Such Sweet Thunder (18 page)

Suddenly the Campbell Street hill flashed through his mind, as his eyes caught sight of the man in the big white hat, astride the big white horse rearing on its hind legs, its front feet clawing the shiny air. A posse of famous names stampeded his ears: William Mess Hart! Hoot Gibson! TOM MIX! Ken Maynard! Buck JONES! Tim Tyler!

“Look where you’re goin’, boy!” cried Viola, stepping off the curb at Harrison Street. They were passing a huge building with two big dirty plate-glass windows separated by a door. It was open. A big dingy room with a long wooden counter on the left side covered with dust and curious dirty boxes filled with corks and bottletops and rubber stoppers. The rest of the counter was filled with dusty green and brown bottles of all sizes and shapes.

“Let’s go in there!”

“Are you crazy?”

He feasted his eyes on the barrels and jugs, on the heap of round wooden plugs on the floor. A man was hammering a plug in a hole in the belly of a big barrel.

Like a navel. He took a whiff of the gummy smell in the air, mixed with a sour, putrid smell that was like vomit, or like the smell of the garbage can when he had taken the lid off to fasten it down better with his heel.

“It’s just an old barrel shop!” She pulled him on, just as the nausea was creeping dangerously to his throat. “Looka there,” she added, pointing toward the corner, “they’ve disappeared. They must be halfway through the holla by now!”

“I ain’!” said Tommy who had been following close behind them all the while. Viola smiled at him. Amerigo pulled his mother moodily on toward the corner.

“Here’s Troost Hill!” Viola declared excitedly. “It’s been a long time since I been down here. Your daddy an’ me, an’ T. C., an’ a whole bunch a us usta slide down this hill in the winter. You see how steep it is? We usta start at the boulevard an’ cross the avenue, here! An’ coast on down past the holla, an’ — you might think I’m lyin’ — a-l-l the way down to Garrison Square!”

“Boy, your daddy an’ me could really
do
that thing!” he heard T. C. saying. “Him an’ your momma an’ me we sure usta cut ’um! We’d build a fire at the top, see, an’ one at the bottom. Some a them jokers would even take off from Tenth Street an’ cut across the traffic at the Boulevard. Troost Hill was enough for me, Jackson — an’ your daddy, too! Ask ’im how he got that scar on his ankle. Ha! ha! ha! That little darkie like to got us both killed. M-a-n he took off from the boulevard, see? An’ me, like a fool, right behind ’im — at night! Zoom! Like a bat out a hell! Down Troost Hill. An’ c-o-l-d! Aw man! that north wind made you wish you was down home. Well, old Rutherford hit the avenue, see, sort a narrow-like, close to the curb. The wind was blowin’ in that little joker’s face so hard he didn’ see the streetcar comin’ till it was damned near on top of ’im. M-a-n you shoulda seen that little joker hustle, scootin’ that old raggedy sled a his around an’ draggin’ his feet. The streetcar conductor was a clangin’ and a clangin’! I thought he was gonna kick that bell to death!

“ ‘Fall off an’ roll!’ I hollered. ‘Fall off an’ roll!’ But that little monkey was so scaired he wouldn’ let go. He flattened out like a pancake an’ ran — Amerigo if I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’ — u-n-d-e-r the streetcar like a express train! The streetcar conductor slammed on the brakes an’ sparks flew ever’ whichaway! The wheels was slippin’ on the ice between the tracks. Whew! I hope I never see nothin’ like that no more as long as I live! Am I lyin’, Rutherford?”

“I sure was hittin’ ’um, all right,” he answered.

“The conductor pulled ’is cap down over ’is eyes. He gave that cat up for dead! I shot around the streetcar an’ just did miss the fireplug by the skin a my teeth. M-a-n — I was really goin’. I was headin’ down the hill,
see, an’ when I looked up I couldn’ see Rutherford
nowhere!
Lord! They done killed that joker, sure, I thought. An’ when I got to the bottom of the hill, there was your daddy, Amerigo, tremblin’ like a leaf! C-r-y-i-n’! ’Cause he lost his shoe! Ah — ha! ha! An’ then — you know what?”

“What?” watching the morning sunlight slant down the hill, throwing elongated shadows from the trees just above the flower shop on the opposite corner.

“What?” he was asking in his mimic, as he, Viola, and Tommy turned down the hill.

“He had a gash in his ankle that long!” doubling his fist, extending his forefinger and intercepting the axis of his wrist in order to indicate a length of about six inches.

“Every time you tell that lie,” Viola exclaimed, “that cut gits bigger!”

“They took
nine
stitches in it! Well, anyway, we tied that li’l cat’s ankle up, it was deep, too, an’ got warmed up an’ then — we
did it agin!
When he got home his ol’ lady like to beat ’im to death for losin’ that shoe! Ah — ha! ha!”

T. C.’s laughter filled the air, crowding out all the other sounds. Amerigo looked down the long sweeping hill that extended all the way down to Garrison Square. He took longer steps, imagining that he was walking in the invisible prints made by his father and mother and their sisters and brothers. This is my street! The long blanket of asphalt interspersed with patches of cobblestone, blazed in the hard reddish yellow light, broken by the swaying patterns of tall cottonwood and soft squatting maple trees whose faint blue shadows fell slantwise, from east to west.

They came to a little clump of gray farmhouses with porches, fronted by a black dirt yard with a narrow concrete path running up to the steps.

“There’s where your cousin Rachel’s been livin’ since Ruben’s been dead,” said Viola. He looked at the house, hoping she might appear.

“She’s got a little girl no bigger’n you. I don’ know where the daddy is. Rachel don’ neither. Let’s cross to the other side a the street.”

They crossed the street and entered a broad cinder-strewn path bordered by a long line of empty houses in ruins. The bricks of the houses were scarred and burned and their foundations had long since been filled in with ashes, cans, and garbage from the neighboring houses. Tall weeds and sunflowers grew out of the ash and cinder piles. Moderate-sized trees with darkly grained barks and intense green leaves stood in deserted yards.

“This is Belvedere Holla!” she said. “Look! persimmon trees! It seems like
only yesterday
that I usta run up an’ down here, when there was a whole lot a people … an’ laughin’. Full a houses.” Pointing about fifty feet from the mouth of the entrance: “That ol’ shack over there’s where Gloomy Gus an’ Aunt Tish usta live the last I remember. Usta be a little garden in front with flowers in it, climbin’ all over the place.”

“It’s pretty! I’d sure like to have a little house like that!”

“Tee hee!” Tommy laughed. He looked around at him in surprise.

“I sure hope you don’ never have to!” said Viola. “Don’t you like your own house?”

“Yes’m.”

Down Forest Street through the strange Italian Quarter. It looked cooler and quieter than when he had last seen it. Finally they came to a street with two sets of streetcar tracks. Amerigo’s eyes swept across the tracks, along the unpaved street that continued Troost Street, coming to an abrupt end at the approach of a steep rise from which he could see a line of one-story frame houses on the rim of a distant hill that flowed down into a valley and a dirt street lined with shabby wooden houses. This street stopped at the base of a great hill.

“There’s Clairmount Hill!” said Viola in a faraway voice. He stared at it long and hard. There were blue-green grasses and bushes and trees growing on top of it.

“That’s the biggest hill in the whole world!” he said, his eyes sweeping down its mud-red sides. “Same color as the bricks in the alley.”

“That old house down there at the foot of the hill, it was nicer then. It’s just a shack now, it’s where your gran’ma lived with all your aunts and uncles.

“An’ that’s the Field House over there.” There were tears in her eyes.

“The school’s just behind it.” She turned her head in the opposite direction in order to dry her eyes with the tip of her finger. He stopped dead still. He began to tremble violently. “What’s the matter, baby, you sick?”

“He’s tremblin’,” said Tommy.

“What’s — what’s wrong, Amerigo?” taking his face in her hands. He threw his arms around her waist and wept.

“He’s just a little nervous — the first day a school an’ all. You go on ahead, Tommy.”

“Yes’m, Miss Viola.”

“Now, now, honey, it’s gonna be all right. Why, bright as you are, why — now’s your time to shine! Your daddy an’ me had to quit — we
quit school. But you gonna go to college an’ be a smart man. You got it in you an’ we gonna stick by you an’ see you through. I
know
you ain’ gonna let us down — an’ all the folks in the alley. They think the world an’ all a you! An’ —”

“Mom …” He looked up at her. Her head was in the sun, a huge shadow in the middle of its blinding light. Her eyes appeared a yellowish green. “Mom …”

“They think the world an’ all a you!” she was saying, “an’ we wanna be proud a you, too.”

“I killed the kitty,” he whispered, but she, having terminated her thought, exclaimed excitedly:

“We’d better hurry up, babe! What you say?” Walking faster, he running now beside her.

“I killed the kitty!”

“Yeah, that’s nice, you don’ wanna be late on your first day. But wait a minute,” coming to a halt. “Here, you better dry your eyes. Don’ want ’um to know you been cryin’. What’d the big boys think, you cryin’ like a baby on your first day! That’s better!” blowing his nose.

A cool sharp breeze shot through the hot sun and chilled him to the bone. It severed the colored leaves from the branches of the trees. Ten paces later a huge asphalt yard full of running, screaming, laughing children came into view! They looked like the leaves in Toodle-lum’s yard when the leaves of the big cottonwood tree fell. The wind blew them about with a clattering, rustling sound.

Amerigo stood in the midst of them. They all
looked
at him. They
laughed
at him. They
talked
about him.

They
know!
How do they
know?

A bell, like the bell of a Big Ben clock rang. The teeming throng of noisy children clamored into the building. He and Viola followed, tramped with the others up the wooden stairs, through the huge wooden corridors with the pictures of one-two-three black men and three-five white men, one with long white hair like a woman’s, a long thin nose, small stern blue eyes, and a thin tight-lipped mouth.

Irish. Staring at the writing under it, distinguishing a
G
and an
E
and an
O
before Viola yanked him down one of the branching corridors with other pictures of other white men with mustaches like Grandpa Will and thick beards and heads of long bushy hair.

“Here ’tis!” Viola exclaimed excitedly. “It sure ain’ changed much since the old days!”

“Good morning!” A soft black woman stood in the door.

He looked up at HER!

Boom!
A door slammed somewhere down the hall and the sound echoed throughout the huge cavernous corridors.

“Good mornin’ — ing, Miss Chapman! You don’t remember me, I-I guess, my name is —”

“Viola? I knew I had seen that face before. Why, how
are
you, honey? Oh, I feel so old, so terribly old! How long long is it? T-e-n years! Ten years ago. And now little Viola is a woman, and married! You were very fortunate. Yes, who … who’d you marry?”

“Rutherford.”

“Don’t tell me it was that little skinny Jones boy! With all those brothers and sisters?”

“We been, we’ve been married five years now — I mean six,” glancing uneasily first at Miss Chapman and then at the child who had never taken his eyes off Miss Chapman’s face, “as-as you kin-can see.…”

He looked curiously at his mother and remarked that she seemed nervous, and that she spoke more slowly than usual, and that she primped her mouth unnaturally. She looked down at him with a proud smile. She looked very young. Like a girl like he was a boy, and Miss Chapman seemed old like a woman, and they — he, his mother and father who was once a skinny little boy — were all children, all together, and Miss Chapman was a woman, but not as old as Old Lady or Aunt Nancy or Miss Myrt or even Mrs. Derby or Aunt Lily. She was undoubtably older than Miss Sadie and Miss Ada, though not so old as Mrs. Crippa or Miss McMahon, and certainly not Irish because her hair was black and her eyes looked real black, even though they were really only dark brown, and only looked black because her face was so black, but smooth and fine, with a little reddish brown mixed in it, darker than Viola, but with a different mouth, large like Aunt Tish’s, as though she said only good and pretty things with it, and not crazy.

And she’s clean. He was still looking her boldly in the face. Aunt Tish isn’t dirty, she’s dirty like a cat’s dirty, or the alley, or the dirt on the hill — and that isn’t really dirty, but Miss Chapman’s clean! She looks like she just grew up in some air that made her eyes shine bright and her
teeth sparkle like Aunt Tish’s if she was young and blacker — darker — and a little fatter and not so much like a bird … or an old rose on a big black hat. Sorta like Aunt Rose!