It was all make-believe, their lives and mine.
I PULLED UP in front of the Tarr home a little after four-thirty. The front door was open, and there were children ripping and running in and out of the house. There were more than twenty kids crying out loud and going crazy. The Tarr children had friends whose parents would never let them run wild like that.
I stepped over two wrestling eight-year-old boys to get past the threshold. In the kitchen I found Leafa making peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for smaller kids who needed fuel for their disasters.
When the perfect child saw me, she smiled. She had her father’s nose.
“She’s in the back room, Mr. Rawlins,” Leafa shouted, pointing with the jelly knife.
I went past the line of preschoolers to a closed door that I opened without knocking.
Meredith was there in a straight-back chair, sitting at an odd, distinctly unfeminine angle and staring at the wall.
“Mrs. Tarr.”
No response.
“Mrs. Tarr,” I said again, moving closer to her corner.
She turned her frozen gaze to me and frowned slightly.
“Have you fount his body?” she asked.
I handed her the pillowcase and the page Pericles had penned. She put the bag on her lap and unfolded the note.
Either she was a slow reader or Meredith Tarr read Perry’s last words to her many times over. I stood there because there was no other chair in that malleable room. After a long time, Meredith took up the pillowcase and looked inside. After that she turned her attention to me.
“What does this mean?”
“I found Perry in a house in Compton,” I said. “He was leaving for New York and said that he was going to send you this money. I told him you were just about to get evicted and offered to deliver it.”
“Did you read his letter?” she asked, ignoring my subtle lies.
“No.”
“It says he don’t love me no mo’.”
I had no reply.
“Was he with a woman, Mr. Rawlins?”
“Not that I could see. There was a woman in the house, but she was very definitely with another man.”
“What am I supposed to do now?”
I had been thinking about that question on the ride over.
“First I need to know something,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Do you believe that Perry wrote this note?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you think that I wrote it and that I brought you this money to hush you up?”
“Because Leafa just got that raincoat from the Anders across the street four days ago, but that ain’t all.”
“What else?”
“Hanley didn’t vomit on that newspaper, Henry did.” She smiled. “Perry was always confusin’ Hanley with Henry. He had to be alive to write this note. And it sounds just like him and this is his writin’.
“Why didn’t you just steal this money, Mr. Rawlins?”
“Because of Leafa,” I said.
“Leafa?”
“She’s a special child, Mrs. Tarr. She deserves better than she has.”
“She does.” Tears rolled down Meredith Tarr’s face, but she didn’t sob or moan.
“Mrs. Tarr.”
“Yes, Mr. Rawlins?”
“I’m going to give you some advice. So please listen.”
Meredith Tarr’s destroyed eyes became clear and focused.
“Do you have a good friend or a sister somewhere?”
“Melinda. She my half sister from Arkansas.”
“Call her. Have her come and live with you to help with these kids. If not her then someone else. Take the money and get a safe-deposit box. Don’t let anybody know you got this money, not even your half sister. I’m gonna have a friend call you, a woman named Jewelle. She will help you buy a house for ten thousand dollars or less. Buy the house and use the money you got left to pay for your sister and these kids. Rest up for a while and then get you a job. Perry told me that he’ll get in touch and send you more money when you need it.
“Are you listening to me?”
She nodded in a sentient manner.
“Where’d he get this money, Mr. Rawlins?”
“I don’t know and I didn’t ask.”
Meredith nodded again, this time sternly.
We went over my advice four or five times. I drilled it into her and I believe that she listened. When I was sure that she at least understood the way to go about taking care of all that cash, I headed for the door. I was half the way out of the back room when Meredith shouted, “Bastard!”
I turned to see if she was talking to me, but Meredith was staring at the wall again. Her healing had finally begun.
40
By the time I’d made it back to the Ariba, Meredith and Pericles Tarr were out of my mind. I turned on the news and lit up a cigarette, kicked off my shoes, and sat there while Jerry Dunphy lectured me on a wide range of unconnected stories. A boy had been kidnapped and then released for a quarter million in ransom. The confessions of two captured American pilots shown on a North Vietnamese film release were denied by American lip-readers. The Oscars might be postponed due to a strike. And Governor Ronald Reagan was slashing jobs in California’s mental-health system. There were no black people in the news that night; no Mexicans or Indians or Africans either. But eleven students in Germany were arrested for a plot to assassinate Hubert H. Humphrey.
None of what I saw meant anything to me. I didn’t believe or disbelieve. Watching the news was just a way to pass the time. If I were a child, I would have been watching cartoons.
After a while I turned down the volume on the TV, picked up the phone, and dialed.
“Hello?” Peter Rhone said in his sad and cultured tenor.
“Hey, Pete,” I said.
“Mr. Rawlins. You want EttaMae?”
“Yeah. But first tell me somethin’.”
“What’s that?”
“Did you tell Etta about that blue Pontiac that Raymond and Pericles bought from Primo?”
“No. No, I did not.”
“Why?”
“Because Ray asked me not to, and I usually do what he asks.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“Just a minute, Mr. Rawlins, I’ll get EttaMae.”
I sat there watching Jerry Dunphy’s boyish face. He was smiling now, giving out good news, I guess.
“Hello,” Etta said in my ear.
“Pericles Tarr is alive,” I said. “I can go to the police with that, and his wife will back it up.”
Etta gave me twenty or so seconds of silence. The kind of quiet a woman gives when she wants you to know you’ve gotten to her.
“Thank you, Easy. Thank you, baby,” she said. “I don’t know what I would’a did if they took him from me again.”
“We both know that nobody’s ever gonna take Ray again,” I said. “Anyway, I did what I did because he’s my friend.”
“Where is he?”
“That’s another question, Etta. I don’t know yet.”
When people have known each other as long as we had, they speak in silences and unspoken questions. Etta knew that I could intrude only so far into Raymond’s life. The same was true for her. We’d saved him from a murder rap. She’d have to console herself with that and wait for his return.
“I’ll call you later, Etta,” I said. “When I get on top of a few things here.”
“Sumpin’ wrong, Easy?” she asked.
“No, baby, not at all. Why you ask?”
“You sound funny. Like a man drivin’ his usual way home and he comes up to a dead end.”
I wondered what daytime TV show had given her those words. Etta had never read a book, but she studied the TV like it was the Library of Congress.
“Light’s just red,” I told her. “Bye.”
I hung up too quickly, or maybe I meant for her to understand that she was right. Communication gets sophisticated when you grow older. Sometimes it’s impossible even to know what you’re saying.