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.