“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“For a favor to Saul. That’s the guy I was with.”
“What if I told you something?” she said. “I mean, could I trust you to keep secret where you heard it from?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But I don’t know how to prove it.”
“Oh I’ll take your word, honey. I can feel how much you wanted me and still you held back. Some woman has made an honest man outta you.”
Her words seemed to be full of meaning.
“Any man that true,” she continued, “will keep his word if he can.”
“All right,” I said. “You got my word. So what can you tell me?”
“Gator and Tilly are movin’ stolen sports cars.”
“From the used car lot?”
“Uh-uh. They work on ’em late at night and then sell ’em from off the street.”
“How so?”
“They get the car in and paint it, then they leave it on some corner and send the buyer the key.”
“How long they been doin’ that?”
“Couple’a years.”
“And was Ross in on it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“And how do you know about it?”
“Eggersly don’t give two shits about me. He got at least two girlfriends at any one time an’ he ain’t hardly ever home. When he is he treats me like a piece’a property. He brags about what he’s doin’ like I wasn’t in the room. Talk about women he had, men he beat, and the cars too. Gator always says that he was born poor white trash but he was smart and tough and made somethin’ outta himself. But my mama always said that you could put trash in a silver ashcan but it’s still just trash.”
I’d known men like Oliphant. Men so proud of their strength and their accomplishments that they forget even the greatest fighter can be stabbed in the back.
“So you think Gator or Tilly knows who stole the money?” I asked.
“Not himself. He wasn’t in there that night, ’cause it was Tuesday. On Tuesdays he drops Eddie off at Little League practice and then goes off. Nobody sees him again till Wednesday.”
“So what does that mean for Ross?”
“Ross don’t know none of it. He don’t know that most nights Tilly and Gator up in there with stolen cars. How’s he gonna be so smart to pick the one night you can be sure nobody’s there?”
It was a good question.
“YOU DIDN’T GET IT? What the fuck is wrong wit’ you, Easy?” Mouse asked.
It wasn’t really Mouse but just a specter in my mind. Lately, whenever I was disturbed or distressed, I’d start telling the story to the air and from somewhere in my mind I’d imagine my dead friend’s opinions.
“No,” I said in the empty car. “No. I haven’t set things straight with Bonnie yet.”
“Lemme get this straight, Ease. She had her hand down in your pants, had a hold’a yo’ dick, and you still pushed her off?”
“Yeah,” I said on a heavy sigh.
And there was no reply. It was new ground for Mouse and me. What could he say? There was no experience he’d ever had with a friend who would have said such a thing.
I PULLED UP INTO THE DRIVEWAY at about eleven. The lights were on. Bonnie was sitting in the reclining chair reading and waiting for me. Her recreational reading was mostly in French. I’d always felt that it was a barrier between us, like her French-speaking African prince.
She put the book down when I came in.
For a while after I found out about her holiday she tried to act normal. She’d smile at me when I came through the door and kiss me the way she always had. But after a few weeks of me being cold and turning away she stopped pretending.
“Easy.”
That’s all she said, just one word, and I wanted to put my fist through the wall.
“Hey, baby,” I said instead. “What you readin’?”
That threw her off guard. She was about to say something else but those words never came out.
“A book,” she said. “Nothing. It’s about a young girl in love with a man who doesn’t even know that she’s alive.”
I pulled a wooden chair up next to the recliner and sat down.
“Just because somebody loves someone else that don’t mean she got to love him back,” I said. I was hoping for better words to come out; words like she’d been reading in that novel.
Bonnie wanted to say something but all she could do was reach out and touch my cheek.
“I was mad at you,” I said. “I wanted to take my love away from you ’cause I thought that’s what you did to me. And maybe it is. Maybe you love somebody who don’t know it. But all I know is that you’re here with me, inside me. And so I wanna say that you can go off now or tomorrow or next month. You can go have that life you read about and I will let you go. And…” I was talking from a place inside me that I didn’t even know was there; saying words that had been worked out in a part of my mind that I was unaware of. “…and you can leave knowin’ that I love you. It doesn’t matter that you love him or don’t love me. It doesn’t matter what you did or wanted to do. I’m not mad at you anymore. And the good feeling from my lovin’ you is stronger than the pain of seein’ you do what you got to do.”
As soon as those words were out I felt like a fool. My ears got hot and I expected Bonnie to laugh in my face. But she didn’t laugh. Her hand fell down against my chest and pressed. Whether it was a caress or pushing me away, I didn’t know.
“You wanna come to bed, baby?” she whispered.
“Not tonight,” I said. “I got things to think about.”
“What Mr. Lynx wanted you to help him with?”
“Yeah. Tryin’ to help his cousin stay outta jail.”
“Okay. But will you come back to bed when this is over?”
“If you still want me.”
Bonnie’s eyebrows furrowed and her hand moved away. She kissed me on the cheek and left without saying another word.
I laid back on the sofa and for the first time since before Mouse had been shot I fell instantly to sleep. It was a place beyond images, way past normal, everyday rest. It was the kind of sleep that you fall into after surviving a high fever or grave illness. It was the healing sleep of infants and wild animals. My dreams, if there were any, were shapeless and feral notions far beyond any small problems of humankind.
When I awoke early the next morning it took a few minutes for me to remember who I was and where. It was a new world and a new life opening up for me. And I was ready to challenge the world.
BUT FIRST I had to go to work.
I was there early prowling the school, looking hard for unlocked doors or broken windows. I found an overturned trash bin on the upper campus. Instead of making a report for one of my custodians, I opened a hopper room and got myself a broom and dustpan. I had almost finished when the principal came upon me.
“Good morning, Mr. Rawlins,” she said.
“Principal Masters,” I said.
It took Hiram Newgate shooting himself in the head to make me call him principal.
“Is sweeping in your job description?” Ada Masters asked.
“When I used to go to school down in Louisiana,” I said, “the last thing we did every night was to sweep, dust, and pick up the classroom. Wasn’t any slot in the budget for a janitor. If you see a mess, you take care of it if you can. How else a child or an employee gonna learn unless somebody sets the example?”
Mrs. Masters’s smile beamed. That’s how my luck ran. Under the previous principal I couldn’t do a thing right. But since Masters had come she only saw me in my best light, even though I had lost my way and spent many days away from work on made-up illnesses.
“How are you, Mr. Rawlins?” she asked.
“As near to bliss as a poor man can hope for.”
Again she smiled.
I SPENT THE DAY checking between the cracks, making sure that my school was in tip-top shape.
Mrs. Plates called in and said that her husband had died that morning. It was no surprise, he’d been bedridden for years, but she was still broken up.