“She’s just a child,” he said. “Him, too.”
“They’re all children, Sam. All of ’em. But you know in the Stone Age most’a your people only lived long enough to see twenty. They were old men and women by twenty-five.”
I knew the scientific explanation for the problem facing us would hearten Sam.
He smiled and said, “Yeah, Easy. You right about that. You sure are.”
They were words I never expected to hear come out of Sam’s mouth.
“So what you doin’ here?” he asked me.
“I got to find Brawly again. Clarissa’s my best bet,” I said. “I went to her house, but she was gone. Do you know where she is?”
“She told me that she was scared’a you, Easy. She went into hiding.”
“I told you why I’m lookin’ for her.”
Sam’s face contorted so that it looked like a wizened brown fruit ready to drop from the tree. At first I thought he was having a heart attack but then I realized that that was the way he must have looked when he was thinking. His mouth twisted with distaste and his shoulders rose, making him look like a comical scavenger bird. Finally he shuddered like the great vulture he resembled, shaking dust from its feathery frame.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. I can see it in my mind. Brawly comin’ in, sittin’ near the kitchen, comin’ on through to go to the bathroom out back. And Clarissa always hoverin’ somewhere nearby. Uh-huh. Uhhuh. She used to stay late every night, talkin’ to her first cousin Doris, helpin’ out with the cleanup even though she didn’t have to. But after Brawly started comin’ around, she always left right on time. Yeah. You right, Easy. Clarissa been seein’ that sour boy for three months at least.”
“You know where she is?” I asked.
“No. No, I don’t but I know who does. Doris. She’s been Clarissa’s partner in hidin’ this from me the whole time.”
I realized that Sam was angry because he had been fooled by his employee, that the whole time he was being superior with his knowledge, reading, and reasoning ability, they had a secret right out in plain sight.
“You wait here, Easy,” he said, and then he strode back into the restaurant.
I lit up a cigarette and remembered again how good a smoke could feel when you had been denied. Then I remembered running with my lungs aching and then Henry Strong getting a bullet in the head. The silhouette of the assassin had some heft to it. It could have been Brawly, but I wasn’t sure.
I thought about Mouse. He would have tagged along with me on this adventure, laughing the whole time.
“What you doin’ messin’ with this boy, Easy? He just sowin’ his wild oats.”
“But he’s in trouble, Raymond,” I’d say.
“We all in trouble, Ease” would have been his reply. “Shit. If it wasn’t for trouble, life wouldn’t be no fun at all.”
I stubbed out the ember of my cigarette and returned it to the pack. A few minutes later Sam came out.
“I know where she is,” he told me.
“Where?”
“Hold on now, Easy. I believe you and everything, but you cain’t go see Clarissa without me comin’ with you.”
“This ain’t restaurant work, Sam,” I said. “People gettin’ killed out here.”
“Clarissa’s my family,” Sam said. “Doris is, too. When I asked Doris how I could get to Clarissa, I told her not to worry, because it was me goin’ to her.”
“Okay,” I said. “It’s your funeral.”
— 35 —
“You know, Easy,” Sam Houston said. “I was surprised to see you when you walked in the other day.”
“Yeah?” I asked. “How come?”
We were on Highway 101, on our way to Riverside, already outside of L.A., traveling through the rolling green hills of the southern California countryside. Oak trees appeared here and there on the landscape. I like the oak because it’s a brooding, solitary tree. It grows within sight of its brethren, but rarely do you see one sidled up to a mate.
“’Cause I thought you’d be dead by now,” Sam said.
“Dead? Why dead?”
“Because the only reason a lotta mothahfuckahs out there didn’t come after you was because’a Raymond,” Sam said. “They hated you but they were more scared of Mouse. Some’a the peoples come in my place called you all kindsa dog, but they knew better than to even say sumpin’ to you. Shit. Easy Rawlins got a guardian angel from hell, that’s what they said.”
Part of the reason Sam was riding me was that he was jealous of my friendship with Mouse — everybody was. Raymond Alexander was the most perfect human being a black man could imagine. He was a lover and a killer and one of the best storytellers you ever heard. He wasn’t afraid of white people in general or the police in particular. Women who went to church every week would skip out on Sunday school to take off their clean white panties for him.
And I was his only friend. I was the one he called first. I was the only one who could tell him no. If Mouse was going to kill a man, I was that poor soul’s last court of appeal.
But that wasn’t all that was eating Sam. He was a talker, a thinker, a man who read the newspaper every day — but Sam was not a man of action. He stayed behind his door-board and stared down the bad men who came into his place. In his restaurant he was the king. But on the street he was just another guy, a frightened black man in a world where being black put you below the lowest rung of white society.
There were no black men in tuxedos playing the violin at the symphony or elected to the Senate or at the heads of corporations. There were no black men on the board of directors or representing our interests in Africa, and very few cruising up and down Central Avenue in police cars. Black men, as a rule, were not scientists or doctors or professors in college. There was not even one black philosopher in all the history of the world, as reported by our universities, libraries, and newspapers.
If you wanted to be an important black man, you had to take a risk and go your own way. You had to challenge a man who outnumbered you ten to one. And every one of that ten was armed with the latest weapons while all you had was a slingshot. That’s why David was such a famous biblical character in the black community, because, against all odds, he brought down the giant.
That’s what Sam Houston dreamt of doing, standing tall and making a difference. He saw himself as an important, intelligent man but he was afraid, with good reason, to stand out from the herd and be heard.
“Well, you know, Sam,” I said, “I been through some pretty hard times without Raymond at my side. I mean, I made it through a whole world war and five years in L.A. when he was still down in Texas. And then there was that five years he did for manslaughter. Naw, man. Those people talkin’ to you have had their chance before now.”
It wasn’t the words but the tone in my voice that kept Sam from one of his snappy replies.
“What you want from Clarissa?” he asked.
“Whatever it is she knows and I don’t.”
That wrinkled look took over Sam’s face, and I knew that he was thinking again.
“What?” I asked him.
“This is what you used to do? Run around sniffin’ after what somebody might know? Drivin’ all over hell?”
“Before I settled down to a job,” I said. “Yeah.”
“But somebody like John cain’t pay you. I mean, John cain’t hardly cover the price for the materials he usin’ to build them houses.”
“That’s true,” I said. “Sometimes I’d be out there findin’ somebody’s missin’ wife when all I was gettin’ out of it was a free tune-up for my car. But every now and then I’d open some door and somebody’d be on the other side offerin’ a thousand dollars just to close it again.”