“John said that you thought it was Brawly.”
The sun on her face made her pained expression seem unbearable.
“Brawly and Aldridge had been quarreling for years ever since… ever since Brawly ran away from home. I was trying to get them back together but… but there was never gonna be any peace between them.”
“What did they fall out over originally?”
“I never knew,” she said, but I didn’t believe it. “That was years ago. When I went to pick him up after the fight, his jaw was all swole up and he begged me to let him come stay at my house. When I asked him about his father he showed me a bloody tooth that Aldridge had knocked out of his head.”
“Why didn’t he go to his mother?” I asked.
“Didn’t John tell you?”
“We were with Alva. She was kind of emotional at the time.”
“She is… very emotional. That was back around the time that her brother Leonard was killed. She took it so hard that she had a nervous breakdown and they had to put her in Camarillo.”
Isolda turned her lips toward me and I had to concentrate to hear what she was saying. Her eyes looked deeply into mine, and I thought that if she wasn’t a good person in her heart, many a man would have hit some jagged rocks while being distracted by her charms.
Maybe that was why Alva disliked her so much.
“That’s why Brawly had to come to you?” I asked. “Because his mother was hospitalized?”
Isolda nodded. “She was really gone. When Brawly went to see her, before his fight with Aldridge, she told him that she couldn’t love him and that he shouldn’t come to see her anymore.”
“Why did you call Alva, Miss Moore?”
“Call me Issy,” she said. “That’s what I go by, mainly.”
“Why aren’t you at your own house, Issy?”
“I haven’t been back there for a few days. I went up to Riverside and when I came back, Brawly had — I mean, Aldridge was dead. I didn’t go back because I was afraid for Brawly.” She looked away. Maybe that meant she was taking it hard, or maybe she was going through the motions — practicing for a more serious interrogation.
“Why do you think it was Brawly?” I asked. “And why didn’t you go to the cops?”
“Aldridge had come into town a few weeks ago. He came to see me.”
“He was your boyfriend?”
Isolda shifted her eyes toward the window. Again they glittered in the light. I doubt if she was looking at anything. Her gaze was definitely of the internal variety.
“We were close. I mean, Aldridge kept his own schedule. If he come to town and I was with a man, he let me alone. But if I was free, he’d stay with me awhile.”
“Did Alva know about you two?” I asked, looking for some kind of thread.
“I haven’t spoke to Alva in ten years.”
“Did Brawly know that his father was shacked up with you?”
I had hoped the rough language would get under her skin, but Isolda wasn’t worried about me or what I thought.
“He came by when Aldridge was there, about two weeks ago. They were eyein’ each other like wild animals in the entryway, but I had them sit down at the table like two normal human beings. I made tea and brought out some bread and butter. I told them that they was father and son and that they had to start actin’ like it.”
Isolda turned her gaze on me again. I didn’t mind the attention. I wondered how those men felt.
“It went okay at first,” she said as if I had asked my question. “They talked and asked each other ’bout what they been doin’. Brawly even laughed once.”
Isolda had the wistful tones of love in her voice. I wonder if it was love for Brawly or for his father.
“But then Aldridge had to come out with that damn flask,” Isolda said. “Said he wanted to make a toast to their seein’ each other after so long.”
“He was a bad drunk?” I asked.
“Both of ’em,” she said with a sneer. “Both of ’em. That’s why I give ’em tea. They drank to their reunion. They drank to me. They drank to a long life and who knows what else. Then Aldridge made the mistake of toastin’ Brawly’s mother. Brawly told his father that he never wanted to hear her name outta his mouth again.”
She said these last words in the tone Brawly must have used. It made me cringe. I’d seen drunken men kill over just that tone of voice.
“The only reason one or the other wasn’t killed right then was that I put my body in between ’em.” Isolda put a hand in the air, swearing.
She pulled down the left shoulder sleeve of her polka-dot dress, revealing an ugly green bruise just above the curve of her breast. It was one of those deep marks that last for months.
“That’s what I had to get before they stopped,” she said. “I pushed Brawly out the door and told him not to come back until he learned how to be civil.”
“So where were you when Aldridge was killed?” I asked.
“In Riverside, like I said,” she said. “I heard about a man gettin’ killed on my block on the radio and I called a neighbor to find out what happened. As soon as I knew, I came back down — in case Brawly needed me.”
“And why didn’t you go to the cops? If you didn’t do it, then there’s no reason to be scared.”
“You ever been questioned by the cops?” Isolda asked me.
For the first time our eyes really met. It was no man-and-woman gaze, but a real understanding.
I had been “questioned” a hundred times and more. And every time my life and liberty had been on the line. It hadn’t mattered that I was innocent or that they had no proof of my guilt. There was no Emancipation Proclamation posted on the jailhouse bulletin board. No Bill of Rights, either.
The sleeve of Isolda’s dress was still hanging off her shoulder. My fingertips got itchy with the closeness of her flesh.
“Do you think Brawly could overpower a man Aldridge’s size?” I asked.
“How you know about his size?”
“Alva told me,” I said, hoping he was a fat man when she had known him.
“Brawly look like a kid,” she said. “He might be a kid in his mind. But he’s strong, scary strong. At a high school picnic once, when Brawly was livin’ with me, some kids bet him that he couldn’t pull a big stone out the ground. That rock was big. Big. Brawly yanked it up like it was made’a cardboard instead’a granite. You know he was with a couple’a heavyset footballers. I could see the fear in them boys’ eyes.”
“Did Brawly make that bruise on you?”
“I don’t remember. It was a whole mess. Them pushin’ and shovin’ all over the place. But even if he did do it, it was only ’cause I got in the way.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know.”
“He have any friends you know about?”
“Why are you askin’ me all these questions? Are you some kinda policeman or sumpin’?”
“Just a friend’a John and Alva’s, like I said. They asked me to look for Brawly, and that’s what I’m doin’.”
“Well, I ain’t seen ’im since he left outta my house two weeks ago.”
“Did he say where he was goin’?”
“He said he was gonna kill Aldridge if he didn’t watch out.”
“You didn’t tell me if he had any friends.”
“There was this one white girl. BobbiAnne Terrell was her name, I think. They went to high school together.”
“Up in Riverside?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Would you know her number?”
“No. Maybe it’s in the book.”
Somewhere during our conversation a coldness set in between me and Isolda. Maybe it was because I represented Alva. Or maybe she saw no use in me.
“Why’d you call Alva, Issy?”
“To tell her about Aldridge and Brawly. And to find out if she knew where he was.”
“Why’d you want to know that?”
“I was like a mother to that boy,
Mr. Rawlins. And that’s some-thin’ that don’t just wear off.”
11
I GOT TO JOHN’S lots somewhere about noon.
There were other houses under construction on that block but nobody was out there on Sunday, nobody but John’s crew.
Mercury and Chapman were sitting on the skeleton of a front-porch-to-be, drinking from small paper cups.
“Wanna snort, Mr. Rawlins?” Mercury asked as I approached.
“What’s John gonna say if he see you out here throwin’ back liquor on the job?” I asked.
Since I’d recommended them, I felt somewhat responsible for their actions.
“John’s a bartender, ain’t he?” Chapman whined. “An’ anyway, he left for home a hour ago. He said that he’d see us tomorrow.”
“You want us to tell ’im you come by, Mr. Rawlins?” Mercury asked.
I picked a newspaper out of a big trash bin, unfolded it, and set it out on the unfinished porch. Then I sat down.
“Actually it’s good that John’s gone, because I wanted to talk to you boys when he wasn’t around.”
Mercury and Chapman exchanged glances. I was glad to see that they were bothered. It meant that they wanted to protect my friend.
“Don’t worry, boys,” I said. “It ain’t nuthin’ against John. Really it’s to help him out.”
“What is it?” Mercury asked.
Chapman clenched his hands together and stared off toward his right.
They were a good team. Chapman was the smart one but Mercury had the personality. He’d asked the questions while Chapman contemplated the answers.
“It’s about Brawly,” I said.
“What about him?”
“What do you boys think?”
“Think about what?” Mercury asked.
“About him quittin’ this job and cuttin’ it off with his mother.”
“We don’t know nuthin’ about their family life, Easy,” Chapman said. “I mean, not no more than might come up in normal conversation while workin’ around here.”
“Like what?” I asked.
Mercury looked to Chapman, who stuck out his lips and nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Brawly’s a good kid,” Mercury said. “Strong as a motherfucker but not no bully. He got temper, though. When Brawly blow his stack you better stand back. One day he got mad at John an’ almost —”
Chapman brushed his hand against his lips, and Mercury switched gears.
“… anyway… Brawly’s a good kid. He just young and stupid.”
“Stupid how?”
“For about a couple’a months now he been talkin’ that Revolutionary Party bullshit. John didn’t like it and Alva didn’t, either, to hear Brawly tell it —”
“Brawly said that they told him he had to quit goin’ to those meetins, or he was gonna be out the house,” Chapman threw in.
That reminded me of something.
“Kicked outta where?” I asked. “You couldn’t squeeze three people in that place they live in.”
“They paid the rent on a studio in that buildin’ they lived in. Brawly stayed down there,” Mercury said, “on the first floor.”
“Studio?” I said. “What in the hell is it that John got?”
“That’s a one-bedroom,” Chapman said. “A deluxe one-bedroom, if you believe what the manager say.”
Chapman and Mercury laughed. I joined in with them. It was only the tip of the iceberg of what was to come in L.A., but right then it was rare enough to be funny.
“What did Brawly say about that political group?”
“Not much,” Mercury mused. “Not too much. He liked it that they were so mad and that they wanted to do somethin’. You know that’s just youth, Mr. Rawlins.”
“He ever talk about his father?” I asked.
“Now and then,” Chapman said. “Not too much.”
“Yeah,” Mercury said while staring down at his work boots. “He only said that him and his old man had a, whatyoumacallit, a disagreement. But that was a long time ago.”
“They have a fight?” I asked.
“Somethin’ like that,” Mercury said. “The boy said somethin’ that they had a fight over his mother or somethin’ like that a long time ago and his old man hit him so hard that he knocked out one’a his teeth. That was when he was still a teenager. Then he tramped on down to his cousin Issy. Now her I done seen. You know that there’s the kinda cousin your orphan boys dream about.”
Chapman let out one of his big laughs. I didn’t find it funny, but I knew what he was saying.
“Where’d you see Isolda?” I asked.
“She drop by now and then to pick up Brawly,” Mercury said. “You know, family stuff, I guess. She’d take him for burgers. It was always on the sly, like. I don’t think her and Alva got along too well.”
Chapman looked at me then. He held out his hands halfheartedly asking, Is that it?
“Well,” I said. “I guess you boys better be gettin’ back to work.”
“I guess so,” Chapman said.
ON THE RIDE HOME I wondered about the complex weave of John’s problem. His wife, her murdered ex-husband and brother, her son living with her cousin while she was suffering from a nervous breakdown, and the black revolutionaries with their hopeful anger, and the cops breathing down their necks.
By the time I got home I was ready to talk to my son.
He was in the backyard setting up three sawhorses, each one spaced about four feet from the next. He also had out a few planks of wood about ten feet long and four feet wide. They were between one and a half and two inches thick.
“What you doin’?” I asked him.
“I’m gonna build a boat,” he said.
“Where’d you get the wood?”
“Bought it from Mr. Galway at the lumberyard.”
“He deliver it?”
Jesus nodded.
This was a new phase in his life. Jesus had never before spent money on himself. Ever since he was quite young he saved his money, for fear that I’d lose my job or be put in jail. He worked four afternoons a week at a local market, bagging groceries and making deliveries for old women. Every cent went into a coffee can in his closet. In his mind everything would always be fine because if I fell down, he would be there to take up the slack.
I tried to convince him that he didn’t have to worry, that he could buy himself toys or clothes or anything he wanted. But Jesus had spent his younger years with my friend Primo. In Primo’s world a boy was just a smaller version of a man; he might not have been able to do as much as his larger counterpart but he was expected to do all that he could manage.
“What kinda boat?” I asked.
“Sail,” Jesus said.
“You know how to build a sailboat?”
“There’s a book.” Jesus pointed at a large paperback that he’d gotten from the library. It was lying on the back porch, open to a page that showed three sawhorses spaced four feet apart. “It says that there’s one hundred and sixty-one steps to build a sailboat.”
“Come here and sit down with me,” I said.
We sat together on the concrete porch. I was looking at Jesus as he stared at the grass beneath his bare feet.
“What’s this about droppin’ out of school?”
“I don’t like it there,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t like the kids or the teachers,” he said.
“You got to say more if you want me to understand you, Juice. I mean, did somebody do something to make you mad?”
“Uh-uh. They’re just stupid.”
“Stupid how?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must have some kind of example. Did somebody do something stupid last week?”
Jesus nodded. “Mr. Andrews.”
“What did he do?” I was used to asking Jesus questions. Though he had been speaking since he was twelve, words were still a rare commodity for him.
“Felicity Dorn was crying.
She was sad because her cat died. Mr. Andrews told her that she had to be quiet or he was going to send her to the vice principal’s office and she would miss a big test. And if she didn’t take the test, she’d probably fail out.”
“He was just trying to keep her from distracting the class.”
“But her mother died just last year,” Jesus said, looking up at me. “She couldn’t help how bad she felt.”
“I’m sure he didn’t know that.”
“But he should know. He’s the teacher. All he knows is the states and their capitals and what year the presidents died.”
“Are you gonna let somebody like that keep you from going to college and bein’ something?”
“He went to college,” Jesus said, “and it didn’t help him.”
I managed to keep the smile off my face. Inside I was proud of the man my son was becoming.
“You can’t decide to leave school because one teacher’s a fool,” I said.
“That’s not all. They think I’m stupid.”
“No.”
“Yes, they do. They don’t wanna teach me. They give me homework but they don’t care if I turn it in. They like it that I run fast but they don’t care.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
Jesus got up and moved toward his sawhorses. I touched his elbow and he stopped.
“We need to talk about this more, Juice. We need to talk about it until we can both decide. You hear me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right. Go work on your boat.”
12
I PULLED UP in front of the restaurant at about nine.
Hambones didn’t have an exit to speak of. They had a back door leading into a crevice that Sam called the alley. But that was just for the fire code, nobody could really get out that way. So I sat in my green Pontiac, which rattled whenever I pushed it over fifty miles per hour, and waited.
Hambones was a dive by 1964, but in the old days only the flashiest men and women went in there at night. That was the way it was for blacks. We couldn’t frequent the fancy clubs in Hollywood and Beverly Hills. And we didn’t have that class of joint in our working-class neighborhoods. So men would put on their glad rags and women would don their costume jewelry and furs and go down to some local hangout where there was a jukebox and the pretense of luxury. After a few months of notoriety musicians would begin to frequent the place. Sam Houston had Jelly Roll Morton and Lips McGee as regulars in his joint in the fifties. Louis Armstrong even made an appearance once.
Bad Boy Brawly Brown Page 6
