And Then We Heard the Thunder

by John Oliver Killens

  “Paper Doll . . . . ”

  and singing loudly with his baritone that sometimes sounded like an Irish tenor, and the piano sounded like an old self-player pianola. And Solly and Celia were dancing again together, slowly dancing, with her head resting on his shoulder, and the Georgia Topkick could not keep his eyes on anything else for any length of time.

  Celia said to Solly, “I’m so glad you’re here with me tonight, my brother dear. I’m really knocked up and I don’t feel like dancing with this one and the other. Especially the stinkos.”

  He said, “At your service, milady.” Your brother is redheaded freckled-faced and is wearing khaki shorts and showing off his hairy legs.

  She said, “Good-on you, myte.” And leaned more heavily against him. And maybe he should let himself go with her and lose himself and forget it.

  The Topkick’s buddy said, “Greatest Topkick in the Army of the Newninety States. Ask anybody—”

  The Georgia-talking Topkick patted Scotty on the arm. “I like you. You awright with me. Us Yankees got to stick together. Too many fu-fu-fu-foreigners round this place—” He stared away at Solly and Celia and muttered underneath his breath.

  One of the ladies in plaid kilts came over to the table with tea and milk and sugar and refilled their cups, and the Top-kick’s buddy stared at her long legs and her roundish knees below her kilts, and he whistled wolfishly, and Scotty gave him a dirty look, and then Scotty stood up and bowed to the kilted lady with the green-blue eyes and the long light-brown pigtails, bowed like an honest-to-goodness gentleman and held his cup of steaming tea toward her as if about to give a toast.

  And said, “Here’s looking up—”

  And Dobbs jumped up and put his hand over Scotty’s mouth, and when he took his hand away, Scotty said, “Here’s looking at you.”

  The lady smiled and said, “Oh—thank you.”

  The piano player kept bomma-lomming and singing loudly and the couples dancing, slowly dancing, and a group of diggers over in a corner making like a barbershop quartet, and Celia said, “Take me home, Sergeant Solomon Saunders, Junior,” and the Topkick staring at Solly and Celia and mumbling underneath his breath and Scotty with his angry eyes on the bald-pated first sergeant and Scotty’s good buddy, Dobbs, chattering on and on and on about the bloody war and the blasted Army Regulations and the bloody brawss could you-know-what—

  The baldheaded Topkick mumbled, “She’s nothing but a foreign bitch, that’s all she is! It’s goddamn sin and a shame!” He looked from Celia and Solly down at his steaming tea and then to Scotty. “Ain’t that right, buddy?”

  Scotty’s stare got dirtier and dirtier as he looked wordlessly at the Topkick through the steam from the cups of tea that were still too hot for mouth and throat.

  The Topkick mumbled, “Dancing with that ugly bastard all night long—where I come from goddammit, he wouldn’t get away with it—the good old Stars and Stripes forever—ahmo put a stop to it—” He had trouble getting to his feet. “In the Uniney States he wouldn’t try it—”

  And Scotty got up and took his cup of steaming tea-and-milk and poured it slowly and deliberately and drunkenly on the Topkick’s bald pate and spreading it roundly like pouring pancake dough on a red-hot griddle. Scott said, “Shut your fat ass, you dirty-mouth peckerwood mother-fucker!”

  The Topkick’s buddy jumped to his feet, but no more quickly than Dobbs, who grabbed him by his collar and shouted quietly, “Break her down, myte—break her down!”

  The Topkick looked dumbly up at Scotty who stood above him at-the-ready, hot tea spilling down the Topkick’s steaming face and down his neck and drenching his shirt and the Topkick mumbling unintelligibly. He tried to get to his feet but Scotty shoved him back down in his seat.

  “Don’t vip a goddamn vop!” Scotty said.

  Within a half of a minute the booth was surrounded by Australian diggers and a few of the Special Men.

  Dobbs said to the diggers, “Put these peckerwoods out. Both of the Yankee bawstards’re boiled, and we don’t allow strong drinks in here.”

  “Yeah,” Scotty shouted, “throw the Yankee bawstards out. They ain’t got no couth and the mama-hunchers stinking from drinking. And cussing too.”

  “Righto!”

  “Good-oh!”

  “Out you go now—”

  The diggers in the corner were singing:

  “Bless ‘em all,

  Bless ‘em all,

  The sergeants, the captains and all . . .

  There’ll be no promotions

  This side of the ocean

  And so fare well, bless ‘em all . . .”

  The Yankee bawstards gone, Scotty and his buddy sat clinking their cups one against the other, and Dobbs said, “Up the rebels!”

  Scotty said, “Yeah, up em.”

  Solly told his drunken buddies good-bye and left to take dear knocked-up Sister Celia home. When they got to the car she asked him to drive and he felt strangely that it had all happened before. Sometime somewhere. A girl, a car, a moonlight. Somebody had asked him to drive—some woman sat beside him—his buddy’s girl—the whole damn scene . . . Everything always happened to him in triplicate, three or four times—five or six—

  They drove through the city, subdued now by the quiet hours of early morning. They followed the winding Bainbridge River while the dim lights of the city bounced off its sleepy waters. Her head lay on his shoulder and she told him this was her city and she loved her city this time of night. This was her River City. They drove across the long majestic bridge, and she told him Bainbridge had started out as a penal colony. He was only half listening. His mind in Ebbensville with Fannie Mae. The night they came from the Thanksgiving party. A million experiences ago.

  He said laughingly, “So your ancestors were jailbirds, eh?”

  She said, “They bloody well were, and you’re a damn snob, Solly Saunders, and my foreparents were the proudest diggers in the—” Her voice trailed off. She hiccupped. “Bless them all, the majors, captains, the colonels and generals and all.” And she probably thought she was singing.

  They went up a hill and down a hill and around another hill with trees everywhere and tree-lined streets and tunnels of trees and the smell of heavy greenness drunk with the dampish air of early morning, and they got to her house, and he walked with her to the door. She fumbled in her pocketbook and gave him the key. He unlocked the door and said good night.

  She said, “How about a nightcap?”

  He said, “No thanks. I want to get an early start. I want to see some of your River City. Before you know it my thirty-day reprieve will be over. And besides it’s late and you, my darling Sister Celia, have to work tomorrow.”

  She said, “I do not have to work tomorrow. I have the whole week off to show you some of our little town, Banana City, and then the rest will be up to you. Unless you have other plans—”

  He said, “All right then, I’ll see you tomorrow.” He started to say, “Don’t forget—you’re knocked up.” But he just put his hands out to her and she went into his arms and put her arms around his neck. “Never ask a handsome digger to take you home and let him get away without a kiss. The Articles of War and Conquest.” She put her misty peach-fuzzed mouth up toward his mouth and he kissed her mouth and said good night. Like the lady said, at this point in his old young weary life he was not romantically inclined. Neither of them were. Which made life so uncomplicated.

  CHAPTER 2

  All that week they went everywhere together, to the rainbow-colored countryside, to the jungle-clad mountains, to the coral-colored beaches, to the National Art Gallery, to the museum, to the beautiful University campus, scenic and sprawling, to the movies, to the George Washington Carver Servicemen’s Club, to Mt Booth-tha Park, to the pastel-colored bay, to the Bainbridge docks. And he had always thought the phrase “purely platonic” to be the phoniest in the English language. But he had a ball that week with Celia, going everywhere talking about everything from coral reef
s to politics, and he could be entirely relaxed with her because they both realized there were no romantic undertones. She warned every woman who came their way, “Don’t waste your charms on handsome Solly. He simply is not interested.” And when he took her home at night he could kiss her firmly briefly on her dewy lips, as she expected, and nothing else would be intended or expected. And that was that and for all that, and they were mature individuals, intelligent people, and they knew what they were doing.

  Friday they went to the National Museum and carried lunch and spent the day, and when he got home he was pooped, and he did not feel like going to the party she had planned for him on Friday night. She dropped him off at her brother’s house.

  She told him, “You look crook. We’ve been going too much this week. I forget you’re convalescing, and I’m your nurse, and you’re supposed to be in my care. Maybe we ought to call the party off tonight.”

  He said, “Not at all. I’m fine.” He thought the walls of him were caving in. “A party would be just the thing,” he lied. At this point in his life he didn’t like himself alone with himself. All he did was think think think, till his poor head ached with thinking.

  She said, “Dinkie die?”

  He said, “Fair dinkum.”

  She said, “Good-o then—but you have to promise me one thing.”

  He said, “What?”

  “That you’ll go in the house and keep Pam at arm’s length and take a good nap and a nice hot bath and relax, before you come to my house for dinner before the party.”

  He said, “Fair dinkum,” and she smiled and said, “Good-on-you.”

  He went into the house and fell on his bed and felt his tiredness moving in on him into every bone and muscle of his body. The burning pain throughout his chest, the throbbing in his head—he felt old before his time, a young man in an old man’s body. He had a son he’d never seen except in snapshots, he was the father of a motherless child, and he felt like somebody’s great-grandpa, and he loved Fannie Mae, he didn’t care, he loved her, he couldn’t help himself, he loved her, and he would write to her and ask her to be the mother of his child. And she would say yes—yes—yes—yes I And he would be healed and whole forever more. He smiled and felt a warmth move through his body like hot coffee in the wintertime. He would get up now and write to her—get up right now and write to her her—get up now and write to her—he was tired, too damn tired—pooped—pooped—and he would write to her tomorrow.

  When he woke up he repeated, I’ll write to her tomorrow. He lay in a hot bath soaking his body and writing the letter in his mind and he was with Fannie Mae again and held her in his arms and her dear face close to his face and she said, Solly! Darling Solly! And he said, Dearest Fannie Mae! He got out of the tub and dried himself and put on his robe and took his dream with him to his bedroom and he got dressed, and when he went up the hall toward the door Pam met him and said, “Two letters came for you today.”

  She brought the letters to him, one from Mama and one from darling Fannie Mae. He went into his room with them. He read Mama’s first, telling him about his son, who already had four teeth and looked just like his father, his spitting image, and big for his age and growing and smart as the devil, and a couple of snapshots of him in which he seemed to be yelling bloody murder and didn’t favor anything. And then he opened Fannie Mae’s and his hands began to tremble, and all over him warm rivulets of chills and thrills and perspiration. He read, “Dear Solly,” and he put the letter back in the envelope, and he would read it later when he got home from the party. He was scared to read his letter. He laughed. After all the stuff he’d been through in the Army of the United States of North America, he let a little harmless letter from his very dearest friend make him panic. He put it on the bed and stared at it, as if it were a hand grenade that would go off any second. His whole body sweating, his heart pounding, he laughed and picked it up again and took it out of the envelope. It was not a booby trap.

  She was well and confident he was the same. She had done a lot of thinking about him and her of late, and she saw now how silly it was of her to cling to something she could never ever really have and hold. So she had started to go out with an ex-GI, a veteran, injured in the European theater and honorably and medically discharged, who was teaching in the same school where she was teaching. Solly said aloud without knowing, “I’ll put a stop to that. I’ll get a letter off to her today—now!—AIR MAIL NONSTOP SPECIAL DELIVERY or maybe I’ll send a cablegram.” Take it easy, he told himself. Just act as if you never received her letter and just write to her and tell her how things are with you. Tell her Millie died in childbirth six months ago and you have a son without a mother. And what will be will be. He kept reading her letter with one part of his mind and scheming madly with the other. She said, “We’re going to be married at the end of next month. I hope you get this letter in time so you can send me happy returns of the day.” He read the lines again and again and again. That was how much she who loved him really loved him. She who would always love him no matter what. That’s the greatest love in all the world, the love that weds another. Well, it was too damn deep for Solly. Fannie Mae was too profound. Maybe if he sent her a cablegram and told her he was now available, maybe she wouldn’t go through with it. Maybe maybe—maybe not a goddamn thing—but maybe his darling Fannie Mae was a fickle-minded lover. But he knew it wasn’t true. He knew the one thing Fannie wasn’t was fickle-minded. She was just what she seemed to be—the most wonderful woman in the world—and she was going to be married to another man because she thought he loved another and could never be entirely hers, and he was going to send her many happy returns of the ever-loving day.

  Usually when they built up in him he fought hard against the tears, but not this time. He wanted to open the floodgates and drown himself in his own helpless tears, and he sat down on his bed and tried every place where tears come from and he strained his insides out, but no tears came. He was so completely shattered he was numbed as if all of his senses were shot full with Novocaine. And what had he expected? What in the hell had he expected?

  That she would wait a million years for a hopeless expectation? He’d read too many Bronte novels. He felt empty, he knew a great big nothingness spreading through his insides. He felt if somebody stuck pins in him all over him, he wouldn’t feel a goddamn thing. And it’s all your fault, you procrastinating bastard. You should have written to her months ago, and you have no one else to blame but you. Spending all your time with Celia. He closed his eyes and bit his lip and there was nothing, and everything was nothing and nothing was everything, and nothing from nothing left precisely not a goddamn thing. He remembered everything about her—her eyes, her mouth, her voice, her strength, her fire always burning fiercely bright. And the love they made together. And he died another time. For the love they made together.

  And the party was a booze-up. Everybody brought his own slop with him. Celia’s brother, Steve, and his wife, Betty, and Pamela and Captain Samuels and Hank Dobbs with his bowlegs in his khaki shorts and Maggie Sutton and a few others whose names Solly didn’t remember. Everybody hit the bottle like dedicated alcoholics with a kind of morbid desperation and a grim determination to let the good times roll. What’s these people’s story? Solly had drunk brandy all through dinner and had a head start on the diggers and the sheilas and the Yankee Captain Bob.

  Celia laid down the ground rules. “No politics, no romance, no war talk, no sincerity. Everything else goes. Wine, diggers, and song, and all is fair in love and war.”

  Solly said, “Dinkie die—fair dinkum.”

  A hundred drinks and about forty minutes later, Dobbs asked Solly, “How’s the Party, mate?”

  “What party?” Solly asked. “I’m having a ball.”

  Dobbs said, “The Communist Party. We don’t like your fellow’s Victory and Awfter. It might be awright for the U.S.A. but not for us. We’re going to have Socialism here five years after the war is over.”

  Solly had had q
uite a few by then. “Which might be five years after hell freezes over.” Whiskey usually made him brotherly and palsy-walsy, but tonight he felt belligerent even though he didn’t want to be.

  Steve said, “You’re bloody well going to have fascism in your country. That’s what you’re going to have in your United States of America. Browder is a bloody fool.”

  Celia said, “Watch your language, Brother.”

  Solly didn’t want to discuss politics with these people didn’t want to get into a fight. He came to have a party. Enjoy himself. Forget the problem.

  Samuels said heatedly, “I’m no Communist and I’m no fellow traveler, but Browder is nobody’s damn fool either. And the U.S.A. is going to have progressive capitalism after the war. We’re a highly industrialized country. We’re the richest country in the world and our capitalists can afford to give our working people the highest standard of living in the world.”

  Dobbs said, “What can you afford to give your Negroes? That’s what I bloody well would like to know.”

  Everybody all over the white world was an expert on the colored man. Solly groaned.

  Maggie Sutton said, “Yes, what about the Negro question? That’s one you can’t answer so cavalierly.” She was blonde. Her hair was white and flopping all over her white-white face and her eyes were the blue of the Coral Sea, green maybe, and her eyelashes were the color of her flopping hair. And she had had a few to drink.

  He wished they’d talk of something else. It was a bloody bore, and he did not want an argument. He said: “Nobody is going to give me anything.” Solly’s tongue was like a sack of rocks. “I’m going to take what I get. Now let’s change the subject, shall we?”

  Steve said, “Hear—hear.”

  Hank Dobbs said, “Good-on you, myte.”

  Solly said, “And now let’s drop the question, shall we? This is supposed to be a party.”

  Samuels said, “We’ll work it out together when we get back. Isn’t that right, Solly?”

  Solly wanted to drink and lose himself. The phonograph was grinding out a Mills Brothers’ recording that was all the rage in Bainbridge. Paper Doll. He recalled his silly poem.