Free Such Sweet Thunder by Vincent O. Carter Page B

baby.
    “Shame on you, Tony!” cried Mrs. Farnum, “I’m sure surprised at
you!
Your momma an’ daddy tryin’ to bring you up decent, an’ you runnin’ the streets with them bad li’l hoodlums!”
    His gaze fell nervously upon the cobblestones. He was suddenly shaken by a sense of fatality that smote him in the pit of his stomach. It made him dizzy and caused his heart to beat violently and his lips to quiver.
    “I’m gonna tell your momma on you!” Mrs. Farnum was saying, “This evenin’ when she comes home! Just you wait and see!”
    He grinned foolishly in a reflex of fear that was very near panic.
    “What?” cried Mrs. Farnum, “You laughin’ at me, young man? Well you just wait till your momma come home!”
    With that she banged the screen door shut and hooked it:
Boom!
He felt the sting of his father’s razor strap on his arms and legs.
    “You comin’ or ain’t you!” Carl yelled, and he realized that the others were already at the foot of the alley. He hesitated for a minute and then started after them. He stumbled on a brick, which threw him off his balance and made him tear his pants on a nail sticking out of the telephone post that stood a few feet from Mrs. Farnum’s house. He felt a throbbing pain in his knee. He had reopened the bruise. A fine trickle of blood ran through the bandage. He wanted to cry.
    “Come on, man,” said Carl, helping him up by the arm. When he tried to walk he discovered that he had stubbed his toe. The brick had torn a thin sheaf of skin from his big toe just under the nail. Even the air that rushed against it when he hobbled along was painful.
    The gang entered the avenue. The pavement was hot and burned his feet so badly that he could only make progress by seeking out the shaded spots. Men in overalls stood in front of The Blue Moon and dummies with clothes on stood in front of a store that had three big golden balls hanging over the door.
That’s the pawnshop
, he heard Rutherford say, as he limped past Jew Mary’s dry-goods store where there were a lot of clothes and shoes in the window.
There’s where Katie works. Old Lady’s ’er gran’ma
.
    The other side of the street was lined with stores: Wineberg’s ice cream parlor, Magedy’s grocery store, Goldman’s grocery store, the Green Leaf restaurant. John Henry was sitting outside Magedy’s beside his bicycle. He delivered the groceries.
    “Hi, John Henry!” he shouted.
    John Henry, a strong, black, bright-eyed boy of fourteen with a big handsome smile, looked condescendingly in his direction. He grinned mischievously, bearing his large white perfect teeth: “Aaaaaw, I’m gonna
tell
your momma you out a the yard!”
    He laughed a little frantic laugh and ran on, with Carl’s help, after the others. The moist raw flesh on his toe was drying fast. There wasalready a thin coating of dirt on it. Although it throbbed every time he took a step, he was getting used to the pain. His feet were gradually toughening to the pavement and a sort of hysterical exhilaration drowned out the pain from his knee.
    They came to a large storefront. The bottom of its big plate-glass window was painted black and the upper half was painted tan. They peered through the cracks scratched in the surface of the glass with a penknife.
    “What’s this?” he asked, able to see only a few empty tables and the long legs of a woman whose dress was raised well above her knees sitting near a piano.
    “What’s
this!
” cried Turner. “You don’ know nothin’, man! This is a fine broad!”
    “Aw, I don’ mean that, I mean this place!”
    “The Black an’ Tan — a nightclub,” said Tommy patiently.
    “Come on, you cats!” Sammy urged.
    They came to the corner of Independence and Charlotte and stopped before the polished window of Pete’s candy store to admire the black and red wax pistols with their barrels loaded with syrup, and licorice and peppermint sticks, and rock candy, orange grains of candy corn, teeming in