“What’s wrong with Tina?” I asked.
“Same thing that’s wrong with all women.”
I raised my eyebrows to ask for the other shoe.
“Men,” Liselle said. Her tone was more lascivious than it was angry. “Men mornin’, noon, and night are the bane of women and the joy of their lives.”
“She see a lotta men?”
“You just need one bad apple, Easy. You know that.”
“Does this bad apple have a name?”
“I call him the X-man,” Liselle said. “But she call him Xavier.”
“And how is this Xavier trouble?”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, Easy. He’s a good boy. If I was his mama, I’d swell with pride every time he walked into a room or opened his mouth. He’s skinny as a rail but brave and proud as a lion. That’s the kinda man a good woman want to have around.”
“So Tina’s a good woman?”
“Good as they come. Manners and charm. She got it all. Know how to fold a napkin on her lap and cleans up after herself without bein’ asked.”
“Don’t sound like trouble to me,” I said innocently.
“Yeah. You talk that sweet talk, baby. But you know the cops been to me askin’ about her, throwin’ dirt on her name” — I didn’t know but I had suspected as much — “an’ you know that the First Men been comin’ by with com’unist leaflets and rough talk about killin’ and burnin’ down the street. I asked ’em was they gonna burn down my house and they said no, but how you gonna start a fire an’ ask it to skip the houses you want to save? Once the flames get goin’, they burn down everything.”
“What did the police say?”
“That she was a revolutionary and could they search her room for arms.”
“Did you let them in?”
“Hell no. Shit. I got two guns under my own bed and another one in the hall closet. What the hell do it mean to have a gun?”
“How about a man named Henry Strong?” I asked.
“Yeah. Yeah. He was here. She introduced me to him as if he was a bowl of ice cream in the middle of the Sahara Desert. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she would tell the X-man that she was goin’ to the beauty parlor and spend the afternoon studyin’ revolution at Henry Strong’s feet — on her knees.”
“That’s all?” I asked.
“Yeah... sometimes that Conrad come by, but usually he was with his uncle.”
“Uncle? What uncle?”
“I don’t think that they were really related. He come to the door one day and I asked him who was that with him and he said his uncle, but then he smirked like it was some kind of joke.”
“What he look like?” I asked.
“Husky man. Thirty-five, maybe even forty. He looked all right but never spoke a word in my presence, never talked to anyone at all.”
“He have a name?”
Liselle twisted her face, trying to remember. All she came up with was the memory of the whiskey in her hand. She took a sip and said, “No. I don’t remember a name. A heavyset man. Big, you know, and dark.”
“Could the name have been Aldridge?” I asked.
Liselle shook her head. “I don’t remember,” she said.
I sat back then. The yen for a lungful of smoke hit me hard, but I refrained from asking Liselle for a cigarette.
“Do you know Tina very well?” I asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you trust me?”
Liselle stalled and then said, “I know that you aren’t a bad man, Easy. But like I said, you hang around some real hard times.”
“There’s been two murders already,” I said. “Those cops came here are more like vigilantes than they are law.”
“What you want with her?”
“You know John the bartender, right?”
“Yeah?”
“His girlfriend, Alva, got a boy named Brawly. He’s all messed up in the First Men. I’m tryin’ to get him outta trouble. But if I can help Tina, I’ll do that, too.”
“And how is Christina messed up in all’a this?”
“She knows Conrad, who’s a dirty piece’a work...”
Liselle hummed her agreement.
“Brawly’s father was killed and the other man, Henry Strong, was murdered just this morning—”
“What?” Liselle said.
“So I think anybody on Tina’s side would be welcome.”
“What you want me to do, Easy?”
“I want you to talk to her, tell her who I am and what you think about me. If she hears that and wants some outside help, have her call me at home.”
“She ain’t been here in a couple’a days,” Liselle said. “But she bound to show up. All her clothes still up in her room.”
I wrote down my number on an egg carton that Liselle had thrown out.
When I opened the door to leave, Liselle put a hand on my arm and said in a conspiratorial tone, “I told you ’bout you an’ trouble now, didn’t I, Easy?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
— 25 —
Feather ran at me the second I came in the door.
“Daddy, I got a B-plus on my Joan Arks book report,” she shouted.
She ran up and tackled me around the waist.
“Do you have to jump all over me?” I complained.
“I got a B-plus, Daddy,” she said again, ignoring my objections.
“Let me go,” I said.
Feather backed away from me with pain in her eyes.
The little yellow dog came up behind her, baring his teeth.
“I got a B-plus,” she said, and the first tear appeared.
“I’m sorry, baby, but I had a hard day. That’s good about your B. It’s good.”
“It’s a B-plus.”
“Hi, honey,” Bonnie said from the kitchen.
It struck me then that there was the smell of cooking in the air.
She was wearing a yellow wraparound dress with a red and blue silk cloth coiled in her hair. Her feet were bare.
“I forgot you were coming home today,” I said.
“You say that as if you want me to leave.”
“No. No, baby.”
Feather moved over to Bonnie and leaned against her side, frowning and staring at my shoes.
“Did you hear about Feather’s B-plus?” Bonnie asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s really great. I mean, I think we should have some special ice cream for dessert after a grade like that.”
Feather’s frown softened and she looked up as far as my shoulder.
I heard the faint sound of sawing coming from the backyard.
“What’s that?”
“Jesus working on his boat.” It was Bonnie’s turn to frown.
“We’re talking about it,” I said.
“A child does not have the right to make up his mind whether or not he’s going to school,” she said.
“Jesus been a man as long as I can remember,” I told her. “If I died tomorrow and you disappeared, he would raise Feather all by himself. You could bet the farm on that.”
“Are you sick, Daddy?” Feather asked.
“No, honey. I’m fine.”
“All I’m saying,” Bonnie continued, “is that he needs to finish his education. He needs to understand how important it is.”
“How the hell you gonna tell me what that boy needs an’ you didn’t even know he was alive six months ago?” I said. “You don’t know. You don’t know what he’s thinkin’ or where he’s goin’. There’s all kindsa people up and down this block got education way over me. But we still livin’ on the same street, goin’ off to work every day. How am I gonna tell Juice that he got to do somethin’ I ain’t never done? How am I even gonna believe that shit?”