“But you know,” she added, “I don’t think that he really is dead.”
“You don’t? Why not?”
“Just how Etta left. I believe that if he had died, she would’a made a funeral, invited everyone who ever loved him and everyone who wanted to make sure that he was gone. ’Cause you know Mouse had many enemies. Like you have, Easy.”
“Now I got to look over my shoulder?” I said, trying to sound amused.
“Man who travel in bad company got to expect grief and misery at the do’.”
“I can see that I knocked on the wrong door today.”
“I’ll tell you what, Easy,” Liselle said. “I will prove to you that you come here because’a trouble.”
“All right, prove it.”
“Christina Montes,” she said.
That brought the curtain down on my repartee. I think I managed to keep my mouth closed, but still Liselle smiled.
“Am I right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said with a sigh that I felt down in what the doctors called my bronchioles.
Liselle grinned and sat back in her wooden chair. She stretched her hand behind her and plucked a pint bottle from the edge of a bookcase. There was a small juice glass on the floor next to the chair. This she filled halfway with the amber fluid. She knew that I had given up drinking and so didn’t offer me a drink.
“What’s wrong with Tina?” I asked.
“Same thing that’s wrong with all women.”
I raised my eyebrows to ask for the other shoe.
“Men,” Liselle said. Her tone was more lascivious than it was angry. “Men mornin’, noon, and night are the bane of women and the joy of their lives.”
“She see a lotta men?”
“You just need one bad apple, Easy. You know that.”
“Does this bad apple have a name?”
“I call him the X-man,” Liselle said. “But she call him Xavier.”
“And how is this Xavier trouble?”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, Easy. He’s a good boy. If I was his mama, I’d swell with pride every time he walked into a room or opened his mouth. He’s skinny as a rail but brave and proud as a lion. That’s the kinda man a good woman want to have around.”
“So Tina’s a good woman?”
“Good as they come. Manners and charm. She got it all. Know how to fold a napkin on her lap and cleans up after herself without bein’ asked.”
“Don’t sound like trouble to me,” I said innocently.
“Yeah. You talk that sweet talk, baby. But you know the cops been to me askin’ about her, throwin’ dirt on her name” — I didn’t know but I had suspected as much — “an’ you know that the First Men been comin’ by with com’unist leaflets and rough talk about killin’ and burnin’ down the street. I asked ’em was they gonna burn down my house and they said no, but how you gonna start a fire an’ ask it to skip the houses you want to save? Once the flames get goin’, they burn down everything.”
“What did the police say?”
“That she was a revolutionary and could they search her room for arms.”
“Did you let them in?”
“Hell no. Shit. I got two guns under my own bed and another one in the hall closet. What the hell do it mean to have a gun?”
“How about a man named Henry Strong?” I asked.
“Yeah. Yeah. He was here. She introduced me to him as if he was a bowl of ice cream in the middle of the Sahara Desert. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she would tell the X-man that she was goin’ to the beauty parlor and spend the afternoon studyin’ revolution at Henry Strong’s feet — on her knees.”
“That’s all?” I asked.
“Yeah… sometimes that Conrad come by, but usually he was with his uncle.”
“Uncle? What uncle?”
“I don’t think that they were really related. He come to the door one day and I asked him who was that with him and he said his uncle, but then he smirked like it was some kind of joke.”
“What he look like?” I asked.
“Husky man. Thirty-five, maybe even forty. He looked all right but never spoke a word in my presence, never talked to anyone at all.”
“He have a name?”
Liselle twisted her face, trying to remember. All she came up with was the memory of the whiskey in her hand. She took a sip and said, “No. I don’t remember a name. A heavyset man. Big, you know, and dark.”
“Could the name have been Aldridge?” I asked.
Liselle shook her head. “I don’t remember,” she said.
I sat back then. The yen for a lungful of smoke hit me hard, but I refrained from asking Liselle for a cigarette.
“Do you know Tina very well?” I asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you trust me?”
Liselle stalled and then said, “I know that you aren’t a bad man, Easy. But like I said, you hang around some real hard times.”
“There’s been two murders already,” I said. “Those cops came here are more like vigilantes than they are law.”
“What you want with her?”
“You know John the bartender, right?”
“Yeah?”
“His girlfriend, Alva, got a boy named Brawly. He’s all messed up in the First Men. I’m tryin’ to get him outta trouble. But if I can help Tina, I’ll do that, too.”
“And how is Christina messed up in all’a this?”
“She knows Conrad, who’s a dirty piece’a work.…”
Liselle hummed her agreement.
“Brawly’s father was killed and the other man, Henry Strong, was murdered just this morning —”
“What?” Liselle said.
“So I think anybody on Tina’s side would be welcome.”
“What you want me to do, Easy?”
“I want you to talk to her, tell her who I am and what you think about me. If she hears that and wants some outside help, have her call me at home.”
“She ain’t been here in a couple’a days,” Liselle said. “But she bound to show up. All her clothes still up in her room.”
I wrote down my number on an egg carton that Liselle had thrown out.
When I opened the door to leave, Liselle put a hand on my arm and said in a conspiratorial tone, “I told you ’bout you an’ trouble now, didn’t I, Easy?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
25
FEATHER RAN AT ME the second I came in the door.
“Daddy, I got a B-plus on my Joan Arks book report,” she shouted.
She ran up and tackled me around the waist.
“Do you have to jump all over me?” I complained.
“I got a B-plus, Daddy,” she said again, ignoring my objections.
“Let me go,” I said.
Feather backed away from me with pain in her eyes.
The little yellow dog came up behind her, baring his teeth.
“I got a B-plus,” she said, and the first tear appeared.
“I’m sorry, baby, but I had a hard day. That’s good about your B. It’s good.”
“It’s a B-plus.”
“Hi, honey,” Bonnie said from the kitchen.
It struck me then that there was the smell of cooking in the air.
She was wearing a yellow wraparound dress with a red and blue silk cloth coiled in her hair. Her feet were bare.
“I forgot you were coming home today,” I said.
“You say that as if you want me to leave.”
“No. No, baby.”
Feather moved over to Bonnie and leaned against her side, frowning and staring at my shoes.
“Did you hear about Feather’s B-plus?” Bonnie asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s really great. I mean, I think we should have some special ice cream for dessert after a grade like that.”
Feather’s frown softened and she looked up as far as my shoulder.
I heard the faint sound of sawing coming from the backyard.
“What’s that
?”
“Jesus working on his boat.” It was Bonnie’s turn to frown.
“We’re talking about it,” I said.
“A child does not have the right to make up his mind whether or not he’s going to school,” she said.
“Jesus been a man as long as I can remember,” I told her. “If I died tomorrow and you disappeared, he would raise Feather all by himself. You could bet the farm on that.”
“Are you sick, Daddy?” Feather asked.
“No, honey. I’m fine.”
“All I’m saying,” Bonnie continued, “is that he needs to finish his education. He needs to understand how important it is.”
“How the hell you gonna tell me what that boy needs an’ you didn’t even know he was alive six months ago?” I said. “You don’t know. You don’t know what he’s thinkin’ or where he’s goin’. There’s all kindsa people up and down this block got education way over me. But we still livin’ on the same street, goin’ off to work every day. How am I gonna tell Juice that he got to do somethin’ I ain’t never done? How am I even gonna believe that shit?”
“Easy,” Bonnie said.
She glanced down at Feather, who was transfixed by my anger.
“I just mean let me work this out on my own, okay?”
“I’ll get dinner,” Bonnie said.
She headed for the kitchen. Feather followed in her shadow.
I reached for my shirt pocket but it was empty. I’d discarded the pack of Chesterfields earlier that day. There was half a carton on the top shelf of the hall closet, I knew. But I clenched my teeth and sat in my recliner. Nothing was going to beat me. Not Jesus’s demands or Lakeland’s designs, certainly not a flimsy little cigarette.
The fabric of the chair smelled of tobacco smoke. So did my fingertips. For five minutes all I could think about was smoking, or not smoking.
When I finally calmed down, Brawly Brown was waiting there in my mind. Big and clumsy, strong and easily influenced. Or was he smarter than he seemed? Was he the First Men’s fool, or was it John and Alva who were fooled by him? I couldn’t trust Alva’s opinion. John only cared about his woman.
If the heavyset man who’d come to Tina’s with Conrad was Aldridge, then I had at least one other person who was connected to both men.
I took a deep breath.
Something was missing.
What was I missing?
A cigarette.
“Dinner,” Bonnie called out the back door.
Brawly had to be involved in something serious. That’s the only way I could see the ambush set up outside of the housing tract near John’s places. There was no other way. Anyway, Strong told me that he was bringing me to Brawly, but that could have been a lie.
But if Brawly tried to kill me, if he murdered Henry Strong, then there was nothing I could do to help him. At least there was nothing I should do.
“Sure I killed him,” Mouse once said to me about a man who had been his friend. “Motherfucker turned on me. An’ you know once a dog taste your blood, he always got a hunger for more.”
How could I put a murderer back in the house with John? Back on the street with the rest of us?
“Easy.” Bonnie was standing there over me.
“Yeah?”
“Didn’t you hear me? Dinner’s ready.”
BONNIE’S LASAGNA WAS always a treat. The tomato sauce was dark red and spicy. She used four kinds of cheese and shredded veal rather than ground round. The salad had lots of Parmesan cheese and garlic in the dressing. The food tasted wonderful but it was somehow weaker than usual. I craved a cigarette. I kept taking deep breaths through my nose, but still I had the feeling of slow suffocation.
“Is something wrong, Easy?”
“No,” I said sharply. “Why you keep askin’ me that?”
“Because you keep sighing,” she said.
“Listen, if a man can’t sit down to a meal and take a deep breath, then maybe he shouldn’t even come home. You been pesterin’ me since I come in the door. What do you want?”
That silenced the table for more than a minute. It would have been even longer but I spoke again.
“I’m goin’ out for a while,” I said, standing up from the table.
“Don’t go, Daddy,” Feather pleaded.
“Where are you going, Easy?” Bonnie asked in a maddeningly reasonable tone.
I took another deep breath that came out in a sigh.
“To the market,” I said. “For our B-plus special ice cream. You want pistachio or chocolate chip, Feather?”
“Both,” she said.
THE LITTLE MARKET down the street was always open until ten. Mr. Tai was a night owl and everyone around the neighborhood knew that his was the only place, besides the overpriced liquor stores, where you could get prepared and packaged foods after eight.
“Sweet tooth tonight, Mr. Rawlins?” Tai asked when I brought the two half-gallon containers up to the register. I also had a pint of vanilla, which was for me.
“Good grade,” I said. “Feather got a B-plus.”
“That’s good. I got one girl get really good grades. She likes the books and the homework.”
“What about your other kids?” I asked.
I liked Tai. He had a slight build and a gentle disposition but he also had a vicious scar down the left side of his face. I’d once seen him throw a six-foot drunk on his ass out in front of his store.
“Two more girls. They will get married and make my grandchildren. One boy who fail everything,” Tai snickered. “Everything. If they gave him a test on what he ate for breakfast, he would fail that, too.”
“Doesn’t that bother you?”
“No.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I wait till he’s sixteen and then he come here and work with me. Eight o’clock we open up and ten we go home. If that don’t make him go back to school, then I have a partner. Tai and Son.”
The grocer gave me a wide grin.
26
I MANAGED NOT TO BITE anybody’s head off over ice cream. Feather spent most of her time eating from her bowl on Bonnie’s lap. Jesus, who probably knew me better than any other living being ever had, stayed away from me. He didn’t talk about his boat or dropping out. As a matter of fact, I don’t think he said a single word. All those early years as a mute had given him a close kinship with silence. Silence and patience at being understood.
After the children were in bed Bonnie made me a drink, a concoction made from a scoop of ice cream, vanilla flavoring, milk, eggs, nutmeg, and honey. In the old days I would have added a shot of bourbon to top it off.
We sat in the living room listening to the late news. There was a story about a Negro named Henry Strong who died instantaneously from a gunshot wound to the head in the early-morning hours. He lived at the Colorado Hotel on Cherry and was a native of Oakland, California.
“Do you want me to leave, Easy?”
“What?”
“Do you want me to move out of your house?” Bonnie asked.
“What are you talkin’ about, Shay?”
“You haven’t even touched me since you came in.” She was close to tears.
I moved over to the couch and put my arm around her.
“I was just… just… I was just preoccupied,” I said.
She shook off my arm and shifted away from me.
“We haven’t known each other very long, Easy. I know that when you helped me that your friend got killed.…”
“No one’s even sure that he’s dead,” I said. “And even if he is, that was between me and Raymond. We been livin’ up near the front lines ever since we were children. It ain’t nobody’s fault the way we lived. You didn’t ask him for nuthin’ and you weren’t there when the shit went down. You were there for me, though. You been there for the kids.”
“You needed somebody to love you, Easy. You were hurting and you were kind, too. But just because you’re grateful doesn’t mean you want me. I will leave if tha
t’s what’s best. I will.”
“That’s not what I want. No.”
Bonnie’s face was like the drawing of a black goddess from some Polynesian myth. The eyes slanted upward, her full lips perfectly shaped. Those lips parted and for a moment I forgot the hunger in my lungs and the pain of Raymond’s death. Even the trouble I’d burrowed down into didn’t seem like much.
“I been doin’ somethin’,” I said.
“What?”
I told her about John and Alva, about Brawly and the First Men. I told her about Aldridge and Henry Strong but refrained from letting on that I was at both murder scenes.
“It sounds too dangerous, Easy,” she said after I was done.
“Like when you were in trouble,” I said.
She kissed me and I kissed her, and then she kissed me again. I’d had an erection ever since her lips parted.
LATER THAT NIGHT we were in the bed, still kissing. Cigarettes must have something to do with sex somehow, because my desire for tobacco was completely gone for an hour and a half. All I needed was my baby. I could have taken that on the radio.
“So you’re upset because of the police and the political group?” Bonnie asked me between smooches.
I think she was looking for a way to talk me out of helping John.
“No,” I said. “I’m upset because I haven’t had a cigarette since early this morning.”
“Why don’t you have one then?”
“Because this is some serious business. I might have to move fast and I know from the stairs at Sojourner Truth that I don’t have much of a wind. I couldn’t trot around this block if I wanted to.”
“You’re a full-grown man, Easy,” she whispered into my armpit. “A man shouldn’t have to run.”
“Maybe there’s some white man somewhere think he don’t have to skip out now and then, but a black man anywhere in this United States better be able to run a mile and then another one.”
“I don’t want you out there running after trouble,” Bonnie complained.
“Then you don’t have to worry about me. I’m the runnin’-away kind.”
“That’s not true,” she said. “I wish it was, but it’s not.”
“You really wish that I was a coward?”
Bad Boy Brawly Brown Page 14
