She said, “Be anything you want, my darling.”
He said, “Don’t try to tell me what to be! Don’t try to arrange my life for me—”
She looked at her watch. He saw the deep hurt in her eyes. “I have to go now, Solly. But I hate to leave you in such a mood. We have everything to live for.”
He said, “Don’t do me any favors.”
And the tears stood barely out of sight on the other side of her eyes now, and he thought, don’t cry here! Don’t cry here!
She kissed him on his angry open mouth, and he lived completely one more time, and she turned and hurried away from him.
He lay there breathing deeply now, as the pain and loneliness moved in on him, throbbing, thumping, stabbing, killing, in his loins, in between his legs, his arms, so painful he thought his heart would never stand it, and he could hear death with her cool white wings flapping, and he could smell death and he could feel it, and the clammy taste was in his mouth, and somehow he felt if death should come he would welcome her like a long-lost lover, and it would be peaceful, like a quiet rustling of golden leaves. He loved the fall of the year with everything dying, terribly dying, peacefully dying, goldenly dying, beautifully dying. Like everything else in life, death could be a thing of beauty. Especially in autumn. Some days he thought he wished that death would take him.
He got the sweetest letter from Millie. Congratulations on the promotion to corporal. When are you going to Officer Candidate School? You’ll make the handsomest officer in the United States of America. Meanwhile she was doing her share on the home front, boosting morale at the Stage Door Canteen, and keeping her chin up, and trying not to worry too much about him, and she was putting aside as much money as she could, so that he could go back and finish his last year in law school, and they would have a little nest egg to fall back on when he put his shingle up. She loved him, oh God, she loved him. She would sacrifice everything for her great love for him.
Everybody had plans for him. Doing him favors which demanded obligations. Even Mama.
All of Mama’s letters ended with: “Take care of yourself. Don’t be a hero.” He always laughed, but not at the very end which always said: “You’re all I got in the world.”
He remembered fragments from an ancient blues. Bessie Smith—Billy Holliday—
“If I go and take a notion
To jump in the deep blue ocean
Ain’ nobody’s business if I do.”
And that’s exactly how he felt, Fannie, Millie, Mama, Bookworm, Samuels, Captain Rutherford—notwithstanding.
He heard the doctor at a bed nearby with his syrup-sweetened voice like a long-distance operator. Solly closed his book and waited. The doctor was probably a queer, he thought. Now they were at his bed, the doctor and the tired nurse, the dark-eyed sweet-faced one with the blue-black hair and: “How are you this evening, soldier?” And looking him over and probing him sadistically and temperature and pulse and nasty medicine and a needle in his tenderized buttock and the doctor’s pale and stubby fingers and his face with the pallid smile of death. Go ahead, he thought, go ahead, do what you’re big enough and white enough to do to me, you sadistic mama-jabbers.
They were leaving and he asked them in a trembly voice, “How long will I have to be in this place, Captain?”
“Oh, not so long. You’ll be out of here before you can say Jack Robinson.” He jabbed Solly in his ribs again playfully and Solly almost fainted. He wished for the strength to knock the smiling captain on his fat faggotty backside.
“The best thing in your favor, soldier, is your attitude. You’re anxious to get out of here and help win the war.”
Solly Saunders said, “Yeah, that’s right. I’m anxious to get it over with. Just let me at them.”
He lay there breathing deeply in his helpless hopeless anger for over an hour after they left. He laughed aloud and he thought, maybe I’m going crazy. Maybe this is what it feels like just before you lose contact with the real world, whatever that means. Images ran around in his head throwing hand grenades at each other. Was he still a man? Were his testicles intact? They ached as if they were being prodded with a red-hot poker. He had to hold his throbbing legs apart. He started to laugh again. If Millie Saunders were not pregnant she’d never be. Not with Solly Saunders’s child. He thought, I’ll cheer her up. I’ll write her about my visit with the cops of Ebbensville and about the good times I’m having in this lovely white hospital. But he never wrote about it and she never ever knew.
Some hours he lay flat on his back scheming like a madman. If he acted crazy, maybe the Army would give him a Section 8, a medical discharge. He would love the Army then. His head was heavy, and every time somebody walked past his bed he thought they must be roller-skaters tap dancing on the inner layer of his skull. He thought, what would happen if I screamed and screamed to the top of my lungs? They would think I had blown my top, and they would be almost right. He thought, this must be somebody else’s head. These are not my thoughts. My head was never this big or heavy. My mouth never tasted like the smell of dead bedbugs before. I lost my manhood and I’m losing my mind, and I hate the Army of the United States, and I hate Millie and Mama and Worm and Rutherford and Boy Wonder and Fannie Mae and all the rest of it, everything is phony, excepting Fannie Mae and Mama and Worm, and I’m mad at the whole damn world or maybe I’m just mad period.
He thought warmly of Jim Larker, the little big-eyed soft-spoken soldier from the work battalion. Had they beaten him up also? Was he somewhere in this white hospital all messed up in perpetuity, as they used to say in law school? Solly’s eyes filled as he recalled the firm expression on the soldier’s prettyish face and the way he had gotten out of line and stood with him, a total stranger. He remembered the ride to the police station. “My name is James Larker. Tenth Engineers—hard work battalion . . . going to get out of Georgia even if I have to volunteer for duty overseas.”
Solly finally fell asleep and most of the night he dreamed of police stations and Jim Larker and police chiefs and Army colonels. He fought the bastards all night long. He and Larker. He did not know what woke him up but he was glad to be awake. It was about eight o’clock in the morning and he didn’t even realize that Worm was standing at his bedside till Worm asked him, “What’s the matter, good kid?”
The tears were streaming down Solly’s face.
He looked up at Worm and he didn’t even bother to wipe his eyes. “What in the hell do you think is the matter? These people pissing in our face every day of our lives and telling us it’s raining outdoors and most of us believe it, and even so there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it.”
“We can write that letter,” Bookworm said. As if he just happened to be standing there and just happened to have a letter to write.
“Write what letter?” He stared at Worm as if he thought the open-faced soldier was out of his mind.
“That letter you said you was going to write—to the colored papers and the NAACP and all that Double-V for Victory.”
The pain halted, the tears dried up, maybe even his heart knocked off momentarily. The wheels turned over in his weary mind, and flares lit up and seemed to set his brain on fire. And he did not want to think about it or rationalize or talk about it; he wanted to do. He was sick and tired of introspection.
He said, “What have we got to lose?”
Worm said, “I ain’t got a thing to lose. Depends on what you think is valuable.”
Solly said, “Hold it a second. Let me think.”
The wheels were turning, his brain was burning. Did he still live with illusions about this Army and the war? After all the dynamiting and the blasting, were ambition and illusion so indestructible? Yet he hemmed and hawed and hesitated. He hated himself but he hesitated, as real world and dream world waged a deadly war inside of him. What was real and what was dream? He wanted to believe in something.
Worm said quietly, “If you still got to think about it, forget it. You just ain’t ready yet.�
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Solly said, “Worm—I—” Somewhere in him he heard, Use your head, never ever trust emotions even if they’re honest. And he heard another voice say Double-V for Victory—and what did he have to lose? What did he have to lose of value? The captain didn’t know he was AWOL was one thing in his favor.
Worm said, “Forget it, good kid. When in the hell they gon let you out this place?”
Solly said, “You go to hell—you go to hell and tell them I sent you. You’re so damn pious and self-righteous, I’ll bet you used to be an altar boy.”
Worm said, “I don’t have to go because you send me, even if you are a corporal in these white folks’ Army. That’s one thing and that ain’t two.”
Solly said heatedly, “You smuggle the typewriter over here, and we’ll do some letter-writing tonight.”
Worm’s voice was trembling. “Don’t do me any favors, pardner. Don’t let me talk you into anything you don’t really want to do. Don’t let your heart do nothing your ass can’t stand behind.”
Solly said angrily, “If you’re scared to bring it, say so, and stop beating around the bush.”
That night Worm sneaked the typewriter into the hospital and they wrote letters for two or three hours to all the Negro newspapers and Reverend Johnson Digby and Mrs. Bethune and to the President of the United States and to Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt.
Worm came for him the day he was released. Brought him his newly pressed uniform, brand-new necktie, shoes shined so you could see your face in them. He was grinning from ear to ear as he watched Solly get ready.
“Man, you are as sharp as a wedding dick. Don’t you go round my old lady.”
“Got good treatment in this place. I started to stay in here indefinitely.”
Worm laughed. “The studs sure did miss you in the company. And the ladies in the PX.”
Solly grunted. He was almost ready to go now. He adjusted his necktie, stuffed his shirttail into his trousers.
Worm said proudly, “Them letters we wrote to them people was a mama-huncher!”
Solly turned quickly toward the Bookworm. “You haven’t heard anything from them, have you?”
“Hell naw.” Worm laughed. “You’d be the first I’d tell about it. After all—you the ringleader.”
“Yeah,” Solly said. He was the ringleader. He was the master mind.
“Don’t worry,” Worm assured him, “we’ll hear from them all right. When the shit hits the fan, boy—”
Solly looked long at his best buddy. Then he said to him quietly, “Meanwhile, let’s drop the subject till something happens, honh? After all, they probably threw them in the wastebasket. We were pretty stupid to write them in the first place.”
The Bookworm stared at him, no longer smiling, looking at his brand-new buddy.
CHAPTER 12
It was his first day back with the company. The captain sat silently at the Topkick’s desk staring at the back of Solly’s head as Solly banged away on the typewriter making out the company payroll.
Finally Rutherford said, “Saunders, I have done everything within my power to bring you forward in the Army, and I’m just about at the end of my rope.”
Solly stopped typing and turned toward the captain.
“You can forget about OCS. That’s down the drain, after all the trouble I went to. And if it wasn’t for Sergeant Anderson, I would bust you down to a private, but he covered for you. I don’t believe the lie he told me, but I can’t disprove it. If I did, I’d have to break him too. So I’m letting you keep your stripes this time. But I’m warning you, Saunders, once and for all, I don’t give a goddamn if you are the best company clerk in the regiment. I wouldn’t even care if you were the best in the whole damn Army. The next time you get out of line or fuck up any shape, form, or fashion, I’m going to burn your ass, so help me. That is no threat, that’s a promise. Is that clear?”
He said, “Yes, sir.” From now on he would never let this man know what his thoughts and feelings were. He would say yes, sir, no, sir, and under his breath say screw you, sir. His head was clearer now. He had no more illusions.
“The company records are in one holy mess. I want you to pitch right in and straighten them out. I don’t care if you have to work at it twenty-four hours a day. We’re going to have Regimental Inspection of company records next Friday morning, and if we don’t pass it, it’s going to be hell to pay, between me and you. If we pass it with flying colors I’m ready to wipe the slate clean. And I’ll give you any temporary help you need. Is all that clear?”
He said, “Yes, sir.” My Army IQ is twenty-three points higher. I’ll outwit this peckerwood.
“This is your last chance, Saunders. If you got a personal problem, come to me, and I’ll see what’s what, but don’t never come to see me as a member of a mob. You’re my company clerk and your first loyalty is to me.”
Solly had thought it was to God and Country. And he was remembering now the letter he and Worm had written, signed by others in the company. Romantic, idealistic, which were other words for stupid. Never again would he let his feelings run away with his common sense. What is a good mind for if not to be used to good advantage?
“You’ll learn one of these days Samuels’s kind doesn’t mean you any good.” The captain got up and sat down again. “I’m a Southerner, Saunders, and I know you New York colored folks are prejudiced against us. And I don’t say like some hypocrites do, that some of my best friends are Negroes, and I didn’t have a Negro mammy cause my family couldn’t afford it. And I don’t pronounce Negro ‘nigrah’ either. And I can say one thing in clear conscience—I am not prejudiced against the colored race. There’s a place for everybody on this planet. Almighty God made all of us, and we ought to live in harmony, and I’m ready to meet you halfway any time any place.”
Rutherford’s voice was soft and low and he was almost out of breath, and Solly stared at him in amazement as he suddenly realized this man was serious in his convictions, and to that extent was honest.
“I don’t know how I can make it plainer to you. I’m your commanding officer and you’re my company clerk, and you’re as good as any white one on the post, but if you give me another half a inch of trouble, I am going to do everything in my power to make you miserable the rest of your Army days. You understand?” His voice was trembling with his righteous anger. He had given this one colored boy every break in the goddamn book.
Solly thought, every man is honest if he does not deceive himself. He said, “Yes, sir.” If those letters were ever published, then he had screwed up in perpetuity. What newspaper would be foolish enough to publish them at a time like this? From now on he would listen to his brain. He had gone way out on a limb and couldn’t get back, and when and if the time came, all the man had to do was to saw it off. He had given Captain Charlie the rope to break his neck with. Never again, Millie baby.
He said, “If Private First-Class Moore could work with me till Friday, sir.”
The CO said, “Tell his platoon sergeant I gave the order.”
Clint and he worked like pack horses day and night, and Samuels helped them. And the colonel came and inspected. Friday night Rutherford called him into the office. He looked at him sternly. Finally he said, “Saunders, I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, I swear before the Lord I don’t. You’ve gone and fucked the dog again.”
Solly thought, he’s found out about the letters! And he realized then how scared he was about them. His heart was beating double-time. To hell with Scotty. He didn’t want any part of the stockade. A sharp pain in between his buttocks. “We did our best, sir.” Hating the sound of his own voice. “Private First-Class Moore and I—”
Rutherford cut him off. “You’ve done your level best all right. You just had the best damn records in the regiment, that’s all.” The CO smiling broadly now. “You just keep fucking up like that and you just might make sergeant one of these days.”
The anger smoldered inside of him and he could not force
himself to smile. He tried hard enough. This peckerwood bastard toying with him like he was a little boy. Well, he would give him smile for smile, even though he could not at the moment smile, and he would make sergeant and even maybe more than sergeant. And he remembered the letters and he was glad and sorry too. They would never see the light of day. No one would dare to publish them. No one would be so foolish.
* * *
Lieutenant Samuels had come to see him several times while he was in the hospital, and each time he had questioned Solly about the happenings in Ebbensville. His first Saturday morning out of the hospital, the lieutenant asked him to drive him into town on some business. It was a warm sun-washed day for the first of November even in Georgia, and a red dusty haze hung over the highway like an early-morning fog. If it were not knee-deep muddy in that part of Georgia, it was ankle-deep in dust. Take your choice.
As they reached the town the lieutenant asked Solly for the millionth time, “And you don’t remember his name?”
“I don’t remember that I ever heard them call his name,” Solly answered nonchalantly. “His name was Colonel. Colonel Charlie Peckerwood the Third.”
“Well,” the lieutenant said his face turning red, “you know where the police station is. That’s our first stop.”
Solly stared ahead at the hot dusty road. He and his Great White Brother.
They were in the heart of the downtown district now, on one of the two streets in town that sported traffic lights, and it was Saturday and overalled crackers, some of them fat, most of them scrawny, and red-necked crackers and dressed-up crackers with brogan shoes in town from the country, and wagonloads of crackers and cracker womenfolk and cracker children, and the stores and shops doing a thriving Saturday business, and the strong sharp smell in the air of horse dung freshly deposited, golden-brown and smoking, and slow-drag drawls and Southern accents and nickelodeons blasting away with hillbilly tunes and boisterous laughter, and all of it conjuring up memories, stowed away and long forgotten, of Dry Creek, Georgia, Lord Lord Lord, where he lived the first seven years of his life. He caught a brief glimpse of a lone black face and remembered another Saturday between ten and fifteen years ago—his mother and he walking all the way from Glenwood Bottom, where colored people lived, through Crackerville, through the downtown district, all the way to the train depot with three beat-up suitcases holding all the wealth they had in the world, and pink-faced red-necked crackers staring at them like they had just escaped from a circus cage, and waiting around on the colored bench for over an hour and catching the first thing smoking for ‘way up North in New York City. A bittersweet nostalgia spread over the floor and roof of his mouth and he thought he smelled a sharp sweet fragrance of honeysuckles on the vine, and he stared at the strange familiar faces as if he longed to discover an old acquaintance. Samuels jarred him out of his romantics.
And Then We Heard the Thunder Page 18