Black Betty

by Mosley, Walter

  All this transpired on an empty sidewalk. The only thing that moved was the cars. There wasn’t a pedestrian to be seen.

  * * *

  “ALL RIGHT!” Jackson slapped my shoulder and played bongos on the dashboard as we cruised away from Juniper’s. “All right!”

  “What was all that about, man?”

  “Two hunnert dollars.”

  “That’s how much he owed you?”

  “Huh? Naw. That’s how much Ortiz bet I couldn’t collect what he owe us. He said I was pussy an’ that the on’y thing a pussy could get was fucked. Well fuck him. Two hunnert dollars!” Jackson jammed two fingers before my face.

  The vent was blowing hot air at me and I was having a tough time breathing. I pulled over to the curb and put my head down on the steering wheel.

  “What’s wrong you, Easy?”

  “No no no no no, Jackson, what’s wrong with you?”

  “Ain’t nuthin’ wrong wit’ me, man.” He couldn’t hide his smirk.

  “Did you ever get that degree from UCLA?”

  “Shit. Motherfuckers wanted me to study some kinda language. Uh-uh, man. I walk on the ground an’ I talk like my people talk.”

  “But you could do somethin’, Jackson. You’re smart.”

  “Naw, Easy, I cain’t do nuthin’.”

  “Why not? Of course you could.”

  “Naw, man. I been a niggah too long.” He said it as if he were proud of the fact.

  “You think that Martin Luther King is down south marchin’ an’ takin’ his life in his hands just so you could be gamblin’ and actin’ like a niggah?”

  “I ain’t got nuthin’ to do wit’ him, Easy. You know I be livin’ my life the onliest way I can.”

  “But Jackson, we can’t be runnin’ in the streets bettin’ on each other’s lives. We got to be men. We got to stand up for ours.”

  Jackson pulled off his big hat. Sweat was running down his face. It was one of the few times I ever looked him in the eye that he didn’t smile.

  “Terry got a pad on Twenty-second Street. House was abandoned. Terry just moved in. It’s near a Renco station and a sto’ called Happy’s Liquors. It’s a pink house with blue flowers on a fence ain’t got no paint.” He said it all deadpan and then opened the car door.

  He walked down the street, away from Juniper’s. When he was half a block away I got the urge to stop him, to try and talk to him some more. I opened the door and got one foot on the curb, but suddenly I was weak, too weak even to call out after Jackson.

  I sat there, holding my head and sweating, for long minutes. I couldn’t stand, couldn’t even sit up straight.

  Jackson was sore on my mind. Life wasn’t any more than a losing hand to him. And death was just another card to be played. All the money he made with his scams was shit through a goose. If he came to a friend’s funeral he was full of ribald tales about how hard that man’s life had been; then he’d try to console the widow or girlfriend left behind. There was never a tear, a regret, a dollar in the bank, a brick laid in a foundation, or a hope that pressed itself into Jackson’s mind.

  And if I were to tell him that his bad ways would lead to a bad end he’d just answer, “Ain’t no such’a thing as a good end, brother.”

  And if I looked into my own heart I knew that he was right.

  — 20 —

  I’VE NEVER REALLY been what you would call a friend to the LAPD. We were on speaking terms only because they needed my help from time to time. And also because I used to be fool enough to put myself in the way when somebody down in my community was getting the short end of the stick.

  But the truth is that I did know some cops and Miss Cain’s veiled threat made me want to set the groundwork for some kind of defense.

  “SEVENTY-SEVENTH Street station,” a woman’s voice said over the phone.

  “I’d like to speak to Detective Lewis.”

  “Who’s calling?”

  “Easy Rawlins.”

  “Oh. Um. Just one minute please.”

  There was some static and maybe five seconds went by before I heard Lewis’s voice.

  “Rawlins? Where are you?” Arno Lewis, the resident Negro detective of the Seventy-seventh Street station, asked.

  I knew when he asked that question that I was in deep trouble.

  “At a pay phone.” I was casual. “I got some trouble out here and I wanted to ask you somethin’.”

  “Why don’t you come on down here and we’ll talk about it.”

  “Why don’t we talk on the phone? You know I got business to take care of.”

  “I can’t really talk about police business on the phone.”

  “Who said anything about police business?”

  “Why don’t I drop by your house later on. We could talk after work,” he said, ignoring my question.

  “Right, okay. You got my address?” I knew he didn’t. Only my best friends know my address and they wouldn’t ever tell a cop. I wasn’t listed in the phone book and I used my house, the one that Primo lived in down on 116th Street, for legal forms and correspondence. Primo and Flower held my mail.

  “No.”

  “You mean it ain’t in your records?”

  “No. I mean… maybe it is. But why don’t you just give it to me now and I’ll be sure to have it later on.”

  I rattled off Clovis’s address. I figured that a half-dozen police officers coming into her house shouting my name might help to keep her off of Mouse and Mofass.

  “What time you getting home?” Detective Lewis asked me.

  I imagined him; a tall Poindexter-looking kind of guy. He wore thick glasses and had the habit of pressing the bridge of his nose, between his eyes. I was willing to bet that he had his glasses off right then, concentrating every bit of his mind on the time he could get at me.

  “’Bout six,” I said. “Gotta make dinner, you know.”

  “Well, maybe I could get a bite with you.”

  “Yeah,” I said as simply as I could. “Come and get it.”

  I WENT OVER to Twenty-second Street. Right down the block from the Renco station and Happy’s Liquors was a small weathered house surrounded by a fallen-down fence that was covered with a weedy vine of hardy blue flowers. The grass was straw and there were no cultivated plants in the yard.

  The wind had brought trash from the street to litter the little front porch. Gum wrappers, leaves, gravel, and sand were scattered across the gray floor. There was a barrel there, I suppose to use as a chair, and a stack of small green umbrellas.

  I knocked. I always knock. But there wasn’t anybody home.

  The door wasn’t locked.

  The house was as barren as the yard and porch; rough pine floors that some lazy fool had varnished without sanding; a mismatch assortment of furniture taken from the curb at trash-collecting time. A couch faced the wall and two wooden chairs were turned over. The shades were pulled and it was dark in the house. But it was still hot. Stifling.

  Terry was in the kitchen; the whole back of his head shot off. He was wearing the same black jeans and T-shirt he had on when he decked me.

  Suddenly I was sorry about the fight we’d had. Maybe if I hadn’t tried to strong-arm him he would have talked to me, and lived.

  Terry was on his back with his head sideways. His brain was a halo on the floor. There was dark blood spattered on his shoulders and down his chest. His eyes were wide and his mouth too. He looked as if he’d been trying to suck down one more breath before it was over.

  Also on his chest was a string of green rosary beads. They were placed there. I knelt down to get a closer look and saw that they were wet, dappled with water, not blood.

  I started to move the second I heard it. It was a heavy shuffle of feet. The sound came from behind me, and before I could rise, much less turn around, I felt a sharp pain, very deep in my back. I yelled and swung backwards with my fist. I connected with something hard and fleshy too, but before I could turn around there came a shock that started at
the side of my head and ran all the way down to each and every one of my toes. There was a far-off gong and a giant wave crashing down on the shore.

  I WAS RUNNING with a mob of black men. In pursuit of us were ravens and dogs followed by rabid white men and white women—the white people were naked and hairless. Horses with razor hooves galloped among them and a searing wind blew. We were all running but every black man trying to get away was also pushing his brothers down. And every man that fell was set upon by dogs with hungry rats dangling down from between their legs.

  I ran so hard that my shoes wore through. Then my feet began to bleed and the blood made me slip. “Betrayed by your own blood,” a familiar voice said.

  MY EYES OPENED before I came to. They were trying to let out the agony. I sat up and rubbed my head. It was wet. Wet with the brain and blood of Terry T. A number ten cast-iron frying pan lay next to me. A better swing and I would have been dead along with Terry.

  That was too much.

  The moaning started softly but soon built into a wail. I heard myself shouting out and I knew that I should stop but I couldn’t. There was blood on me. Blood.

  When I tried to stand, still racked by tears, a pain grabbed my shoulder. It was deep inside me and I knew I had been stabbed. I tried to grab the knife but I couldn’t reach it.

  It was the fear of death in the form of that blade that saved me.

  I got up and stumbled into the living room. I was looking for something but I didn’t quite know what. I went through a door and found myself in Terry’s bedroom. He had a single bed with a thin blue-striped mattress on it. On the floor lay a stained pillow with no casing and a woolen blanket.

  It was the blanket that I was looking for.

  I draped it over my shoulder gently so as not to press against the knife. But even that little bit of pressure on the haft sent a high-pitched scream running down my spine. I had to lean up against a solitary chest of drawers to steady myself.

  There was a framed photograph laid flat up there. And even though I was in terrible pain and in fear for my life I noticed that it was the same kind of frame that Marlon had for Betty’s snapshot. I looked at the picture but I couldn’t make out anything. I couldn’t get my mind to focus on the faces there.

  So I took the picture and stood up as straight as I could manage. Then I went out to the car trying to seem nonchalant, wrapped up in a blanket in hundred-degree weather.

  The heat was nothing to me anymore.

  I climbed into the driver’s seat and sat back, jamming the knife a little further in. That sat me up straight.

  My hand didn’t want to do what I told it. It took me three tries to turn the ignition.

  I had to get ready for a turn a full half block before I reached the corner.

  And each block had its own special pitfall. Once I didn’t see two little children playing in the street until it was almost too late. I hit the brake too hard and threw myself forward and then back against the seat. The jolt in my shoulder was so blinding that I had to stop for a while and rest on the steering wheel.

  I don’t know what Terry was doing with a wool blanket in the summer heat. I was getting light-headed but I was afraid to pull the blanket off. If one more thing changed I knew I was going to die.

  A prowl car followed me for over two miles down Pico Boulevard. I don’t know why they didn’t stop me. I was cruising at about twenty-five, hunched over the wheel like I was making love to the thing.

  But somewhere around La Brea they took off. Probably a real crime came in on the radio. I don’t know. But it was just about then that I remembered about bleeding. Maybe I was bleeding too much. I stuck my hand under the blanket and brought it back covered in blood. My blood.

  My foot was becoming uneven on the gas pedal. I would speed up and slow down, then speed up again. By the time I got to my block there was a bass sound thrumming in my ears. I turned into the driveway and was easing back toward the garage when suddenly I took a turn to the left. I don’t know why. There’s no turn in my driveway but I turned just as natural as if I did it every time I came home.

  Jesus came running out after he heard me plowing into the side wall of the house.

  “Go make Feather go to her room,” I said, waving Jesus back into the house. “Go on! And bring me back my green coat.”

  God knows why I wanted that coat.

  I had to move over to the passenger’s side to get out of the car. By the time I made it to the back door Jesus had returned with the coat. He stood there looking at me, eyes wide. I lumbered past him, still wearing my blanket. I went through the kitchen and then into our TV room, followed by the silent boy.

  “Go to the bathroom and get the witch hazel and the alcohol,” I said. “And the gauze and some tape too.”

  Slowly, I let myself down into a perch at the edge of the couch while Jesus ran to get the things I needed.

  “Daddy?” Feather was there at the edge of the room rubbing her nose and pulling at the hem of her little blue dress. She didn’t run to me because half my face was covered with Terry T’s insides.

  “Go up to your room, baby,” I said. My voice was thick and gravelly.

  The man she was running away from wasn’t her father. He was a real monster that had invaded her home.

  Jesus came in with his arms full. I stood up and let the blanket fall off me.

  “Juice, I don’t want you to get upset, but I need something from you.”

  He was all attention.

  “I’m going to turn around and you’re going to have to help me. Okay?”

  He nodded.

  I turned around slowly and faced the wall. There was a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation that I’d bought from Woolworth’s hanging there—gilded frame and all. It struck me that hanging that document up there was like an ex-convict displaying his discharge papers.

  “Oh God, Daddy.”

  Jesus’s hushed cry made me forget the frame. I even ignored the knife in my back long enough to smile at my son calling me Daddy.

  “Is it a knife?” I asked him.

  “It’s an ice pick,” he answered in perfect articulate English.

  “All right, son,” I said lowering myself down to my knees. “I want you to put both hands around it and pull it out the same way it went in. It might hurt me enough that I faint for a minute but that’s okay. You take a wad of that gauze and press it against the wound until you’re sure that it’s stopped bleeding. You understand?”

  “Yes, Daddy.” And then he did it—all at once and with no hesitation.

  “Uhh-ah!” I groaned. There came a bright yellow light, not in my eyes but in the whole upper part of my brain. My body was being sucked upwards and I knew for certain what it was like to die.

  But I wasn’t going to die; not until I found Elizabeth Eady and the killer of Terry T.

  The yellow light faded and with it my consciousness. I remember Feather calling and me wanting to say “Yes, honey?” but I couldn’t and that simple fact was among the saddest things I’d ever known.

  — 21 —

  WHEN I CAME TO I was afraid to open my eyes at first. Instead I listened to the sounds around me. The drip of the faucet in the kitchen; the rattle of the window in the Santa Ana wind. I felt a slight breeze that wasn’t hot and a gentle stroke across my face. When I finally opened my eyes I saw Jesus using a washcloth to wipe the blood from my face. He was using a little plastic bowl filled with tepid water. I was laid out on the couch, with him next to me. On the floor at my feet Feather sat with her back to me playing with her doll, Roxanna.

  “You be a good girl now, Roxy,” I remember her saying. “Or you don’t get no surprise.”

  There was a darkening knot under Jesus’s left eye. I reached out to touch it and he drew back.

  “What happened?”

  “After the blood stopped I put some alcohol on it and you, you jumped like.” There was a question in his voice, as if he were asking me if I had indeed jumped or was I mad because of
something.

  “I’m sorry. It musta hurt pretty bad.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It was real red in there.”

  I took a deep breath and noticed that the breeze was coming from the fan that Jesus had set at the foot of the couch so that it could blow over all three of us.

  The green coat was over my feet.

  I passed out.

  When I came around Jesus was still there next to me. Feather was eating ice cream out of a bowl, just like the bowl Jesus used to wash me, and clutching her doll.

  “Honey,” I called out to Feather.

  “Uh-huh,” she answered, not looking up.

  “Would you like to go on a trip to Uncle Primo’s?”

  “Yeah!” She stood right up from the bowl, wrenching Roxanna’s arm. She was ready to go, and I couldn’t blame her. The trouble I had brought into her house was too much for any little girl.

  It was too much for me.

  “Juice.”

  “Y-yes, Daddy?”

  “Call Primo and ask him if you and Feather can come out there for a couple of days.”

  When Jesus got on the phone I had another surprise. He spoke Spanish! I guess it shouldn’t have been such a shock; he’d lived with Primo’s family from the time I saved him until he was five.

  “He said okay.” There was a slight smirk on Jesus’s face. “He said that there’s no room in the house or the garage but me and Julio and Juan-Baptiste can sleep out on the deck in the avocado tree.”

  Only children could make fun out of despair.

  “You take Feather in the bus, okay?”

  “Uh-huh.” It was like he had always talked.

  Feather was happy to go until they got out the door. Halfway through the front yard she started crying and running back to the house. Jesus caught her by the arm and picked her up. I watched them going down the street; Feather was hugging Juice and reaching back over his shoulder toward the house.