And Then We Heard the Thunder

by John Oliver Killens

  When they reached the front of the two-storied brick building fifteen or twenty minutes later, all the guns were trained upon the entrance, except the two trucks at the opposite ends of the convoy—which kept their guns trained up the wide and empty street. The delegation, each with rifle, leaped quietly from the Ducks and trucks and moved nervously and swiftly toward the entrance to the station. There were eight men in the delegation, including Worm and Baby-Face Banks and Dobbs and Sergeant Williams, who was more or less the spokesman. Scotty was in charge of the men outside.

  The first cop they saw as they entered was a corporal seated dozing at his desk. Worm walked over to him quietly and prodded him with his rifle and he awakened instantly.

  He said, “What the hell—?”

  But as he spoke, four Amphibs had already moved swiftly to the back room where they found three other MPs shooting dice on a blanket in a corner of the room.

  “Ada from Decatur!” a little sawed-off MP pleaded.

  Baby-Face Banks said, “I got your Ada from Decatur.”

  The three cops almost jumped out of their skins.

  They brought the three frightened crapshooters into the front room to keep company with the sleepyhead corporal, who was wide awake by now.

  Williams explained it to them briefly. “We’re looking for a soldier by the name of Staff Sergeant James Larker. You brought him here tonight from the Southern Cross, and we intend to take him with us. That’s about it in a nutshell.”

  The corporal said, “You—you can’t do that. You have no papers. I mean, where’s your order for release?”

  Worm and Banks meanwhile had taken the MPs’ guns and put them in a corner.

  Sergeant Williams said quietly, “We have no papers, but we will do it, because we have guns and we have the drop on you and we have trucks outside with mounted guns and we have men outside to shoot them.”

  Worm said, “We ain’t no hand to start no row, but we’re hell when the row gets started.”

  The corporal flipped the pages of his record book. His hands were trembling.

  Worm said nervously, “Take your fingers outcha ass and get on the ball before I blow your few brains out.” He put his gun up against the corporal’s head.

  The corporal was sweating. He said, “We ain’t got no record of your man in here.”

  Baby-Face said, “The redhead one there is one of the ones that was at the Cross tonight. I’ll never forget that ugly face.”

  At that moment four more MPs came through the door, ushered in by five Amphibs. One of the MPs was the sergeant who had been at the Cross earlier and had taken Quiet Boy away. They had turned into the block from another street, and before they knew what was happening, they’d been surrounded by Amphibs.

  Williams said, “I remember the sergeant. He knows where the Quiet Man is. Sergeant James Larker, that is.”

  The Jones Street station was hot and stuffy and getting hotter and stuffier, time weighed heavily on the Bookworm, and he knew the MPs were stalling for time, it being definitely on their side. The more time was wasted, the less chance the Amphibs had of getting Quiet Man out of the Jones Street MP station without shooting. He wanted to get Jimmy right away now and get the hell out of there while the getting was almost good.

  He shoved his rifle viciously into the sergeant’s belly. “Talk, mother-fucker, or I’ll blow you a new one. Take me to Jimmy!”

  Sweat poured from the sergeant’s face. He led Worm and Williams out of the room and started up the stairway where the cells were.

  Worm said, “You got the keys with you?”

  The sergeant turned and went back into the room and went to the desk and opened a drawer and took a ring of keys, and they went out of the room and started up the stairs again. The sergeant moved too slowly for Corporal Joseph Taylor.

  Worm prodded him with his rifle. “Get the lead outcha ass!” he shouted softly. “Or else I’m gon put more in your ass!”

  It felt like a million years to Worm before they finally got to Jimmy’s cell and unlocked the door. And now he had his arms around Quiet Man’s shoulders. Worm’s eyes filled up. “I’m sorry, Jimmy!”

  “Let’s get outa this sonofabitch,” Baby-Face reminded them.

  Worm said, “Watch your language, baby boy.”

  The other soldier who was arrested along with Jimmy was in the cell with him, and they all went down the stairs together. They took the MP guns and rifles with them, but did not take the telephones, and now the Amphibs were outside in the daylight again, moving toward the Ducks and Worm thought aloud, “It’s too damn easy—too goddamn easy—” And for the first time that morning he was really scared all through his body and deep in his bowels and the perspiration drained from him and he could taste his fear and smell it. He began to run as did the rest of them toward the vehicles. One of the men running with a handful of MP rifles stumbled and fell and dropped the rifles, breaking the awful peace of the quiet morning. Worm ran back to the clumsy one and helped him pick the rifles up, and they headed toward the Ducks again.

  “Let’s get rolling!” Worm shouted softly.

  A couple of the trucks had trouble starting and they wasted five or ten more minutes. But now they were in the Ducks and trucks, and Jimmy in the Duck with Worm—Worm’s Duck with its Double-V insignia proudly stenciled in big letters on both sides and the back. The convoy was led by Worm this time, and his Double-V. And above the Double-V a larger “Fannie Mae” was stenciled. He started the motor and just before he took off he took a good full look at Jimmy. Jimmy’s large soft eyes were pained and sunken, his face was drawn, at the same time his eyes and face were burning with the warmest fiercest feeling he ever felt in all his life.

  Worm winked his eye. “How you doing, Quiet Man?”

  Jimmy’s voice was brimming with emotion. “Just fine,” he said. “My right arm may be out of commission, but there’s no use to complain. I got the best damn comrades in the world. I wouldn’t even mind dying this pretty Sunday morning.”

  After the first block Worm picked up speed and the others followed suit, as the sky splashed tender sunlight onto the empty Sunday street, and the trees heavy with leaves and blossoms blooming cast soft shaky shadows and reached over the street and clasped each other forming a tunnel with more colors than the rainbow. They were moving at about fifty miles per hour, but Worm was conscious of everything. His senses were sharp as a double-edged razor blade. He wanted to go-go-go-go-go! If he could reach the bridge and get across it and get to the King’s Highway he would have it made, he figured. He didn’t worry about the court-martial which they would surely face. If they could just make it back to camp. The damn Duck seemed to be marking time instead of hauling ass. Uneasiness moved through his shoulders. Fear choked him in his throat and rumbled in his stomach. Yet there was also the good warm feeling of a great job done, the color of the trees and the sunlight sifting through the trees. He wished for Solly and remembered Fannie Mae and felt like shouting, “Double-V for Victory!” He looked sideways at the Quiet Man and stuck his fat foot further in the gas, and now they were going sixty miles an hour up the empty Sunday street. He saw the big bridge up ahead. They had it made! They had it made! And that was when their luck ran out.

  Ziiiiiiiinnnnnnnngg—bop!

  Ziiiiiiinnnnnngg—bop!

  Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

  Ziiiiinnnnnnngg—bop!

  From all sides came machine-gun music beating out a now familiar rhythm against the side of the Duck and into the Duck and ricocheting and peppering tiny holes into the windshield.

  All of the men in the first Duck hit the floor excepting Worm, who put his head down and swerved into a sweeping U-turn and headed back down the wide and sun-splashed street, and Baby-Face, who crouched low behind his machine gun and played his own sweet deadly music. Other Ducks went into frantic U-turns and followed the Bookworm back up the street.

  Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat—

  Ziiiiinng—bop! Ziiiinnngg—bop!

&nb
sp; Some of the trucks had trouble turning around and one of them got halfway around and stalled as the frightened driver panicked, clogging up the nervous traffic. Worm meanwhile moved two and a half blocks back up Jones Street on the double on the triple with death-talk talking behind his back. That was when he spied other trucks coming at them from three or four blocks up the street. And he could see the palefaces underneath the helmets and he saw rifles and machine guns mounted and they were Yankee trucks all right, but he thought they were not friendly faces. He put his head down even lower and gunned his motor and put his foot all the way into the gas and the Duck shot forward like a wild beast in the jungle. The men had come up off the floor all excepting one of them and they held their rifles at the ready. When Worm reached the next corner he turned into a narrow side street on two wheels, maybe one, tires screaming, brakes screeching, hell breaking loose all around them, he heard shooting everywhere. He slammed on his brakes and climbed quickly out of the driver’s seat and told Baby-Face to take over as he leaped behind the gun.

  “Let the mama-hunchers come!”

  He noticed one man still lying face down on the floor of the Duck. He said, “Straighten up and fly right, buddy. We got important work to do.” But the Amphib did not move, and a great fear grabbed Worm by the throat and filled his face and beat angrily where his heart lived. He got slowly from behind the gun and it couldn’t be, it wouldn’t be! Lord have mercy, Jesus Christ! He went to the soldier and knelt down and he turned the soldier over, but he knew before he turned him over, before he saw the hot hole in his forehead in between his heavy eyebrows. There was the same quiet smile on Jimmy’s face, full of pride and love and dignity and deeply felt emotions. He had not had time to change his face to the proper fear of Death.

  Worm could hear him now and evermore, ‘No use complaining. I got the best damn comrades in the world.” Worm smiled back at Jimmy’s smiling face as the tears streamed down his own wide face. He turned him over gently, as anger almost ran him crazy. Guilt and anger. He went back behind his gun and yelled: “Let the mama-hunchers come!” Crying like a baby boy.

  They were coming from all over Bainbridge and without Worm’s special invitation. Coming particularly from the two camps on the opposite edges of the town. Most of them had already arrived. Thanks first of all to Colonel William Bradford the Third, the adjutant of Worthington Farms. He turned it on with phone calls, but after a while it got out of hand and he couldn’t stop the patriots. Everybody wanted to wave the flag and crash the party and join the Sunday picnic. Up and down the downtown streets of South Bainbridge, the thunder and the lightning broke out all over everywhere. Worm could hear it all around him.

  “Jimmy’s dead!” he screamed to Baby-Face. “Quiet Man is dead!” he shouted now more quietly. And wiped the tears from his face and wiped his running nostrils.

  They had almost reached the end of the block-long dead-end street, and Banks cussed and gunned the motor and when he reached the dead end he slammed on the brakes and backed up quickly and turned around, just as a truck of soldiers armed and helmeted entered the other end of the block—Eager-faced wild-eyed pale-faced Southern-accented men. Sweaty men. Pissy-scared and crazy-glad.

  “There the niggers is!”

  Handsome clean-cut all-American Jack Armstrongs.

  “Git ‘em! Git em!”

  Some of the Amphibs on the Duck leaped with their rifles down to the street and ducked swiftly into the doorways, and their rifles started making speeches to the men with Southern accents from the little towns in Dixie. Some of them were chopped down and never made it to the doorways. Banks stepped on the gas and hurtled toward the Southern Yankees. Worm went crazy behind the machine gun, but went crazy with a vengeance. The first revenge he took was the baby-faced machine gunner and then he raked the truck from stem to stem as the bullets screamed around him. Quiet Man is dead—Quiet Man is really dead!

  A few blocks away Scotty was hauling ass in his Duck up a long wide street, with his buddy, Corporal General Grant, to the rear of him seated behind the machine gun and making it talk sassy to the peckerwoods, as two Army trucks with machine guns mounted came after them down the Sunday-morning sun-washed street. General Grant combed the first truck from left to right and up and down, and it went crashing into the plate-glass window of a fancy clothing shop for men, Southern accents screaming and heavy plate glass flying and like a bloody reaper cutting, and blood was spilling everywhere. And Grant was laughing, harshly laughing.

  “Get yourself some brand-new kilts free of charge, you peckerwood bawstards!” He laughed like a raging maniac. “I’m gon finish the job old Tojo started—this pretty Easter Sunday morning!” One blond-haired boyish-looking soldier climbed bleeding out of the ruins of the truck and ran around in circles and Grant took careful aim at him and put him forever out of his misery.

  Scotty with his back to Grant thought, the bastard thinks it’s Easter Sunday. He done flipped his fucking wig. Crazy as a Bowery bedbug and fifty times as blood-damn-thirsty. Scotty’s lion-like shoulders hunched over the wheel as the Duck leaped forward up the street. He was one of the best and craziest drivers in the outfit as well as the best and craziest cook. Two crazy bastards together, Scotty thought. Together two crazy mama-jabbing bastards—back to back—me and General-the-Goddamn-Grant.

  Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat—

  “This is Grant, you bawstards! General Grant, you white mudder-fuckers!”

  Scotty laughed deep deep inside of him as he heard his General raving, but he really laughed to keep from crying. He heard the gunfire all around him and especially behind him and playing “The One O’Clock Jump” up against his Duck like Chick Webb used to play his traps at the Howard Theater in Washington, der Capital, and at the Apollo on One Hundred Twenty-fifth Street and “Drop me off uptown in Harlem.” Great God Almighty, he’d love to be in Harlem now. Any minute he knew he would feel a little piece of deadly pointed metal come piercing in between his shoulder blades or in the back of his big head, he could almost feel it now, and he knew it had to come, and it would be all over with him, he was sure of this, and yet he felt no special pain or fear. He was fighting as he saw it, for that Freedom Democratic shit at long damn last and that Double-V for Victory! “You can’t die but one damn time—you can’t die but one damn time,” he kept repeating to himself. It was funny even to himself, but he didn’t feel any particular hate toward the paddies this morning. Just kill as many of them as we can, cause they’re the goddamn enemy. They got eyes like me, got nose like me, got mouth and brains like me and ears like me and legs like me and they piss like me and shit like me, but they ain’t no mama-jabbing good for me. Like Solly say, I don’t hate them, I just hate their mother-hunching ways. And I don’t mind dying if I’m dying kicking asses for my freedom.

  He thought about Quiet Man and wondered had they beat him bad. Quiet was one of the nicest cats in all the crazy goddamn world . . .

  Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping!

  The little capsules of death beat it out against his windshield, and Jimmy was alive, that’s one damn thing, but he hoped they hadn’t beaten him bad. Cops were bastards everywhere the whole world over. Cops were bastards. He’d seen them in the Bowery and in Chicago and L.A. and in all the Skid Rows everywhere. He’d seen them up in Harlem, seen them on their handsome horses, seen them whip heads till their arms got weary. Seen them get their kicks kicking asses that could not defend themselves.

  Jimmy’s my man—he’s my buddy! Jimmy and Worm and Solly—he would die for any one of them—and even batty General Grant. Jimmy’ll be all right—goddamn—goddamn—hell be all right.

  Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping!

  He thought, ain’t this a bitch! Here I am worried about the Quiet Man and I’m getting ready to bust hell wide open in a few damn minutes. Getting ready just as fast as I can to attend my own damn funeral and worrying about the Quiet Man. Ain’t this a mother-fer-ya? He started to laugh and he couldn’t stop laughing and the tears rolled down his c
heeks, he laughed and laughed, and the Duck began to swerve from one side of the street to the other as if it were trying to dodge the screaming bullets.

  And General Grant in the rear of the Duck with his machine gun back-talking to Captain Charlie thought out loud, “That goddamn Scotty gone stark raving mad!”

  Sergeant Henry Williams had gotten in another Duck instead of Scotty’s when they left the jail, and now his Duck was being chased up a side street by two trucks with machine guns mounted and spitting fire and mayhem. Suddenly up ahead of them three White trucks turned into the street and came toward them from the opposite direction. And they were in the middle, with death hurled at them front and back. The Duck came to a halt and choked down and the trucks closed in. Within seconds every living on the Duck was dead excepting the sergeant and his driver.

  “Niggers! Nigger! Niggers! Niggers!”

  Hank Williams crouched on the floor of the Duck with death crisscrossing over his head and ricocheting. He decided to save his and his driver’s life. He put a white handkerchief on the tip of his bayoneted rifle and held it up and waved it from side to side as the machine-gun fire continued to play its deadly music.