We had a great time at dinner. Feather regaled us with fragments of “Joan Arks” while we ate. After dinner she read to us from her paper. Jesus went to bed early, reading his book on how to build a single-masted sailboat. Feather and I watched The Andy Griffith Show. She loved little Opie.
“Because he’s so nice,” she said.
“Daddy? Daddy.”
I had just walked into a graveyard’s warehouse where dozens of occupied coffins had been stockpiled, waiting to be buried. It seemed that there was only one man, armed with just a shovel, whose responsibility it was to inter all those dead souls. I looked from one casket to another, but none had Raymond’s name on the little bronze nameplate placed at the foot of each box.
Somebody called my name. Somebody held out a shovel. He wanted me to get back to digging.
“What?” I said. And then I remembered: I was the man in charge of burials, I was the gravedigger for all the dead black men and women.
“Daddy.”
“What?” I said.
“You’re asleep, Daddy.”
I opened my eyes. There was a static buzz coming from the television. Feather was pressing against my chest with both hands.
“We fell asleep,” she said.
I carried her to her room and put her under the covers fully dressed.
The phone rang but at first I thought it was the alarm. Who set the alarm, anyway? I called out Bonnie’s name. I knew that it must have been her, that she had some early flight and set the alarm and now was going to sleep through it.
“Bonnie, shut that thing off,” I said.
And then I remembered that Bonnie was out of town. She was in an airplane somewhere. I imagined a plane high in the sky. I was sitting in the pilot’s seat, looking out of the broad windows at the panorama of deep blue. There was no limit to the space overhead.
Then the phone rang again.
“Mr. Rawlins?” a deep voice asked when I answered.
“Who is this?”
“It’s Henry Strong,” he announced.
“Man, what time is it?”
“I must speak with you, Mr. Rawlins. It’s urgent.”
I looked at the night table. The clock’s turquoise luminescent numerals read 3:15. I blinked and started to slide into that big sky again.
“Mr. Rawlins, are you awake?”
“There’s a doughnut shop on Central at Florence,” I said. “It’s an all-night place that they use for the Goodyear tire plant down there.”
“I know it.”
“Be there in forty minutes,” I said, and then I hung up.
I turned on my back and took a deep breath. Graveyards and blue skies. The phrase ran through my mind. It was a good title for a jet-age blues song.
— 19 —
I put on work clothes so that I’d blend in with the crowd at Mariah’s Doughnuts and Deli.
I made it in twenty-five minutes, my car rattling now and again along the way.
Strong wasn’t there when I arrived. But the large room was half filled with workmen and — women smoking cigarettes and downing coffee.
It was way down in the black neighborhood, but the room was filled with all the races of L.A. Black and white, yellow and brown. All sitting together and talking. Norwegian, Nigerian, and Nipponese derivatives all speaking the same language and getting along just fine.
“Coffee,” I said to Bingham, the nighttime counterman at Mariah’s.
“How you want it, Easy?”
“Black as it gets.”
He went to fill my order and I let my eyes roll over the three dozen or so late-night workers. The nearby Goodyear plant ran twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. The people who worked there had simple, straight-ahead lives. They got up an hour and a half before they were supposed to be at work, then they worked eight hours, and maybe a little overtime. They were citizens of a nation that had won the major wars of the century and now they were enjoying the fruits of the victors: mindless labor and enough of anything they wanted to buy.
Everyone in the room looked as though they belonged there. No one was looking at me, and no one was looking away.
I sat at a small table near the cash register and guzzled the strong coffee. Every word spoken or cup banged down exploded in my ears. My fingertips were numb, and if I moved my head too fast, my vision shook a bit.
After my third cup of coffee things began to settle down. Strong came in the front door at 4:19 and strode up to my table. He had tried to dress for the occasion, wearing black slacks and a square-cut dark blue shirt with orange circles around the hem. But his head was too elegant for the clothes, and the clothes were too sporty for the twenty-four-hour diner.
Strong would have had a hard time fitting in anywhere he was not the center of attention.
“Coffee?” I asked him.
I gestured at Bingham, who called a waiter from the back to bring a plate of hot beignets and two fresh cups of coffee.
“You hung up on me,” Strong said.
“You woke me out of a sound sleep.”
The standoff lasted until after the young man had delivered our breakfast.
“I have to talk to you, Rawlins,” he said.
“That’s why I’m here.”
“But not here. There’s too many ears around here.”
“Here is where they ain’t gonna be listenin’, man,” I said, letting my country upbringing soak each word. “Here is where people mind their own business. They don’t care about us.”
Strong had a long face with deep, soulful eyes. He used those eyes on me.
“Are you a race man, Mr. Rawlins?”
“I can run if I have to,” I said.
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know what you mean. You one’a them better-than-thou kinda Negroes tryin’ to explain everything by your own book. But I’m just a everyday black man, doin’ the best I can in a world where the white man’s de facto king. I got me a house with a tree growin’ in the front yard. It’s my tree; I could cut it down if I wanted to, but even still you cain’t call it a black man’s tree. It’s just pine.”
I had given him everything he needed to figure me out. If Strong was smart enough to read me, then I’d have to take him seriously; if not — well, I’d see.
His rubbed his fingers across his lips, digesting my words. He stared even more deeply into my eyes.
Then he smiled. Grinned.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m not trying to convert you. I just wanted to know where you stand in relation to the First Men.”
“Next question,” I said.
“What do you have to do with Brawly Brown?”
“I’m looking for him. For his mother, like I said.”
“Is that all?”
Strong was taller than I was and heavier by thirty pounds. His question had the hint of a threat in it. But I wasn’t afraid.
“This is a waste of time,” I said.
I sat back and bit into one of the best beignets I’d ever tasted.
“I’m worried about Brawly,” Strong said.
“How’s that?” I asked.
“I believe that he’s part of a radical fringe in Xavier’s group. Despite the name, the Urban Revolutionary Party is a cultural organization, Mr. Rawlins. They want to have better education for our children, to bring the proper nutrition and political clout to the neighborhood. But some of our youngsters aren’t patient with the process. They’re angry and want to lash out. I believe that Brawly is part of that element.”
“How’d you get my number, Mr. Strong?”
“I got it from Tina,” he said.
“I didn’t give Tina my number.”
“No, but you did give it to Clarissa. She went to Tina after you came to her house. She’s worried about Brawly, too.”
“She worried about his safety, and you worried ’bout what he might do to you.”