Such Sweet Thunder (29 page)

“Aw.” He wanted to ask her what they were for, he wanted to ask her about all the things she was using, but the serious mien with which she had said “Bay leaves” caused him to think better of it. So he touched the filling of one of the sweet potato pies that were cooling on the windowsill. Viola cut him with a killing glance. He stood on one foot and then the other, made a blubbering sound by forcing the air between his closed lips. Then he went to the window and wrote his initials upon the sweating windowpane. Suddenly he heard Viola saying “Rutherford! The grub’s on the table. Your hands washed?” following which they sat down to table all dressed up in their Sunday clothes, the big golden-brown goose steaming on the platter in the center of the table with the pile of maple leaves he had gathered in the
lot behind the empty house. “You kin decorate the table,” Viola had said, and he had gone out and gotten them: big yellow ones and brown ones spotted with red and yellow color, and yellow ones spotted with red and brown color, with purplish black edges and purplish green stems. He had arranged them in an orderly heap in the middle of the table, and had placed a big leaf beside each plate to put the knives, forks, and spoons on, and smaller ones for the cups and saucers and glasses and salt-and-pepper shakers.

“Look!” he had exclaimed when it was all finished.

“Oooooo-whee!” Viola had said: “Bea-u-ti-ful! Now git some chairs an’ wash your hands an’ we can call your daddy!”

His fingers slid over the surface of the sweaty windowpane, his attention absorbed by the letters written there, he heard, as if in a dream, his mother say:
“Rutherford! the grub’s on the table. Your hands washed?”

And Rutherford solemnly bowed his head in order to say the blessing, in a long black cape, the tips of his fingers enclosing a serious thankfulness: ‘Dear Lord, we thank Thee for the blessings we are about to receive.’ … and when he had finished Viola, in black cape and equally as solemn, serious, thankful, said her New World Prayer, and then he, the Friendly Indian, and when he had finished he raised his tomahawk, made the sign of peace, and bit into it.

A rich sensation rose up from the mists of November in a rush of succulent color and sound — like a pretty bird — and flew off into the cold blue-white reaches of the wild and dangerous New World.

“Mom, you the best cook in the w-h-o-l-e w-o-r-l-d!” he exclaimed, just as the warm-winged bird dipped into the blue shades of the frosty wilderness. The funny feeling came over him.

You mean, beside Aunt Rose, said
Miss Chapman.

He looked guiltily into his plate.

The movie — plus the comedy and a second feature — lasted from three-thirty until seven-thirty; it was ten to eight when he got home.

“Hi, Babe!” said Viola in her underskirt and stocking feet. Her hair was freshly curled and shining and her eyes were excited.

“Hi,” noticing that the house was still full of Thanksgiving dinner smells. A whole raisin pie and half of a sweet potato pie stood upon the oven shelf, and the remains of the goose stood in the big boiler beside the pies.

In the middle room discarded clothes were strewn on chairs and on the bed. Powder boxes and perfume bottles stood out of their usual
order on the vanity dresser, while two of the side drawers stood open with their contents hanging over the sides.

Rutherford was standing over the Victrola in the front room with a record in his hand.

“Hi, son.”

“Hi.”

He beheld his father with pleasure, admiring his handsome blue Sunday suit and tan shoes, his white shirt with its tab collar and the stand-up knot in his tie. He could still see the imprint of his skullcap in the skin of his forehead.

“Whereya goin’?”

“You forgot the dance, boy! Lawrence Keys is playin’ with Baby Lovett at Elks Rest! Me an’ your momma’s gonna be there with bells on, Jack!”

“Gonna be gone long?”

“Till the law comes!”

He headed desperately for the kitchen. Viola was rushing toward the middle room. He turned again and followed her. The record began to play.

Yes yes!
cried the singer.

Fats Waller he thought as the raucous pearling tones agitated his fear.

“Whereya goin’?” he asked his mother.

“Huh?” She was blackening her eyelids with a little brush that she dipped into some black stuff in a little red box, which she had wet with spit.

“Didn’ your daddy tell you just now? We’re goin’ to the Thanksgivin’ dance.”

“How far is it?”

“Eighteenth an’ Vine.”

He returned to the front room where his daddy was cleaning his nails with a penknife. His fingers were long. He looked at his own; they were short and stubby.
You’d have pretty nails like your daddy if you didn’t bite ’um all the time
, he heard Viola saying, and he put his hands in his pockets. He admired Rutherford’s broad shoulders, the smooth skin on his freshly shaven face, his straight Indian nose. He speculated as to how long it would take for him to have a neatly trimmed mustache like his, regretting the absence of a soft blueberry mole on the left side of his upper lip.

Fats Waller had stopped playing. The needle was running in the empty groove of the record.

“Play Bessie!” said Viola from the middle room. “What time did Sister Bill an’ ’em say they was comin’?”

“They oughtta be here pretty soon, Babe.” Rutherford slipped Fats Waller into the cover, laid it aside and put the Bessie Smith record on the Victrola, wound it, released the brake, and set the needle in the spinning track:

If you don’t, I know who will, she sang. If you don’t, I know who will!

He went over and stood beside the machine. He watched the reddish brown label spinning around and around:

You may think that I’m just bluffin’, but I’m one gal …

“Ain’ sapposed to want for nothin’,” he murmured under his breath, and suddenly an uncanny feeling passed through his body. He spun around and looked at his father, who stood with his foot resting on a chair, brushing his shoes for the last time. He stared at Viola in the middle room, freshening the mole on her chin with the wetted tip of a pencil. It’s all happened before! I
know
it!

A cool sheen of sweat stood out upon his forehead; the strong sweetish smell of liquor filled his nostrils. A man, tall, dark, with a little scar on his chin withdrew a flask from his inside pocket and poured some whiskey into the top that made a cup when you screwed it off and handed the flask to Rutherford, who poured some of the whiskey into a glass. They said something to each other in hushed voices, glancing cunningly into the kitchen where the women were — three or four besides Viola — just as they brought the cup and the glass together with a barely perceptible click:

Man, you better treat me right!
Bessie was singing
, or else it will be, good-bye, John!

The two men laughed, throwing back their heads. Then somebody knocked at the door, Rutherford opened it, and two people entered the room, a light, almost white-looking man with curly hair like an Italian and a brown-skinned woman with a short dress that slid way up over her knees when she sat down on the sofa:

Love me till I git my fill!
Bessie continued.

“Tell it like is!” cried the brown-skinned woman, snapping her long brown red-nailed fingers meaningfully.

He observed himself staring at her pretty red lips that matched the color of her fingernails, at her ripe bosom, and at her shining hair that looked as though Viola had done it. She beckoned with her finger, dipped her head slightly forward, while the men drew their smiling
faces close to hers. Her wet lips whispered something he couldn’t hear, at which heads flew back in all directions, like a multicolored flower bursting into bloom at the clap of a peal of laughter.

Viola came running in from the kitchen to find out what had made them all laugh so, greeting the brown-skinned woman with an exuberant, “Why hello there,
girl!
” Then the woman whispered it to her, while the men paused with bated breath until she had heard, and when they all saw by the broad smile that stole upon her face that she had heard, they all burst into laughter, teeth and eyes flashing, hair shining, tie knots fitting snuggly in the vortexes of immaculately starched collars framed within the lapels of blue serge suits, while the women — Miss Allie Mae, Miss Ada, Miss Patsy, and Miss Vera — rushed in from the kitchen and laughed, too.

After which they dashed here and there getting dressed, sipping from their highball glasses as they dashed, eyes shining brighter, hair bursting into clusters of brilliant curls, amid the pleasant smell of soap, powder, perfume, fried hair, fried popcorn, salted peanuts, whiskey, gin, and ginger ale — agitated and stirred by excited fragments of conversation:

“I heard you got let off at the laundry, honey,” said Miss Vera to Viola, running her fingers along the seam of her stocking to see if it were straight. Catching his eye gazing at her thigh, she gave him a wink. He blushed and looked at the floor.

“Yeah, girl,” Viola answered.

“Ain’ that a shame!” said Miss Ada. “After all ’em years you been there!” She stood in front of the vanity dresser, straightening her lip with red color issuing from a bullet-shaped dispenser. “But at least you got a
man
to help
you
. I ain’ got no papers on Jenks!”

“Shucks!” Viola exclaimed, turning her back to Miss Ada. “Here, girl, kin you fasten me up?” She glanced quickly into the front room to see if the men were listening, and then, lowering her voice, talking out of the side of her mouth, she said: “Huh! If we had to live on those pennies Rutherford’s bringin’ in, we’d starve to death!”

“What you gonna
do
, girl?” asked Miss Allie Mae.

“The Lord only knows!” said Viola. “But what does the Good Book say? Where there’s a will there’s a way? You know, the Lord helps those that help themselves, honey!”

“Ain’ that the
truth!
” said Miss Patsy. She sat on the little chair beside the vanity dresser watching the others as they got ready. A sly grin appeared on her face. She looked up at the ceiling, her grin deepening
into a suggestive smile. Then she puckered her lips sensuously and said: “The Lord made man, an’ he made women, an’ I’m as
glad
as I kin be! Say!” in a hushed tone, “did you see old you-know-who at Piney’s the other night?”

“Yeah, honey,” said Viola, “but I didn’t have much time to talk.”

“Could you tell ’im what I told you?”

“I just gave ’im the note.”

“He’s a hot poppa — just full a fun — an’ a-l-l-ways ready to break open a keg a nails!”

“Ssssh!” hissed Miss Ada, “not so loud!” glancing into the front room.

“Aw, girl, that don’t matter,” said Miss Vera, “they so busy schemin’ theyself they ain’ got no time to hear what we talkin’ ’bout! I could die tamarra, an’ my old man wouldn’t miss me, honey. If it’s somethin’ he likes better’n juggin’ between some woman’s legs, I swear I don’ know what it is. Girl, a good man’s h-a-r-d to find! Bessie wasn’ tellin’ no lie! But you sure lucky, Vi, to have a steady workin’ man like Rutherford. An’ good lookin’ to boot!”

“Yeah,” said Viola, “but I had to git ’im straight! I had to leave home once. Gone two weeks. He kept a-writin’ an’ a-callin’ an’ a-hangin’ ’round till I come back. ’Course, I can’t tell you what it was all about, ’cause one a the first things you gotta learn is to keep your business to
yourself!
”

“A-men!” said Miss Allie Mae.

“What happened in them two weeks is between the good Lord an’ me, an’ I wouldn’t be ashamed to face my Maker with the details, but what
no
man don’ know won’t hurt ’im!”

“Oh, Lord! Did I bring the tickets?” cried Miss Allie Mae, rumaging the vanity dresser and then the bed.

“Did you look in your purse?” Viola asked.

“Aw, yeah, girl, I’m so
excited!
We better be goin’, the shindig’ll be over before we even git there. You remember last year, we come pullin’ up to the dance an’ all the folks was comin’ home! Eeeee!”

“An’ we had to go down on Twelfth Street, to the Sunset, to have some fun!” said Miss Ada.

“Yeah, e-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y was out
that
night!”

“Come on in here, Allie!” cried Rutherford, suddenly entering the middle room.

“What you up to!” She grinned broadly. He grabbed her by the arm.

“Let’s see if you kin still cut a rug!”

“Ohoooo! You
know
I can’t dance, Rutherford!” allowing him to pull her into the front room. Viola smiled a tolerant superior smile, while the crowd gathered around, Amerigo squeezing himself to the front. He watched his father take Miss Allie Mae by the waist and pull her close to him so that their bodies pressed against each other — trunk straight, head erect — from hip to hip, to the beat of the music, then do it again, and then fall into a two-step, then a double, rushing the tempo because the music was slow. Suddenly dropping back in his right hip, he shifted his weight and swept forward, gliding into a spin, pivoting on the ball of his right foot. S-m-o-o-t-h! he exclaimed in silent admiration, as they fell away from each other, fell back, shuffled backward until they were several feet apart. Then Rutherford raised his arms, the elbows slightly crooked, fell back in his right hip, bent his left knee, and glided forward — evenly — with a graceful shuffle. That’s the Camel Walk.

“Wait a minute!” Rutherford cried suddenly, “where’s my old lady? Come on, Babe! Let’s show these jokers how to cut a rug!”

Viola sprang into the front room. “Make room, here,” she said. Rutherford stood waiting. “Shall I shimmy?”

“Aw do it!” cried Mr. Jenks.

“You hear me talkin’, honey!” cried Miss Ada with a sly grin. “Do it like your momma showed you!”

“Look out, there, Sister Bill, don’t gimme none a that
momma
jive!”

Peals of laughter. He smiled, then laughed, and wondered what they were laughing about. Just then Miss Vera said: “Wait a minute! Bessie Smith ain’ no shimmyin’ music. Here!” She put on another record, wound the crank, and set the needle in the groove. A low raucous rumbling pulsing burst of chords, undulating up and down a hill of rhythmic feeling, issued upon the air.