Our embrace would have hurt most people. It was strong and straining.
Two double bells sounded in the yard.
Etta’s arm moved up to caress my head in its padded vice. I felt that explosion go off in my chest again. The wind kicked up, fanning the tiny ember left years before.
Again, two double bells.
“That’s for you, Easy,” Etta said in a voice that had no sympathy with the words.
“I know.”
We kissed and then kissed again. But the ember didn’t have anything to catch on. My right hand laced itself together with her left.
Our smiles were sorry grins.
By the time the bells sounded again I was off down the stairs.
12
Mr. Rawlins,” Gladys Martinez, the snitch, said shyly, “Mr. Preston wants you to meet him in the aud.”
“Okay.” I turned to go. I wasn’t really mad at Gladys. The way I figured it, Sergeant Sanchez had told her to report on anyone who asked about Mrs. Turner. People in the working world went by the rules. That’s how they knew to survive.
“Mr. Rawlins,” Gladys called when I was half the way out of the door.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Stowe called from the central office. He said that he’d like you to come down there.”
Any other time I would have gone to meet Mr. Preston with no qualms. He was the boys’ vice principal at Sojourner Truth, and he was okay, in an aloof way. He was a squat, muscular man, in his late forties. Bill had come up the hard way, working as a gym teacher for twenty years before they promoted him.
I was a workingman just like him. But as I made my way to the eastern side of the administration building, I remembered the last time Preston wanted to see me in Truth Auditorium…
“…Mothahfuckah!” was the first word I had heard when I came through the back door. After that came the low murmur of another voice. It was the kind of man talk that sent sensible people going in the opposite direction.
The auditorium was mostly dark. From the elevated aisle I could see the two men standing in the glow of the floor lighting in the space down between the last row of seats and the stage.
“I don’t give a goddam ’bout all that shit! I want my boy and I want him right this mothahfuckin’ minute.” The man talking was big, really big. Taller than I was and younger too. From the look of those bulging short sleeves he was stronger than I had ever been.
The folding knife went limp in my pocket.
“He’s in good hands, Mr. Brown,” Bill Preston was saying. “Your son has been badly injured repeatedly over a long period of time. He has broken bones that have never been set right and maybe some internal damage…”
I hugged the shadows and moved down toward the men.
“I don’t know what the fuck you talkin’ about, man!” Brown screamed. “Eric’s just accident-prone. It’s in his feet.”
“Many of his injuries just couldn’t happen—”
Mr. Brown used both hands to push Preston backwards.
I flowed quickly through darkness.
I was next to the last tier of chairs, behind the brutal father — unseen by either man.
Preston righted himself and held up his hands.
“Hold on, Mr. Brown,” he said. “There’s enough trouble here already. When I saw what was wrong with Eric I had to call the nurse. She had to call the police. That’s the law. They took him to a hospital.”
“He my boy,” Brown said. “And I say what happens to him. If I say he goes to a hospital, well then, okay. If I say he stay home with a broke arm, you better believe that that’s where he gonna be.”
Andrew Brown — I’d later found out his name from the police forms I signed — was six foot four if he was an inch. Bill Preston might have grazed five-eight on a good day in his twenties. But despite the height difference, Bill Preston had a hidden advantage — he had steel springs in his legs. He pointed his right fist at Andy’s jaw and took off like a jet-powered pogo stick.
You could have heard the bones cracking from the back row. Andy Brown sagged backwards but he couldn’t fall down because Preston’s fists came on like mother birds protecting their nest. When the larger man finally slumped to the floor I was actually relieved for him.
The vice principal jumped up on the stage and ran back behind the curtains. I came over and kneeled down next to the unconscious man, to make sure that he was still breathing.
The jaw was definitely broken, his face was already swelling from the blows.
I heard something and looked up to see Bill Preston coming toward us with a black metal platform extender rod in his hands. He held the thing like a club. I stood up in front of Brown, expecting Bill to come to his senses. But he didn’t even see me. He raised the rod high and I tackled his midsection. Preston dropped his weapon, which fell on Brown’s foot, and started tussling with me.
“Bill! Bill! It’s me, man!” I yelled. “Stop! Stop!”
He struggled with great strength but no intent. When he said, “You can get off me now,” I knew that he’d regained self-control.
We sat there on the floor breathing hard. Preston rubbed his face. He was pressing so hard that I thought he might get crazy again.
“Let’s get our stories straight,” I said.
“What?”
“He pushed you,” I went on. “And then he was gonna hit you again. You threw your lucky punch and then fought until he was out of it. I was coming down the aisle and saw it all.”
“I wouldn’t have hit him if he hadn’t talked about the boy like that,” Preston said, remembering. “They shouldn’t let people like that have kids. They shouldn’t even let them live.”
“Hey, hey, hey, hey… hey.” I had my hands up in front of his face to keep his eyes off of Brown. “Let’s get down to the office and call the cops.”
“We can’t leave him here,” Preston said. “We have to tie him up or something.”
“Ain’t no niggahs gonna be tied up anywhere around here today.” I don’t know where the words in my mouth came from. But they were angry words and they weren’t to be toyed with. “We ain’t the police, and even though we got a story we both know what really happened.”
“But you should see what he did to his son.”
“You took the man’s child and broke his jaw. If he wants to get up and go before the cops get here, then we’re gonna let him.”
The cops found Andrew Brown trying to limp away from the school. He was the definition of a loser in L.A.: a man without a car.
Eric was in the nurse’s office the whole time. They tried to call his mother after the fight but she had to go down and get Andrew out of jail and into the hospital.
It took the courts to finally remove Eric from his home. Andrew had put him in the hospital that time. The police didn’t like that, and so they worked Mr. Brown over so bad that the judge took Eric away to keep his own police from someday being charged with murder.
Preston had been friendly with me since that day. Friendly in that superior-feeling white man kind of way. He’d do things like slap me on the shoulder and give me advice that I didn’t need.
The lights were on in the auditorium this time. Preston was down toward the front seated in one of the hard ash tiers. He was gazing up at the drawn curtains as if there were a play going on.
“Mr. Preston,” I called from the high ground.
He stood and waved. He didn’t look crazy so I strolled down to meet him. We walked out into the same space where he’d broken Andrew Brown’s jaw.
“Mr. Rawlins,” he said lamely. “How, um, how are you?”
“Fine,” I replied, smooth and cool as glass.
“The kids?”