“How many years?” Socrates asked when he realized that there was nothing he could tell Lydell.
“Sentenced to twelve but I got out in eight.”
Socrates figured that his drinking partner was mid-thirties, not much more. “How long you been out?”
“Six years, seven months, five days,” Lydell answered. “I went in when I was nineteen. My mother died the next year.”
“You done did all right, man,” Socrates said. “I mean you run that carpentry business, right?”
“What you mean when you say it ain't over till it's over?” Lydell asked.
“Huh?”
“That's what you said in the park this weekend.”
“I'idn't mean nuthin'.” Socrates was trying to remember exactly what he had said and why. “That was just some talk.”
“You said what would you do if you could go back. That's what you said to Willie Ryan. You said it like you was givin' him a chance, like there was somethin' he could do right now.”
Chico came with more beer. Socrates nodded and made a sign to keep them coming.
“What you askin' me, Lydell?” Socrates asked. “What you really wanna know?”
“They told me about you bein' in prison, man.” The carpenter rubbed his face pushing his jaw impossibly far to the right. “They said that you was all hard and mean when you got out but then you started doin' stuff. You know. How you help people and talk about what's right an' what's wrong. They said it was like you learned some-thin'. Like, like you … I don't know. Like you know you wrong and you figured out how to be right anyway.”
“That's just some talk, man. I ain't got nuthin' on nobody. You know. Shoot. I got a job as a boxboy an' my head don't feel right less I'm sleepin' or drunk.” The words came easily. They were all true but he was barely aware of a truth that lay just under their meaning.
Lydell felt that truth too.
“I don't sleep at all. Not really.” The thin black man started rocking gently in the chair. “I close my eyes. But you know you cain't block out that shit. It get worser every day. Every day that I'm up here an' Henry's in the ground. I try not to think about how it was my fault. And then I try an' do what you said to Willie. I try an' go back. In my mind I go back there tellin' myself that I set Henry up for that shit. I tell myself that he didn't deserve to die.” Lydell looked at Socrates with those ruined, heartbroken eyes.
Chico came around with two more beers. The ex-cons waited for the bartender to leave.
“… but when I get there,” Lydell continued, “an' I hear that noise she makes. I tell myself, ‘You could just hit him,’ but then the knife is in my hand again. Here I am tryin' to make it better in my mind but I just kill'im again. Kill'im again.”
Socrates jerked his head back because he felt something strange at his mouth. But when he looked it was just the forgotten beer glass in his hand grazing his lower lip. Again he wondered where he'd been.
“It's like I done killed ten thousand Henrys,” Lydell Samuels said. “You asked Little Willie what he'd do? Well I could tell ya: the same thing. That's what he'd do. No matter what you showed him or how hard he tried he'd'a been on the same killin' floor. 'Cause even though Willie don't want you to kill'im he still want that girl and that wallet.”
Socrates remembered the conversation clearly then. The domino game where they had argued over right and wrong. He could see that Lydell had turned it over in his mind again and again over and over until it was like a worn page in a condemned man's bible.
“You got to let it go, man,” Socrates said.
“Willie don't even want to do right except that he's scared,” Lydell said as if he hadn't heard. “Here I want it but I cain't help it but to do wrong.”
“He's dead, Lydell. He only died one time. It was wrong. All of it. Your wife, you, and him too. But it's over an' you got to let it go. I don't mean forget it. I don't mean you got to smile like they baptized your sin away.”
Lydell looked up at Socrates with fever glazing his eyes. He was jittery like Willie had been on the weekend but he wasn't afraid.
“I try to do right, man,” Lydell said. “I try but they don't let me.”
“Who?”
“I try to do right. I try to do like you told Willie.”
“I said that to Willie 'cause he ain't been on that floor yet. He just dreamin' 'bout another man's wallet and another man's wife.” Socrates felt, again, like he was back in prison, trapped in his own mistakes. “You'n me been there. You'n me got to take all we've seen and make somethin' new about it. It's not what would you do for men like us. It's what will you do that we have to worry about. For us it ain't no game. We got to see past bein' guilty. We already been there.”
“Like you mean we still got some place to go?” Lydell asked.
“This is life, Lydell. Life. What's done is done. You still responsible, you cain't never make it up, but you got to try.”
Lydell smiled again. This time the smile lingered. There was a question in his face and then a certainty. He nodded and grinned and ordered another drink.
Two weeks passed before Detective Biggers, the black cop assigned to keep tabs on Socrates, dropped by for one of his irregular visits. Socrates knew the policeman's knock and took his time getting to the door. Sometimes when Detective Biggers came by Socrates didn't even answer. Sometimes he'd just sit on his foldout bed reading the newspaper until he heard the gate to his yard open and close again.
But that day Socrates wanted company. He pulled the door open and said, “Afternoon, Albert.”
The burly cop always paused a moment in silent protest when Socrates used his first name. But he couldn't complain when he didn't have a warrant or a pressing reason to be at Socrates' door.
“You know a man named Samuels?” Biggers asked.
Just that quickly Socrates wanted to be alone again. He didn't want to answer any questions—or ask any.
“Do you?”
“What you want, man? I ain't had dinner yet.”
“Geraldine Samuels said that you and her husband had been friendly lately. She said that you and he were regulars over at Bebe's bar. She said that Lydell had been saying how you were so smart and wise and that you were helping him to figure out how he could live with what he had done.” Albert Biggers seemed to know that his questions would hurt Socrates, that the hurt would linger and blossom over time. “He was like you, you know, a murderer.”
“Did you say Geraldine?” Socrates asked.
“His wife,” Biggers said, nodding. “Didn't you know he was married?”
“Uh-uh. He never said a thing about that. I mean he said that he was married before, that he killed his wife's boyfriend. Her name was Geraldine too.”
“Same.” Biggers smiled. “She got sick after he went to prison. I guess she was pretty bad off when he got out. Some kind of nerve disorder. She's the one that found him. They slept separately. Cut his own throat in his own bed. I don't think Geraldine liked him much but he did pay the rent. Cut his own throat. You know that takes guts.”
Killer, the two-legged dog, jumped up buoyed by the harness attached to the line strung across Socrates' small yard. The dog padded his way to the door and pressed his snout against the ex-con's hand.
“What you want, Albert?”
“Was Samuels distressed? Was he depressed?”
The laugh that issued from Socrates' deep chest was hard earned. “You the one said he was livin' with a woman hated him. What do you think?”
“But you said you didn't know about his wife,” Biggers argued uselessly.
“You ever hate anybody, officer?”
“I asked you a question, Mr. Fortlow.”
“ 'Cause you see Lydell hated somebody. He hated a man and he killed him. He couldn't help himself. And if you put that man in front'a him today he'd kill him again. All he wanted was to wipe that man from his mind. That's what he talked about.”
“So he killed himself because he couldn't kill his wife's boy
friend again?” Biggers asked.
“I don't have no idea, man. I wasn't in his head. We just got drunk together.”
“So he didn't give you any indication that he intended suicide?”
“There weren't no play in Lydell, officer. No play at all.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” the policeman wanted to know.
“It means what it means, man.”
Socrates turned on his radio that night. There was jazz playing on the university station. Fats Waller. The image of a smiling fat black man came up in Socrates' mind. He was laughing and playing those ivories. He was cooing and wooing. Socrates knew that there must have been tears behind all of those funny lines. And then the announcer said, Waller suffered a diabetic attack on tour and the all-white hospital turned him away. He died from the disease of racism and he left us his legacy like the smile an undertaker draws on his corpse.
Socrates wondered who he could blame for Lydell's death. He wondered that until he drifted off to sleep.
a day in the park
Socrates got to the front stairs of the house on Marvane Street at six fifteen that Sunday morning. The block was lined with a few large homes left over from the more prosperous days of South Central L.A. Most had been subdivided into rooms for let or knocked down and replaced by large stucco apartment buildings. There was the big brick house a few lots down, the one that the radical college students called the New Africans once occupied. It was vacant. The young college radicals had splintered into two smaller organizations, Socrates had heard, neither of which could afford the rent.
The police surveillance house across the street was empty now too. Without potential revolutionaries to spy on the police saw no reason to maintain their presence on the block.
The only industries left were Luvia's private retirement home and the crack house down toward the end of the block. Even at that hour there was a fat man in a cheap suit who had driven by for a quick blow job in the deep lawn. Socrates couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman down on one knee before the fat man.
Socrates was remembering the days when he and Right Burke sat out on the front porch of Luvia's and watched the cops sneak in and out of their nest. Right Burke had been Socrates' best friend but now he was dead.
It had been almost a year. Socrates wasn't invited to the service. Right's sister had come down from Richmond in the Bay Area and organized the funeral with Luvia Prine. The women had blamed Socrates for Right's death. They were angry because Right had gone out with Socrates one night and the next morning he was found at a bus stop, dead from an overdose of morphine complicated by a large quantity of alcohol.
He didn't blame them but still he'd gotten himself up and out of bed at five in the morning to come down to Luvia's retirement home.
She the onliest person I ever met who might be able to stare you down, Socco, Burke had once said to his friend. You know she ain't afraid of nuthin' but Jesus and I do believe that even he would say ‘yes ma'am’ to her.
Socrates remembered the suicide of his friend with no guilt or even remorse. He was dying to begin with. All those pills he took did what they were supposed to do—they stopped the pain.
Three young girls walked past the big man, looking frightened and beautiful in calf length pastel dresses that set off their dark skins like three flames. The smallest child, who must have been about ten, smiled at Socrates and waved as they walked past.
They got to walk through hell, he thought, just to get to Sunday school.
When the girls got past Socrates they began to run, giggling and laughing as they went. They looked back over their shoulders at Socrates and screamed as if he were a monster.
A car door slammed. The fat man had finished his business. He turned over the engine on his old Buick and cruised past Luvia's home looking straight ahead.
“Socrates Fortlow, what you doin' at my door?” She was at least five eight but weighed no more than a hundred pounds fully dressed. Luvia Prine had the stare of a heavyweight though.
“Miss Prine,” Socrates said as a greeting.
“Well?” She held a bunch of freshly picked dahlias.
“I heard that somebody picks you up here at six forty-five an' takes you to Right's grave on the first Sunday of every month. Topper Saint-Paul told me he heard that.”
The flesh around Luvia's watery eyes hardened into two tight squares. “What I do and where I go and who I go with ain't got nuthin' to do with you.”
“An' Right told me that you were a Christian woman.” Socrates fought to keep the humor he felt out of his voice. He enjoyed the vehemence of Luvia's hatred. He was a bad man. He had done awful things. And even if Luvia didn't know exactly what crimes he had committed, she could feel that he had done something. That intimacy, even though it was shown in distaste, made Socrates feel kinship toward the hard, churchgoing woman.
“And what do you mean by that?”
“I mean that a Christian woman, on a Sunday too, would not keep a man from paying his respects to his dead friend,” Socrates said.
“I ain't keepin' you from nuthin',” Luvia said angrily.
“You didn't let me come to my friend's funeral. You didn't even let me know where I could send no flowers or even a card to say I was sorry and sad.”
“You don't deserve to be invited with decent folk, Socrates. It's your fault he's dead. He was alive when he left wit' you and then the police called to say that they found him cold on a bus stop bench. And where were you? You don't deserve to stand at his grave. You ain't earned a place to pray.”
Socrates could tell by the waver in Luvia's voice that she felt deeply about his crime. He almost lost heart then and turned away, allowing her her victory over Satan.
Almost.
“You see?” he said instead of leaving. “What kind of real Christian woman would put herself in the place to make a judgment on a man's soul? It's a blasphemy for somebody to say that another man is unworthy in God's eyes. But here you go sayin' that I cain't pay my respects to my friend. Here you go actin' like the Lord give you the power to judge.”
The squares screwed themselves down to pinpoints. Luvia actually shook in her loose Sunday dress suit. Her fist grasped so tightly on the bunch of hand-picked flowers that he heard the stems cracking.
“You tell me that I killed Right but the truth is I saved him,” Socrates added.
“Saved him!”
“That's right. You had him up in that room moanin' from all the pain that that cancer could make. Your doctor couldn't get him the kinda medicine he needed to kill the pain. All you could do was leave him upstairs to wither and die. No dignity, no manhood. Just four walls and a Bible on his nightstand. You ain't never asked me about what happened, Luvia. You think you know but you wasn't there. You didn't see him in his final suit tellin' stories and laughin' about the short skirts some'a these girls wear out in the street. You didn't hear him say good-bye to Charla and then tell me t'leave him on the bench. He said that he wanted to stay and watch the lights, Luvia. What business did I have to tell him no?”
Socrates had lost his sense of humor. Luvia, from his experience, never had one to begin with. Socrates was wondering how far he'd have to go to look for a smile when a long, gold-colored Lincoln drove up behind him.
“Damn you, Socrates Fortlow,” Luvia said. “Come on.”
Luvia Prine whisked past the big ex-con and he turned around to see a dapper man standing at the open door of his car. He was about Socrates' age with a mustache and no beard. He was wearing a light brown sports jacket and dark brown pants but his red, yellow and green shirt was an African cut, as was his brimless and beaded hat.
“Luvia,” the man said. When he smiled Socrates could see that one of his bottom teeth was gold.
“This here is Socrates Fortlow, Milton,” Luvia said. “If you have any room he wants to go out and pay his respects, I guess.”
“Hey, my man,” Milton said extending a hand. “All I got is room in this boat. Ride on up f
ront with me. You know Miss Prine always take the backseat.”
With that Milton pulled open the back door for Luvia. Socrates made his way around to the passenger's side and let himself in.
“Strap yourself down, brother,” Milton said as he turned the ignition key.
“Say what?”
Milton, who was the color of coffee mixed in with an equal amount of cream, turned and smiled brightly at Socrates. “Between alcohol and cigarettes, guns and blunt objects, between high blood pressure and low test scores in these piss-poor schools they—”
“Milton!” Luvia cried.
“Sorry about the language, Miss Prine,” Milton said and then he continued, “… caught in between all that I'm as cautious as butterfly in a hurricane.”
Socrates buckled his belt feeling a little foolish and not knowing exactly why.
They drove down Central for a long while, cruising, stopping at every third traffic light. Every now and then Milton would beep his horn at someone making their way to early service. He seemed to know a lot of people.
“Car's in good shape,” Socrates said. He knew that the compliment would get the driver to smile.
“Bought it new twenty-five years ago when I was a letter carrier with nuthin' but a room, a bed and this here car. I hate to let anything go. This the fourth engine on this sucker but you know I'd really be sad if I ever had to give'er up.”
Socrates turned away and looked out of his window. Luvia had moved to the seat behind him. She was staring out at the same street that Socrates was watching but he still wondered what it was that she saw. He knew that Luvia lived in a completely different world than he did. Maybe the world she saw had different colors; maybe there were truths revealed to her scrutiny that Socrates missed.
“You just like me, eh, my man?” Milton words were wrapped in the rhythms of sixties jazz.
“What you mean?”
“The name. Some old dead white man wrote a book an' our mommas hoped the name'd rub off on us. They didn't think that a famous black man is usually dead before his time.” The driver's laughter sounded hollow to Socrates.
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