"Just a fool," Ernest said. "Thas all. Jackson here is too."
"What happened?"
Jackson was a small man and very dark. He was so black that his skin glinted blue in the full sun. He cowered and shone his big eyes at the door.
"Lenny's girlfriend, you know Elba, left him again," Ernest said.
"Yeah?" I was wondering how to turn the conversation to Frank Green.
"And she come purrin' 'round Jackson just t'get Lenny riled."
Jackson was looking at the floor. He wore a loose, striped blue suit and small-brimmed brown felt hat.
"She did?"
"Yeah, Easy. And you know Jackson stick his business in a meat grinder if it winked at him."
"I'idn't mess wit' her. She jus' tole'im that." Jackson was pouting.
"I guess my stepbrother be lyin' too?" Lenny was right there with us. It was like a comic scene in the movies because Jackson looked scared, like a cornered dog, and Lenny, with his fat gut hanging down, was like a bully dog bearing down on him.
"Back off!" Ernest shouted, putting himself between the two men. "Any man can come in here wit'out fightin' if he wants."
"This skinny lil booze hound gonna have to answer on Elba, Ernie."
"He ain't gonna do it here. I swear you gonna have t'come through me t'get Jackson and you know he ain't worth that kinda pain."
I remembered then how Jackson sometimes made his money.
Lenny reached out at Jackson but the little man got behind Ernest and Ernest stood there, like a rock. He said, "Go back to your game while the blood still in your veins, man," then he pulled a straight razor from the pocket of his blue smock.
"You ain't got no cause to threaten me, Ernie. I ain't shit on no man's doorstep." He was moving his head back and forth trying to see Jackson behind the barber's back.
I started to get nervous sitting there between them and took off the bib. I used it to wipe the lather from my neck.
"See that, Lenny. You botherin' my customer, brother." Ernest pointed a finger thick as a railroad tie at Lenny's belly. "Either you get back in the back or I'm'a skin ya. No lie."
Anybody who knew Ernest knew that that was his last warning. You had to be tough to be a barber because your place was the center of business for a certain element in the community. Gamblers, numbers runners, and all sorts of other private businessmen met in the barbershop. The barbershop was like a social club. And any social club had to have order to run smoothly.
Lenny tucked in his chin and shifted his shoulders this way and that, then he shuffled backwards a few steps.
I got out of the chair and slapped six bits down on the counter. "There you go, Ernie," I said.
Ernie nodded in my direction but he was too busy staring Lenny down to look at me.
"Why don't we split," I said to the cowering Jackson. Whenever Jackson was nervous he'd have to touch his thing; he was holding on to it right then.
"Sure, Easy, I think Ernie got it covered here."
We turned down the first corner we came to and then down an alley, half a block away. If Lenny was to come after us he'd have to want us bad enough to hunt.
He didn't find us, but as we were walking down Merriweather Lane someone shouted, "Blue!"
It was Zeppo. He hobbled after us like a man on invisible crutches. At every step he teetered on the edge of falling over but then he'd take another step, saving himself, just barely.
"Hey, Zep," Jackson said. He was looking over Zeppo's shoulder to see if Lenny was coming.
"J-Jackson."
"What you want, Zeppo?" I wanted something from Jackson myself and I didn't need an audience.
Zeppo craned his head back further than I thought was possible, then he brought his wrists to his shoulder. He looked like a bird in agony. His smile was like death itself. "L-L-Lenny show i-is m-m-m-m-ad." Then he started coughing, which for Zeppo was a laugh. "Y-y-you-ou s-sellin', B-Blue?"
I could have kissed the cripple.
"Naw, man," Jackson said. "Frank gone big time now. He only sell by the crate to the stores. He say he don't want no nickels and dimes."
"You don't sell fo' Frank any more?" I asked.
"Uh-uh. He too big fo'a niggah like me."
"Shit! An' I was lookin' fo' some whiskey too. I gotta party in mind that need some booze."
"Well maybe I could set a deal, Ease." Jackson's eyes lit up. He was still turning now and then to see if Lenny was coming.
"Like what?"
"Maybe if you buy enough Frank'a cut us a deal."
"Like how much?"
"How much you need?"
"Case or two of Jim Beam be fine."
Jackson scratched his chin. "Frank'a sell by the case t'me. I could buy three an' sell one by the bottle."
"When you gonna see'im?" I must've sounded too eager because a caution light went on in Jackson's eye. He waited a long moment then said, "Whas up, Easy?"
"What you mean?"
"I mean," he said, "why is you lookin' fo' Frank?"
"Man, I don't know what you mean. All I know is I got people comin' to the house on Saturday and the cupboard is bare. I got a couple'a bucks but I was laid off last Monday and I can't spend it all on whiskey."
All this time Zeppo was shimmying there next to us. He was waiting to see if a bottle would materialize out of our talk.
"Yeah, well, if you need it fast," Jackson said, still suspicious, "what if I get you a deal somewhere's else?"
"I don't care. All I want is some cheap whiskey and I thought that was the business you did."
"It is, Easy. You know I usually buy from Frank but maybe I could go someplace he sells ta. Cost a little more but you still save some money."
"Anything you say, Jackson. Just lead me to the well."
"M-m-m-m-me too," Zeppo added.
20
When we got to my car I drove down Central to Seventy-sixth Place. I was nervous being so close to the police station but I had to find Frank Green.
Jackson took Zeppo and me down to Abe's liquor store. I was glad that Zeppo had come along with us because people who didn't know Zeppo kept their eyes and attention on him. I was banking on that to hide any questions I asked about Frank.
On the way down to the liquor store Jackson told me the story of the men that owned it.
Abe and Johnny were brothers-in-law. They came from Poland, most recently from the town of Auschwitz; Jews who survived the Nazi camps. They were barbers in Poland and they were barbers in Auschwitz, too.
Abe was part of the underground in the camp and he saved Johnny from the gas chamber when Johnny was so sick that the Nazi guard had selected him to die. Abe dug a hole in the wall next to his bed and he put Johnny there, telling the guard that Johnny had died and was picked up, by the evening patrol, for cremation. Abe collected food from his friends in the resistance and fed his ailing brother-in-law through a hole in the wall. That went on for three months before the camp was liberated by the Russians.
Abe's wife and sister, Johnny's wife, were dead. Their parents and cousins and everyone else they had ever known or had ever been related to had died in the Nazi camps. Abe took Johnny on a stretcher and dragged him to the GI station where they applied to immigrate.
Jackson wanted to tell me more stories he'd heard about the camps but I didn't need to hear them. I remembered the Jews. Nothing more than skeletons, bleeding from their rectums and begging for food. I remembered them waving their weak hands in front of themselves, trying to keep modest; then dropping dead right there before my eyes.
Sergeant Vincent LeRoy found a twelve-year-old boy who was bald and weighed forty-six pounds. The boy ran to Vincent and hugged his leg, like the little Mexican boy clung to Matthew Teran. Vincent was a hard man, a gunner, but he melted for that little boy. He called him Tree Rat because of the way the boy crawled up on him and wouldn't let go.
The first day Vincent carried Tree Rat on his back while we evacuated the concentration camp survivors. That night he made Tree Rat go with the nurses to the evacuation center, but the little boy got away from them and made it back to our bivouac.