He put his head to his knees and cried.
I was too weak to comfort him but I knew what was right. I knew that I should tell him everything I knew about Mouse; what a rotten man he was and how he messed with other people’s lives. Even if Clifton didn’t believe me I should have told him and then my conscience would’ve been clean. I should have taken that boy in the car and gone back home to Houston, but I was sick and tired. Even when he told me Mouse’s plan I stayed quiet.
‘Yo’ friend tole me t’meet him t’night. He showed me a place in the woods where I could sleep an’ then he said I should meet him t’night an’ he gotta plan fo me t’get away. I axed why he doin’ all that for me an’ he said he doin’ it fo’ Ernestine so the law don’t get on her. So what can I do?’
I wake up nights remembering Clifton sitting there with his hands stretched out. I had the answers but I didn’t give them to him because Mouse was my friend and you don’t cross your friends.
Or maybe I just didn’t care. Maybe that’s what was wrong with us back then. Life was so hard that we were too tired from just living to lend a hand.
Clifton left after a while and I didn’t even think about going with him. He knew that Mouse was up to no good but he needed someone else to say it so that he could change his mind.
He’d have been lucky if it was Big Jim on his trail.
The second-night drunk never feels as good as the first. I finished the whiskey and laid in a funk all night. I didn’t sleep at all. I just had visions of people coming in and out of my room; some of them I knew and some I didn’t.
My daddy came in and sat on the bed. He looked at me with sad eyes and I felt I had done something wrong. I asked why he never came back and he said that he died; that he wanted to come back but death was too much and he finally gave out.
Mouse came in with a young woman. He was talking to me but feeling on her at the same time. I asked him to stop but he said, ‘You know you like t’watch, Ease.’ And then he pulled out his thing, it was so big that the girl got scared but Mouse sweet-talked her and she said okay...
Then the door opened and Domaque came in. He stood next to the bed and said, ‘You up, Easy?’
‘Do I look like I’m up?’
‘Well... you lyin’ down but yo’ eyes is open...’
I just waited for him to disappear like the rest of my dreams but then he said, ‘I wanted t’talk wit’ someone, Easy. An’ you Raymond’s friend too...,’ He went on, ‘I met that girl an’ she real pretty, an’ she be out to Momma’s house.’
‘At Jo’s?’
‘Uh-huh. She called Ernestine an’ I like her an’ she said she come out an’ look at my house if Momma wanted her to.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Uh-huh, Easy. She kinda pretty an’ she wanna stay out to there wit’ momma...’
When I saw the sky lightening into dawn the dreams went away. I knew that I had fever but it didn’t matter because I was sure now that I had to go home. I was going to go to church with Miss Alexander and then I was going to find the road to Rags Pond. And when I got back to Houston I was going to learn how to read and write. That was all I knew; in that I guess I was lucky.
Chapter 10
‘Easy! Easy! Time fo’ church, hon!’
It was Miss Alexander calling from the door. I guess she didn’t want to come into a man’s room uninvited.
‘All right,’ I called back. ‘I be up in minute.’ But I was asleep before my mouth closed.
In my sleep I saw my parents sitting at breakfast. My father was reading a paper even though he couldn’t read. My mother was making griddle cakes, singing...
‘Easy!’ Miss Alexander was shaking my shoulder and calling in my ear. ‘We gotta go, honey! Jo gonna be there.’
I remember sitting on the side of the bed with my head between my knees. I had fever and cramps and a pain in my head but I thought it would pass in a day; it’s an amazing thing that young men get any older at all.
I’d slept in my clothes, which was lucky because I don’t think I had the fingers to do buttons and zippers that morning.
Miss Alexander was wearing a plain white dress with a lace green hat and William wore a brown suit with black lines crisscrossing it. Momma Jo was with them. Domaque and Ernestine were behind her. Dom had on the same overalls he wore when I first met him and Ernestine still had on the blue dress with the red-brown cows printed on it. She’d washed that dress though and she had a necklace of tiny red flowers, the kind of flowers that grew at Domaque’s house.
‘Hi, Easy,’ Jo said in a soft voice. ‘You look a little tired, honey.’
‘Hi, Easy,’ Dom yelled. ‘This here is Ernestine.’
‘Easy,’ she said simply.
I looked down at her feet; they were still bare.
We all walked down to the building with the white crosses on the doors and went in. A woman sat at the front playing an upright piano.
It was a lively tune but I couldn’t put a name to it. Theresa was there in a nice violet-and-white dress; she came over and sat next to me. I recognised almost everybody from the dance at Miss Alexander’s but I didn’t remember any names so I just nodded when people said hello.
The room was almost full, about sixty souls there. A big woman and a shrimpy little man went up to the piano and started singing hymns. There was a hymnal underneath each chair and, one by one, people lifted them and started to sing along. I didn’t because I have a bad voice and I just didn’t feel up to it.
When I heard the door open in the middle of ‘Sweet Baby Jesus,’ I turned around to see who it was.
The chill I felt when I saw daddyReese was the cold that a corpse might feel.
He wasn’t the same Reese that I had seen a few days before. That Reese was a powerful man, that Reese had muscle like black iron and a thick mane of nappy black hair. But the Reese who walked through that door on Sunday was an old man. His arms and chest sagged down like flab but he wasn’t fat; he must’ve dropped ten pounds in those few days, I’d never seen a man lose weight so fast. His hair was sprinkled with white, not gray. He was stooped, just a little, and when he walked he had a slight limp.
Some men believe in evil. They’ve seen so much of it in the world and in themselves that it becomes a part of what they know as truth. And when you believe in it the way daddyReese must have, you open yourself up to people preying on that fear. The strength of hatred turns to weakness.
But with all that Reese was bowed - he wasn’t broken. He was wearing a black suit, the old kind that my grandfather wore with five buttons on the jacket. He had a starched, high-collar white shirt and a hat kind of like a bowler.
When he saw me I thought he was going to come in my direction but just then Jo turned to see what I was looking at and that changed Reese’s mind. He took a chair in the back.
Just about then the minister entered the room. Reverend Peters was a fat man with a wide mouth and a black suit; he strode down the middle aisle shaking hands and saying good morning to the people he passed. He was bristling with energy, the kind of man that pious women have sinful dreams about. The kind of man who feels so confident that other men don’t like him too well.
‘Mornin’, brothers and sisters!’ he shouted.
‘Mornin’, reverend,’ said an old woman in a raspberry dress. She was sitting right up front.
‘Yes, it is a good morning. Every one of God’s mornings is a good one.’