She held out her hand in welcome, and maybe as a peace offering.
“How are ya?” I asked.
“Why don’t you have a seat,” she replied.
I went back to my footrest.
“What’s up with you guys?” I asked as amiably as I could.
The reaction was discomfort and silence. Alva wore a gray pants suit that didn’t hang right on her. She was a woman who needed bright colors and flowing lines. She stared at me as if I had tried to insult her with my question.
“It’s a pretty long story, Easy,” John said. “It’s got to do with Alva and her first husband—”
“John,” she said.
“What?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if this is right.”
“Well,” John said, a glint of his old hardness coming through. “Make up your mind, then. Easy come over here to help if he can, but he cain’t do a thing if you don’t tell him what it is you want.”
Alva clenched her long fingers into bony fists. “Can I trust you, Mr. Rawlins?”
The alarm in my head, the giddiness, the wind through the window of my car — they all came back to me with her question.
“I have no idea, honey,” I said. “I don’t know what it is that you need.”
The tension went out of Alva’s long body and she slumped back onto a blue bolster. John stared helplessly at her.
“My ex-husband,” Alva began. “Aldridge A. Brown. He took care of Brawly when he was a child. I couldn’t do it. A boy needs a man to guide him. That is, if the man will stay around.”
I had no idea who she was talking about. But she was straining so hard just to get the words out that I decided to let it go for the moment.
“Aldridge wanted to be a good father. He might have been a good husband — for some other woman — but he was just... just... too much for us.”
She stopped for a moment, and John went over to sit by her. He put his hand on her shoulder and she crumpled against his chest.
“Is this your son we’re talkin’ about?” I asked.
“Brawly,” she said, nodding.
“He was workin’ for me out at the lots up till a couple’a weeks ago,” John said.
Alva shed silent tears that rolled down John’s dirty T-shirt as if it were made of wax paper.
The woman’s grief and her man sharing it moved me out of myself for a moment. In that instant I saw myself, fevered and mindless, reveling in these good people’s pain. But the vision passed and for a long time I forgot that I’d even had it.
“Where’d he go?”
Alva’s hard glare was daunting but I didn’t look away.
“That’s why we need your help, Easy,” John said. “He moved out and she’s afraid — we’re afraid — that he might be in trouble.”
“How old is Brawly?” I asked.
“Twenty-three, but he’s young for his age.” The tenderness in her voice was rare.
“Twenty-three! How old are you?”
“I had him when I was sixteen. Aldridge was the age Brawly is now.”
“Excuse me for askin’, honey, but you don’t look nowhere near thirty-nine.”
Even through that rock-hard perfection a little vanity found a chink. A smile flickered on her lips and then died.
“Why you think he’s in trouble?” I asked. “I mean at twenty-three he could just be out havin’ a good time.”
“No, Easy. Not this boy,” John said. “He broods. He did good in high school but then he got in trouble and dropped out. Now he’s in wit’ a bad crowd and Alva’s worried.”
“So you want me to find him?”
Alva sat up. The pain in her face almost made me turn away.
“Yes,” she said. “And maybe, somehow, help us to get him back home.”
“I’ll do what I can. Sure.”
“Oh,” she uttered, and I did look away.
“What kinda crowd you talkin’ about?” I asked John.
“They call themselves urban revolutionaries or somethin’.”
“Say what?”
“The Urban Revolutionary Party,” Alva said. She was sitting erect. Any show of weakness had been wiped away. “They also call themselves the First Men.”
“Who are they?”
“They say that they’re freedom fighters but all they want is trouble,” she said. “Talkin’ about the church and civil rights, but when it comes down to it they only want violence and revenge.”
“Prob’ly communists,” John added.
“He left some pamphlets they made,” Alva said. “I’ll get them for you.”
She went through a door opposite the one John and I had entered.
“You got to do this right, Easy,” he told me when she was gone.
“How you mean that?”
“Brawly got to come outta this safe.”
“How I’m supposed to promise you that if he’s runnin’ around with thugs? You know yourself it’s better not even to look for ’im. Either he’s gonna outgrow it or it’s gonna row him under. That’s the way it is for all young black men.”
He knew I was right.
Alva came in with four or five cheaply printed pamphlets clutched to her breast.
“Here they are.” She made no attempt to hand them over.
“Can I take them?” I asked.
She swayed backward slightly. Finally John took them from her.
“Here,” he said, handing the crumpled leaflets to me.
“What do you want from me, Alva?” I said loud and clear.
“I want you to find Brawly.”
“That’s all? If he’s with these people here, you or John could go do that for yourselves.”
“I want you to talk to him, Easy,” she said. “If he saw us, he’d be even angrier. I want to know that he’s okay and maybe, if he would listen to you, maybe...”
“Where he is is easy,” I said. “But what he’s doin’ an’ how he’s doin’ takes a closer look. I’ll look him up, then come back here and tell you what I think. If he’s willing to listen to reason, maybe I’ll even bring him home.”
“We gonna pay you now, Easy.” John held up his hand as if he were defending himself from attack.
“Invite me an’ the kids and Bonnie over for dinner and I’ll be paid in full.”
John laughed. “Still the same, huh, Easy?”
“If it work, don’t fix it.” It felt good trading words with my friend. “Alva,” I said then. “I need two more things from you.”
“What?”
“First I’ma need a picture of Brawly. And next I wanna know what your husband got to do with this.”
“Nuthin’,” she said. “Aldridge don’t have nuthin’ to do with this. Why?”
“I don’t know. You’re the one that brought him up. You and John.”
“He said it.” She sounded like a guilty student answering to a strict teacher. “I only meant about Brawly.”
“You think he mighta gone to his father’s house?”
“Never.”
“I thought you said he was a good father? That he raised Brawly?”
“Brawly ran away from Aldridge when he was fourteen. He went to stay with my cousin; she was livin’ up in Riverside then. Something happened between him and his father and he ran away. I don’t think that they’ve seen each other since then.”
“Brawly lived with his cousin? Why didn’t he come to you?”
“That don’t have nuthin’ to do wit’ nuthin’, Easy,” John said. He’d come up next to Alva and put his arms around her. “That’s ancient history.”
“Uh-huh. I see. Well, if Brawly didn’t go to his father, how about this cousin?”
“No,” Alva said.
“No what?”
“He’s not with her.”
“Excuse me, Miss Torres, but you don’t know where Brawly is. That’s why you called me.”