Escape the Thunder

By Lonnie Coleman

Fat, brutal Josh rules this street of junkies and prostitutes, drunkards and lost souls. Shame and degradation walk hand in hand—seen in the tense faces of its men and the painted faces of its women.
Against this grim background Lonnie Coleman, author of the memorable Clara, weaves a compelling story of Pecola, the kept woman who breaks away from the sadism of Josh to find tenderness and sudden rapture in the arms of Luther, the ex-convict who has come back to Day Street for a strange revenge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Classica Libris
• Release date: Jun 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9788835843382

Book preview

Brown

Chapter 1

Night came suddenly, for it was November. And Luther walked as a man who awakes from the dream of a long sleep. He walked with his arms limp at the sides and with his feet moving uncertainly over the tarry pavement of the street, as if they were afraid to carry him too far; as if a voice would call presently and they would turn back.

But no voice called.

No voice had called all day, and he had wandered restless with the first glow of his freedom, over all the streets in Montgomery he had known and loved and had not seen for six years.

Kilby Prison was not far from Montgomery, but the walls were high and there were guards, and men had been killed trying to escape. Big Sam, the husky, apelike Negro with the broken nose, had tried to get Luther to go with him, but Luther had stayed. And big Sam had been stopped at the electrically charged walls, and he had been buried with his hands burned and his back full of holes made when the guards emptied their guns into him.

Luther had stayed and served out his term because he had killed a man, and he wanted to be punished, just as a child who does something he knows is wrong wants to get his whipping over so he can rest easy. So, Luther felt that only by punishment could he ever walk free again in the world and know himself free.

On this the first day of his freedom he had wandered about the streets he loved, Commerce and Monroe and Madison, and the streets that ran between Monroe and Madison. They were the town streets of his people. He walked along them, feeling joy at the calm, lazy snip-snip sound of scissors from the barbershops, at the sharp click of billiard cues against the balls from the pool rooms, at the laughter in the streets, at the earnest bargaining of the street peddlers. Those were sounds he loved, familiar sounds, sounds that had not been forgotten, the dearer because once lost and now found again.

At three o’clock Luther was hungry and stopped in one of the restaurants on Monroe Street. He sat down on a stool at the counter, and a ginger cake waitress in a wrinkled green uniform came up to him.

What’ll you have?

He looked up at her, not hearing these first words that had been spoken to him since he got out of jail, hearing only the sound of them. I don’ ’xactly…

She handed him a grease-marked, blurry-printed menu. She seemed used to men who did not know what they wanted.

Look it over, she said.

He looked down at the folded sheet and studied it carefully, conscious all the time that she was staring at him, waiting for him to speak.

Baked chicken dinner, forty cents… T-bone steak and… He could pay for any of it; he had money in his pocket they had given him along with the suit he was wearing. He had promised himself that when he got out he would go to a restaurant and order just what he wanted, no matter what it cost, but now he suddenly felt confused, being able to choose his meal like this. The idea of himself eating a T-bone steak seemed remote and unreal, and he felt the waitress still looking at him, maybe wondering by now if he had money to pay. So he said quickly, A bowl o’ veg’table soup and some corn bread. He slid the menu between the salt shaker and the sugar bowl and looked up at her as she scribbled his order. He stared at the red nails on the fingers that moved the pencil, and she caught him staring, and laughed and winked, and called his order out to the kitchen.

While they were waiting, she sat down on a chair back of the counter and lit a cigarette. She took a piece of folded newspaper and swatted occasionally at the flies on the counter. Luther did not look at her, because he did not know how to look at her. He wanted to, but he was afraid somehow. She was a woman, the first woman he had been close to and talked to in a long time. So he sat uncomfortable under her occasional glance, staring down at his hands, big and clumsy-looking on the counter. She was looking at him now, and he wondered if she were thinking about the new suit he was wearing, if she thought he had just bought it, or if she guessed where it came from.

The cook called out, All right! from the kitchen, and the waitress slid out of the chair and brought him the steaming bowl of soup and the corn bread.

What to drink? she said.

Uh… cup o’ coffee…

He crumbled the bread into the soup and began to eat it, and she slapped the coffee down by his bowl. When she drew her hand away, it brushed against his. He looked up at her quickly, confused, and his hand holding the spoon began to shake. Her eyes were on his face, and she said quietly, You been away somewhere a long time. You ain’ seen a woman in a long time…

Yeah, he said, looking straight at her now.

Then she asked, Where you been?

He drew in his breath, but he was no longer confused before her. He was not ashamed. So he said, In jail. In Kilby jail. Six years. Then he turned back to the soup and crumbled corn bread and started eating again. He felt her studying his face, and he waited for the next question he knew she would have to ask.

What they git you for? she said.

He looked up at her, hating her a little then for asking that, for making him remember. And he said, I killed a man.

Her expression did not change much, but she caught her breath a little, and he thought he saw admiration in her eyes. And because he did not like the idea of admiration for what he had done, he finished his soup quickly. She did not ask him any more questions, but she watched him closely until the last of the soggy corn bread had disappeared. And when he got up to pay his check, she took a long time making change from the cash register. She leaned over the counter as he turned to go and said meaningfully, Come back agin sometime…

He nodded his head without looking at her and walked out of the place.

As the day wore on he did not see anyone he knew. Faces had changed and the town had changed. There were more neon signs, and the dresses women wore looked different.

And now as night fell, he stood on the hill at Five Points blinking his eyes softly at the window lights coming on over the city like stars, to startle at first, and then to soothe, and to remind that home was waiting.

He had no home unless old Jane was alive. He had not heard from her because she could not write, and she had come to see him only once, four years ago. She had been afraid of the prison and had shaken her head and said, Ole Jane better not come heah agin. De white folks might lock her up an’ not let her out no mo’. Her eyes were misty but without tears, and she had crooned the words softly to herself, "No mo’…

He would go to her now, he thought. He would go to the kitchen door, and without knocking walk in and say, Well, I’m home, Mis’ Janey. I done come home. Dey turned me loose. Dey turned me loose an’ told me to come home an’ take care o’ Mis’ Janey, an’ let her be mammy to me an’ keep house fo’ me like she used to. Then he would laugh, and she wouldn’t believe it was he at first, and he would give her a big hug and she would cry. She would cry because she was glad to see him. And she would make him sit down in the kitchen by the stove while she went over next door to tell Miss Lula and bring her back to see him.

Luther smiled as he walked along Mobile Street, past Mildred Street, and turned into Day Street.

Day Street was his because it had always been his home. It was long, and it stretched over two hills and crossed a bridge and ended down by the lumber yards. It was a busy street with trucks and cars, and children roller-skating, and stores and houses lining its sides all the way down. It was a straight long street, and it had been part of his life as far back as he could remember. As a boy he had stood on the dirt sidewalk and watched funerals go by with the black hearse leading, and the mourning families in the long, rented cars behind. And he had watched the fire engines and the police cars go by. The Negro school was on Day Street too, and there were three or four churches.

And it was on this Day Street when he was twenty years old that he had got into a cutting scrape and had killed a man.

But that was over; that was gone. He had done wrong, and he had paid for the wrong, the way a living man does pay. And now he was going home.

As he walked along, he saw that there were more electric lights in the houses than there had been before he left. But there were still more oil lamps than electric lights. He looked up, and there were no stars in the sky and no moon. The sky was dark and cold looking. He shivered and turned up the collar of his coat.

When he got to a yard where some children were playing, he stopped to watch them. They were all small, and they had built a fire, and some were dancing around it and singing, and others were beating their hands softly on old rusted pans. The children were small, but as they danced, they cast grotesquely tall shadows on the side of the house. Luther stared at the shadows, forgetting the children for a moment, feeling within himself the vague stirrings of something he seemed to half remember, as one sometimes only half remembers a dream.

Then his eyes went back to the children, and the quizzical frown that had been on his face changed to a smile. They did not notice him looking at them.

He turned and walked on, wondering what had happened to the boys he had known six years ago… Josh Jackson and Pete Glover and Josie Slade. Only they wouldn’t be boys any longer. They would be men like himself. Josh had been the oldest, the leader. Josh had had a way with him. He had never worked at a steady job, but always seemed to have money, nobody knew how. There had been some talk about his being a bootlegger, but when Luther had kidded him about it, Josh had been evasive. But he had seemed pleased in a way, so Luther had kidded him more, because he liked to do things that pleased Josh.

Suddenly Luther stopped. Here was the place, here in the street beside the crooked, bare chinaberry tree. He looked at the house and wondered if the man’s wife still lived there. He frowned and his face was troubled, and he started to go on again. But then he stopped. No need to be scared, he told himself, no reason to run away. He even took a step back and stood again beneath the tree. And he thought of that other night six years ago beneath this tree.

He and Josh had been going home drunk from a dance, and they had been singing and cursing. He didn’t remember the whole thing well, but he remembered that. They had stopped under this tree because it was the place for Josh to turn off and go home. But Josh had not turned. He had said to Luther, My weed, Josh gonna take you home. You too damn drunk to fin’ de way yo’self.

And Luther had protested drunkenly, You a damn liar. I kin walk as straight as you kin, an’ you know it. But even when he was saying it, Luther had known that Josh was right. Josh was always right. And he never seemed to get drunk, no matter how much he drank. He only acted drunk sometimes to make other people laugh. But it was fun telling Josh he was a damn liar.

Josh had laughed at him and pushed him in the direction of home, and at that he, Luther, had become indignant, and had cursed louder. And teasing him, Josh had given him another shove, and Luther