And Then We Heard the Thunder

by John Oliver Killens

  He turned and looked down into her face like she was a total stranger to him, and suddenly he started to laugh, loud and harshly, as if a geyser had erupted in him. She was frightened and she said, “Solly!”

  “Things will be different after the war, darling, don’t you worry,” he mimicked her.

  One of the MPs came over to the car. He was mild-faced and bowlegged and blue-eyed and medium-sized and corn-fed and Midwestern Yankee. A Minnesota gopher maybe. Nebraska corn-husker.

  “What’s the matter with you, boy?” He asked good-naturedly.

  Solly tried to stop laughing. “Nothing, officer.” Laughter still oozing out of him in bubbles.

  “You all right, Miss?” the MP asked with real concern.

  “I was never better,” Celia said indignantly.

  The MP said “All right then, boy, cut out the noise and get outa this neighborhood on the double. That’s why you people ain’t allowed in places like this. You don’t know how to behave yourself.”

  Solly started to laugh again, quietly. “Yassah, Boss, but you schizophrenic Yankee paddies are the funniest people in God’s creation. You’re absolutely hysterically the ever-loving most—” He raced his motor and pulled away and left the MP standing there.

  A few days later, Samuels drove into town for lunch with Solly. They sat in a little quiet restaurant not far from where Solly lived and looked each other over.

  Solly said, “Thanks, Captain.”

  Samuels said, “You’re not back in the Army yet. The name is Bob. And thanks for what?”

  “For the other night at Celia’s.” His face grew warm with embarrassment. “Thanks for putting me to bed. It must have been a rugged—”

  Samuels’s face grew even warmer than Solly’s, warm and red like pomegranate. And Solly knew. He covered up quickly. “Thanks for putting me on the couch and covering me up. Celia told me you—I mean—I must have been a mess. I’ve never been that drunk before in all my life.” Thanks for nothing.

  Samuels said, “It was nothing at all.”

  You’re mother-loving right it was.

  They had steak and eggs and coffee, and Samuels said, “A couple of days from now and you’ll be back in the old routine.”

  Solly said, “I can’t wait.” And he got up and went to the jukebox and put a nickel in for the Mills Brothers’ “Paper Doll,” in respectful dedication to his girl in Ebbensville.

  He came back and sat down and said, “My favorite song on the hit parade.”

  Samuels said, “I’d like to talk to you a little about your future in the service.”

  Solly smiled ironically. “I want a civilian first-class rating, if it isn’t asking too much. I mean, if Uncle Sam can spare me.”

  “I’ll steal the doll in Ebbensville . . . ”

  Samuels said, “You have two alternatives. You can go to a special Officer Candidate School right here in Bainbridge, and when you come out you would be assigned to the Duck outfit where the fellows and I are. It’s pretty definite that we’ll be here for the duration. We’re so shot up, there’s no place for a Japanese bullet.”

  Solly said, “Or?”

  “Or what?”

  “The other alternative?”

  “If we tried hard enough we might be able to get you a medical discharge and you could go home and forget it.”

  Solly’s voice was trembling. “What the hell are we waiting for? Let’s plan the farewell party.”

  Samuels stared at him and said, “The farewell party might take about a month of red tape, whereas you could be in OCS next week.”

  “From the purple-hearted soldier . . . ”

  Solly said, “I’m not in that big a hurry.”

  Samuels discussed the pros and cons with Solly. If he went to OCS, with the recent institution of the point system for separation from the service, he might go home only seven or eight months later after all, and with an officer’s status, more separation pay, more prestige, more this, more that, and more the other.

  Solly said, “I can’t hear a word you say. All the Army can do for me is give me out.”

  Samuels shook his head. “You’re so bitter about the States, why’re you in such a hurry to get back?”

  Solly laughed. “I’ve got great big expectations including a son I’ve never seen.” The wheels in his mind were turning like propellers on a P-38. Going home—Fannie Mae—going home—Fannie Mae—

  Samuels said, “I think you’re making a mistake.”

  Something deep in Solly began to argue with him quietly. Use your mind instead of your feelings. Why not become an officer? What the hell is six or seven more months? Especially in Australia—you can do six months standing on your head. No war—no problems. Your son is in good hands, your mother’s. If you’re going to go through life forever asserting the color of your skin, why in the hell did you go to college? Take advantage of your education, your personality, your intelligence, and submerge your asinine emotions. That’s the trouble with colored people, even educated ones. More pay—more prestige—officers’ quarters—and if you’re an officer you can do more for the men—and get a better job when you get back home—and do much more for Junior when you get there just a few months later. Have more money to start civilian life with.

  He said quietly and angrily, “I have to think about it.”

  Samuels said, “The men in the outfit would love to have you as an officer, and so would I.”

  He thought about Fannie Mae and he felt himself aging by the seconds and there was so little time, and he had wasted so much time, and he didn’t want any part of the Army. He saw the bloody beach again and waves of men washed out with the tide, and he had to get home, had to get home. In the entire million million years of time he had only one half of a tick-tock left. He must get home and start the living. And yet a few more months—he must think of the advantage of going back an officer. He must think of Junior’s future and his own. Fannie might be only a dream he was always dreaming. She was promised to another. Celia was here and now and willing. And why in the hell should he be in such a hurry to run home to the back seats of America?

  Samuels stared at him and said, “How’s Celia?”

  He said, “Fine as sparkling burgundy, I imagine. When do we get my separation under way?” So little time—so little time. He was growing old so fast, so fast. There was no time to get ahead. He wanted to see his child so bad, it felt like rocks were in his stomach. See his child—teach him manhood.

  “Tomorrow morning,” Samuel said. His face grew warm and he stared down at the table. “How will Celia take the news?”

  Solly said, “How’re the fellows? And how is their ever-loving morale?”

  A storm settled over the captain’s face. He shook his head. “The worst—the very worst—and I know goddamn well I’m not to blame. It’s the peckerwoods in this Jim Crow Army, turning Bainbridge into Georgia.”

  Solly laughed sarcastically. “You’re beginning to sound like a colored man, a member of the Club, old Cap’n. You need a transfer, quick. You’re getting nervous in the service.”

  “I’ve been all over everywhere protesting, from base headquarters to division to corps and even down to Adeline Street, and they all look at me as if I’m out of my mind.”

  Solly said, “You are out of your mind, if you think you’re going to change this cracker Army. Your trouble is you always wanted to be an officer and a colored man too, and that’s the ever-loving most impossible situation. That’s exactly why I’m going home.”

  Samuels said, “They’re complacently sitting on top of an ammo dump, and it might go off any minute.”

  Solly got up and motioned for the waiter. “Man, I do not want to hear your problems. Let’s go somewhere and find a pub. I feel like celebrating. And I want you to sweet-talk me about how we’re going to get me separated. Let’s just hang a tiny one on, and then I’m going to my lonely room and write a letter to a lady and ask her not to sit under that apple tree with anyone else but me. And
you and your colored problems can take a flying frig at the moon.”

  But when he left Samuels, he did not go to his lonely room. He went to town and sent a cablegram to his fickle-minded real live doll. All the way to Ebbensville.

  CHAPTER 3

  Red tape—white tape—blue-damn-tape. The first week back in the Army he spent most of his sweet precious time taking physicals and signing papers and waiting outside of offices. And like Samuels told him, it seemed that it would take at least a month to get him ready for the ship which would take him State-side back to that other-worldly world where brave red-blooded patriots bit their lips and counted their ration coupons and sacrificed and went without and stood in line for cigarettes and said V for victory valiantly. Meanwhile Samuels promoted him to a master sergeant and put him in charge of the 25th Amphib platoon for the short time he would spend with them. He was a Great White Buddy tried and true.

  Also meanwhile, the tension built all over Banana City, all over Australia’s eastern coast between the white and colored Yankees, which was mostly due to the hypersensitive arrogance of the colored. It was all their fault, Solly told Worm. Just because they were American soldiers ten thousand miles away from home, way down under over yonder, and just because many of them had risked their lives in the jungles of the South Pacific and left their black blood to smear the pretty white beaches on the sprawling far-flung islands, and left their black and brown and light-brown comrades to fertilize the land of strangers. Just because they were soldiers, tried and trusted, nephews of their Uncle Sam, they had the colossal nerve to want to go to all the places where the other soldiers went and to be treated free and equal. They were stinking opportunists. They wanted to take advantage of the situation; they wanted to be treated in Australia better than they were at home. What arrogance—what treachery—what unmitigated gall!

  Solly shook his head at the Bookworm. He remembered Captain Rutherford. Solly said, “Colored folks are the most ungrateful people the world has ever known. The man was good enough to put some clothes on your back and give you a free trip abroad and give you a chance to die for your country in the Great War to save Democracy, and still you’re not satisfied. You want the whole damn hog or none. You have the nerve to want to be free. That’s arrogance, buddy boy. That’s being downright biggedy.”

  Worm stared at his master sergeant. “Buddy, your head wound must have been a mama-jabber! You really need to go home bad!”

  The Negro soldiers went into town every night all over town and went into all of the nicer places just to cause a disturbance and raise a row. Troublemakers pure and simple. They were looking for trouble and usually found just what they looked for. As fast as the MPs threw them out of one place, they would go into another. There must have been three thousand broken-down battle-scarred Negro soldiers in Camp Worthington Farms, which was situated in North Bainbridge out on the edge of the city, and each night just out of pure cussedness, almost half of them would empty across the river into South Bainbridge, most of which was “off limits” to them. And each night twenty-five or thirty of them would end up in an Army jail. The most famous jail in Australia was the Jones Street MP station. They had a reputation of whipping more heads per night than all the others put together. And they did their very damnedest to deserve their reputation.

  It was not that all of the places in Bainbridge were off limits to the colored soldiers. They were welcomed by the Australians to the Southern Cross, and they could go to the Dirty Dipper and the George Washington Carver Service Club and the Greasy Spoon and the Bucket of Blood and to a few more of the lesser pubs.

  But they had worn out their welcome even at the Southern Cross, which just went to prove the point once and for all. Every night there were all kinds of disturbances, fights and near fights, at the Cross, between white and colored Yankees, usually over who would dance with the sheilas or take up time with the sheilas or take the sheilas home. Division headquarters finally had to issue orders placing the Southern Cross off limits to American soldiers one and all, without regard to race, color, or creed or previous condition of servitude. This was the last straw, and the Negro soldiers had better behave themselves from here on in, or face the consequences.

  “We’ve been patient,” the adjutant at division headquarters told Samuels, “but there are limits.”

  “Everywhere seemed to be off limits,” Samuels punned bitterly. Sometimes he sounded like a colored soldier, even to himself. Sometimes he thought he even felt like a colored soldier.

  “It’s not as bad as you make it sound,” the adjutant said quietly but firmly. “It’s just the more exclusive clubs especially over in South Bainbridge. You know how it is. We want to maintain good relations with the people of Australia. You can understand that. Every American soldier must be a good-will ambassador.”

  Samuels said, “Colonel Davenport, I imagine you have received complaints from the Australian people about the Negro soldier’s behavior? I mean especially the Negro soldiers?” He smothered the heat in his voice but could not keep it from his face.

  The colonel batted his eyes and pulled on his unlighted pipe. “Not particularly,” he said reflectively, “and that is what we mean to anticipate, and to head off, if we possibly can. We’d like to let them go wherever the other soldiers go, but we cannot afford to take too many chances. Question of public relations pure and simple. Has nothing to do with prejudice.”

  Samuels stared at the colonel. He thought of Solly, Master Sergeant Solomon Saunders, Junior, who was in the outer office waiting for him. For the last couple of days they had been all over town together, trying to find at least one sympathetic ear in the higher echelon. The colonel leaned back in his swivel chair and sucked on his Sherlock Holmesian pipe. He had the complacency of a fat filthy pig bathing himself in the noonday sun.

  Samuels said, “Most of the complaints I’ve heard, sir, have had to do with white American soldiers. Why do we take it out on the Negroes? They have the best record, and yet white Americans can go anywhere in town—no place off limits to them—”

  “That isn’t true,” the colonel said shrewdly. “There’s this place we just put off limits. This Southern Cross, or whatever you call it. It’s off limits to everybody.”

  “The Southern Cross,” Samuels said heatedly. “I’ve been there myself, sir. It’s—I mean, there’s no cause for it to be off limits. They welcome the soldiers. Especially the colored—”

  The colonel said softly and comfortably, as if he were talking only for himself to hear and was enrapt in what he had to say, “Well—it isn’t as if they didn’t have any place to go. Like I say, plenty of places are still not off limits to them.” And he started to name a few of the dives still open to Negro soldiers, but Samuels had had enough colonels for one day, this was his third, and he said, “Thank you, sir.” And turned to leave.

  The colonel said, “Captain!”

  Samuels turned again and said, “Sir, I—His face reddening like it always did when he was angry or frustrated.

  The colonel leaned forward in his chair. “You were not dismissed, Captain. You seemed to have forgotten yourself.”

  Samuels said, “I’m sorry, sir, but somebody’d better listen before it’s too late. Two of my men were beaten up last night in that Jones Street MP station. The Negro soldiers are angry, and I can’t say that I blame them. There’s going to be an explos—”

  “No, Captain, you’d better listen. The colored soldiers will follow orders just like every-damn-body else. We’ll make no exceptions just because they’re colored, and if and when they get out of line, they’ll be dealt with accordingly. And we’ll make no exceptions with officers in charge of colored troops. When we issue orders, do us the courtesy to believe they have been given careful consideration. We don’t suck them out of our thumbs. And we mean for them to be obeyed without any pouting or grumbling about them. This is the Army. You’re not a den mother in the Girl Scouts. Get that clear!”

  Samuels said, “But, Colonel—”
The perspiration pouring from him, the anger mounting in him.

  The colonel snapped, “That’s all, Captain.”

  “But, sir—” He’d like to yank the arrogant bastard across the desk.

  “I said—that’s all, goddammit! You’re dismissed.” The colonel threw a salute across the desk at the captain trembling in his rage. Samuels returned the colonel’s salute and turned to leave the office.

  The colonel’s voice softened. “Captain, I admire an officer who goes to bat for his men, but there’s such a thing as going too far, and that’s your tendency, which I will overlook this time.”

  Samuels said, “Thank you, sir.”

  Outside he and Solly got into their jeep, and Solly said, “And how was the chief boss-cocky?” He laughed. “I have a strange feeling, Captain Bob, of everything having been done before on some other stage at some other time, and—and—another boss-cocky—”

  Samuels said, “Let’s go somewhere to some goddamn pub, Solly Saunders, and get pissy-ass drunk.”

  Solly said, “You be the one, Cap’n Robert.”

  They found a pub over in North Bainbridge and they sat in a corner booth and signaled one of the publicans and told him to put a bottle on their table and figure out how much they owed him when they were finished with it.

  The little sawed-off mustached publican said, “Who’s shouting?”

  Samuels said, “I’m shouting. You just bring the bottle, and when we’re finished tell me the damage, and I’ll shout bloody murder.”

  The publican said, “Fair dinkum.”

  They sat there downing drink after drink after drink. Samuels said, “I am so goddamn mad I could bite a tenpenny nail in two.”

  Solly said, “I used to eat those delicious things for breakfast with condensed milk. Put lead in your pencil.”

  Samuels was just about half boiled already and his tongue was getting thick and heavy. “You’re a real tough bastard, Master Sergeant Solomon Saunders, with your seemingly soft and easy ways, and most of the time you’re right, goddammit—”