happened the last time he was in town. As long as there were white soldiers to get on, he had had to stand there like a damn fool and see a couple of buses come in and fill up and pull out again heading for the camp. And each time he felt less and less a man, frustrated and helpless as they openly robbed him of his humanity and his manhood, him, Solly Saunders from New York City, a soldier in the Army of the United States. Who would one day be an officer.
He looked at the faces of the other Negro soldiers, angry and sullen. His ears picked up the grumbled cusswords under their breaths. Why in the hell didn’t they do something about it? Why did they stand there night after night in the Army of the United States and let themselves be robbed of the dignity of being a soldier of serving their country of being a man? He summoned up the deepest kind of hatred and contempt for them and for himself. Why in the hell didn’t he do something? He didn’t even have a pass. He was Absent Without Leave, A-W-O-goddamn-L. He couldn’t say a word. He even had to get off the bus at the stop before the camp was reached about a half a mile from the camp and walk the rest of the way and crawl under a barbed-wire fence, and make it through the woods. The second bus was half filled with white soldiers and no more of them around to get on, and why didn’t the soldiers in his line get on? The cracker motorman looked around to see that no other white soldiers were getting on the bus. He came to the door and looked up and down the broad plaza to see if any more white soldiers were on the way, and now he would motion to the colored soldiers in a friendly fashion. “All right, boys, what are we waiting for?”
Up the plaza a block away Solly saw a police car slowly moving in their direction. Everything was slow in Ebbensville, slow and easy and nice and sweet as apple pie and sugar cane, but before you knew it lightning would strike and anything could happen. But he had nothing to worry about. Nothing at all. The car came down the boulevard and slowed down almost to a stop, and turned in a driveway toward the station, creeping along. Solly could feel the anger of the other colored soldiers merging with his own, and the men up front started to board the bus without the usual signal or the words from the driver. He stood in the doorway, barring their progress, long and lank like Rutherford, with his hand resting carelessly on his forty-five and a friendly smile on his face. “Now wait a minute, boys. Ain’t no hurry.” He looked from them to the police car crawling up the driveway.
“All right, let’s go, goddammit,” a white soldier yelled from inside of the bus. “You holding up the fucking war.”
The police car finally came up taking its time, and two of Ebbensville’s finest got out and came over to the bus. One was a great big blond-headed cracker, big and tall and plug-ugly, with his police cap sitting back on his head and roosting on top of a big nest of hair. His feet were big and bad enough to be put in jail. He walked like he was stepping on hot coals. The other policeman was medium height with a soft pretty face and a long neck with a big Adam’s apple and skinny as a broomstick.
“Howdy, boys,” the bus driver said. “Y’all looking for any these boys, I got here? Anything happen in town tonight?”
“Naw,” the skinny one said. “Just checking passes. That’s all. We don’t want nobody to be A-W-O-L. You know how it is.”
“Go right ahead then and check them passes. You got here just in time. But don’t take all night now. The boys inside want to get back to the camp.”
Somebody inside of the bus shouted angrily, “Let’s get going! You holding up the fucking war!”
The big cracker cop was already to the front of the line asking for passes. The colored soldiers were reaching into their pockets and bringing out their passes and showing them to the big cop who had no right to check them in the first damn place. And Solly Saunders reached into his own pockets searching for a pass that never existed and hoping that one of the soldiers before they got to him would challenge the cop, tell the cracker he had no right to look at their passes. They were not MPs. But not a single soldier challenged the white policeman as the big cracker came down from colored soldier to colored soldier. They just reached in their pockets and showed him their passes, some with blank expressions on their faces, some with anger, some faces frightened. The big bad-feet cracker was about five or six men away from Solly now and Solly’s whole body was drenched with sweat and his poor nervous stomach turning over and over, and maybe the cracker would stop looking at passes before he got to the foot of the line. The little soft-faced cracker cop stood away from the men with his hand on his hip near his gleaming gun. Waiting to make himself a hero. This was the way they emasculated Negroes in Georgia every single day in the year. Solly imagined the plug-ugly one going down the line from man to man with a long white-handled razor and slicing brown and black testicles one at a time. The colored soldiers naked before the world and the two policemen. He could hear the testicles drop to the pavement with a horrible monotonous thud. The image was so powerfully real to him he felt a painful throbbing in his groins.
Three men away from Solly a little dark brown-skin soldier with big brown eyes like they should have belonged to a pretty girl put his hand in his pocket, but he didn’t bring out a pass. He looked up at the big cracker and asked him, “Why didn’t you inspect the passes of the men already inside of the bus?”
“That ain’t none of your worry, boy. All you got to do is show me your pass. The only worry you got is if you ain’t got no pass in your pocket.”
The big bad-feet, plug-ugly cracker kept smiling, his face turning red, and the little cracker cop kept his hand on his pistol. The colored soldiers stood there worried-looking, angry and sullen, some of them scared. It was as if the whole town held its breath for a minute, and then breathed easily and went back to sleep, as the little dark soldier with the big brown eyes swallowed the night air and took his pass out of his pocket and showed it to the big cracker cop. And then the next soldier and the next, and now Solly Saunders, Corporal Saunders, candidate for Officers’ School, company clerk, the brain of H Company. The man with the officer attitude.
He looked up at the big blond cracker and down at the ground. He didn’t hardly have any choice. He had to challenge the cracker for the simple reason that he didn’t have a pass to show him. Not even a bogus one. He looked up again and made himself stare the cracker in the face. Court was in session. The issue was joined.
He though
t, I should tell them I’m a loyal American and I believe in the war, and tell them with a good old Southern “nigrah” accent. I’m such a trusted colored soldier I’m going to be an officer. Convince them that I’m neither agitator nor troublemaker. I have the proper attitude, and if they don’t believe me, they can ask my captain. He’s a Southern gentleman just like they are. The issue was not necessarily joined. It never was. Unless he joined it.
The big cop said (not unfriendly maybe), “All right, boy. Let’s have it. We ain’t got all night. Rest of these boys wanna get home to camp.” He was doing a job was all he was doing.
Sometimes a good run is better than a bad stand and ten times more intelligent. Run away and live to fight another day. Solly felt the fresh sweat on his forehead, cleared his throat and moved his feet, and heard himself say, “I don’t believe you have any right to be checking our passes. You’re not the Military Police.”
“Well, like I told the other boy while ago, don’t worry too much about that. Thinking ain’t good for you nohow. Make you git a awful bad headache. You let us do the thinking. Just show me your pass, boy, that is, if you got one.”
“You don’t have jurisdiction over a soldier in the Army, especially if he hasn’t violated a civilian law.”
The easy smile had left the big cracker’s face now. He put his hand on his gun. “That’s the trouble with niggers with a little education. They don’t know when to use it and when to not.”
Solly didn’t say a word. He just stared at the cracker. He had started now and he couldn’t turn back. The road was long and white and lonesome and narrow and no side roads—no bypasses, no detours—just straight ahead, and long and white.
“You gon show me your pass, boy, or you gon cut the goddamn fool?”
“I still say you don’t have any jurisdiction.”
The slow life of Ebbensville speeded up suddenly and things happened quickly. Both of the crackers pulled their guns on him.
“All right now, boy, you gon show us your pass?” And for a brief moment he wished he had told them from the beginning he didn’t have a pass and had thrown himself on their white and tender mercy, their Southern hospitality. He wished desperately he had a pass to show them. But the way he figured, it wouldn’t do any good to tell them anything. Not now. He had challenged their whiteness their jurisdiction their Godalmightiness, and he might as well stick by it for the good it would do him, and the taste in his mouth was better this way. He was scared, worried scared deep deep down in the pit of his belly and in the middle of his buttocks, and his body steamed with perspiration. But he had resisted the long white razor and his testicles were still intact. Ever since he came into the Army the war had raged around him. He’d been alert and agile, even as the bullets bounced around his feet, hitting Worm, Scotty, Sergeant Greer. With his fancy footwork and his ambition and his intelligence, he had avoided every issue. But now the issues were forever joined. With his education, his personality, he had thought They would surely spare him, but They had betrayed him.
“I’m a soldier and I have committed no crime against the civilian law and you have no jurisdiction over me.” He tried desperately to keep his voice from trembling.
They had always betrayed him. He had betrayed himself from the beginning.
“All right, nigger, if that’s the way you want it.” And they pulled him roughly out of the line with their brave pistols gleaming in the tender moonlight and the bus driver shouted, “All aboard. Let’s get going,” as several of the soldiers stepped out of the line, including the little one with the big brown eyes and moved toward the policemen, the little fellow asking, “What’s going on here?” Four or five other soldiers fell out behind them and crowded together.
The big cop turned on them with his forty-five. “Back up, goddammit, and git on the bus, or I blow every one of you to hell and back.” His blue eyes wide and wild with fear on the borderline of panic.
“This is America—this isn’t Germany,” the little soldier said without flinching. “What are you going to do with that soldier?”
“Since you’re so innerested,” the big cracker said, “we’ll take you along.” He waved his gun. “The rest of y’all get the hell on the bus and I don’t mean perhaps.” The two policemen backed the rest of the men away toward the bus, cussing and grumbling, and the big cracker and the little cracker waving their guns courageously, and the brave bus driver with his gun in his hand, and the colored soldiers got aboard the bus, and the bus pulled out, leaving Solly and the little big-eyed soldier alone with the cracker policemen, and everything had started so slowly and happened so quickly. And at that moment in his short life he thought about Millie his Millie so many hundreds of miles away, and sleeping peacefully without any knowledge of the fix he was in, and Millie and Mama were sleeping soundly, and Fannie Mae too was probably asleep just a few blocks away, and it was all her fault but it wasn’t her fault at all. He knew it wasn’t. They took the two American soldiers over whom they had no jurisdiction whatever down to the Ebbensville police station, the City Hall, and as they sat in the back of the car together, Solly told the other soldier, “You shouldn’t’ve gotten mixed up in this mess.” His eyes filling up now with tears of admiration and a feeling of warmth and comradeship and coloredness moving all through his body. For the moment at least his own predicament was out of focus of his mind. And for the moment he felt better than he ever felt since he became a soldier in the Army of his Uncle Sam. He felt good deep down in the guts of him.
The little soldier whispered, “My name is James Larker. I’m in the Tenth Engineers—a hard work battalion. What’s your name?”
“My name is Solly Saunders. I’m in H Company of the Fifty-fifth Quartermaster.” He wanted to say something else to the soldier but he couldn’t think of anything.
He sat there in the squad car in silence as he smiled at the bitter taste in his mouth. Damn them. They had caught him at last. They had been after him ever since he could remember almost, and one of his mother’s greatest worries used to be that one day she would come home from work or they would call her on her job and tell her he was in trouble with the law and the police would have locked her baby up, but it had never happened in that great big city where a lonesome fatherless kid with a working mother could find so much trouble to get into. He had to wait till he came all the way down South in the land of cotton into the great democratic Army of the United States of America. His face filled up. He had bought the whole hogwash while pretending that he hadn’t. It was a real funny joke. He remembered the first time They had actually chased him . . . .
It was right in the middle of the Great Depression and even Mama was unemployed. Out on the streets of Harlem he saw New York’s Finest night after night break up street meetings and unemployment demonstrations and charge into crowds with their handsome horses and whip heads till their nightsticks looked like they were dipped in tomato ketchup, and dreaming about bloody heads all night long and the newspapers said it was the Communists stirring up trouble. And yet almost every afternoon Freddie and Jimmy and Lonnie and sometimes Joe MacBride and Solly would get together and one of them would say, “Wonder where one gon be tonight?” And they would wander all over Harlem till they found one. One night they were watching a meeting and a colored man was standing on a step-ladder with the Stars and Stripes waving in the evening breeze and the little black man was shouting his lungs out about President Hoover and unemployment and discrimination, and suddenly the cops on their big proud handsome horses charged into the crowd, and Solly and his buddies threw marbles in the way of the poor unfortunate horses who slipped and skidded, and cops and horses fell all over the place. It was a trick they had learned from one of the men who ran the meeting. And before Solly knew it he was being chased by a big burly white cop shouting, “Goddamn little nigger!” and his back was exposed to the policeman’s pistol and fright moved through him like an open wound, expecting to be shot down any second. Across Lenox Avenue and down to a Hundred and Twe
nty-second Street and back up to a Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street and “Stop that nigger!” Sweat draining from every pore of his frightened body. And on his street now and into his house and the door slammed locked behind him and the chain in place and—
“What’s the matter, Solly? Where you been, baby?” And “Nothing, Mama—” And Mama shaking him till the tears spilled out. And BANG BANG BANG upon the door and “Open up in the name of the law!” And Mama to the door and Solly to the closet.
“What you want?” and “I want that boy! You know what I want!” . . . ”What boy?” . . . ”You know what boy!” And Mama and the policeman shouting at each other through the locked door, and the cop called Mama a Communist and Mama didn’t even know what a Communist was. Finally the policeman walked away but he would be back, and he would find the little nigger if he had to burn down the goddamn block. And there wasn’t time for Mama to ask any questions after the cop left. She gave him a nickel and sent him up to the Bronx to spend the night at a lady friend’s of hers. He went out of the back window and across the yard littered with cans and broken bottles and trash and with a ragged black man standing in the middle of the yard singing, “Did Your Mother Come from Ireland?” and paper flying and the lines full of wet clothes shouting and flapping in the evening breeze.
He came back to the present when the little soldier seated next to him in the back of the car said, “I’m going to get out of Georgia even if I have to volunteer for overseas duty!”
Solly grunted. “You can say that again.” He was still thinking about New York City and the fact that They had never caught up with him in his city and he had assumed They had given up the chase a long time ago. He had gone through high school, finished college, got a job, gone to law school, gone into the Army with great morale and tremendous expectations.
And Then We Heard the Thunder Page 16