And Then We Heard the Thunder

by John Oliver Killens

  “How about you, Corporal? I even want to try to save your skin if I can.”

  Cop that plea now. Do it! Do it! It’ll get all the others off the spot. They’ll understand you did it just to get them off the spot. You’ll be a hero. And yet he heard himself say calmly: “I cannot help you, Captain Rutherford.”

  “I know you’re one of the ringleaders, Saunders. I’ve had my eyes on you ever since you came into the company. You been agitating like a goddamn Communist! And I’m gonna get every last one of you. I tried to be decent with you, particularly, I gave you the benefit of every doubt, cause you were educated and I thought you were different, but now I know don’t any of you appreciate decent treatment. Education can’t work magic with your kind. All of you’re going to face a general court-martial for plotting against the government of the United States. Holding it up to ridicule before the whole damn world. Giving comfort to the enemy. I’ll get every one of you shot at sunrise. This is war, goddamn you!”

  Thank you, Fannie Mae. I feel much better, thank you.

  “Just a minute, Captain!” Buckethead shouted. “I ain’t in this mess, I ain’t in this mess at all. You ain’t asked me yet. You ain’t asked me nothing!”

  “Well—?” the captain said, turning to Baker.

  “Don’t worry about a general court-martial,” Solly heard himself tell Baker quietly. “The captain is just trying to scare us. He doesn’t want you to be a man. Don’t be his stoolie. Writing letters is not a crime.”

  “Shut your mouth, Saunders!”

  “I don’t know anything about nothing, Captain, please, sir. I wasn’t in it at all.” Baker got up and walked around shaking his big head.

  “How do I know you’re not lying through your teeth like the rest of these boys?”

  Baker stood still. “No, sir. I wouldn’t lie to you and I don’t want to get into no trouble. I didn’t know what I was signing. I just thought I—I—I don’t rightly know what I thought. Maybe I thought it was the Guard Duty Roster.” Solly thought any minute Buckethead will fall on his knees in front of the tall cracker captain and maybe kiss his officer’s shoes.

  “Who gave it to you?”

  “Corporal Solomon, please, sir. Or maybe Joe Taylor. I’m so nervous and upset I don’t hardly know what I’m saying.”

  “Maybe it was both of them?” Captain Rutherford urged.

  “Maybe it was, sir. Maybe it was?”

  “Will you testify at the court-martial that these men concocted the whole scheme against the Army and the government?”

  “I—I—I don’t know about all that, sir. I don’t want to testify at no court-martial. No, sir.”

  “Listen, Baker, I’m not going to stand for no crapping around. You either are or you aren’t—understand? You either testify or face general court-martial along with the rest. That goes for you and the Topkick and Saunders and every last one of you.”

  “Yes, sir!” Buckethead Baker said, shaking his big sweaty handsome head. “I’ll testify. You don’t have to worry about a thing, Captain, sir.”

  “I’m not worried,” the captain said. “If you get up there and tell everything you know, you won’t have to worry. And you, Sergeant Anderson?” He was eager for the Topkick to be on his side.

  “I reckin I’m just as guilty as my company clerk, sir. I don’t see where we did anything wrong anyhow. And furthermore I ain’t no stool pigeon. I ain’t never been and ain’t gonna start now.”

  “Don’t be no hero, Sergeant. Don’t be a fall guy for a couple of no-good New York Communists.”

  “I ain’t no hero, Captain Rutherford. But the way I look at it, if it comes to that, I’d rather be a hero or a Communist or whatever you want to call me, than be an uncle tom. I’m a first sergeant and that don’t mean stooling on my men.”

  The captain turned back to Buckethead Baker. “All right, Baker who told you to sign the letter?”

  Baker looked furiously down at the floor. “The Bookworm,” he mumbled.

  “Who? Speak up, boy.”

  “Private Taylor, sir.”

  “Whose idea was it in the first place, Baker?”

  “Sir?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Corporal Saunders, sir.”

  Solly got to his feet, his intentions not entirely clear to him. But his feelings and his thinking were somehow co-ordinated.

  The captain said, “Sit down, Saunders.”

  Solly said, “I can’t stand much more of this, sir—”

  The captain shouted, “Sit down! Do you hear me? You goddamn stinking Communist! Don’t you hear an officer talking to you?”

  “I am not going to sit here and watch you degrade a man—break his morale—make a man like Baker lose all of his self-respect.” His voice was trembling. He stared at the red-faced apoplectic cracker and turned to go.

  “I warn you, Saunders, if you leave this room, you’ll be sorry. I’ll throw the book at you, goddamn your black ungrateful soul!”

  Solly turned toward the captain. But there was no turning back now. He was scared and soaking all over and nervous in the middle, and he saw the walls of Scotty’s stockade closing in on him, and the Federal Penitentiary and a dishonorable discharge, but he had started and he would not turn back. And in a way he was glad the letters had brought things to a head. He was scared to death and glad. “You may do anything you think you’re big and white enough to do, sir, but you’re going to have a fight every step of the way.” He watched himself wade further and further out into the angry ocean and at any minute it would be over his head. “All the way to Washington, and I’m not going to forget that you goddamned the President of the United States, the commander-in-chief, and you called Private Scott a goddamn nigger and you goddamned my black soul, and committed other acts unbecoming a commissioned officer of the United States Army, and my fondest hope is to meet you one day somewhere anywhere without those two bars you’re hiding behind.” Solly turned to leave again. He was trembling with rage.

  The captain was speechless like everybody else. Before Solly reached the door, the first sergeant jumped up. “That isn’t the way to do it, Corporal. Ain’t no need of being foolish. Don’t leave until it’s over. We’re all in this together.”

  Solly stared at the Topkick, the perspiration settling angrily into his eyebrows and over his forehead. He had let his emotions run away from him again instead of using his intellect. He’d let the captain make him blow his top. But the taste in his mouth was good to him. He was scared down in his stomach but he felt good up in his chest.

  “You better talk to him, Sergeant,” the captain said. “He’s been listening to the New York lawyer. He’s the one that got him in this mess.”

  “Nobody got me into a single thing, Captain Rutherford. Let us get clear on that. Whatever I did I’m man enough to stand by.” That much was clean and clear to Solly. Manhood was important to him. He had not really lost his temper. His intelligence and his feelings were in close collaboration this time. Yes. Yes.

  “Then you admit—?”

  “I admit nothing. I merely said whatever I do, I do of my own free will and intelligence. Nobody masterminds me. I do my own thinking. I am my own counsel.”

  “You don’t have to admit it,” Rutherford said. “I know everything. I know all about it. I know about you and the lieutenant raising all that hell in town. I know about you attacking the colonel. I know who started all this NAACP mess here in the company, and I’m going to throw the damn book at every last one of you.” He paused as if he had been running up a long steep hill and was out of breath. “And especially you—especially you!” He pulled his trousers up with his elbows. “And that ain’t no threat, boy. That’s a promise.” He took all of them in with a sweeping glance full of scorn and hatred. The veins in his forehead seemed to be moving and breathing and pushing against the skin drawn tighter than a trap drum. He calmed himself. “I’m giving each and every one of you one last clear chance. Who wants to talk?”

 
; The battle still raged inside of Solly. One last clear chance to cop a plea and save your ass and take the blame and alibi and be a hero. He opened his mouth but the words wouldn’t come.

  “I’m listening, boys.”

  He heard somebody breathing hard.

  Buckethead cleared his itchy throat.

  CHAPTER 17

  For the next few days nothing happened, except that a couple of nights later, Solly and Worm were seated in the orderly room Bee-Essing, when Buckethead Baker came in from town and signed in for the night. Solly and Bookworm didn’t say a word to Buckethead. Baker checked in, then stood for a moment listening to Solly and Bookworm. He smiled good-naturedly and cleared his throat.

  “Goddammit, why in the hell don’t you two studs get off your dead asses and go into town sometimes and get your axles greased?”

  “I mean I go for that Double-V-for-Victory jive,” Worm said to Solly. “Especially against the Georgia peckerwoods.”

  Buckethead laughed. “Boy, I did a mean wiggle with that broad tonight. You cats should have heard her groaning and grunting and calling my name. She can do more with a dick than a monkey with a peanut. Oooh goddamn!”

  “I like Mrs. Roosevelt all right, you understand,” Worm said, “but then when you take in consideration these Southern Democrats, how can you go for the Democrat Party? I mean I’m a F.D.R. man, but them Southern Democrats got to go.”

  Solly said, “That’s exactly what I was telling my Great White Buddy the other night.”

  “I thought about you when I was grinding, you fat-ass mother-huncher.” Baker laughed again.

  Solly looked up quickly. “What did you call me?”

  The smile left Buckethead’s wide handsome face. “What you mean?” he asked.

  Solly was standing now. “I say what did you call me?” All the happenings of the last months building in him like the flood tide.

  “I said you cats ought to get into town one of these evenings.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking you, man. I asked you what did you call me. You know what I’m talking about. You are a goddamn fool but you aren’t crazy.”

  Baker laughed again uneasily. “I said I thought about you, you fat-ass mother-huncher—but I was talking to the Bookworm—”

  He didn’t get it out of his mouth before Solly’s fist was in his mouth and Solly swarmed all over him. “Don’t call me no mother-fucker, you handkerchief-head bastard!” Solly was as much taken by surprise as was Buckethead, because he knew Baker had been addressing Bookworm. The realization made no difference. He was wild with rage. He clipped the big-headed soldier going and coming, as they battled all over the orderly room, knocking over chairs and tables, and Buckethead picked up a chair and waved it over his head at Solly, blood streaming from Buckethead’s mouth and nostrils. “You better tell your buddy something,” he pleaded to the Bookworm. “I’ll break his goddamn neck—I’ll kill him!” Solly moved in and threw his right fist at Buckethead’s big head as he swung the chair. He connected first and it sounded like something cracked, and the chair struck him a glancing blow on his neck and shoulder, and he went temporarily insane, it seemed. He hit the bighead soldier from every direction and went out of the door on top of his chest and combed him up and down, tears of unimaginable anger spilling down Solly’s face as he worked him over. He battled Buckethead all the way down the stairs, and halfway down, Buckethead grabbed him in self-defense and they began to wrestle, and they stumbled and fell and rolled the rest of the way down the steep steps. And Worm ran down after them and soldiers came running from upstairs and down. “Kill that buckethead sonofabitch!”

  By the time Worm reached the bottom of the stairs, Buckethead was getting up off the floor and Solly was lying there as still as death.

  Buckethead backed away from him. “I told that crazy mother-huncher to stop messing with me.” Crying like a baby and his nostrils running and shaking all over.

  “Somebody get the doctor!”

  “He’s dead already!”

  Worm knelt over Solly and took Solly’s wrist and couldn’t feel anything happening at all. God have mercy! It had happened so quickly, but he could have stopped them if he really had wanted to badly enough. He took Solly’s other wrist, and he thought he felt something happening, but he couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t his own heart pumping overtime. Somebody ran into the latrine and came out again with a bucket of water, and before Worm could say, “Hold it a second,” or even think about it, the soldier dashed the whole bucketful, some of it on the Bookworm, the rest in Solly’s sleeping face. Worm jumped and cursed.

  “His eyes are opening!” one soldier shouted.

  Worm looked back at Solly and Solly stirred and his eyes were open and blinking.

  “Solly!” Worm cried.

  Solly moved around and tried to sit up and Worm helped him gently. “What’s going on here?” Solly finally asked.

  “You’re okay, Solly. Just take it easy. Your head hit the bottom step pretty hard.”

  “Where’s that stool-pigeon?”

  “Take it easy, Solly.”

  Solly pushed Worm away, struggled to his feet, and looked around him. “Turn me aloose, goddammit!” He staggered and swayed from side to side. “Where is he?”

  Worm took hold of him again to keep him from falling, but Solly finally located Buckethead and tried to pull away from Bookworm. “Turn me aloose, goddammit!”

  Buckethead trembling and crying and sucking his nose and backing away. He said, “You better talk to him. You better tell that crazy nigger something. I don’t wanna have to kill him—I don’t wanna—”

  Solly wrested himself away from Bookworm and in the same motion made a lunge for Buckethead, and Buckethead broke out of the door and ran out into the chilly night. Before Solly could catch up with him he was long gone. Solly sat on the stoop in the cool night air. “I’ll get that bastard if it’s the last damn thing I do.” He shook his head from side to side. He felt high as a Georgia pine. He touched the lump on the back of his head. Worm and Lanky took him upstairs and gave him some smelling salts and put some medication on the lump on his head that was growing by the second and put him to bed.

  “You better get on sick call in the morning,” Worm said, “and get a good examination.”

  “You’re my cut-buddy, buddy,” Solly said drunkenly. “My real bosom boon buddy-buddy.”

  Bookworm laughed. “If I’m not, I’ll have to do till the real thing comes along.”

  CHAPTER 18

  A few days later Captain Rutherford had them gather in his office again. He stood behind the desk with a beaming smile on his face. There were two additions to the gathering—Buck Rogers and Staff Sergeant Perry, the don’t-give-a-damn mess sergeant.

  He looked at them from face to anxious worried face. The air was close, the men were tense. “I got a little surprise for y’all. A nice little surprise. I think y’all gon like it.”

  Solly didn’t look around but it sounded like the first sergeant clearing his throat.

  “There’s a cadre being made up to form a new regiment.” He looked from face to face again.

  Solly wasn’t sure how to take the news. His stomach started acting up. Everything happened in his stomach.

  “I’m recommending every last one of you to go out on the cadre. Every outfit in the Fifty-fifth is required to send eight men as cadre to form the basis of new companies in a brand-new special regiment being formed. You’ll be leaving Camp Johnson Henry in the next few days.” The captain was having himself a ball.

  A wild thought started in Solly’s mind and created a hope that made his heart beat fast and crazy. They would be heading North! And he would see Millie after all . . . .

  “What you think of that, Corporal Saunders? Instead of a court-martial, I’m giving you a free train trip. You’ll be leaving the dear old Southland.”

  To hell with Captain Charlie and Sam’s Army, is what he thought, but he looked blank-faced at the captain and said, “Y
es, sir.” Whatever that meant. He already saw himself back at Dix, hitchhiking a ride to Trenton, or maybe all the way to the City—and Millie and Millie and Millie—and Mama too—and the theater with its long lines of soldiers not allowed to stand in the line (“Go right in, sir”)—and the ride on the ferry to Staten Island, the subway, the elevated, the museum at Eighty-first Street—and the Savoy—and alone with Millie and the baby in her belly in the dark in the warm friendly darkness and in Millie’s warm bed in her warm tender arms in her warm soft golden with-child body. He would miss Fannie Mae—that was the big knot in his chest now. He knew he would always miss her. She would always be a fullness in his face, a warmth in his shoulders. She would always be.

  He heard the captain invading his dream with hand grenades. “Where you’re going there’s warm weather the year round. You won’t be needing much winter equipment. And you won’t be in California long anyhow. After a couple of months—probably not that long—you’ll be bound for overseas and dying for your country. See how good I am to my bad boys?”

  California was a million miles the other side of Nowhere. A chill moved over Solly’s shoulders, and he stared at the smiling captain, and he knew an overwhelming sensation of helpless rage. And he understood what had happened. The brass had somehow managed to kill the story and avoid a court-martial, because, once it had gotten underway, heads might have rolled all along the line, even one or two among the brass. Even Captain Rutherford’s little head. This way only colored heads would be offered for the sacrifice.

  He vaguely heard the captain talking. “We’re going to send eleven men from H Company. We’re going to be very generous—L Company will only have to send five.”

  “Why you sending me with the rest of them?” Baker asked. “I been a good soldier.”

  “A cadre is made of two kinds of soldiers,” the captain said. “Number one—it’s made up of fuck-ups and sad sacks like most of you soldiers—I’m not saying which. But you always have to throw in a couple of good ones in the lot to give it some kind of balance. After all, a cadre is supposed to be made up of top men. They supposed to give leadership and training to new recruits coming into the Army.”