Such Sweet Thunder (6 page)

Again he started to enter the house, when he caught sight of a little knot of children cutting through the shoot: three big ones and three little ones. Tommy Johnson, Turner an’ Carl Grey — big. Willie Joe an’ Blanche an’ Cornelie — little. In patched pants and dresses, odd jackets and sweaters and can-scarred, rock-scarred, marble-scuffed shoes, with pigtails with and without ribbons, with big red Indian Chief tablets and pen-and-pencil boxes and lunches wrapped in brown paper sacks and newspaper. They kicked at cans and rocks and laughed and yelled, looked this way and that as they passed under the elm trees where they came to a halt, looked up on the porch, and discovered him.

“Look at that li’l niggah up there with that peanut head! Hee! hee! hee! Wow! What a
head!
An them
eyes!
With eyes like
them
, that niggah oughtta see the
whole world
with one look!”

“Aw come on, man. Let the boy alone. Hi, ’Mer’go.”

“Hi Tommy.”

The girls giggled and straggled behind the boys at the permitted distance. He followed their laughter through the shoot until the sound was gone, had mingled with the distant hum of traffic and with the farm news reporter’s final prediction of shifting southerly clouds and probable rain.

Just then Bra Mo came out of his cellar and put up the tailgate of his empty truck and climbed into the driver’s seat and released the hand brake and the truck creaked a short distance until the motor caught and then rattled down the alley in convulsive jerks, Bra Mo bobbling up and down on the springs of the driver’s seat like a cork on a choppy sea.

“Toodle-lum! Aw, Toodle-lum!” croaked the hoarse voice of an old woman.

Mrs. Shields. By straining over the banister he could just see her as she stuck her head out the window, a big yellow white-headed woman with a large wart on her cheek and big dark injured eyes underlined with deep purple rings.

“Her mouth looks like it’s always about to say somethin’ nasty,” he heard Viola say, seeing now his mother and father sitting with Aunt Lily on the front porch one evening when Mrs. Shields came out on her front porch and sat facing them.

“She
is!
” said Rutherford with a mischievous laugh.

“Now children,” said Aunt Lily in a discreet tone, “Margret Shields
usta be young an’ pretty an’ as sweet a child as you’d ever wanna see. An’ then her momma died, an’ she had to take care of a mess a brothers an’ sisters. An’ then she
had
to git married, an’ had a mess a kids of ’er own. An’ you
see
how they turned out. An’ what with hard times an’ all, she suffered a lot. Poor child’s got the blues an’ can’t git rid of ’um. The blues makes some people able to laugh a little, an’ other folks they just git bitter an’ spiteful. But she don’ mean no harm.”

“Sh-sh-shee’s jus’, jus’ mmm-mad ’c-c-c-cause she’s a-a-a-niggah!” stammered Unc Dewey. “Th-th-th-that darkie’s mad, mad at the whole world. Sh-sh-shee’d llllike to gggive it a kkick in — the ass!”

“They just ruinin’ poor Toodle-lum!” Rutherford said. “Toodle-lum! What a name to torture a child with!”

“Yes, hon,” said Aunt Lily sweetly, “but you’re forgettin’ somethin’. He’s all she’s got! You lucky. The Lord’s been good to you an’ Viola. Amerigo’s a good boy, an’ one day, just like Old Jake said, he’s gonna be a blessin’ to you. He is already. I ain’ heard from that young ’un a mine in
ten years!
If you was like her an’ you had a grandson you’d hope that at least he could turn out to be somethin’. Only thing is that she don’ know that you kin love somebody too much!”

“Toodle-lum! Aw, Toodle-lum!”

“Yes’m, Big Gran’ma, Big Gran’ma.” A thin frightened little voice, followed by a burst of laughter from a bunch of little kids whose voices he knew as well as his own: Annie, William and Lem, Victor and Helen-Francis and Sammy and Frank.

“You come in that yard where I kin see you or I’m gonna tan your hide!” shrieked Mrs. Shields.

“Oh, ho! ho! ho!”

“Hee! hee! hee!”

“Yoo — hoo!”

“C-o-m-e Toodie-woodie,” cried the children.

“Little devils!” cried Mrs. Shields. “If’n you was mine, I’d kick the holy shit out a the whole damned lot of you!”

“Sho’ glad I ain’ her’n!” giggled a muffled voice.

“What you say, li’l niggah?”

“Nothin’.”

“Toodle-lum, if you don’ stay ’way from them little dirty nappy-headed niggahs I’ll
kill
you!”

Charles! That’s his real name. Charles Baxter.

The delicate little boy went up on his front porch and sat on the top
step and looked at his companions in the alley with an apologetic expression. Meanwhile the children ran barefoot back and forth in front of the porch, dancing and prancing and poking fun at him. They stuck out their tongues, stuck their fingers in their behinds, and pulled off monkeyshines until they made him laugh through the tears that rolled down his face.

He’s pretty. He thought of Toodle-lum’s brown eyes with the extraordinarily long lashes, like Mr. Crippa’s. Thin nose, big mouth. When he laughed or smiled his lips — like Mom’s an’ Aunt Rose’s, with the ridge coming to a point just beneath the base of the nose — suddenly expanded the full length of his small face and made his peach-colored cheeks swell into rosy mounds under his eyes so that one could hardly see them. His big curly head was balanced upon a long skinny neck just like a baby bird!

Skinnier than a telegraph wire! Pigeon-toed. Can’t fight, can’t go out of the yard. Shoots marbles good, though.

A wave of pity for Toodle-lum swept over him. He’s crazy! Watching him laugh and cry at the same time, wondering how it was possible — with just a flicker of his lashes or a flash of fire that he coaxed into his eyes. Just like a girl!

And now he felt shame mixed with jealousy at the memory of how Toodle-lum always shied away when Amerigo hit him because he was mad because he had won his marbles. Amerigo cried until he gave them back, and then wanted to do something wonderful for him like giving him his wineballs, or lending him the jackknife that he got for Christmas to play mumble peg with or something like that.

His mother’s name was Hazel and she was Mrs. Shields’s youngest daughter. And then there was Margret who was twenty-eight but pretended to be twenty-four. And then Jimmy, the oldest next to Maggie. Old lady Shields couldn’t bully her, she worked for her living. Lived down on the first floor next to Mr. Dan. Jimmy was a porter in a hotel out south, and George didn’t do anything but drink, until the old lady started to giving him hell, then he would get a job for a few days until she quieted down.

Miss Margret’s pretty! He saw her thick black hair and dark daring eyes and followed the line of her lips from memory. They were always smiling at the men who passed by. He wished he were a man.

He remembered sitting on the back steps of her house one Saturday morning when she was bending over a tub full of dirty clothes. A thin trickle of sweat rolled down her neck and between her breasts, which
were exposed by the sagging lapels of the bathrobe she’d clumsily fastened with a safety pin. She looked up just in time to catch him looking down her bosom.

“What! What-you-lookin’ at you little
black rascal!
” she exclaimed. “Why
you
— he’s — ha! Are you lookin’ down my bosom, boy?
Already!
Why, you filthy li’l bastard! Git out a my sight! An’ go tell that
ugly biggidy
momma a yourn that if I ever catch you — or hear tell a you — lookin’ at what ain’ none a your black business
agin
I’m gonna slap the piss out a you! Now git!”

Toodle-lum looked like his mother. She was sick all the time and her eyes were always red. She cried a lot and laughed a lot. But not the way T. C. laughed, or like Mom and Dad’s, or Bra Mo’s or anybody’s.

“Them’s hustlin’ women, Amerigo,” Rutherford was saying. “You stay away from that house. You let Toodle-lum come over
here
if you just gotta play with ’im.”

“Yeah,” said Viola testily, “or maybe your daddy could go over an’ play in his yard if he can’t come over here. That Margret don’ do nothin’ but swish ’round on that porch half naked an’ make eyes at ’im, no way!”

“Aw Babe, what I want with a tramp like that?”

“The other evening,” Viola interrupted with narrow eyelids, “she was over there just a singin’ to beat the band — ‘I kin git more men than a passenger train kin haul!’ — in that loud twang a hers when Hazel, ’er own sister, yelled upstairs: ‘You can’t git none of ’um to marry you!’ an’ laughed — you know the way she does? Heeee — all high like she was wheezin’. The folks up an’ down the alley sure had a laugh on her!”

The Shieldses’ house loomed up in an ominous shadow in the falling darkness, its bulky mass perforated by the soft yellow light of coal oil lamps that filled the windows. Silent figures of white and black men slipped in through the back from the Charlotte Street side. The blues spewed out in the sticky air, shadows danced upon the walls, a carelessly closed door idled open: Margret sitting on a white man’s lap, holding out a glass into which Mrs. Shields poured whiskey, while the white man ran his hand up under her dress between her legs. “You quit that now!” she giggled, just before Mrs. Shields prudently shut the door.

The image faded away and blended into the expansive feeling of a Saturday morning when Viola let him go out and play in the alley because it was a holiday and she didn’t have to work. He slipped over
to play marbles with Toodle-lum. Toodle-lum won, and then they sat on Mr. Everett’s windowsill. Mr. Everett, a bald-headed old man with the face of a devil, heard them arguing about the marbles, which Toodle-lum had won, and poured a can of ice water through the screen onto the sill and wet their bottoms. Then they went up on Toodle-lum’s back porch to sit in the sun and dry themselves. Presently they heard a sound like that of someone struggling in the bedroom. A bar of shade falling across the screen of the bedroom door enabled them to look in. Miss Hazel was lying on the bed and a man was lying on top of her. She was scratching him and whining and he was kissing her and squeezing her titties. The noises they made sounded funny. The man started to tear at her dress.

At this point Mrs. Shields came out of the kitchen downstairs and called: “Toodle-lum! Aw-Toodle-lum!”

“Yes’m! Yes’m!” answered Toodle-lum. Amerigo hit him hard in the ribs but it was too late. Miss Hazel, hearing voices just outside the door, jumped up from the bed, ran to the door and looked out. Her dress, which buttoned down the front, was open. The children stared at her naked body. Her hair was all in her face and her red eyes flashed angrily.

“Git away from here you li’l black muthah-
fuggah!
”

Meanwhile Mrs. Shields came grunting up the steps as fast as she could, slowly enough, she being a fat old woman, to allow them to rush past her, but not before she could swat them twice with the broom.

“Little sons a bitches!” she exclaimed. Amerigo ran home as fast as he could. From his front porch he heard the old woman screaming. “Toodle-lum, you
git
in this house! I’m gonna warm your little behind!”

“Yes’m, yes’m.” His frightened voice hung — stuck — in the air, and Amerigo felt a heavy depressive loneliness steal upon him.

The sun was burning its way through eleven o’clock, diffusing its hard blatant light through the alley, raising blisters upon the ancient porch banisters and drying the cracks in the cement yard.

The cool, dank bouquet of vatted wine rose from Mrs. Crippa’s cellar and mixed with the smell of parmesan cheese hanging in mold-encrusted loaves from the ceiling while blue-green flies buzzed happily
around the half-shut garbage can in the yard at the foot of the porch steps. The putrid odor of rotting food permeated the air.

He descended the steps and lifted the lid of the can and gazed at its contents with an expression signifying both curiosity and revulsion. Swarming in the midst of a bile-green mass of decaying food — which in turn rested within the center of a dull, brick-red substance that appeared to have once been chili-beans — was a heap of tallow-white maggots! The smell was revolting, but he was fascinated by the colors, for now he discovered the volatile yellow hues of several lemon rinds strewn among the green, and that the outer edge of the mass of chili-beans were of a lighter shade of reddish brown, having dried more quickly in the sun. He narrowed his eyelids and discovered that the colors blended in a remarkable way, the whiteness of the maggots causing the lemon rinds to appear of a more saturated yellow, almost white, and at the same time adding a richness to the deep brown, almost black, watermelon seeds!

Then something moving on Aunt Lily’s porch attracted his attention. He turned his head and peered between the banister railings into the shadows of the porch. At that instant the sharp putrid odor from the garbage can stung his nostrils with the intensity of some volatile poison. Ugh! he cried aloud, and clamped the top down over the can and hammered it more firmly with the heel of his bare foot.

The odor safely sealed in the can, he returned his attention to the porch. A small kitten emerged from the hidden corner formed by the concrete wall and the shed. It was about six months old. It advanced with some difficulty up the three concrete steps into the yard. It approached Amerigo and paused a few feet from where he stood. He picked it up and stroked its soft blue-gray fur. He looked down into its yellow eyes and they regarded him with a savage tenderness. He felt its delicate spine tremble in his hands, reverberate with a gentle purring murmur.

“Me,”
said Rutherford’s voice,
“an’ a gang a niggahs usta go snake huntin’ ever’ Sad’dy on Clairmount Hill an’ all up in them woods ’roun’ Cliff Drive an’ down by the railroad tracks. An’ don’ let us come ’cross no cats! M-a-n, we was rough on a cat. We’d throw ’um up in the air by the tail! an’ chunk rocks at ’um!”

He saw his father’s mischievous smile as he spoke, he heard his mother’s reproach and his father’s reply:
“They got nine lives, ain’ they?”

He trembled with a deep sense of mystery, fear, and curiosity. He stroked the cat gently. Again. It purred and fanned its tail with a gentle
show of satisfaction. Gradually, unaware that he did so, he gripped the kitten tightly in his hands and moved breathlessly up the steps. He stood over the banister and rested his elbows upon the rail, but he did not feel the heat of the sun upon it, nor did he hear the distant hum of traffic that rose from the boulevard and from the avenue. He did not see that the elm trees in Miss Ada’s yard swayed gently and that their branches cast cool transparent shadows against the back wall of the empty house. The kitten wriggled in the free air beyond the railing. His arms, then his hands grew gradually numb. He looked at the soft fur of the kitten’s head until it blurred out of focus. And suddenly his hands were empty. His eyes followed it down …