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Such Sweet Thunder
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Critical praise for Such Sweet Thunder,
by Vincent O. Carter
“A colossal work of fiction … Sprawling and searching, it is Dickensian or even Joycean in scope. Carter’s rendering of Amerigo’s journey to adulthood is masterful.”
— The Kansas City Star
“In electric modernist vernacular prose … Carter paints an uncommonly rich picture of black American family life in the early twentieth century.… A marvelous blend of jazz rhythms and high literary tradition.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The story behind Such Sweet Thunder is almost as captivating as the extraordinary tale told within its pages.… A rousing, inspired work, keenly observed and soulful … This is a rich addition to our literary understanding of the 20th-century African American experience.”
— The Boston Globe
“Evoking African American childhood uniquely and on a grand scale, Carter’s long-vanished magnum opus finally finds its worthy way into print.… An extraordinarily honest and compassionate child’s-eye view of a world too seldom seen in American fiction.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“Readers will appreciate Such Sweet Thunder’s dreamy, nostalgic quality and lyrical writing, which evokes urban life before the war and offers a stirring portrait of a young boy growing up.”
— Booklist (starred review)
“Infused with the sounds and spirit of Kansas City jazz, the author’s gritty style was ahead of its time.”
— Library Journal
“Echoes of Faulkner, Twain and Joyce … For its lyrical rendering of a time and place long vanished, this is a book to savor, slowly.”
— Entertainment Weekly
“Fans of Toni Morrison or William Kennedy will appreciate Carter’s style, and history buffs will be fascinated by a Kansas City that may have otherwise gone unsung.”
— Midwest Living Magazine
“A spiraling and powerful account of African American life in Kansas City during the 1920s and 1930s. Carter paints a rich, jazz-like portrait of pre–World War II life in Black America.… By fusing the best European modernist literary traditions with African American ones, Carter weaves a colorful, distinctive tapestry of a seminal period in African American history.”
— Seattle Skanner
“Carter bridges Zora Neale Hurston’s folkloric narratives and Toni Morrison’s communal spirituals. In reading Carter’s brilliant narrative of black boyhood and adolescence in the Jazz Age, one is not treated to a dysfunctional ‘ghetto.’ Instead, Carter depicts a mainly black, urban community that is close-knit, organic and striving for uplift.… Few works of fiction are so insistently frank about a boy’s proto-sexual, innocent but instinctive yearnings.… Carter musters profound empathy and warmth for all his characters, especially Amerigo’s parents, Rutherford and Viola, who are self-sacrificing, loyal, contradictory, loving, bawdy and philosophical. Carter’s creations evade stereotype because they seem modeled on people he knew.”
— National Post (Canada)
“Some critics have speculated that publishers rejected this book because its gentle coming-of-age tale, partially based on Carter’s own life, was at odds with the fiery black-power rhetoric of the ’60s. If that’s true, publishers missed this book’s quiet but unflinching condemnation of a society that rejects bright, eager black children.”
— Cleveland Plain Dealer
“A treasure … Such Sweet Thunder is Carter’s Portrait of the Artist.… Amerigo Jones — the name itself speaks of discovery and bold hop — is Carter’s stand-in in the novel.… Dedicated to musical giant Duke Ellington, the book is a jazz mix of sounds and sensations — the phonograph in the living room, the slamming of screen doors up and down his alley, trams clacking down the boulevard, the rhythms and rhymes of his young parents’ enthusiastic speech (‘I was standin’ pat in ma gray bo-back, Jack!’). Amerigo as a child and young man is thirsty for the world, and we drink it all in with him.”
— Rain Taxi
Copyright © 2003 by Liselotte Haas
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
For information about permission to reproduce
selections from this book, write to
Steerforth Press L.C.
25 Lebanon Street
Hanover, New Hampshire 03755
Unedited, hardcover edition first published by Steerforth Press in 2003.
Carter, Vincent O., 1924–
Such sweet thunder : a novel / Vincent O. Carter. — 1st pbk. ed.
p. cm.
“This paperback edition has been substantially edited (from the 2003 hardcover edition), in particular the first 44 book pages, which described the author’s experiences during World War II” — ECIP data view comment box.
ISBN-13: 978-1-58195-217-9 (alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-58195-217-1 (alk. paper)
eBook ISBN: 978-1-58642-223-3
1. African American boys — Fiction. 2. African American families — Fiction. 3. African Americans — Fiction. 4. African American neighborhoods — Fiction. 5. City and town life — Fiction. 6. Nineteen twenties — Fiction. 7. Nineteen thirties — Fiction. 8. Kansas City (Kansas) — Fiction. 9. African American soldiers — Fiction. 10. World War, 1939-1945 — African Americans — Fiction. I. Title.
PS3603.A79S83 2006
813′.6–dc22
2006013006
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
v3.1
To
Duke Ellington
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
First Page
Afterword
Suddenly Amerigo had opened his eyes and was staring at the light filtering through the window. Listening to the clock ticking in the middle room. What time is it? Peering into the darkened room where his parents’ bed loomed up in a big bulky shadow.
He closed his eyes once again. The springs of the big bed whined. She isn’t home yet! He was startled by the pop and flash of a match head grating the thumbnail of Rutherford’s right hand. He followed the trace of its yellow flare to the tip of his cigarette. Rutherford’s face shone like a yellow mask in the darkness and disappeared, while the crimson glow at the end of the cigarette grew brighter, and then fainter, in a nervous pulsing rhythm, as he drew the clouds of hot smoke into his lungs and spewed them out into the dark.
The bed lamp flashed on. “Twelve-thirty!” Rutherford muttered angrily.
Where could she be? Amerigo wondered.
“Show’s out at the latest,” said Rutherford, “twenty minutes with the streetcar, an’ three-quarters of an hour on foot. But that gal ain’ gonna do no whole lot a walkin’ — not at this hour.”
Father and son tossed nervously.
The clock ticked one o’clock, one-one, one-two, one-three,
The crimson tip of Rutherford’s cigarette grew brighter and then fainter.
The cigarette flared like a danger signal, like the stoplight at the top of the alley.
One-four, five, six
A car zoomed down the alley, slowed up at the foot, and turned into the avenue.
One-seven-one-eight …
“Want somethin’ to go with that pint a whiskey, daddy?”
“Hell naw!”
A burst of secret laughter between a man and a woman.
Rutherford ground the top of his cigarette in the ashtray on the table beside the bed and squirmed under the covers.
Silence for three minutes.
Rutherford went into the kitchen and turned on the faucet and let the water run until it got cold. Then he filled the battered old aluminum cup that Uncle Sexton had brought back from the war and drank until it was empty. Then he went to the toilet. After that he returned to the middle room and sat on the edge of the bed, lit another cigarette, got in bed, and turned off the light.
Night light filtered through the window.
One-thirteen. One-thirty-seven-and-a-half. Thirty-eight.
Rutherford sighed deeply and arranged his pillow. He turned on his side and stared out over the roof of the empty house next door. Whiskey fumes rose from the still on the first floor. A door opened and threw a long oblique beam of light across the roof and the twang of a guitar stirred the night air.
“Black gal!” sang a man with a voice as high as a woman’s: sad, plaintive. “Black gal! Woman what makes yo’ head so hard?”
The door closed. Darkness and silence for two, three, four minutes.
A car turned discreetly into the alley, rolled down past the house, and stopped. The door opened and shut, followed by the click of iron-plated heels on the cobblestones, and then the soft thud of toes tiptoeing up the stair. A momentary silence broken by nervous fingers fumbling for a key, and then the jingle of several keys before one stabbed the lock. The front door swung quietly open, and then a cool rush of night air.
Viola undressed hurriedly, quietly. Rutherford lay dangerously still. The clock ticked unbearably loud.
Rutherford stirred as though her movements had awakened him. He turned on the lamp and the room flushed rose. Viola, caught in her underskirt, was hastily slipping off her stockings. The naked glow of the bulb shone directly upon his angry face. It drew deep hard shadows under his eyes.
“Do you know what time it is?” He picked up the clock and looked at it. “Well?” He rose threateningly upon one elbow.
Why don’ she say somethin’? he implored.
“Yes. I-know-what-time-it-is.”
“This crap’s gotta stop! This is the second time this week. You’re a married woman! Out gallyvantin’ till-till almost two o’clock in the mornin’. What you take me for, a damned fool? Sick an’ tired a this shit! Workin’ like a damned dog — an’ for what?”
“What you startin’ all that rigamarole for?” Viola retorted. “I went to the show. An’ then I met Susie an’ Mabel on Eighteenth Street. She was with Bill. An’ they asked me to have a drink with ’um at Elk’s Rest an’ I went with ’um. We got to talkin’, an’ it got late. That’s all!”
“ ’Em lies gonna trip you up one a these days an’ I’m gonna break your damned neck!”
“If I was big,” the child muttered to himself, “if I was big I’d kill ’im — talkin’ to her like that. To my momma!”
Tears rolled down his face. He stirred angrily in his bed in protest.
“Go to sleep, boy!” Rutherford commanded.
Viola got into bed, and the lights went out.
“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. H
e 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.
Such Sweet Thunder