Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned

by Walter Mosley

Her face was squashed in on itself. No forehead to speak of and little chin. She was quite dark except for her eyes. The whites of the ugly woman’s eyes were like hundred-watt bulbs.

  “Why you comin’ in here every day, Mr. Fortlow? I used to only see you once a week.”

  “Expectin’ a letter,” he said.

  “A check?” Sylvia’s eyes increased their voltage.

  “Old girlfriend,” he said.

  “Oh,” the shopkeeper cooed. Her voice had become low, and very sexy. “That stuff is better’n money sometimes; ’cept if you hungry.”

  “’Cept if she gone,” Socrates added.

  They both laughed hard.

  “All right then,” Socrates said, concluding their play. “I’ll see ya tomorrah.”

  “Good seein’ you anytime, Mr. Fortlow.” Sylvia’s voice was sincere.

  Socrates was feeling good as he left the little store even though he’d come to realize over the four weeks since he’d sent his letter that Theresa was gone from him forever—again.

  In his sleep Sylvia was still laughing. But instead of a happy friend she sounded like a cartoon witch, cackling and savoring his pain. Her hot coughs battered against his eardrums and soured his stomach. In the middle of the night Socrates woke up feeling as if the flu had returned.

  If he stayed awake he was okay. But if he dozed, or even lay down, the laughing returned and with it the sick stomach.

  “You should take the day off, Mr. Fortlow. You look bad,” Sol Epstein said. There was concern in his wrinkled white face.

  “Naw, man. No. Lemme do another shift.”

  “Another shift? You look like you should be in the hospital.”

  “I can’t sleep, Mr. Epstein. Maybe if I work two shifts I’ll be tired enough to go to bed.”

  “What’s wrong?” the daytime manager asked.

  “It’s these dreams, man. Not dreams really but like things I see and hear in my sleep.”

  Sol Epstein was a short man, strong on top and fat underneath. His hair was the kind of gray that seemed to be blue. He had the cruel slate-gray eyes of a task-master but his smile, when he smiled, made him a kind uncle.

  He smiled then.

  “You might need some help, Socrates.”

  “What kinda help?”

  “Counselor. Psychologist. Somethin’ like that.”

  “Shit. Only counselin’ I need is to work my butt off until I cain’t see straight no more. That’s what I need.” Socrates was thinking about the prison psychiatrist. All he’d done was to give tests with circles and squares on them, that and pass out drugs.

  “Can I stay?” Socrates asked.

  “Sure,” said the kind uncle.

  {5.}

  He worked seven shifts in four days and stopped picking up the mail from Sylvia Marquette. He drank a half pint of whiskey while listening to the cool jazz radio station every night.

  Nothing helped.

  He couldn’t sleep.

  He was losing weight and his hearing had turned strange. Sounds had become louder, tinny. Sometimes he didn’t hear what people said at all. Whenever anyone spoke to him it seemed as if they were speaking Chinese or some other foreign language.

  He looked older in the mirror, and for the first time in his life he felt weak in his arms and hands. He knew that he couldn’t win a fight with his hands and so he started carrying a knife again and listening closer to the foreign language that everyone around him was speaking.

  He was listening for threatening tones.

  One day he was watching Sol Epstein from the back of the store. Sol was giving his kind-uncle smile to Noah Hoag, a young boxboy. Socrates remembered Sol’s advice to him about a counselor. He knew that it was his only chance.

  The next day Socrates took out his delivery push wagon. He dropped off groceries for Watson, Kirkaby, and Stein. Eight seventy-five in tips. Then he went down the long Beverly Hills alley that was better paved and maintained than most of the streets in Watts. He passed behind a house that was on Chaldy Lane and quickly pushed his cart through a redwood doorway parking it behind a stand of rose bushes.

  He knocked on Mrs. Hampton’s back door but he knew that she was in Miami visiting her dying sister. He put on his work gloves, took the key from the light fixture over the door, and let himself into the small house.

  White walls trimmed with green and dark wood furniture decorated every room. Small photographs of relatives stood on each windowsill. The smell in the cool air was faint and sweet.

  Socrates delivered a brisket roast or two small chickens, bell peppers, potatoes, and frozen containers of diet lemonade to Mrs. Hampton every Tuesday. Sometimes she’d call in to add to that order. She’d told him about the key for days when she was out. And if she was out there was always a four-dollar tip waiting for him on the dinette table next to the phone.

  There was no tip today. Socrates sat at the table and peered through lace curtains out onto Chaldy Lane. A horn tooted somewhere and Socrates realized how quiet it was in that house. No one talking, no loud banging.

  You only had to remember the exchange to dial this number because the last four digits were the letters G-I-R-L.

  “Girls,” a pleasant woman’s voice said. “What kind of girl do you want, sir? Blond, brunette, Asian baby?”

  “I wanna talk to Theresa,” Socrates said.

  The pleasant voice hesitated a moment. Maybe she heard the deep violence and despair in him.

  “Just a moment,” she said.

  The phone clicked and there was dead silence. After a few seconds Socrates began to wonder if they had hung up.

  “Hello?” It was a black woman’s voice.

  “Theresa?”

  Another hesitation and then, “Yeah. Who’s this?”

  “It’s Socrates.”

  “Oh hi, Socrates,” she said, loud and happy, it seemed, to hear an old friend. “What do you want me to do for you? You wanna hear what I got on?”

  “How are you, Theresa?”

  “I’m fine. Real fine.”

  “Uh-huh. You know it’s been a while.”

  “Yeah,” the woman answered, her voice more subdued. “What is it you want from me, Mr. Socrates?”

  “I just want some talk is all.”

  “Talk about what?” she asked, hardly pleasant at all.

  “I wanna talk to Theresa.”

  “And what is it you need to say to me?”

  “Are you Theresa?”

  “I am right now. Yeah. Now what did you have to say? Because you know I cain’t be listenin’ to no weird shit, baby.”

  “It’s just been a long time an’ I wanna catch up. That’s all.”

  “You been sick?” Telephone Theresa asked.

  Socrates coughed out a harsh laugh. “Yeah. That was the last thing on a whole line’a things. I was sick an’ I dreamed about you.”

  “What was I wearin’?” she asked.

  “You had on them tan slacks and that ole T-shirt’a mine. I was all beat up and you put a cold towel on my head.” Tears were coming from Socrates’ eyes but he kept the crying out of his voice.

  “Uh-huh,” the woman said. “What else?”

  “I don’t get in trouble like that anymore. I don’t get into fights every night. I only drink in my house sometimes. You know I learned some things, Theresa. I’m outta jail and I ain’t goin’ back there no more.”

  “Yeah, baby, that’s good,” the woman answered. “What you wanna do now that you outta jail? You missed bein’ with a woman when you was in there?”

  “The first few years it was hard but not no more. I got it now. You know I figgered out that livin’ is kinda like music. You know what I mean? Like when you walk, you know. Ev’ry step is the same length and takes the same amount’a time. An’ your heart too. Even your eyes blinkin’ is pretty much the same beat unless somethin’ messes up. Maybe somethin’ gets in your eye or you gotta run …”

  Telephone Theresa made the quick hollow breath of half-yawn but
Socrates didn’t care.

  He went on, “… an’ if you could keep up that beat they ain’t no reason t’be drunk or mad.”

  “How long were you in jail?” Theresa asked.

  “Twenty-seven years.”

  “And did you miss your girl all that time?”

  “I thought about you every night. I knew you were right. I knew that I did wrong. But it was like I couldn’t help it. I thought about all the children and good times and even the bad times we coulda had. Maybe I’da got fat and lazy drinkin’ beer on the front porch while you was on the phone to your girlfriends and yellin’ at the kids to stop all that horseplay. I thought about it so much that I prob’ly lived it more than if I was free.”

  “Did you miss my body?” the woman asked.

  “Yes,” he whispered. “Yes I did.”

  “Would you lay up in that cot at night holdin’ on to yo’self an’ thinkin’ how you wanted me to kiss it?”

  Socrates nodded.

  “Huh?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “’Cause that’s what I wanted, baby. I missed that hard dick you got for me. I was thinkin’ about that. I wanted you to fuck me with that.”

  Another horn honked in the street. Weeks later when Socrates was telling Right Burke about what a crazy fool he had been, breaking into Mrs. Hampton’s house and trying to call the woman of his dreams, he remembered that horn.

  “It was Telephone Theresa’s dirty talk and that horn,” Socrates said to Right at a checkers table in McKinley Park. “That made me wake up.”

  “Wake up?” the maimed vet said. “You was sleepwalkin’?”

  “Yup. Ever since I had that flu I been in a dream. She was so real, man. I believed that I saw her. I even tried to write. Here I ain’t spoke to her in thirty-fi’e years an’ I’m tryin’ t’write her a letter, tryin’ t’call her on the phone.”

  “Damn,” Right said, rubbing his chin with his paralyzed claw. “You was way out there, huh? Did you really think that that was your old girlfriend on the phone?”

  “I wanted it to be, Right. I wanted to pretend so much that maybe a little bit I thought it was real. But then when that girl started to get my dick hard I knew I couldn’t pretend no more. The woman I wanted was gone. Gone.”

  {6.}

  A month passed. Socrates had settled back down into his routine. He slept every night straight through, getting up only twice to go to the toilet.

  Mrs. Hampton didn’t seem to suspect him of breaking in and using her phone. Maybe she was so rich that the ten or twelve dollars just slipped by her. Maybe she complained and the telephone company let it go.

  Darryl was growing every day. His voice got deeper and his walk became graceful. He was doing the push ups that Socrates had showed him and his arms grew thicker and firm.

  Socrates was coming home from work one day when a woman called out to him, “Mr. Fortlow! Socrates! Hey!”

  Sylvia Marquette came up to him. The full sun on Central Avenue did not, in any way, dim the brightness of her eyes.

  “You ain’t been by in six weeks, Mr. Fortlow,” she said.

  “No,” Socrates agreed.

  Something about the woman still disturbed him. Her squashed-down face, the hairs that sprouted from a black mole on her right cheek.

  “You got that letter,” she said.

  Dear Mr. Fortlow,

  It’s been many years since I even thought your name. For a long time I hoped that I would never hear of you again and, God forgive me, sometimes I even hoped that you’d never get out o that jail. But your letter touched my heart and I finally thought to write and answer your questions. I’m sorry that it has taken so long but I’m blind now and I had to wait for my granddaughter, Cova, to come by and read your letter to me.

  My daughter, Theresa, married Criston Jones in 1961. They gave me four beautiful grandchildren (including Cova, who is writing this letter) and then moved to Los Angeles. They had four more children out there. Criston worked at McDonnell Douglas for many years and then he died from diabetes. Criston was a healthy eater but his bones and organs just couldn’t take all that weight.

  Theresa saw her last baby, Teju, through college and then she collapsed from all that work. She was admitted to Falana Rest Home on Criston’s health insurance but she never recovered. Theresa Childress-Jones died on November third of last year. She is survived by Malcolm, Cova, Mister, Sandy, Criston Jr., Minnie, Lana, and Teju. All of her children are healthy and well. Most of them have good jobs, though Teju and Lana have become artists.

  I know that you cared for my daughter, Mr. Fortlow, and I’ll tell you that Theresa lived a good life. She was happy and rich in love. I never heard her say a harsh word about you and I know it broke her heart to see you go to jail.

  Theresa Childress-Jones is buried at Valley Rest in Pomona next to her husband. There’s a plot to her left for me, Mr. Fortlow. I’m eighty-four and so I’ll probably be coming out to rest next to my daughter before too long.

  I’m glad that you’ve found some peace, Mr. Fortlow. I know that Theresa would have been glad too.

  Sincerely yours,

  Rose Childress

  It took three and a half hours by bus to get to Valley Rest. Socrates got there on an overcast and warm afternoon. Her slender marble headstone stood elegant and straight next to Criston’s. His stone was wider and not quite as tall.

  On each stone there was merely a name and the dates.

  Socrates wanted more.

  He wanted an address and a phone number; an invitation to her house when everybody was there for the Fourth of July. He wanted Nat King Cole on the record player playing out of the window and a cold beer on the patio with the both of them. Him and Criston talking about work and where they came from in Indiana; Theresa calling the children over one by one to meet the man who could have been their father.

  He would have been standing right there on that spot for Criston’s funeral. Theresa would be vulnerable but he wouldn’t take advantage of her. He’d offer consoling talk, money, or to fix things around the house. He’d hold her hand and tell her that she had eight kids and one old friend who needed her not to die.

  He wanted to take her back to Rose on Rose Street.

  He wanted, for the first time since he was young, to go back home. He could have walked with her down Rose to Thatcher and down Thatcher to Thirty-Second Street just to see where the streetcars used to run with an old friend who had forgiven him. He wanted to hear that forgiveness.

  Socrates stared at the graves for over an hour, wanting; his jaw clenched to keep from shouting at the stones. His heart beat erratically and fast. In prison he had learned to live without desire. And now that he had let desire in he wanted everything.

  All that wanting wore on him until the only desire left was to lie down and sleep on Theresa’s grave. But he knew that it was wrong. He knew, beyond that, that it was probably against the rules.

  He stood there wavering over the grave.

  “Hey, mister,” a voice said.

  He was a small black man dressed in a too warm brown suit and wearing a short-brimmed hat. He might have been Socrates’ age but looked older, more resigned.

  “Yeah?” Socrates said.

  “These your people?” the man asked.

  Socrates nodded slightly.

  The man peered at the stones mumbling numbers on his lips. Socrates realized that he was figuring out their ages.

  “It’s a shame how so many black folks die so young,” the man said.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Socrates said loudly. The trees shimmered green and silver under pearl-gray skies. “I think a whole lotta our people put more into a year than some others might do. Sometimes it just takes a hour and you done had a lifetime.”

  HISTORY

  {0.}

  Socrates stayed in his house for three days watching the tiny black-and-white TV screen. He turned the volume off after the first few moments of coverage. There were mainly aerial sh
ots of the blocks burning around him. That and the continual video replay of some white man being dragged from a truck and beaten by raging black men.

  He stayed in his tiny rooms, eating boiled rice and tuna sandwiches, but Socrates wasn’t afraid of the riot; not, at least, of any harm that might befall him. Any harm in Mr. Fortlow’s vicinity would fall upon somebody else—that’s why he stayed inside.

  He’d served up Molotov cocktails every night in his prison dreams. He broke white flesh with his fists and laughed as the cellblock collapsed.

  In prison he prayed for his door to spring open and a riot to be waiting outside. He would have been willing to die.

  The smoke coming through the cracks in his apartment walls smelled of sweet revenge. Every scar on his body and curse in his ear, every sour stomach and sleepless night, every minute in prison, every white girl on a magazine cover, every image in his mind for twenty-seven years of incarceration wanted out in that street.

  But Socrates stayed inside refusing to ball up his fists. He heard the mobs roaming the streets through his thin walls. He watched them, on the mute TV, living out his dreams.

  On the third day he saw the snowy image of a billboard falling from its high perch. He wasn’t sure but then they replayed the footage on Channel 13 half an hour later. The sign said HARPO’S BAZAAR. He knew that sign. He knew that there was only one place for it to fall.

  Socrates forgot the TV after that. The images played on but Socrates was remembering back several years, back when he had just gotten out of jail.

  Those days he spent roaming the streets; a free man after all those years locked away. He was waiting for somebody to give him a look so he could break their face for them. Whenever he’d see a young woman in short pants and halter top he’d taste whatever it was that he’d eaten last. The twisted face from his sour stomach would scare all the women away from him, and somewhere, inside, he was relieved.

  He knew that he was on a path to violence.

  He knew that he’d die before they got him back in the cage.