Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned

by Walter Mosley

  “That’s it, brother,” Gordo said. “Nineteen sixty-nine, November third. It wasn’t far out from the camp. He jumped at me with a stick knife but I heard him….” Gordo’s eyes glistened in the firelight.

  Evening had come.

  “Where you comin’ from, brother?” Gordo asked.

  “Prison mostly.”

  “What you in for?”

  “Murder.”

  “You killed a man?” Delia asked.

  Socrates didn’t answer her.

  “How long you in prison?” Gordo asked.

  “Twenty-seven years.”

  “For killin’ one man?” Gordo was really surprised.

  “It was a man and a woman. I raped her too,” Socrates said, wondering at the spell of the ocean. “And then there was three convicts I killed but nobody ever knew it, at least nobody could ever prove it. And then there was all the men I brutalized and molested, robbed and threatened. I either committed a crime or had a crime done to me every day I was in jail. Once you go to prison you belong there.”

  “You kill anybody hand-to-hand?” Gordo asked. His body was tense, his head still like a predator’s.

  “I did it all wit’ my hands. All of ’em. I ain’t never used no weapon. I had’em but I ain’t never used one.”

  {6.}

  Gordo nodded and relaxed a bit.

  “I went from high school to heroin by way of Vietnam,” Gordo said. Delia had her head in his lap, she was looking up into Socrates’ eyes. “Everything was stronger there. The drugs, the rain, the sun, and the enemy. You could put him in the ground but he’d just pop up again. Pop right back up at ya. After a while all you felt was tired. Tired.”

  The exhaustion of war descended on Gordo. His shoulders slumped and the plate tilted in his lap. He couldn’t speak or even lift his spoon. The man seemed so tired that Socrates wondered how long he would be able to draw breath.

  Then Delia talked about orphanages and shopping malls and how she was nobody and how much she liked that because there wasn’t anybody she wanted to be.

  “You wanna come over there and fuck, Socrates?” Delia whispered when Gordo started to nod.

  Socrates looked at Gordo first. He was ready to fight but Gordo hadn’t even heard.

  “What you say?” Socrates asked.

  “You heard me. It’s okay. You like me and it’s a special day. We could go right over there.”

  Delia held out a hand and Socrates took it. She pulled at him but there no strength in the girl. She leaned over and kissed his hand, biting it lightly. Socrates glanced at Gordo; now he was staring up at the stars thinking that there were stronger stars in Vietnam—no doubt.

  Delia bit Socrates’ lip and pushed her tongue along the line of his teeth. She pulled at his hands again, and he stood up. They walked to the edge of the light and embraced. Delia let her weight go as if she wanted to fall to the soft sand. But Socrates stayed upright, looking at Gordo staring at the stars.

  Delia kissed him again and there was the magic of passion, but that passion was in the wind and the moonlight; that passion was perched dangerously at the sides of the canyon. It wasn’t sex that he wanted. All that he needed he already had.

  Delia felt it too. She let her arms fall but still leaned against him.

  “I’m gonna go,” Socrates said.

  “Oh.” Delia sounded honestly disappointed. “Stay. We don’t have to do anything. Come on.”

  Socrates waved at Gordo and said, “See ya.”

  The vet waved back. “See ya.”

  On her tiptoes Delia gave Socrates a girl’s kiss on the lips. It was wet and soft and tasted of ocean salts and orange peel.

  {7.}

  Socrates staggered back down the way he’d come; down near the water where the sand was firm and wet. The waves followed him, crashing against the shore and breaking into foam that was almost phosphorescent in the moon’s stark light. It was, Socrates felt, the ocean’s laughter.

  And it was funny. He thought of Delia writhing in the sand with Gordo, her hemplike hair sporting small flames from the cookfire. He thought of Charles Rinnet, grown old before his time, pushing his stolen grocery cart down Hooper and Central and Florence.

  He walked a long way and then stopped. His legs felt as if someone had laid a live wire against them. It was all he could do not to fall down. He strode up to where the underbrush and cliffs met the sand. There he found two large cardboard boxes. Abandoned. He fit the boxes together behind a thorny bush. Once inside he tried to keep the thought of coffins out of his mind.

  The wind played against the paper walls all night; the hollow sound of rushing air and the slither of gathering sands. The wind was so strong the boxes would have blown away save for Socrates’ weight. The wind pressed the side of the box against him. He leaned into the pressure dreaming of his Aunt Bellandra’s lap.

  In the morning he saw half-erased paw prints in the sand around his shelter. It made him happy to think of some dog guarding his frail home.

  The sun glared down so strong that the sea seemed tame. When he raised his arms, bellowing as he stretched, hundreds of seagulls cried and broke into flight. He could see where they’d been resting in a flooded clearing just past his thorny corner.

  He wondered about Delia and Gordo but did not return to their grotto. Instead he wandered back toward the blue buses and home.

  Somewhere along the way Charles Rinnett’s voice came to him.

  “You think that shit mean sumpin’?” the phantom sneered.

  “That talk is over,” Socrates whispered as he imagined Charles Rinnett blowing away on a breeze.

  LESSONS

  {1.}

  “What she say?” Darryl asked with little interest. He and his only friend, Socrates Fortlow, were sitting on a redwood bench in Carver Park in Watts.

  “She didn’t say nuthin’.” Socrates was remembering his mother and how he was so surprised that she had gotten older even in his dream. Her hair, the little he could see of it under her Sunday hat, had gone white and there was a heaviness to her face.

  “That’s why I thought she was real,” he said out loud.

  “Say what?” Darryl looked around nervously at the ragged trees.

  “I mean,” said the ex-convict, “when she died, when I was in jail, she was only fifty-two. But she was way older than that in the dream. It was like she never died and just grew older and older.”

  “Huh,” the boy said. In the few months since he’d left home to come live with Socrates he’d shot up four inches but hadn’t gained a pound. He was long and bony, almost as tall as the hefty, hard-muscled Socrates.

  “Ain’t you listenin’ t’me, boy?” Socrates glanced in the direction that Darryl kept looking. “You see’im?”

  “Not yet,” Darryl said. “But he always comin’ from over that way.”

  “Well stop lookin’ over there. He gonna know how scared you are he see you lookin’. Here, look at me.”

  Darryl turned his head and squinted at Socrates. He was trembling.

  “So what you think?” Socrates asked the boy.

  “What I think about what?” Darryl whined.

  “About my dream, that’s what.”

  “’Bout yo’ momma?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was she nice to you?” The boy’s adolescent voice cracked from approaching manhood and fear.

  “Oh yeah,” Socrates said. “My mother was the only one stuck by me. The only one.”

  “ ’Cause you know,” Darryl said, “I be dreamin’ ’bout Yvette Frank sometimes.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Uh-huh.” Darryl nodded like a much younger boy. “She be naked an’ tell me how much she like me.”

  “An’ then you wake up wit’ yo’ dick all hard?”

  Darryl leaned down quickly, plucking a long blade of tattered grass from underneath the bench. He twirled the shoot, squashing it until the light-colored pads of his forefinger and thumb took on a greenish tint.

&n
bsp; “That’s okay,” Socrates said. “That’s how you dream when you a boy. You dreamin’ ’bout manhood.”

  Socrates stared out across the littered lawn of the park. At a picnic bench not far from them four men had begun a lively game of dominoes.

  “Twenty-fi’e!” Trevor Brown shouted as he slapped down his bone.

  Socrates recognized Trevor from the South Central Flea Market and Fair down at the Avalon Shopping Center. The mall had gone bust in 1988. Now the supermarket and stores were broken up into stalls that people rented by the day, the week, or the month. You could get anything from music discs to power tools at the Flea Market Fair.

  Trevor Brown sold T-shirts that his daughter hand-painted with images of African warriors and statuesque women.

  Socrates had rented a stall now and then to sell junk that he’d collected and repaired in his spare time. That was before he’d become a food packager and delivery man for Bounty Supermarket.

  When Trevor raised his head in a victorious grin he caught sight of Socrates.

  Socrates waved and Trevor gave him a happy nod.

  Beyond the men came a group of three boys—twelve to fourteen years old. Tough-looking children with tennis shoes that had no laces and jeans that hung low on their hips. They seemed heavy in their big coats, ambling forward like a mob of unruly bear cubs.

  The men stopped their game a moment to gauge the threat of the children.

  Darryl looked up from his mangled blade of grass. He put his hand on Socrates’ thigh.

  “That him?” Socrates asked in a voice that held absolutely no emotion.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Then let’s get wit’ it.”

  “I ca … I ca … I cain’t.”

  “You got to, Darryl. They ain’t no other choice.”

  Darryl’s eyes pleaded with Socrates but the ex-con showed no sympathy. He stood up and walked away. He went in a wide arc so as to avoid the attention of the rolling gang of boys.

  He went over to the group of men playing dominoes.

  “Hey, Trevor,” Socrates hailed.

  At that same moment the head bear cub, Philip, yelled, “Hey, punk. I told you to stay outta here.”

  {2.}

  “Your boy’s in trouble over there, Mr. Fortlow,” Trevor said when Socrates made it to their table.

  He hadn’t looked back until then. He didn’t want to witness Darryl running scared. But Darryl wasn’t running. He faced the shorter, heavier Philip. The other two boys stayed a couple of yards back. Darryl was holding out his hands in a reasoning posture.

  Good, Socrates thought, with those long arms he got the advantage.

  “You hear me, Socco?” Trevor Brown asked.

  “Say what?” Socrates was watching the boys closely.

  The men around him were talking, asking questions, but Socrates just stared. Nothing was real except those boys.

  Philip took a wild overhand swing at Darryl, who leaned back, wobbled a little bit, and then bounced forward with a textbook right cross. The fist found its target on Philip’s chin.

  The hard little gangbanger didn’t even flinch.

  Darryl had good training, and more courage than most, but he didn’t have enough muscle to back it up.

  Socrates took a deep breath and held it. Someone put a hand on his shoulder. Socrates stiff-armed whoever it was that touched him. He heard the man’s Wholp! and the sound of the dominoes skittering around.

  Darryl produced a steak knife from somewhere in his pants but Philip slapped it right out of the boy’s bony hands.

  Somebody shouted, “Hey, what the …” but Socrates didn’t hear the rest of what was said because he was moving. Philip’s fist made a meaty connection with Darryl’s jaw, and even though the lanky boy was tying up his attacker the way Socrates had taught him to, it wouldn’t be long before Darryl was hurt bad.

  Socrates kicked off his shoes to get better traction in the grass. Close to sixty, he didn’t feel old because hot blood was moving in him. He went quickly and quietly behind Philip’s two friends.

  Darryl doubled over from a fist in his gut.

  The first boy went down from a slap behind his head.

  Darryl screamed and twisted on the ground as a heavy foot barely missed his face.

  “Hey …” was all the second boy could get out before he was slapped senseless by Socrates.

  But Philip hadn’t seen his friends go down. He hit Darryl with a flying body slam that ended in a laugh and a hippy sexual grind.

  Darryl was screeching while Socrates disarmed the prone boys. He pulled a Glock, a rusty .22, and a switchblade from their clothes.

  “Turn over!” Philip shouted.

  Darryl was lying on his stomach with his hands and arms up over his ears.

  “Turn over, pussy boy!” Philip’s words were loud and slurred with passion. With his left hand he was trying to force Darryl to turn over. In his right hand he held up a .45 automatic.

  “Help!” Darryl shouted, and then, “Pleasepleaseplease.”

  Socrates slapped the gun from the upheld hand. When Philip turned around to see who it was, he got slapped so hard that he tumbled over twice, coming to rest in a heap.

  “All right!” shouted a domino player. The others were cheering.

  The other two boys were trying to rise but they didn’t know where they were.

  Socrates yanked Philip up by his arm. The boy was out. Socrates pinched his cheek hard and twisted. The pain woke him up.

  “You see me, boy? You hear me?”

  Philip’s head moved, maybe it was a nod.

  “Who you?” he asked.

  Socrates released him so that Philip stood under his own power, on uncertain feet. Socrates was going to hit him one more time; once more and he’d think twice before he messed around with Darryl again. Socrates grinned, thinking, Three times, an’ he’d be dead.

  But before even one more blow Trevor Brown shouted out, “Watch it! Watch out, Socco!”

  The big man swung around, ready for his death—or someone else’s. But what he saw almost made him laugh.

  Darryl stalked toward them on stiff legs, Philip’s .45 automatic held out before him in both hands. The boy lurched from side to side as he approached, the pistol pointing anywhere and everywhere.

  When he came up beside Socrates, Darryl stopped and brought the wavering muzzle up to about two feet from Philip’s chest. Philip’s widely spaced small eyes came awake while he was staring at that gun.

  Darryl looked to Socrates and then back at Philip. Darryl’s mouth opened in a wide, silent yowl. His eyes darted back and forth between friend and foe.

  “Don’t look at me,” Socrates said.

  Darryl’s aim got straighter and Philip took off. He ran straight past Darryl, then crouched low to avoid Socrates’ wide grab. He ran screaming toward the domino table as Darryl swung around to fire.

  “Shit!” a domino man shouted.

  They all went down to the ground but it wasn’t necessary. When Socrates touched Darryl’s arm the boy released the gun, letting it fall unfired to the grass.

  {3.}

  “I was scared,” Darryl sulked, staring down at Socrates’ pitted linoleum floor.

  “That was a damn good punch you give that boy,” Socrates answered. “Right on the chin.”

  Darryl sat up a little straighter.

  They’d come home carrying the knife and three pistols in a brown paper bag.

  “You stood up for yourself, Darryl,” Socrates said. “That’s all a black man could do. You always outnumbered, you always outgunned.”

  “But they gonna still be after me,” Darryl said. “They still gonna wanna get me.”

  “That’s right,” Socrates agreed, nodding. “But now you done stood up. Now you done your best, so you don’t have nuthin’ t’be sorry for—not ever again in your life.”

  “How that gonna help me?”

  “You done your job, Darryl. Now leave it up to me.”

  They had
smoked ham hocks, served with mustard, and rice for dinner.

  “What’s wrong, boy?” Socrates asked.

  “I’ont know. Nuthin’ I guess. I mean if I was like you I wouldn’t have no problems.”

  “Hm. If you was like me you woulda spent ten years on a dirt farm hopin’ your daddy got drunk enough to pass out ’cause if he didn’t you’d get your ass whipped with thick cord.”

  “He did that to you?” Darryl asked. “For nuthin’?”

  “When he fin’ly died my momma cried, not ’cause he was dead but because we lost the farm. But I was happy until I realized without him I didn’t eat ev’ry night. No, Darryl, you don’t wanna be like me.

  “You don’t wanna run wild in the street treatin’ women like they was dogs. Fightin’ an’ stealin’ an’ actin’ up till they put you in jail. Naw, man, you wanna get out from under all that shit. You got to.”

  “But I’ont know how,” Darryl said.

  After the dinner Socrates said, “You take my bed tonight. I’ll sleep out here on the couch. You worked hard today, you need a good sleep.”

  As he fell off to sleep, Socrates knew that Darryl couldn’t stay with him any longer. One day that gang of boys would find him. They’d either kill him or make him one of their own.

  Maybe not. It didn’t always happen like that. But he didn’t want to take the chance.

  “You sa’ed that boy’s life,” Trevor Brown had said in the park.

  Not yet, thought Socrates. Not yet.

  His mother entered in a dream. She was older but still standing straight and tall. They were in the small front room in the house in Cartersville. The picture window looked out over a field of jagged stumps of cornstalks.

  Socrates sat at a small table that had a fancy linen cloth across it. He was looking at his big hands while she stood next to the window that was filled with blue sky and the field of corn. The sun was so bright through the window that Mrs. Fortlow seemed to be in a shadow.