Such Sweet Thunder (9 page)

In a matter of seconds the children were surrounded by a mottled crowd of black and white people who looked curiously at the dying man and whispered queries in anxious voices. A gray-headed old white lady who looked like Mrs. Crippa brought a pan of water and tried to wash the bleeding wound. But the blood only flowed faster, gushing in rhythmic spurts, bright red now like strawberry soda-pop. It ran into the street, cutting a path through a thick layer of dust that gathered at the corner and ran down the drain in front of the fireplug.

“A neeger done eet!” said the old woman, still bent over the man. Amerigo looked about curiously, as if to identify the “neeger” who could have done such a terrible thing. All the eyes were looking down at him. He felt a faint tug on his arm, and turned around in time to see Carl, Turner, Tommy, and the others seeping through the crowd.

A siren whined down the avenue. Seconds later a big white car with big red headlights swerved into Cherry Street. Two white men dressed in white got out, ran around to the back of the car, and pulled out a stretcher. The crowd gathered around the men. Amerigo, having reached the edge of the crowd, turned on his heels and ran as fast as he could. But he could not run very fast because he hit his knee again when he brushed past the window of the candy store. With every step the pain shot through his whole body, while the coolness of the air against his stubbed toe caused it to throb with a private, separate pain that was very intense. And the pavement still burned his feet. He looked down the avenue after the others, but there was not a soul in sight. He began to cry. Unable to run anymore, he slowed down to a
walk. He hobbled along, blinded by the pain and the fear, no longer seeing or caring where he went.

Suddenly he heard the siren whining threateningly behind him. They
know!
They’re after
me!
He forced himself to run. His bleeding toe left a thin trail of blood upon the dusty sidewalk. Just as he was crossing the alley where the meat market was, a voice whispered to him:

“In here!”

It was Carl. He darted into the alley. The ambulance screamed past, followed by a police car. They ran to the other end of the alley and cut through a yard, climbed a fence, and turned once more into the avenue six streets away.

“Here’s them cats!” Etta yelled. They approached the little gang who stood waiting on the corner in front of a large building whose little windows were covered with wire grating looking up onto the street from the basement below. The boys peeped down into a large room full of women. They were of all ages. Some were black, and some were yellow. They wore white aprons with white rags or handkerchiefs around their heads. Strong jets of steam spouted from a big machine that filled the room with a rumbling noise, while the acrid odor of strong soap and wet clothes agitated by an unbearable heat hung heavily in the air. The women shouted loudly and laughed as they went about their work. Some removed the steamy clothes from the machines, while others silently, resignedly ironed the collars of shirts, and still others untied the bundles of dirty clothes, which they sorted and counted.

One woman attracted his attention. He could hardly see her because of the steam. She stood over in the far corner of the room, all to herself. She wore a white apron like the rest and a white towel around her head. Fine beads of sweat stood out on her forehead. Her lips moved, as though she were talking to herself as she worked. His gaze, however, was fixed upon the white hand towel around her neck.

That’s because of the heat bumps, he explained to himself unconsciously, noticing also that she handled the bundles carefully: to keep her nails from breaking off.

Suddenly the woman looked up through the steamy air and wiped the sweat from her forehead. She looked at the window, directly into his eyes, fixed him with her gaze. He held his breath. She started to move toward the window, a distance of some fifty feet, but then seemed to change her mind, and returned to her station. She grabbed a fresh bundle of dirty clothes and started counting again.

Meanwhile he knelt before the window, frozen to the spot, his heart throbbing as though it would burst the hollow of his chest.

“Come on, ’Mer’go,” said Carl quietly, touching his shoulder, and he hobbled after his companions.

They turned into a broad street. There was a steady stream of cars whose bodies and chromium parts glistened in the sun. They ran down toward Fifth Street. He kept up as well as he could.

Nearing Fifth Street he saw a big red house on a hill, nestling in a thicket of flowering bushes. A man sat on the porch sunning himself. Uncle Billy! He looked for signs of Aunt Rose. Stealthily he crossed over to the north side of the street, hovering close to the stone wall in order to avoid being seen. He passed by the nightclub with the neon sign that read:
DANTE’S INFERNO
.

“That means hell!” he said out loud.

“Aaaaw, you said a
bad
word!” said Willie Joe.

“What means hell?” asked Carl. Etta sniggered mockingly.

“In-fer-no!” he replied, pointing to the sign.

“How do
you
know!” asked Sammy, “when you can’t even read?”

“Aaaaaw, yes I kin!” he declared, glancing back up through the bushes, quickening his pace now, almost running ahead of the others His toe was again caked with dirt, and the blood on the bandage around his knee had dried into a crust that stuck fast.

They stopped at the corner of Fifth and Main and gazed at the old city market and then turned up Main Street until they reached Sixth Street.

“This way!” cried Tommy, and they turned down Sixth Street and proceeded for a block and a half east.

“You see! I told you!” cried Sammy, pointing to a dingy old four-story building on the north side of the street. The upper floors appeared to be filled with offices. Signs were printed on some of the windows with white paint, while on others they were printed with raised white porcelain letters. The ground floor of the building was a big storefront separated by a large screened double door. Big words were printed on these windows, too, but with white stuff that rubbed off when you touched it, like the words on the window of Magedy’s store.

Through the window he could make out two long counters, behind which were five Negro men dressed in white jackets and tall stiff white hats and handkerchiefs or towels around their necks like Viola and the other women at the laundry. The handkerchiefs and towels were wet
with sweat and beads of sweat rolled down their faces and glistened on the backs of their hands as they dipped into the huge steamy pots with long dippers. He had to imagine the plates because he could not see very well from between the hips and legs of the crowd of men who gathered around the window.

“You’ll have to go to the rear of the line and wait your turn, son,” said a voice. He looked up into the kind blue eyes of a tall thin white man dressed in neat blue summer pants, spotlessly white shoes, and an equally white polo shirt. The fine golden hair on his arm shimmered in the sunlight as he pointed to the end of the line. Carl and the others who were peeping in the window on the opposite side were also directed by the handsome man to go to the end of the line, but by the time they got there he was already ahead of them.

The line curved from the door in a wide arc that trailed down Sixth Street. It moved slowly through the screen door on the right, while another stream passed out through the door on the left, causing him to imagine that they were both a part of the same line.

A skinny one in and a fat one out! he thought with a smile, momentarily forgetting his toe until he jammed it against the heel of the man in front of him. The pain that throbbed through his body reminded him that he was sorry he had come. An awareness of his uneasiness of the previous night swept over him and he was sorry about what had happened to his mother and father. He thought about the morning and he was sorry about the cat, about the man with the bullet hole in his neck, and about the nigger who did it. The quiet peaceful yard that he had forsaken seemed more remote than ever. He tried to remember all the streets he had come through, but he got lost in the alley where the meat market was.

What time is it? he wondered with a sudden feeling of desperation. I have to get back in time!

“I’m gonna tell your momma on you, you just wait an’ see if I don’!”
cried Mrs. Farnum.

I don’t care, he thought defiantly, feeling quite beside himself. He gazed at his bizarre companions in the line: silent, unshaven men with sunken faces and dumb eyes that stared at the ground. Some, however, looked with candid impatience toward the door, while others shyly tried to avoid the eyes of their companions and to hide themselves from the view of passersby, maneuvering themselves behind others.

The sun slanted over their right shoulders, deepening the red tones in their faces, while their shadows cut a black chain of slowly moving figures into the amber light that fell upon the dirty concrete wall.

Looks like a fence, he thought.

A tiger cat walked across the fence of heads.

He tried to press forward, to make the others hurry.

“Take it easy, sonny,” said a short thin white man who stood in front of him. His eyes were brown and watery and there were flecks of dried blood around his mouth, as though he had gotten the worst of a not-too-serious fight. “I reckon there’ll be enough fer you.”

He glanced down the fence of shadowy forms and then up the line of living faces. He noticed that their expressions were different when they left the room behind the plate-glass windows. Some of them smiled, others smirked and walked jerkily, gingerly away with a show of arrogance. He tried to think of the ice cream and cake and wineballs and fried chicken that he was going to get.

The line moved slowly forward. Now there were as many men behind him as there were in front of him, a long line of hip pockets and baggy knees attached to an odd assortment of run-over shoes and dirty socks — when there were socks — the holes of which exposed grimy heels, tired feet with corns and bunions. Amid cigarette butts, scraps of paper, and freshly spat spit, the air was saturated with the odor of the sultry heat of the late afternoon mixed with the sweat of unbathed bodies, burned shoe leather, and tobacco. The more volatile odors of wine, whiskey, and beer spewed into the air through the numerous mouths and noses and through the pores of sweltering flesh.

“Over there!” said the man with the kind eyes who had directed him to the end of the line almost an hour ago. His white shirt was now fired by a tinge of red.

It’s getting late!

“Over there,” he was saying, arm extended, forefinger pointing to the shaded interior of the room. He followed the finger into the full glare of the sun, which now split the double door into a triangle; one half was light, the other half dark. He was moving into the room, astonished by the slowness — and at the same time by the swiftness — of time. The screen door banged behind him, and he went toward the empty stool indicated by another white man. He squeezed in between two men who ate eagerly and stared at the big white bowl on the cleanly scrubbed counter. He looked on either side of him and saw that the counter was lined with bowls like his and that beside each bowl was a big spoon and a big white cup very much like the cup from which Rutherford drank his morning coffee. Here and there was a huge plate piled high with slices of bread and at every third or fourth
place stood a salt-and-pepper shaker. Turner sat three places farther down on his right and Carl sat next to the end. Then the men started to ladle food into the bowls.

One of the cooks was a tall black man with a long skinny nose and fleshy lips. He recognized him because the skin of his bottom lip was very purple.

“Mister Jenks!” he cried. Mr. Jenks who had been looking down — from the pot to the bowls — had until then taken no cognizance of the faces of the men before him, but now he suddenly looked up:

“What the hell!” he exclaimed, dropping the ladle in the pot. Confounded by the sight of the child, and overwhelmed with a powerful emotion not unmixed with embarrassment and pity, he nodded sadly at him, and passed on to the next plate, mumbling: “Well I’ll be damned!”

He looked into his bowl; it contained a thick milky liquid with flecks of a dull orange color. Carrots. Thinking of the lemon rinds within the mass of bile-green in the garbage can just before he had clamped the top down, he unconsciously scooped up a spoonful. Ugh! He spat it back into the bowl. He felt sick. A man tugged at his arm:

“Give it to me if you don’ want it, kid!”

He looked into the face of a tall white man who stood behind him. The rims of his eyes were raw and his lips twitched. He stared at the soup, and his Adam’s apple shuttled up and down the skinny column of his neck several times. He timidly nodded consent and slid down from the stool and sneaked quietly outside and waited for the others to take him home.

The sun was lower in the sky. His toe quietly throbbed now that he stood on his feet, but he noticed it less than before because of the deepening red of the sun. He watched the door anxiously. After several minutes Turner came out followed by Etta, then Sammy and Tommy, and lastly Carl and Willie Joe.

They started down Sixth Street. They walked quietly, guiltily, not looking at each other. They gathered at the corner to wait for the light to change. The heavy stream of evening traffic ground dangerously by.

“If any a you niggahs tell on
me
, I’m gonna beat your
head!
” cried Sammy suddenly, looking suspiciously at him. Etta thumped him on the head and said, “He means
you
, niggah!” The light flashed green and they ran across the street.

The sun shone redder on the strange long street, flooding his face with fiery amber light, flicking in blinding flashes from the windshields
of speeding autos. The constant stream of cars whizzing up and down the boulevard made him feel that he was moving at a snail’s pace.

It’s too late! he thought, seeing his mother and father already sitting at the supper table waiting for him to come.
Where you been?
he heard Rutherford asking, and a heavy sense of dread added to the misery in his feet with each step he took.…