Such Sweet Thunder (56 page)

“A-Men!”

“Now, we’re gonna pray to God for courage, an’-an’ strength-an’ faith-aaaan’
money
. We’re sure gonna need a lot of it —”

“A-Men!”

“— an’ build the Lord a
new
temple — a new Saint John’s Baptist Church!”

“Help’im, Je-sus!”

“A place of worship that we kin
all
be proud of!”

Like the art gallery, Amerigo thought, as he followed the stream of black, brown, and beige faces, flowing west until the white faces gradually faded away and a gray, reddish, sweaty, pungent, rhythmic, dusty, blood-spattered, gold-spangled, laughter-ridden, pain-ridden, teary-eyed humor filled the sky: heel over toe, toe over heel: east to west, west to east, and then south, along the shining rails come Sunday, animated by a burning sense of pride, because the Municipal Auditorium’s not far from the Muehlebach Hotel and the Southern Mansion and it’s on the way to the art gallery, where everything’s so pretty — an’ clean! Different from the North End, from the slums!

“I see where Saint John’s gonna buy the old Fifteenth Street dance hall,” said Rutherford at the end of a day when the wind had blown warmer, and he had spread out the pages of the
Voice
and waited for Viola to finish frying the fish.

“Unh — unh!” she exclaimed, “what a time we usta have there!”

“In a couple a months,” said Rutherford.

“In a couple a months it’ll be spring!” Viola said.

“Yeah, an’ old Amerigo’ll be graduatin’!”

Amerigo watched the bar of sunlight advance toward the foot of the table.

“He’s gonna need a new suit,” said Viola, emptying the boiled potatoes into a bowl.

“With long pants!” said Amerigo.

“I don’ know about that.”

“Vi-ola, you can’t have that boy graduatin’ in no short pants! He’s almost as big as you!”

“Ever’body’s
supposed
to have long pants!” Amerigo declared, “— and a navy-blue suit with a white shirt, and a tie, blue or black, an’ … 
d
white shoes. Hot dog!”

“That’ll be my black ruin!” Rutherford exclaimed.

“What?” Viola asked, lifting the fish carefully onto the platter.

Buffalo, Amerigo thought, anticipating the hot salty crisp taste of the first mouthful. She set the plate of corn bread on the table.

“Well,” Rutherford said, “he’s wearin’ my socks, my ties, my drawers
an’
shirts. Now he kin almost wear my
pants!
”

“That’s what you git for havin’ me!” Amerigo said, and burst into a fit of laughter that infected Viola and Rutherford, who shot swift subtle glances at each other.

Suddenly the fish had disappeared, all but the bones.

Like a leaf, he thought, looking at the skeleton that he had carefully spread out along the edge of his plate. He stuck his fork into the blind eye.

I did it! He sipped his buttermilk.

“An’ then next year,” Rutherford was saying, “next year he’ll have to git up early to go all the way out on Nineteenth Street to school.”

“I know!” Amerigo declared. “It’s like on the way to Aunt Rose’s.”

“An’ you gonna have to work hard!” said Rutherford. “None a that foolin’ around, ’cause if you don’ make it there, you can’t go to high school, an’
then
college is
out!
”

“Your daddy’s sure tellin’ you right!” said Viola. “Just think, you’ll be graduatin’ in
June!
An’ here it is April already! Ever’body’s comin’, Aunt Rose, Ardella, your daddy an’ me, an’ Aunt Lily an’ Unc, Flat Nose. An’ even old T.’s gonna git all dressed up, just to see you graduate!”

One day, during the busy-bee lull of a lazy afternoon in the beginning of June when the heat of the sun melted his eyelids and his chin sagged upon his chest, a penetrating voice shocked him into a state of fearful awareness:

“Amerigo Jones!” It was Principal Powell.

“Yessir.”

“Would you come up here, please?”

He half walked, half stumbled up to the great man’s desk.

“Sit down.”

He sat on the chair beside the desk and inadvertently crashed his knee into the wastepaper basket.

“ ’Scuse me.”

“Now,” said the principal, “I should like to know how you would like to have your name signed —
should
you happen to graduate.”

“Hot dog!”

“Surely you don’t mean that!”

“Aw, Oeh, neo sah.”

“What
do
you mean?”

“I mean I’d like it.”

“It?”

“To be signed: Amerigo Frederick Douglass Booker T. Washington Jones.”

“But that’s not your name, is it? It’s not the name your mother and father gave you.”

“No sir, but that’s what I want!”

“Well, let’s compromise: Amerigo F. D. Jones.”

Franklin Delano.

“Jones,” he was saying.

“Yessir,” replied the Father of the Country.

Boom!

A great clap of thunder shook the dark sky, followed by a bolt of lightning:

“Oh!” rippled through the surprised crowd whose attention had been fixed upon Principal Powell.

“Amerigo did it!” Chester whispered.

“What!” Amerigo asked.

“Made it rain, niggah!”

The graduating class, ranging in rows behind Principal Powell, burst into snickers that caused him to turn around and give them a silencing look.

“Too bad it rained,” said Viola in the taxi after the ceremony. “But it was nice. All the kids looked
so
nice. An’ that little girl that spoke — spoke so
nice
an’ clear! She was so tiny for twelve.”

“She’s ten!” Amerigo exclaimed, “an’ they had to hold ’er back to keep from graduatin’ too young.”

“Well, she sure spoke like a little lady all right!”

“Yeah, it was real nice, all right,” said Rutherford.

“They said I did it,” Amerigo said.

“What?” Rutherford asked.

“Made it rain.”

“How come?” Viola asked.

“ ’Cause I come in long pants. I was lookin’ s-h-a-r-p! Hot dang!”

“Be careful, there,” Viola warned, “you almost said somethin’.”

“Walkin’ all cute!” Rutherford exclaimed. “An’ like to fall down. Haw! haw! haw! An’ didn’ win
nothin’!
Not even a booby prize! They kept callin’ the names a the ones on the honor list an’ I kept waitin’ to hear my son’s name — an’ I ain’ heard it
yet!
But that little Chester — what was his name?”

“You know it, Amerigo,” said Viola.

“Chester Owlsley.”

“Now
he
must be a tough little joker! Had the highest marks in the whole school.”

“He kin do long division without writin’ it down in his head. But his sister, Erma, is better in English, an’ his other sister, Emma — they’re twins — is better’n both of ’um, but she’s sick all the time an’ has to stay home.”

“Well, you ain’ missed a day!” said Rutherford. “What happened to
you?
You supposed to be so smart an’ all.”

“That don’ matter!” said Viola. “You got through, didn’t you, babe? It won’ be long now!”

The taxi swerved into the alley.

Amerigo sat on the porch and ate his crawdads and drank his beer.

“He kin have a glass a beer. He’s a man now — or he soon will be,” Rutherford had said.

“Aaaaaaw naw he ain’!” Viola had exclaimed. “That boy ain’ nothin’ but twelve years old. Why, he’s just a
baby!
”

“Do you remember how old we was when we got married?” Rutherford asked.

“That don’ make no bitter difference!” she replied.

“Drink your beer, boy,” Rutherford said.

“Yessir.”

“But one glass is all you git!” Viola declared.

He sat on the porch and drank his beer and ate his crawdads, and watched the stars fill the sky. The moon flushed red and then orange against the lamplight up and down the alley. Meanwhile he indulgently accepted the congratulations of the neighbors and answered all the questions and suffered with those to whom fate had denied the opportunity that he had been privileged to enjoy.

The nine o’clock whistle blew and stirred the fireflies around Sammy Sales’s tree.

I can stay up tonight, he thought, laughing to himself with secret pleasure, titillating uneasily upon the verge of an enthusiasm the limits of which he was at a loss to discover.

“Aw, swing them hips!” cried a man’s voice from the alley. They all looked down and saw Fay, a tall, pretty, muddy-yellow woman of twenty-four, switching up the alley.

“She’s really puttin’ it on, there!” Rutherford exclaimed.

“Yeah,” said Viola, “she’s gonna break ’er backbone, if she ain’ careful!”

“Tee! hee! hee!” Amerigo exclaimed. “Look at that broad walk!”

Rutherford and Viola looked at him. The grin froze on his face.

“What did you say!” Rutherford asked.

“Nothin’.”

“Well, you better not say it agin! Look at that broad walk! You must think you a
man
or somethin’!”

“It’s about your bedtime, anyway, ain’ it?” Viola asked.

“Aw, Mom!”

“Well, you straighten up an’ fly right, then.”

He trembled within the happy stillness of ten o’clock, soothed by cricket-song, singing the tale of the hero who graduated from elementary school and who was going to junior high school for a year, after which the great doors of North High would open, and the secrets of its many rooms would satisfy his thirst and his hunger to know. Once wise, he would win the prizes of the world. Mom and Dad, and Aunt Rose, and Aunt Lily — the whole North End — would be so proud.

Be a race man!

Fight for the rights of our people!

Things is gonna be a lot better for you than it was for us — if we don’ git tangled up in another one a Europe’s wars!

“Ain’ that the
truth!
We oughtta stay over here an’ attend to our
own
business — an’ let them Frenchmens an’ Germans kill theyself up if’n they got a mind to!”

“We all in the same boat!” Rutherford exclaimed.

“What you mean, we
all
in the same boat?” T. C. exclaimed. “We got two big oceans between us an’ them. We kin just lay over here, Jack! Cool as a cucumber, an’ when they start cryin’, Come over an’ help us, tell ’um, Unh-unh!”

“We’re a half a block from the avenue, T. C.,” Rutherford said, “but if
one
house starts burnin’,
all
the rest is goin’, too. A plane kin fly everywhere a bird kin fly, an’ birds fly everywhere, you hear me?”

“Well,
I
sure don’ want nothin’ to do with no war!” T. C. exclaimed. “I didn’
start it
an’ I ain’
gittin’ nothin’ out a it!
Let these white folks fight they
own
wars.”

“Mrs. Jones,” Miss Jenny whispered, slipping quietly out onto the porch. “Did you hear what I heard?”

“Naw, what? Good evenin’, Miss Jenny.”

“ ’Evenin’. Mrs. Crippa’s tryin’ to raise the rent!”

“Naw!” Viola turned to Rutherford. “You see, I just knew it was comin’!”

“I got it from the folks downstairs,” Miss Jenny said.

“How much?” Rutherford asked.

“What
ever
it is is too much!” Viola said. “She’s done gone too far this time!”

“Yeah!” Rutherford said, “we oughtta
move!
”

“We oughtta start lookin’ for a place right now!” Viola said.

“But someplace close to the hotel,” Rutherford said, “so I won’ have to pay no carfare.”

“Maybe you could study up for one a those civil service jobs,” Viola said. “They pay good an’ you don’ have to work too hard.”

“Yeah,” said Rutherford, “but, Babe, you know I ain’ got enough education. You gotta have at least a high school diploma.”

“With all that readin’ you do! You could do it like —
that!
” snapping her fingers.

Rutherford grinned with embarrassment. “But old Amerigo’s goin’ to high school. He’ll be out a high school —
an’
college — in no time. He’ll git him one a them high-powered jobs, Jack! An’ we’ll have it made! Hey! hey! Won’ that be somethin’?”

Viola looked down into the alley. The shades of the streetlights cut hard eleven o’clock holes in the cobblestones. A sad sound seeped down through the crevices between the cobblestones, filled the holes and rose until it filled the crevice that was the alley, and rose until it flooded the sky and made the stars shimmer as though Amerigo were seeing them underwater. Tears rolled down his face, as he gulped down a breath of air.

“You’re sleepy, boy,” Viola said. “You better go to bed now. You been up late enough for one night.”

He said good night and ascended the stairs. Minutes later he turned out the light, slipped into bed, and reached for the star with his toe.

“We oughtta start lookin’ for a place right now!” Viola whispered from the middle room, and he turned over on his side and gazed at the sky.

I hope it never changes
. The way to Garrison School stretched out before him. He bolted upright in a seizure of fear.

Next year
, said a voice, which catapulted him into the deep mysterious regions of the black room. Stars rained down and covered the way to Garrison School, buried all the houses and all the trees.

It ain’ no Sanie Claus!

Aw — yes it is!

Aw — naw it ain’!

I don’ …

The stars rained down and rained down and filled the black room:

Four!… Three!… Two!… One! —
Boom
!…

“Rutherford!” Viola exclaimed, just as he was stepping in the door the following evening.

“What you say, there, Vi?”

“Guess what?”

“What?”

“I was talkin’ to Sister Bill an’ she said that she heard from Mister Williams that they were plannin’ to move next month — an’ she thinks it might be somethin’ for us.”

“Where is it?” He took off his coat and hat and handed them to his son, who put them away and brought his house shoes. “Thanks, son.”

“It’s up on Tenth Street. It’s got four rooms an’ a bathroom. An’ it’s about the same distance from the hotel. But I don’ know if we kin git it ’cause they don’ want no kids.”

“What you think we oughtta do?”

“I think we oughtta take a look at it,” said Viola. “Ain’ no use waitin’. It wouldn’ cost but a little more’n we payin’ here when the old lady raises the rent. Ever’body we
know
— practically —’s
gone
. Amerigo’s graduated. Ain’ a
thing
to keep us down here.”