Such Sweet Thunder (32 page)

Presently he had made his way through the hollow and, lost in the toil of plodding through the soft squashing snow, he suddenly found himself in the midst of a dangerous host of colors and sounds that greeted his ears with a familiar strangeness:

“Look out, niggah!” cried Leroy, a seventh grader.

“Look out, niggah!” Leroy was saying, “any a you niggahs hit me’s hittin’ your mammy!”

A big snowball squashed against the back of his head.

“Aw-haw haw!” Amerigo laughed, pointing at Leroy. The other children who had seen it laughed, too.

“I’m gonna git you, niggah, just as sure as your mammy got a rubber dick! You just wait’ll school’s out.” Leroy glowered at little Frank Walker, who had thrown the snowball at Amerigo, but missed and hit Leroy by mistake. Amerigo was still laughing when Leroy turned on him: “What you laughin’ at, you little
frog-eyed
niggah?” He immediately checked his laugh, but it was too late. Leroy was saying: “I’m gonna put a knot on your head, just for laughin’! Now laugh that off frog-eyes! Frog-eyes! Frog-eyes!” A crowd gathered. They laughed and clapped their hands, while Leroy chanted: “Frog-eyes! Frog-eyes!”

“F-R-O-G E-Y-E-S!” the crowd answered back.

Tears swelled in his eyes. Etta ran up behind him, grabbed his cap, and threw it up into the air: “Whoopie!”

He ran after his cap. Chester kicked it just as he was about to pick it up.

“Goin’ down to the bottom!” Leroy sang: “To the
froggy
bottom! Where the folks don’t hurry, an’ never worry! Goin’ down to the
bottom an’ live my eeeeasy way!” He stepped up to Amerigo and thumped him on the head.

“Aw, leave the boy alone!” said a voice. He looked up gratefully and saw that it was Tommy who had spoken.

“What
you
buttin’ in for, niggah!” said Leroy threateningly. He walked up to Tommy and looked dangerously down at him. Tommy’s bottom lip quivered nervously, and then —
Boom!
— before Leroy knew what had happened, Tommy had let go with a swinging right to his jaw. Leroy’s cap flew into the air. He was on his behind and his heels were in the air.

“Niggah, you don’t call me no niggah!” Tommy cried. Fine beads of sweat stood out on his nose.

“Git that niggah, Leroy!” Etta cried, kicking Tommy on the leg from behind. Tommy turned to attend to Etta, and Leroy sprang to his feet.

“Wiiiiiilyum!” cried Geraldine, “ ’em niggahs is gangin’ up on your brother!” William came running over from the swings where he had been swinging with Birdie Lou. He dashed into the crowd with his mouth poked out and his firsts doubled up. Tommy and Leroy were scuffling on the ground, and Etta was on Tommy’s back, hitting him on the back of his head with the glass stone of a dime store ring that she wore on the middle finger of her right hand.

“Git ’er, Wi’yum!” Geraldine shouted.

William dragged Etta off Tommy’s back, and she lit into him, swinging her arms and fists like a wild cat. Meanwhile Tommy kicked Leroy in the stomach:

“Ooooow!” he groaned and doubled over.

William had Etta by the hair. When she heard Leroy scream she started screaming, too. Sammy, her brother, who was just coming on to the playground, heard her scream and came running.

“Aw-aw!” Turner yelled, “I’m gonna see this!”

William turned and faced Sammy.

“Let me have that niggah, man,” Tommy said.

Meanwhile Amerigo stood on the edge of the crowd and watched. While Leroy was still groaning Tommy leaped at Sammy’s neck and dragged him down. Etta stooped over to pick up a stick to hit Tommy with, and William kicked her in the behind. Sammy pulled his knife out of his pocket. Tommy grabbed his wrist just as the bell rang.

All the children ran into the building.

“See you after school, niggah!” Sammy said gruffly, gasping for breath, as Tommy let him up.

“You ain’ gonna see me before I see you, niggah!” Tommy replied more gruffly.

Amerigo went quietly to his seat and sat down. He looked out the window at the gray sky. He looked at the gnarled branches of the trees in the yard across the street. The sky grew darker. The streets grew wet and the wooden porches of the neighboring houses became slate-gray.

“Joy to the world!” they sang, “the Lord is come! Let earth receive her king! Let ev-ry heart …” He sang distractedly, with a troubled voice.

Finally the last bell rang.

“You stick to me, ’Mer’go,” said Tommy gravely when they gathered in front of the schoolhouse. William and Geraldine and Carl and Turner came up and they all stood in a huddle.

“Ready, men?” said Turner. “Look. If ’em cats start somethin’, we’ll git ’um!” He opened his fist and proudly exhibited a smoothly polished sandstone about the size of a duck egg.

Tommy’s gang took the east side of the street, Sammy’s took the west.

Meanwhile the wind rose up from the north and cut their faces and hands. They turned into the hollow. Sammy’s gang lagged behind. There was a strong gust of wind, followed by a shower of rocks and cans that fell among Tommy’s gang.

“Anybody hurt, men?” Tommy inquired. “Naw …” they answered and discharged their own rocks, cans, and bottles at the enemy. The wind blew very sharply.

Tommy’s gang turned into the alley.

He climbed the front steps … I don’t care — There is a Santa Claus! he thought. He entered the front room and lit the stove. The flames invested the little stage with a rosy light that filled the somber four o’clock shadows lingering ominously in the room.

They had just finished supper. Viola was clearing the table. Rutherford was in the toilet, smoking a cigarette.

“Mom, kin I go down to Aunt Lily’s?”

“You better put your coat on.”

“I’m just goin’ to Aunt Lily’s!”

“Put your coat on!”

“Yes’m.”

He entered the middle room. Rutherford came behind him and resumed his task of washing the woodwork. He watched for a minute. It’ll be Christmas soon, he thought. Viola had told him that Christmas
would come in two weeks. He looked at the sweating windows. It was dark outside, blue-black. The sweat ran down the panes like strips of tinfoil that hang from Christmas trees. Icicles. He saw thin daggers of frozen ice falling sharply from the roofs of houses in the morning, when the sun shone on them and made them glisten like the pretty glass in Rutherford’s ring. A diamond! He made a tinkling sound with his mouth to imitate the sound that occurred when he ran his finger along a row of icicles hanging from an accessible railing, and dashed happily down the stairs.

He lay on Aunt Lily’s floor with a heap of newspapers, while Aunt Lily sipped her strong black coffee from a big white cup. He turned a page and stared into the face of a huge smiling Santa Claus. He had an enormous sack from which he emptied toys. They spilled onto the bottom of the page and piled up so high that they looked as high as Clairmount Hill: trains and dolls and flashlights and knives and shoes and boots, and all sorts of things, but no
real
horses — little wooden horses with wooden wheels on their feet to push or pull them until they ran — not even a little one. Next to a real horse he liked a wagon. It was red and had white rubber tires.

“Western Flyer!”
he heard Tommy say when he had asked him the name of a wagon:
“That’s what the name of ’um is ’cause they got ’um at the store where Tom works. I seen ’um!”

“Western Flyer,”
he repeated, unconsciously disturbed by the air of certainty of Tommy’s tone.
“I’m gonna write a letter to Sanie Claus an’ tell ’im to bring me one!”

“Aw, man, it ain’ so,”
Tommy’s voice had tried to say, but he had turned away and ran down the alley after Toodle-lum who had followed Carl and Turner into the empty house to get firewood.

WESTERNFLYER. He copied the letters carefully. Then he held up the paper:

“Look!”

“Unh-huh! That’s fine, babe, but you gonna have to work mighty hard to git it finished an’ lookin’ nice before Chris’mas. Why — it’ll be Chris’mas before you know it!”

Two weeks. An unexpected fear filled his mind, and he grew impatient with writing. He turned the pages of the
Star
. He studied all the advertisements. They were filled with elegant white ladies dressed in expensive fur coats, funny hats, and long funny shoes. There were pictures of big shiny rings and wristwatches, and clusters of holly with little red berries. He traced them out on the clean part of the paper. He
traced the pointed leaves of the poinsettias and the richly decorated Christmas trees. Viola had told him that he could buy the Christmas tree and make snow from soap flakes to put the presents on.

“Unh!” Rutherford exclaimed when he came home the following evening. “Babe, you oughtta see the Plaza! I had to go out an’ help old lady Mac with some decorations for the house. It’s all decorated for Chris’mas — already! An’ man I’m tellin’ you, Babe, it’s somethin’!”

He took off his coat and washed up and sat down at the table.

“I bet it’s pretty, all right!” said Viola. Amerigo remained quiet, for his father had that dreamy look in his eyes.

“It looks like a-a-a fairyland or somethin’. The streetlights got big silver stars on ’um, Babe, an’ Chris’mas tree branches — braided, Jack! — hangin’ from one post to the next. That’s along the sides, over the side walks, but they swing up, Babe, to the big stars in the middle of the street. An’ p-u-r-d-a-y! I ain’ never seen nothin’ like that. An’ all the stores decorated
down!
Lookin’ like palaces or somethin’. An’ groc’ry stores an’ candy stores — the stuff looks too pretty to eat! An’ all around where the old man lives is nothin’ but fine houses, Jack, with pretty lawns, an’ nice walks lined with bushes an’ evergreen trees. Some of ’um’s got little crystal chandeliers for porch lights, an’ when you ring the doorbell bells ring. Chimes, Jack! Makin’ pretty music!” Rutherford smiled with wonder at the remembered scene. “Quiet, an’ c-l-e-a-n! Can’t even see not even a scrap a paper nowhere! Just think, Babe, just think — if a man could live in a house like that he’d be sittin’ on top a the
world!
Don’t even have to be no big one like the old man’s, could be just a little one, with say, just four rooms. Why he’d be s-t-r-a-i-g-h-t hear me?” His smile broadened into a grin, as he stared out the sweaty kitchen window.

Saturday evening shone bright and clear. Shortly after supper the snow began to fall in big dry flakes that lay, like leaves, where they fell.

“Rutherford,” said Viola in a worried voice, “I don’ know if we oughtta let this boy go all the way out there on a streetcar by hisself.”

“What kin happen, Babe? He
knows
where he
lives
— an’ what his telephone number is. All he’s got to
do
is git on, an’ git off at the end a the line, an’ walk around a little bit, an’ git back on the streetcar an’ come on home! Go on, boy, that woman’ll keep you a baby till you git to be as old as Me-thuse-la!”

“He
could
git
lost!
Or have a accident, or anything. It happens
every day
.”

“When I was his age I didn’t have no accident!
I
could go all over town by myself!”

“Who else’s goin’, Amerigo?” asked Viola.

“
All of ’um!
Tommy an’ Eddie an’ ’em!”

“Well, you go an’ ask if you kin go with ’um. An then you come back here and wash yourself. An’ put on a clean shirt. You kin dirty up
more
shirts! An’ put on your Sund’y shoes an’ …”

He sat in the back of the streetcar all by himself. Tommy and Carl looked out the big rear window, while Eddie and Turner sat up front by the conductor. A current of hot air flowed up through the seat and warmed his bottom, while his feet tingled from the cold air that rushed in when the doors flew open at the stops. The streetcar’s motor throbbed rhythmically. He tapped his foot and swayed from side to side, as the streetcar swayed, causing the leather straps hanging from the roof to swing back and forth like pendulums. He perused all the posters and spelled out all the letters, and then he looked out the window.

He saw the reflected image of a white lady who sat on the opposite side of the car. Her face looked like a pink shadow and her hair glistened with snow. He pressed his nose against the pane and watched the dark streets glide by. Then he turned and looked at her. She smiled. Her lips were very red.

He tapped his foot and sang a tune to the rhythm of the motor:
I’m a dingdong daddy from Duma, you oughtta see me do my stuff!
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. He thought he saw a smile on her face as the streetcar rumbled down through the Negro neighborhood, and down past houses and apartments where white people lived, past dingy stores, restaurants, and hamburger stands, up past a big stone building with a high iron fence around it:

“That’s the public library,”
he heard Rutherford saying.
“There’s a lot a books in there. You kin git ’um free. All you have to do is sign a card. You kin git ’um, too, when you git old enough to read good.…”

“How many books they got?”

“A lot.”

“I bet they got a million of ’um!”

“Well, I don’ know about that, but there’s prob’ly more’n you an’ me’s gonna read in a lifetime put together!”

“I’m gonna read ’um all!”
seeing the big image of Santa Claus in the
Star
, wondering if just one of those millions of books would contain a voice loud enough to silence Tommy’s voice, which now rose above the rhythmic rumble of the streetcar.

“Aw, man, it ain’ no Sanie Claus!”

They were just crossing an intersection when he caught sight of a huge Santa Claus standing in the bed of a white truck with big signs on the sides with writing on them. Santa Claus threw back his head and billows of laughter rolled from his mouth, while his arms waved mechanically in the air.

“I TOLD YOU! I TOLD YOU!”

Tommy grinned sarcastically, but his protest was drowned out by Santa’s laughter.

“I TOLD YOU!” looking at the smiling faces of the men and women on the streetcar for confirmation. They all smiled back at him. Even the conductor looked back for an instant, smiled and remained silent. Santa Claus’s laughter continued to resound above the din of the traffic. But suddenly the laughter stopped, and the cracking of a phonograph needle spinning in an empty groove could be heard in spite of the rumbling of the streetcar’s wheels. Then the laughter started again, but now the truck turned off into a long broad street. He waved good-bye from behind his breath-misty window.