Finally and suddenly the music came to a stop.
Hank and his driver leaped quickly down from the Duck. Hank continued to wave his white handkerchief. They quite sensibly put their lives in the hands of the white men’s tender mercy.
Hank shouted, “There’s no sense in our killing each other like this. After all, we’re all Americans.”
“You’re a nigger, nigger!” the gunner in the first truck shouted. And he opened fire on them and they fell dying in the sunlight near the shadow of the Duck. The last thought Sergeant Williams had on earth was what a goddamn fool he was to believe white folks knew what mercy meant. He wished he had died in the Duck with his buddies.
A sergeant in the first truck said to the gunner, “That wasn’t necessary, you bloodthirsty sonofabitch.”
The gunner laughed uneasily. “Ain’t none of this goddamn shit necessary.”
CHAPTER 6
By the time Solly and Samuels reached the north side of the bridge, the business in South Bainbridge sounded like a million typewriters going at the same time in all the office buildings in the world, typing out death notices to gold-starred patriotic mothers.
Tatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatat
ZINGZINGZINGZINGZINGZINGZINGZINGZING
bopbopbopbopbopbop!
“Your sons were killed in action—
We commend your loving son for courageous service beyond the call of duty—“
Tattattattattattattattattat
Zingzingzingzing
Bopbopbopbop!
“A hundred thousand calculators adding up the casualties.
They all fell in the line of duty.”
Tat-tat-tat-tat—tat-tat-tat—
“Believe me, mothers—fathers—brothers—sisters—“
Halfway across the bridge they stopped the jeep and they stood up in it and they could see the war in all its fury. Amphibs racing desperately up and down the streets of a canyon deep somewhere in Hell, trying to blast their way out of a trap that was slowly closing in on them. Inch by inch the White armies moved in on the Amphibs and their Allies, foot by foot, street by street, drawing the noose tighter and tighter. Solly stood there helpless and crying. He knew it was true as surely as he knew his name, and yet he could not believe what his bleary eyes beheld. He couldn’t wouldn’t believe this was happening to the United States of America. His country and his mother’s country and his father’s country and his mother’s mother’s country and the country of his father’s father. And what the hell could he do about it? He felt himself hardening all inside himself as if he were turning into cement, as the anger rose inside of him. He wiped his eyes and cried no more. And what could he do to help his buddies? Crying did no goddamn good. If they didn’t surrender every one of them would be slaughtered.
Samuels stood beside him, shaking his head with the tears streaming down his own face as he watched the men being cut down like bamboo with machete knives. “I can’t believe it! I just can’t believe it!”
Solly said, “There’s your goddamn democratic antifascist Army!”
“I can’t believe it.”
“You believe it all right. You’d better believe it. The question is—what the hell you’re going to do about it?”
Samuels’s voice was trembling. “Maybe if—maybe if I—went over there alone, maybe I could talk to some of the—I mean, whoever is in charge of the white men.”
“No goddamn body’s in charge. It’s just a good old-fashioned lynching picnic. Red-blooded Americans getting their nuts off having a little clean innocent sport. It’s open season.”
“Maybe I can talk to some of them and get them to hold off at least long enough for me to get through to the fellows and get them to surrender.”
Solly saw one of the Ducks go crashing crazily into the side of a building and bullets screaming and soldiers flying and winning purple hearts and some of them gold stars for their mothers.
He sat down in his jeep. He had to do something. He put the jeep in reverse and backed up swiftly in the direction he had come till he was off the bridge again. Australian people, dressed for church, some of them half-dressed and sleepy-faced, all of them startled and unbelieving, had gathered at the northern end of the bridge, staring across the river at the sound and fury. Shocked and speechless.
When Solly and Samuels got back to the other side, people came toward the jeep and surrounded it.
“What’s happening over there, mytes?”
“Bloody Yankees fighting Yankees!”
“The whole damn world is off its rocker!”
“Did the Japanese make a surprise attack?”
Solly asked somebody, “Where can I get to a telephone?” A tall blondish man jumped into the jeep.
They took off down the street.
Samuels asked Solly, “What’re you going to do?”
Solly said, “What do you think I’m going to do? I’m going to get some reinforcements here and I’m going in with them.”
The Aussie said, “Turn right here, myte.”
And they turned into a short street and they went two blocks and made another turn into an empty street and stopped halfway up the block in front of a little two-by-four café that seemed to be just getting up for the morning.
Samuels said, “You’re going to call Negro troops. You’re going to turn it into a racial war.”
Solly looked at Samuels and laughed bitterly as he jumped out of the jeep and ran into the café. He saw the telephone up against the wall and went toward it, and as he picked the receiver up, he heard the little radio on the counter.
Two people were seated at the counter drinking coffee and the owner was on the other side of the counter, leaning on it and staring at the radio, his sleepy eyes transfixed, as if it were the first he had ever gazed upon.
“ . . . People of Bainbridge were blasted out of their Sunday-morning complacency by the war which has finally come to our town. Down in the heart of the commercial district in South Bainbridge a full-scale battle is raging between Americans, blacks and whites. It is reported that a few of our own diggers are engaged on the side of the blacks . . . . ”
Solly stared across the café at the radio as he phoned the first sergeant of some Combat Engineers out at the Farm, whom he was friendly with. Somebody finally answered at the other end, and when he asked for Sergeant Bailey, the other voice said, “Are you kidding? Every living is gone into town to help the 25th Amphibs!” He paused and then said: “I’m leaving in the next few minutes with the last of the Mohicans!”
Solly felt chill after chill race up his spine and spread out to his shoulders. He tried to get another number but stood there listening to the ring and nobody answered. The radio said:
“Australian citizens are shocked at the display of racial animosity . . . . Other troops from both of the major camps are pouring into town and converging on the city toward the center of the tension. Unthinkable and shocking . . . ”
One of the coffee drinkers said, “The bloody arrogant Yankee bawstards! Bad as the bloody Nazis!”
Samuels said, “Well?”
Solly said, “Everybody’s getting into the act.” He walked past Samuels out of the café and Samuels and the Aussie followed him. They got into the jeep and Samuels said, “Now what?”
Solly blew up. “Why in the hell do you keep asking me? You’re a goddamn brilliant ninety-day wonder! You got the captain shit on your collar!” He started the jeep and headed back to the bridge. He stopped before he reached the corner, and he could hear the typewriters pounding out their death messages across the way and the calculators calculating and bolt after bolt of lightning flashing across the peaceful Sunday sky. The lanky Australian sat silently in the back of the jeep.
Solly turned to Samuels. “Before we go any further together, we have to decide who we are and where we are and why we are.”
Samuels’s tan face was red now and leaking nervous perspiration. “I don’t get what you mean.”
Solly said, �
��You know damn well what I mean. I know who I am—I’m a black man and I’m going to get to my buddies even if I have to wade through a goddamn river of white folks’ blood.”
They did not notice the Australian as he slipped quietly out of the back seat and ran toward the corner and went around it in the direction of the bridge.
Samuels argued earnestly, “This is your last chance to reconsider and turn back. One more soldier in South Bainbridge will not turn the tide one way or the other for our fellows. But you do have a chance to go home and forget about all this shit. You have a son whom you’ve never seen—you have a responsibility to him—you can go home and not forget this shit. You can do something about it.”
Solly sat there listening to the thunder of his heart and the rumbling in his guts and collisions in his head, and all along he had tried not to think of his son, not to think of Fannie Mae, not to think of going home. He had had the picture of his buddies before him, especially the big-eyed Quiet Man who stepped out of line in the bus station in Ebbensville how many centuries ago? He wanted badly to go home, he wanted to hold his son and hear his son and see his son and know him know him know him. He wanted Fannie Mae to love her and to live with her. Samuels was right. Of course he was right. He didn’t need to go across the bridge. He could say that he had a week-end pass and he spent the night at an Australian friend’s house and he was drunk and he overslept, and by the time he got himself together, the war in Bainbridge was over and done with. Nobody would know the difference but Samuels and Celia and the charge-of-quarters and nobody else nobody else. Like Samuels said, he had a son, he had a responsibility to his son, greater than any loyalty he might feel he owed to Jimmy and the other poor bastards on the other side of the river, and he would be worth more to them, able to do more for them, and be missed more by his darling son than his buddies across the way. His son was motherless already. He didn’t need to make him fatherless. He didn’t need to prove himself to the men. He didn’t need to be heroic. He had his purple heart already. Fannie Mae would never know.
Samuels saw Solly wavering and he moved in swiftly. “Furthermore, you’re more valuable to everybody if you go back to the States and work like hell to build a better world. You owe it to those men over there. That’s what Larker believes in. After all, you’re educated.”
Yeah, he thought, yeah. After all, I’m educated, and I owe it to the men not to die but to live and fight another day—for them—for Jimmy—for my son—and after all, I’m educated. He could go home next week to his son and Fannie Mae and his mother, and together with them he would build a life—writer—lawyer—prominence—leader—fighter—He could really be somebody. Fannie Mae and Solly Saunders. He had a responsibility to his son and his buddies and he hated himself. Use your head instead of your emotions, thank you, Millie. She was absolutely right!
Solly made a U-turn and headed back the other way, sweat draining from every pore in his body. He hated the very breath he took. But he was sensible.
Samuels said, “Where in the hell are you going now?”
“You’re my captain, and I’m taking your advice. I’m going back to Celia’s and back to the good old U.S.A. and live to fight another day. And there’s my responsibility to my son to be considered, and—” His voice choked off.
They were driving now up a long wide thoroughfare bordered on each side by eucalyptus trees and hibiscus and jacaranda and poinciana and bougainvillea. The street was drenched with sunlight and fragrance from the shrubbery. It was a day you could forget the war. And he would forget the war. They went up a long winding street, up and around and up and around. He didn’t even hear the war anymore. A tender breeze was blowing a wild sweet scent of blooms and blossoms and he breathed deeply and he opened his mouth and drank it all in. He never wanted to hear of war again. Nor feel the war, nor smell the war.
He stared sideways at Samuels, hating him for being white and for showing him a way to save his skin and for contraposing his son to his embattled buddies.
Solly finally got his voice again. “Which way’re you going to jump?” he asked contemptuously. “Have you figured out what color you are this pretty Sabbath morning? And what are your responsibilities?” He could not make himself hate Samuels, he was just hot with him because he was here and now and he was one of the ones who would always know that Solly Saunders chickened out and deserted his buddies or whatever else you called it, a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose, and a chicken ain’t nothing but a goddamn bird. He stopped the jeep and laughed harshly into Samuels’s face.
Samuels said nervously, “I have conflicting responsibilities. I have a responsibility to my men, but I also have a responsibility to the Army of the United States.”
Solly laughed again. “Your first and only responsibility you ever had is to you, Robert Samuels, you you you, nobody but you. To thine own self be true—William Shakespeare.” And even as he said it and heard himself say it and watched Samuels’s face flushing red with guilt and anger, he knew he had also found his own answer. If he were true to himself he could not be false to son or comrades or Fannie Mae or to people or to country, and if he chickened out or deserted now, he would know it and always and forever know it, and the charge-of-quarters didn’t matter, nor did it really matter that Celia or Samuels would know, or even Jimmy, always and forever, as long as Solly Saunders knew it and he would never ever be able to forget. He turned the jeep about again and stepped on the gas and sped back in the opposite direction, down hills and around hills till he reached the King’s Highway and headed toward the bridge. He could no longer smell the smell of jacarandas. Death invaded all of his senses. Maybe Death was driving him, luring him. He didn’t say a word. He just drove madly till he reached the thoroughfare before the bridge.
His heart leaped about in a wild dance without rhythm, his body screaming perspiration. Now that he had made his decision he was sad and scared-to-death and happy. The front section of a convoy of gun-mounted trucks and Ducks with Negro soldiers was already halfway across the great bridge, the rear of the convoy extending back to two blocks this side of the bridge. The progress of the convoy had been halted by a steady vicious barrage coming from the southern tip at the foot of the bridge which was shaped like a rainbow. The front section of the convoy was at the tiptop middle of the rainbow and was naked and exposed. They were like targets on a rifle range. Across the river the sky was red, the war was raging.
Solly spied a Duck in a part of the convoy just off the bridge and started to aim his jeep at it, but then he stopped again and turned to Samuels. “All right, Cap’n, you’d better make up your mind in hurry what color you are, before my comrades mistake you for a bloody peckerwood.”
Samuels said, “What do you mean?”
Solly said, “You know damn well what I mean. Are you with us or against us? You got one last clear chance to tuck your tail between your legs and show your damn true colors like you did in Ebbensville. You don’t owe me a goddamn thing, and I’m going to leave the jeep right here. If this is not your fight, you can take it and go back home and forget it and hold hands with Celia and play the part of Nero.”
Samuels said, “You are a bloody bastard!” His tan face was the color of an over-ripened carrot.
Solly said, “Don’t do me any favors. Just tell me what your color is.”
Samuels almost lost his voice. “I’m going with you, goddammit!”
Solly laughed.
He parked the jeep and he and Samuels ran across the wide thoroughfare toward a Duck about seventy-five yards from the foot of the bridge, with machine guns trained on him and Samuels all of the way. It seemed they would never get across to the Duck. The street seemed to widen every millionth of a second. They finally reached the Duck and grabbed the side and started to climb up, when the brown-faced sour-pussed gunner said, “Hold it, both of you mother-fuckers!” And when Solly’s head came up over the side of the Duck the gun was pointed down his throat.
He shouted feebly, “You hold it
, goddammit! We’re from the 25th Amphibs!”
The gunner said, “Talk like that then, cause I don’t know you from Adam’s house cat. You might be passing for colored this morning.”
Solly fell over a wall of sandbags and into the Duck as did Samuels, and Solly said to the gunner and the other men in the Duck, with their rifles and their submachine guns ever at-the-ready, pointing to Samuels, “He’s a light-complected colored man, and he’s a member of the 25th.” He was tired and breathing deeply. His heart was thumping in his forehead.
The gunner said distrustfully, “I didn’t know y’all had no colored officers.”
Solly said breathlessly, “He was passing for white just so he could be an officer in a colored platoon. He’s a Race man from his heart.”
Samuels face got redder and redder.
The gunner glowered suspiciously.
One of the other men in the Duck said dryly, “That’s some real deep sophisticated shit. You have to be educated to dig that jive.”
The Duck blew up with nervous laughter. And Solly felt at home—at home! He leaned back on a wall of heavy sandbags, which the men had stacked up two to three feet high around the inside of the Duck, and he closed his eyes and he was scared to death and happy. A corporal shoved rifles into his and Samuels’s hands, as he leaned further and further back on the sandbags into the sandbags which seemed to suddenly soften, becoming plush, and he sank back back comfortably back, and he heard the thunder and lightning of the war all around him and he stared at Samuels seated across from him and all of Solly’s weariness and nervousness and all of the sadness he felt for his country which he desperately loved in spite of not being able to love wholeheartedly—he loved his country angrily—made him glad Bob Samuels had chosen sides and Bob was his friend and Bob was his country, the best part of it, the healthiest portion, and he and Bob and Jimmy and Worm and Scotty and Lanky were the best part, and Bob was not a phony bastard, he wanted to believe, all white bastards were not bastards, and he remembered the two white soldiers at the Ebbensville bus station and the white soldier at the Red Cross Recreation Center, and Celia and Dobbsy and Steve and the dogtag fellows of the Anti-Aircraft, who were blown to hell up north in the Philippines. They were not bastardly bastards, he wanted to believe, and there were white folks back in the States who were not really bastard bastards, they meant well but did so poorly, he wanted desperately to believe, goddammit, it was his country as much as it was anybody else’s, and he loved it angrily and critically, and he hated the phony patriots, the goddamn goose-stepping flag-waving patriots, who really loved the status quo more than they loved the country and its promises unfulfilled. Love love unrequited love loveless love—everything ganging up on him now. Love and sadness and gladness and sorrow and exhaustion and sleep and fear, as he sank further and further into the plushy softness of the hard sandbags and he went wearily to sleep, and he saw his mother saw his baby, and held his baby in his arms and laughed and cried, and he saw Fannie Mae who loved him loved him, believed in him and waited for him, and he attended his own wedding and the bride was Fannie Mae, and Samuels was at the wedding in his soldier’s uniform, as were Worm and Jimmy and Scotty and Lanky Lincoln, and Solly said, “You’re dead, old buddy,” and was very very sad, deep deep sad, and the Duck moved forward jerkily and he woke up. And where was he? And how long had he been asleep?
And Then We Heard the Thunder Page 54