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Bunting and Sansoam were dead, but I didn’t feel bad about their passing. I didn’t feel guilt. The cops were in the wrong, but I wasn’t. Those men had run a murdering streak from Vietnam to California and they wouldn’t have stopped with Faith Laneer. They’d have come after me soon enough, not knowing what I might have against them.
I had a lot of living to make up for after a year of moping around because of Bonnie.
The scatter of stars over the lightless ocean called to me on the high rise up the side of the coastal mountain.
Bonnie had to turn me away. She had to marry Joguye. Africa and the Caribbean were closer to each other than America could ever be to either. He was a king and I was a bum. And tonight I would drive so far away that no one could find me to tell me if anything had changed.
My children were safe and living in a mansion. I wasn’t there to watch over them, but they had Jesus. Jesus — the boy who had always been the better man.
I lit a cigarette, took a hit off my cognac bottle, and made up my mind to call my little tribe at daybreak. They deserved to know where I was.
I wouldn’t give them a number to call me because if they knew the number, every time the phone rang I’d wonder if they’d given it to Bonnie.
A big sixteen-wheeler was having trouble with the rise. I moved out a little to make sure there was no one coming and then hit the gas. I had just about cleared the cab when I saw the headlights of an oncoming car.
That was no problem. There was a shoulder to the left. I widened the arc of my turn and tapped the brake to slow down. I had no idea that the shoulder would thin out and then fade away. I jammed down on the brakes, but by that time the wheels were no longer on solid ground. The engine stalled out, and the wind through the windows was a woman howling for help that would never come.
“No,” I said, remembering all the times I had almost died at the hands of others: German soldiers, American soldiers, drunkards, crooks, and women who wanted me in the grave.
The back of my car hit something hard, a boulder, no doubt. Something clenched down on my left foot, and pain lanced up my leg. I ignored this, though, realizing that in a few seconds I’d be dead.
Quickly I tried to come up with the image I needed to see before I died. My mind reached toward the top of the cliff. I was grasping for Bonnie, Faith, and my mother. But none of them was around for my last seconds.
The front of the car hit something, making a loud bang and a wrenching metal sound. Chevette Johnson rushed into my mind then. She was sleeping on my new couch, safe from an evil world.
I think I smiled, and then the world went black.
About the Author
Walter Mosley is the author of the acclaimed Easy Rawlins series of mysteries, including national bestsellers Cinnamon Kiss, Little Scarlet, and Bad Boy Brawly Brown; the Fearless Jones series, including Fearless Jones and Fear Itself; the novels Blue Light and RL’s Dream; and two collections of stories featuring Socrates Fortlow, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, for which he received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and Walkin’ the Dog. He was born in Los Angeles and lives in New York.
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