“Easy,” Bonnie said.
She glanced down at Feather, who was transfixed by my anger.
“I just mean let me work this out on my own, okay?”
“I’ll get dinner,” Bonnie said.
She headed for the kitchen. Feather followed in her shadow.
I reached for my shirt pocket but it was empty. I’d discarded the pack of Chesterfields earlier that day. There was half a carton on the top shelf of the hall closet, I knew. But I clenched my teeth and sat in my recliner. Nothing was going to beat me. Not Jesus’s demands or Lakeland’s designs, certainly not a flimsy little cigarette.
The fabric of the chair smelled of tobacco smoke. So did my fingertips. For five minutes all I could think about was smoking, or not smoking.
When I finally calmed down, Brawly Brown was waiting there in my mind. Big and clumsy, strong and easily influenced. Or was he smarter than he seemed? Was he the First Men’s fool, or was it John and Alva who were fooled by him? I couldn’t trust Alva’s opinion. John only cared about his woman.
If the heavyset man who’d come to Tina’s with Conrad was Aldridge, then I had at least one other person who was connected to both men.
I took a deep breath.
Something was missing.
What was I missing?
A cigarette.
“Dinner,” Bonnie called out the back door.
Brawly had to be involved in something serious. That’s the only way I could see the ambush set up outside of the housing tract near John’s places. There was no other way. Anyway, Strong told me that he was bringing me to Brawly, but that could have been a lie.
But if Brawly tried to kill me, if he murdered Henry Strong, then there was nothing I could do to help him. At least there was nothing I should do.
“Sure I killed him,” Mouse once said to me about a man who had been his friend. “Motherfucker turned on me. An’ you know once a dog taste your blood, he always got a hunger for more.”
How could I put a murderer back in the house with John? Back on the street with the rest of us?
“Easy.” Bonnie was standing there over me.
“Yeah?”
“Didn’t you hear me? Dinner’s ready.”
Bonnie’s Lasagna was always a treat. The tomato sauce was dark red and spicy. She used four kinds of cheese and shredded veal rather than ground round. The salad had lots of Parmesan cheese and garlic in the dressing. The food tasted wonderful but it was somehow weaker than usual. I craved a cigarette. I kept taking deep breaths through my nose, but still I had the feeling of slow suffocation.
“Is something wrong, Easy?”
“No,” I said sharply. “Why you keep askin’ me that?”
“Because you keep sighing,” she said.
“Listen, if a man can’t sit down to a meal and take a deep breath, then maybe he shouldn’t even come home. You been pesterin’ me since I come in the door. What do you want?”
That silenced the table for more than a minute. It would have been even longer but I spoke again.
“I’m goin’ out for a while,” I said, standing up from the table.
“Don’t go, Daddy,” Feather pleaded.
“Where are you going, Easy?” Bonnie asked in a maddeningly reasonable tone.
I took another deep breath that came out in a sigh.
“To the market,” I said. “For our B-plus special ice cream. You want pistachio or chocolate chip, Feather?”
“Both,” she said.
The little market down the street was always open until ten. Mr. Tai was a night owl and everyone around the neighborhood knew that his was the only place, besides the overpriced liquor stores, where you could get prepared and packaged foods after eight.
“Sweet tooth tonight, Mr. Rawlins?” Tai asked when I brought the two half-gallon containers up to the register. I also had a pint of vanilla, which was for me.
“Good grade,” I said. “Feather got a B-plus.”
“That’s good. I got one girl get really good grades. She likes the books and the homework.”
“What about your other kids?” I asked.
I liked Tai. He had a slight build and a gentle disposition but he also had a vicious scar down the left side of his face. I’d once seen him throw a six-foot drunk on his ass out in front of his store.
“Two more girls. They will get married and make my grandchildren. One boy who fail everything,” Tai snickered. “Everything. If they gave him a test on what he ate for breakfast, he would fail that, too.”
“Doesn’t that bother you?”
“No.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I wait till he’s sixteen and then he come here and work with me. Eight o’clock we open up and ten we go home. If that don’t make him go back to school, then I have a partner. Tai and Son.”
The grocer gave me a wide grin.
— 26 —
I managed not to bite anybody’s head off over ice cream. Feather spent most of her time eating from her bowl on Bonnie’s lap. Jesus, who probably knew me better than any other living being ever had, stayed away from me. He didn’t talk about his boat or dropping out. As a matter of fact, I don’t think he said a single word. All those early years as a mute had given him a close kinship with silence. Silence and patience at being understood.
After the children were in bed Bonnie made me a drink, a concoction made from a scoop of ice cream, vanilla flavoring, milk, eggs, nutmeg, and honey. In the old days I would have added a shot of bourbon to top it off.
We sat in the living room listening to the late news. There was a story about a Negro named Henry Strong who died instantaneously from a gunshot wound to the head in the early-morning hours. He lived at the Colorado Hotel on Cherry and was a native of Oakland, California.
“Do you want me to leave, Easy?”
“What?”
“Do you want me to move out of your house?” Bonnie asked.
“What are you talkin’ about, Shay?”
“You haven’t even touched me since you came in.” She was close to tears.
I moved over to the couch and put my arm around her.
“I was just... just... I was just preoccupied,” I said.
She shook off my arm and shifted away from me.
“We haven’t known each other very long, Easy. I know that when you helped me that your friend got killed...”
“No one’s even sure that he’s dead,” I said. “And even if he is, that was between me and Raymond. We been livin’ up near the front lines ever since we were children. It ain’t nobody’s fault the way we lived. You didn’t ask him for nuthin’ and you weren’t there when the shit went down. You were there for me, though. You been there for the kids.”
“You needed somebody to love you, Easy. You were hurting and you were kind, too. But just because you’re grateful doesn’t mean you want me. I will leave if that’s what’s best. I will.”
“That’s not what I want. No.”
Bonnie’s face was like the drawing of a black goddess from some Polynesian myth. The eyes slanted upward, her full lips perfectly shaped. Those lips parted and for a moment I forgot the hunger in my lungs and the pain of Raymond’s death. Even the trouble I’d burrowed down into didn’t seem like much.
“I been doin’ somethin’,” I said.
“What?”
I told her about John and Alva, about Brawly and the First Men. I told her about Aldridge and Henry Strong but refrained from letting on that I was at both murder scenes.
“It sounds too dangerous, Easy,” she said after I was done.
“Like when you were in trouble,” I said.
She kissed me and I kissed her, and then she kissed me again. I’d had an erection ever since her lips parted.
Later that night we were in the bed, still kissing. Cigarettes must have something to do with sex somehow, because my desire for tobacco was completely gone for an hour and a half. All I needed was my baby. I could have taken that on the radio.