He sat her up and took her into his arms. “What’s the matter with you now?”
She put her head on his chest. “Nothing’s the matter. I’m not crying.” Her body shook with sobbing. She tried to laugh. “I’m just silly and stupid and happy and already I feel so lonesome.” Her voice choked off again and she could not keep back the tears. “I feel like the world is moving out from under me.”
“You have your family, you have my mother, and you’ll have the baby. I’m the poor boob who’ll be lonely.”
She cried, “The baby! The baby! The baby!”
He said, “The baby’ll be all right. I’ll be back before he misses me. Fathers are not that important anyhow. Now if you were going overseas and I were left to have the baby, that would be something really serious.” He tried to laugh her out of it.
She stopped sobbing and she wiped her eyes. “This is our last night together, and I have to tell you something important.”
Something scary in her voice alerted him. He felt a hard pain in his rectum, but he tried to be lighthearted. “Don’t tell me at this late date I’m not the baby’s father.”
“Do you love me with or without the baby?”
“I love you period! What is this nonsense?”
And then she almost lost her voice. “There is no baby.”
“I don’t hear you. What about the baby?”
“I said there is no baby. There never was.”
He said in a shaky voice, “That’s a silly way to kid a man on his last night in this part of the world.”
Her eyes were crying out for help in the flood of her angry tears. “There is no baby! There is no baby! There is no baby!”
He took her by the shoulders and shook her. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I was never pregnant and I’m a deceitful bitch and I made it all up because I thought you didn’t love me.” Her voice choked and she cried and cried.
“Stop! Stop it!” he shouted. “You’re upset because I’m leaving. You’re hysterical—” He stood up and stared at her unbelievingly.
“I used to read your letters over and over again and I knew you didn’t love me anymore—I could tell there was somebody else—and—and I was scared to death of losing you. I didn’t know what to do. So I thought, if he thinks I’m with his child he’ll love me—” She lay on the bed and pushed her face into the pillow and cried like a motherless child.
He stopped breathing, his heart stopped beating, and he died and he was dead. Numbed-dead. Dead-dead. He wanted to go to her and say, “Yes, you’re a lying deceitful bitching whore, yes, you are—you are—you are!” And slap her till his hand was dead, and slap her till she passed out, and keep on slapping her till she came to again. He hated her violently because she had deceived him, because she made him hate himself.
He stared at her. “Was it a miscarriage?”
She shook her head in anguish.
“Was it an abortion?”
“Go to hell!” she screamed.
He grabbed her shoulders and started to shake her. She was a murderer. She killed his child. “You’re a monster, you know that? And I hate your goddamn soul!”
She said, “Go ahead! Beat me up! I don’t care. That’s what you want to do, isn’t it? Kill me—I’m a monster!”
He turned her loose and walked across the room. He felt that everything was dead between them. And all was dead inside of him. And they had killed each other.
He thought his brains were burning up. He went back to the bed and put his hand on her shoulder. She shouted, “Don’t touch me. Get out of my sight! I’m a no-good lying bitch! I know what you’re thinking—I’m a lying bitch and a monster, but I’m not ashamed. And I don’t ever want to see you again in all the days of my life. You’re coldhearted and you’re insensitive, and I’m so ashamed—I’m so ashamed! You’re a brute—that’s what you are!”
His head was like a Coney Island roller coaster. The war was raging in his stomach. His throat was dry, his brow was wet. He had no idea how he felt. He thought he was in a coma. He lived a hundred years this moment, and he could never be the same.
“I’ll kill myself, that’s what I’ll do! I’ll kill myself!”
He said, “No!” And he took her firmly by the shoulder and pulled her up from the bed and into his arms and said, “I love you!” But why did she do it! How could she make it all up like that! Why in the hell did she do it? He felt as if she had created their child and then murdered it willfully and maliciously. Just to get even with him.
She said, “No, you don’t! You hate me! I’ll kill myself, that’s what I’ll do. I know you hate me!” She was crying and talking and sobbing at the same time and she wet his shirt with her tears. And he was blind with hate and guilt and anger. His fault! His fault! His dirty low-down guilty fault. Goddamn her soul, it was his fault! He felt a great compassion for her.
He said, “Don’t you tell me how I feel. I’m in love with you. I didn’t marry your baby, did I? The only baby I married was a great big beautiful silly crybaby.” He felt so guilty he felt like dying violently.
She took his handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiped her eyes and blew her nose. He said tonelessly, “Come on now—what kind of way is this to carry on on our last night together? We’ll have plenty of time to make as many babies as we want just as soon as I get back. You can believe me when I tell you.”
She laughed and her eyes filled up again, and he kissed away her salty tears. “It’s all my fault,” he said, “It’s all my fault.” And quietly he took off her dress and then her slip and then her brassière, he kissed the nipples of her gleaming breasts, took off her panties, stared at her roundish stomach. She said, “For the last two months I stuffed myself like a pig just to make my stomach fat.” Her eyes filled up. He took her up in his arms and lay her naked on the bed. She shyly got beneath the sheets—tentatively, poised for flight, unsure. He pulled off his clothes and went to her and she was cold with fear at first, but he was warm, and he blamed her and he hated her, but he knew he was to blame, and he loved her, and he kissed away her doubts and fears, temporarily at least, and his body gave her body warmth, and they made desperation love together, and love was good and good and good. Love was good for both of them. And a little after midnight they kissed good night and he went wearily back to the barracks.
The soldiers were marching in full field dress, with packs on their backs, duffel bags on their shoulders, and carbines and rifles. They were talking and joke-cracking and nervously laughing as they approached the big white ship. They were the lead company in the regiment immediately following the last of the white troops. Even at route step there was a certain uniform cadence in the sound of their feet striking the asphalt road as they moved forward under the midday sun, through a long funnel of noisy people and quiet palm trees and gorgeous shrubbery. But Solly hadn’t spotted Millie yet and he was getting sick from worry. Something must have happened to her!
Bookworm walking beside him, talking, laughing and grumbling, and eating candy. “Man, I’m telling you, these people a bitch on wheels. What you reckin I read in your Harlem paper last night? Some of your folks’ leaders called on the President down in Washington and demanded that colored soldiers be allowed to die with dignity at the front rather than serving in the Quartermaster. Now ain’t that a mother-fer-ya?”
Solly’s eyes shifted distractedly from the line of people to the Bookworm and back to the people again.
Worm said, “Percy Black can have my uniform any day in the week, he wants to fight so damn bad. Them Japanese ain’t done me nothing. I ain’t mad at a living ass.”
Solly could see the big ship plainly now and the white troops getting aboard, and the fear was almost overwhelming. Maybe he had already passed Millie and they hadn’t seen each other for looking so damn hard. He opened his mouth and let the air go in and out to relieve the pressure in his chest and the griping in his belly. He thought of Fannie Mae and felt an awful guilt toward Mill
ie. Maybe she had been so upset last night, she had become ill and something awful had happened to her, with no way to let him know, too sick to move. He could hear her crying: “I’ll kill myself! That’s what I’ll do! I’ll kill myself!” He felt weak all over. Maybe she—maybe she—A wave of panic swept over him, and wave after wave after wave. Maybe—maybe—she had seen through him completely, she had felt his hatred and his anger, even as they’d made their love together. And she had killed herself. He loved her! Yes he loved her!
And then he saw her up ahead, waving at him with the widest prettiest most confident smile that anybody ever smiled. He was so glad he could hardly move his lips to smile or laugh or anything else. He loved her, yes, he loved her. She came to him in all her raging beauty, and his ears burned as he heard the soldiers whistling and signifying.
“Hello, soldier boy, where do you think you’re going?”
“Damn,” he said finally in as calm a voice as he could manage. “I thought maybe you had forgotten what day it was. Thought you had forgotten to come to my going-away party.”
“Now how do you sound?” She laughed at the funny look on his face and told him he looked cute with the dark sunglasses and needing a shave and the helmet on his handsome head and the pack on his poor back. She was at that very moment very very precious to him with their baby as yet unconceived and the way she submerged her own feelings for the sake of his, and he was an adulterous undeserving bastard! And a great guilt began to build inside of him mixed with an overwhelming tenderness. He couldn’t keep the tears from coming to his eyes and spilling down his face.
He said, “You’re so pretty you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
She pretended not to notice his tears and walked with him, laughing and talking till they reached the last block. The women were not allowed to go any further. Looking at her, he wished somehow she would cry, just a little bit anyhow, and yet he was damn thankful she didn’t. She reached up and kissed him quickly.
“Good-bye, darling, take care of yourself. And don’t worry about me or Mama. I’ll write every day, beginning this afternoon.”
And he said, “Don’t you worry about me, sweetheart. I’m going to take care of myself, and I’m going to get ahead in this Army, and I’m coming back to Millie.”
She said, “Concentrate on the last item first and foremost, last and always and forever.” And she kissed him and was gone.
The last of the white soldiers were boarding the beautiful white ship, and a band on board was playing “God Bless America.” He felt a chill like a wave of electric current pass across his slim shoulders, and he wasn’t sure whether it was from “God Bless America” or from leaving Millie behind. He hoped she could hear the band playing and that she would know how much it helped him to understand why Americans, no matter their color or condition, had to go to fight for their country so many thousands of miles away from home. “God bless America . . . God bless America . . . I love this land . . . He really loved this land.
They stopped in the middle of the block and stood waiting until the last white regiment was all aboard. He wanted to look back for one last glimpse of Millie.
“I love you, Millie—I love this land—”
He wanted desperately to look back, but he would not let himself. Then they started again, marching toward the ship, and it hit him like a vicious kick in the solar plexus, as suddenly the band stopped playing “God Bless America” and jumped into another tune—”The Darktown Strutters’ Ball.”. . .
He didn’t want to believe his ears. He looked up heatedly at the ship and saw some of the white soldiers on deck, waving and smiling innocently and friendly-like at the Negro soldiers below, and yelling, “Yeah, man!” and popping their pinky-white fingers. A taste of gall crept from his stomach up into his mouth.
“Goddamn,” he heard Worm say, “that’s the kind of music I like.” The husky little soldier cut a cute soft-shoe step. “I guess Charlie wants us to jitterbug onto his pretty white boat. Special men—we ain’t no soldiers. We ain’t nothing but a bunch of goddamn clowns.”
Solly’s stomach felt like he had been eating double-edged razor blades and an awful heat grew inside his collar. He hoped Millie was too far away to hear.
Worm grinned at him. “What’s the matter, good kid? Mad about something? Damn—that’s what I hate about you colored folks. Take the goddamn chip off your shoulder. They just trying to make you people feel at home. Don’t you recognize the Negro National Anthem when you hear it?”
Solly didn’t answer. He just felt his anger mounting and he wished he could walk right out of the line and to hell with everything. Nothing had changed though. He would still do what he had to do. He would take care of himself, he would get ahead in the Army, he would come home safe and sound to Millie. He would hate it and at the same time take advantage of it. There was nothing else that he could do. His face filled up, his eyes were warm and misty too. With “The Darktown Strutters’ Ball” ringing in his ears he put up his head and threw his shoulders back, and he kept on marching toward the big white boat.
PART III—LIGHTNING—THUNDER—RAINFALL
CHAPTER 1
The big white boat took them to San Francisco, where four hours later they took another, an old Dutch liner, which had been converted hastily into a troop transport and renamed the U.S.S. New Rotterdam, and by the time the sun was about to sit down over the ocean, they moved under the Golden Gate Bridge and put out toward the open sea. Just as they were getting aboard, two MPs drove up with Scotty and put him onto the ship and into the brig.
Solly and Bookworm and Lanky Lincoln and Jimmy Larker stood on deck and watched the continent slip farther and farther away from them as they ploughed a long white foaming row through the middle of the grass-green ocean.
Ever since they left the docks in San Francisco, they had been looking for the rest of the ships to join the convoy. A Coast Guard cutter led the way and another brought up the rear. A big fat sluggish-looking blimp hovered above them like an ugly buzzard and these were their only obvious escorts. These three were giving them safe-conduct to a rendezvous with a large task force convoy consisting of other troopships and a couple of battleships and a couple of destroyers and mine sweepers and destroyer escorts. They would be well protected.
They pursued the sunset for over an hour and finally caught up with it at just about the time that their three escorts chickened out and turned back toward home, and darkness fell. Fell with a thud like black heavy drapes all over the ocean, far and wide all over the Western world.
The public address system blasted away at the dark and heavy silence:
“NOW HEAR THIS—NOW HEAR THIS
NO SMOKING ON DECK OR STRIKING OF MATCHES.
LOCK THE PORTHOLES, SECURE THE HATCHES.
BLACKOUT REGULATIONS ARE NOW IN OPERATION.”
And then a slight pause and then the deep brassy voice again said:
“DUMP THE GARBAGE.”
Buck Rogers pompously explained that the ships always dumped the garbage after dark, so that by daybreak they would be miles and miles away and a Japanese submarine would have a tough time picking up their trail.
“These people think of everything to protect your fine brown body.”
Worm said, “Yeah—but what happened to the rendezvous? Them chickenshit escorts left us in this big black sea all by ourselves to root hog or die.”
The silence was as thick and heavy and as awesome as the darkness. Solly staring with the rest of them over the side of the ship and seeing nothing but black space and great big white phosphorescent waves around the ship as it ploughed perpetually forward. It might have been a giant ghost ship sailing this side of an endless black wall, trying to come to the end of it and sail around, but never succeeding. Solly said he’d never heard of a troopship going overseas to the combat zone entirely unescorted.
Buck said, “Don’t get scared, men. And don’t be prejudiced. You know Uncle is going to look out for his colored nephews. Maybe
the rendezvous is in Hawaii. Just because you’re colored, you don’t have to look on the dark side all the time. Wait till I get my life jacket on.” He laughed nervously but nobody joined him.
The salty wet wind blew into their faces as the big ship moved steadily and unafraid through the great big blackness, rocking deliberately from side to side, keeping time with the steady throbbing beat of the mighty diesel engine.
Worm said, “I got a good mind to jump overboard and make it back to San Francisco.”
CHAPTER 2
Twelve days later Solly saw a ship on the horizon to the starboard. It blinked there for moment briefly in the sunlight and its sudden disappearance gave him an eerie kind of feeling, and after a while he thought perhaps it had been an optical illusion.
There was very little to do with his days. He spent many hours on topside, staring thousands of sparkling-blue miles into endlessness toward the edge of the world, where the sky and ocean came together and where his future lurked on the other side. If he could just see what lay ahead of him. But all he saw was the vast monotony of everything and nothingness.
Some of his hours he spent trying to get a novel started. He wrote pages, he tore up pages. He tried realism, naturalism, he tried streams of consciousness. He tried to remember Creative Writing courses he had had at City College. He sweated over pages, till finally he wrote five pages to his liking and he felt like celebrating. He drank beer with Worm and Lanky till all three of them were cockeyed. It was as if he had finished writing an entire book which a publisher had accepted. And he would be a novelist when he got back home and to hell with the legal profession.
It was the seventeenth day out when they saw the first thing faintly resembling land since leaving San Francisco. When they got an initial glimpse it looked like a dark shadow on the dazzling-bright horizon. Then it turned out to be a giant storm cloud, and then, as they came closer, it was obviously the Japanese fleet; then it was the convoy they had been catching up with since San Francisco, and as they came even closer they saw airplanes circling it, and they realized it was actually a Japanese aircraft carrier, and in Worm’s expressed opinion, “Somebody should tell the stupid skipper of the New Rotter-goddamn-dam!” who continued to head directly toward it as if it were a magnet or the point of debarkation. And then the airplanes changed before their eyes into sea gulls and the men laughed and the flattop changed into a huge desert rock jutting up out of the sea, away out there a million miles from nowhere. The New Rotterdam passed about two hundred yards to the left of the big black moss-covered mountain, and then there was the furious speculation that the Imperial Navy was hiding on the other side. And they laughed uneasily.
And Then We Heard the Thunder Page 30