Such Sweet Thunder (2 page)

“Anyway, she’s home,” he whispered to himself. “She’s home!”

Viola and Rutherford tossed angrily for a while and finally pushed themselves to the opposite sides of the bed. In the silence there was only the sound of their troubled breathing, of wild hurting thoughts flitting through the dark like hungry mosquitoes.

Where was she? Don’ she love us? He tried to sleep. Will he
really
break her neck? What will happen to me? What will happen if he goes away?
Go away!
Is Dad goin’ away?

Mom? Dad? His eyelids grew heavy, until he became aware of only the quiet darkness interrupted by the fiery twinkle of starlight falling between his eyelids. And then they fell shut.

A heavier, fluid, more transient darkness descended upon him. He sank to the depths of a great forest that was blacker than night. He was going somewhere, but he had lost his way. He couldn’t find the path. He was afraid. Something, someone was after him. He had to get away, to hide. He ran, stumbled as he ran, faster and faster! A long black hand with claws tried to catch him by the neck, to
break
it! Faster and faster he ran. He grew tired. He grew weary. He was afraid to stop, couldn’t stop because the hand was getting closer and closer.
Boom!
He stumbled over something big and hard. He fell down, down, down,
down, through an endless sky full of dazzling stars! He screamed a loud piercing scream, but his voice made no sound.

Suddenly he was sitting upright in bed, his body covered with sweat. He was no longer falling. He looked anxiously into the middle room to see if his mother and father were still there. He listened to their quiet breathing. Then he fell back upon his pillow and sank into a deep oblivious sleep.

The sparrows were twittering in the eaves of the empty house next door. He lay awake at the foot of the bed, naked, having torn off his pajamas during the night. The bedcovers lay crumpled on the floor. The streetlight was still burning.

It’s night.

But then he noticed a faint blue color that crept into the sky. He sat up in bed with an air of incredulity. The streetlight went out.

He surveyed from memory the faded flowers on the papered walls, the plump outline of the sofa that opened out into the bed on which he slept.

He discovered the grape-blue leaves designed upon its velvet surface. It stood against the north wall. A big overstuffed chair stood in the northwest corner, its color and design matching that of the sofa. He remembered the evening when Rutherford had come home and found it there — a whole brand-new living room suite!

“Don’ you know there’s a depression, woman?” he had said. “The whole damned country’s starvin’ an’
you
buyin’
furniture
— on credit!”

“This place looks like a pigpen!” Viola had protested. “Maybe we gotta be poor, but we
ain’
gotta give up livin’! Besides, I’m gonna be in debt, too. I work just the same as you do. I’ll make enough on the side sewin’ an’ doin’ hair to make a big part of the payments!”

During the days that followed Rutherford had grumbled. But after that he was proud! Even invited T. C. and Mr. Zoo and Mr. Elmer and Miss Vera over to see it. They had a party and danced.

A fresh burst of twittering from the birds distracted him and caused him to look suddenly at the bird-of-paradise that strutted proudly through a garden of exotic flowers on the shade of the tall floor lamp. It had silk fringes on the border that swayed when there was a breeze, or when someone moved the lamp. The fringes stirred now, ever so
gently. He looked questioningly at the magazine rack between the lamp and the chair, but it remained merely a dumb shadowy form engulfed in a faint, almost misty aura of blue, cluttered with detective-story magazines, last week’s copy of the
Voice
and yesterday’s copies of the
Times
and the
Star
. Their pages appeared uncommonly white, fusing into the blueness pouring into the room. It created a ghostly impression.

He was looking at the east wall, at the door that opened on to the middle room where his mother and father lay sleeping. He relived a sudden painful curiosity undermined by fear, which caused him to shift his glance to the left of the door and examine the straight-backed upholstered chair that stood against the wall. He tried to separate the blue-black mass resting upon its arms into three grape-blue cushions that converted the folded bed into a sofa. And then he was surprised by the discovery of a long thin thread of light that hung vertically suspended in the air less than a foot from the chair. It gradually revealed itself to be the stem of the floor lamp with the pink pleated shade that Viola had made. It was a dusky blue-gray color now.

It was getting lighter. His eyes fixed upon the chromium ashtray near the sofa. Now there was even a dull metallic sheen of light upon its black enamel base. He tried to see himself in the mirror that hung next to the window: a soft ghostlike image rendered animate by two large eyes set wide apart, with neither hair, ears, nor a nose. He looked away, down, at the top of the humidor that was partly reflected in the lower right-hand corner of the mirror. A lace doily covered its square top, upon which rested a cut-glass vase containing artificial roses whose blossoms almost touched the mirror, causing them to appear double. His eyes traveled up the edge of the mirror, and suddenly he caught the reflection of the little gas stove in the upper right-hand corner, standing in the opposite corner of the room behind him; it was partially hidden by the overstuffed chair, which had been turned toward the door because it was summer. The lacquered floor in front of the stove reflected the criscross patterns of light from the fire-brick columns dancing upon the shallow crests of the blue flames at the base of the burners. It was like a miniature stage.

Will Dad go away? He studied the fine and suddenly perceptible layer of soot that stained the wall behind the gas stove. He looked questioningly at the dark skies of the large velvet landscape that hung on the south wall of the room. Will he? Unconsciously he entered into the scene: a silver velvet moon shining upon an old velvet mill, a velvet
moonlit stream turning the velvet waterwheel shaded by a row of soft green velvet poplars, while silver-feathered birds winged the blue-black velvet sky beyond the rolling banks of the silver clouds.

What’ll happen to me? he asked the gaily festooned plaster of paris staring at him from the opposite wall. The bird did not say a word. When Viola had bought it at the five-and-ten-cent store it was white. She got paint in little tubes like toothpaste and painted it. Dad watched until he got sleepy and went to bed and then we finished it together. Last winter … we ate a whole bowl of popcorn!

The Spanish lady came after that. He shifted his gaze a little to the right of the parrot. She wore a wide silver hooped skirt and a white satin bolero blouse, a little black vest, and a big red wide-brimmed hat, like a cowboy’s … Buffalo Bill, Grandpa Will. She stood proudly upon a silver balcony leaning against a silver balustrade amid bushes of poinsettias, palms, and ferns. She looked out into the black night studded with silver stars, gazing at them while eating a big red apple with a little green leaf attached to the stem. He remembered with deep emotion how his mother had stayed up half the night filling in the outlines of the thinly sketched forms, which she finally framed in glass.

Somewhat relieved of his anxiety by the things he could only partially see, but which he knew were there, even though the light
was
out, he got out of bed, pulled on his pants, and tiptoed through the middle room where his mother and father lay sleeping in the big bed that occupied more than half the space. Viola lay on her side on the edge of the bed facing the window; Rutherford lay on his side facing the interior of the room. He paused for a moment in the little space between the bed and the vanity dresser. Its drawers were filled with cosmetics and miscellaneous odds and ends, and in the bottom drawer on the right-hand side beneath Rutherford’s underwear and socks and handkerchiefs was a little twenty-two-caliber revolver like the one that killed Uncle Ruben. The top of the dresser was crowded with an assortment of perfume bottles of various shapes, sizes, and colors, with and without sprayers, with tassels and tops of silver and brass and stems of crystal.

He glanced at the mirror that composed the upper half of the dresser, extending from its top to a distance the height of a short man’s head. He saw Viola seated upon the low wicker stool in front of the mirror (matching the wicker-bottomed rocking chair in the corner opposite the dresser, between which was a narrow closet crammed mostly with her clothes) surrounded by comb and brush and a large hand mirror,
patiently performing the miracle that never failed to dazzle the eyes of father and son.

What with the large four-poster bed and the vanity dresser there was hardly enough room for the chest of drawers, squeezed into the corner between the bed and the wall. It was filled with slips and panties (snuggies), purses, ribbons, scraps and cuttings of dress patterns, and knitted caps and belts and bunches of artificial flowers — paper violets, roses, and cherry blossoms Viola had made. And on the floor protruding from under the edge of the chest of drawers was a line of shoes, Rutherford’s, Viola’s, and his.

The ashtray on the end table was filled with cold dirty-gray ashes strewn with crumpled cigarette butts with black grotesquely splayed ends. Meanwhile a beautiful Indian maiden smiled sweetly upon the scene from the calendar on the wall above the table. Her black hair was decorated with beads, her long graceful legs supported a proud straight body that stood under the sweeping boughs of a willow tree beside a birch-bark canoe that nosed a quiet little cove nibbled into the shore by the smooth waters of a blue-green lake, which in turn sprawled out over the numbered days of September written in large Gothic letters.

A shiver ran up his spine when he looked at Jesus sitting at the Last Supper table in the picture that hung over his parents’ heads. He cast a knowing glance at his companions, as if to say:

Who among you here in God’s house — today! — ain’ got
some
secret locked up in his heart!

He fled to the kitchen, a moderately sized room with a linoleum floor with a flowered pattern of various shades of apple-green, and a breakfast set with apple-green flowers that Viola had painted. And a gas range. A
R-O-P-E-R
— Roper! Rope, dope, swope, park.

He opened the screen door and stepped out onto the back porch. The sky was brighter and the air was cool, sweet, and fresh with the scent of wet grass. He looked down into the backyard. Wild grass, weeds, the tall stalky sunflowers in the lot behind the empty house next door, and the vegetables in Mrs. Crippa’s garden glistened with dew. The squarish concrete yard between his house and Mrs. Crippa’s house opposite was wet in the cracks, as though it might have been rained on during the night. No flies buzzed around the big trash box standing with its back against the wooden fence on the south side of the yard jammed against the upper half of the outer wall of the narrow shed on the porch below.

He studied his yard with a curious fascination and with a vague feeling of dread. The yard itself formed a little plateau that began on
the second-floor level of the back of the house, which was built into the hill that swelled up from the alley. A wooden staircase led up from the ground floor — necessarily a dark damp musty place because the sheer dirt wall that supported the yard afforded neither sunlight nor fresh air — up through the porch below and from there up to the third floor where he now stood.

There was a drain as round and as deep as the half of a scooped-out watermelon in the middle of the narrow concrete shelf below where the neighbors poured dirty dishwater and water from the big tin tubs they took baths in every Saturday night. The cloudy stream souring in the crevice leading to the drain was as yet unvisited by flies, nor did they swarm merrily around the garbage can where the smell of rotting food rose with the sun.

Now the sky was fragrant with the smell of blue air washed with dew; of growing vegetables, the pungent scent of two tall elm trees over three stories high in Mr. Fox’s and Miss Ada’s backyard; of white and red wine, which rose from huge vats in Mr. Crippa’s cellar; and of corn whiskey from the still below.

He looked through the shoot into the alley. It was still asleep except for the crickets chirping in the grass and the incessant twittering of the sparrows. One suddenly swooped down upon the banister near his hand and then darted through one of the paneless windows of the empty house.

A robin stepped from behind a sunflower stalk with a worm in its beak — and took his breath away!

“I hope it never changes!” he murmured with a rush of deep emotion.

He sat down opposite the kitchen door on an orange crate and tried to cope with the fragments of his dream, which now rushed helter-skelter through his mind. He closed his eyes and shut out the stars, and fell down, and was afraid, and ran and ran in order to escape the hand that was trying to break his neck. And then he awoke. He opened his eyes. Objects in the increasingly bright morning light came more sharply into focus and he heaved a sigh of relief for having escaped the fatal hand.

But then he remembered the sound of bedsprings, his father tossing in his bed, waiting for his mother to come home. Then suddenly the flash of the match and the tip of the cigarette glowing in the darkness, and his father’s masklike face silhouetted against the sky full of stars.

“Up long, son?” said a voice.

He looked through the kitchen screen at the shadowy apparition of his father looking down upon him as though he were reading his thoughts:

“Up long, son?”

“No, sir,” his eyes vacantly staring at the worn boards of the porch floor.

Rutherford turned into the kitchen and Amerigo watched him brush his teeth and wash his face in the sink and throw the dirty water into the toilet, next to the door, that they shared with the neighbors. Then he went into the front part of the house.