A Little Yellow Dog

3

Hiram Newgate had been principal at Sojourner Truth Junior High School for four months. In that time he had his office laid with thick maroon carpets, moved in a desk constructed from African ebony wood, and had teak shelving installed from ceiling to floor. He took the dictionary and its podium from the library and placed it in the window overlooking the coral tree that branched out over the main entrance of the school.

Principal Newgate, as he preferred to be called, always wore a dark suit with a silk tie of bold and rich colors.

“Come in, Rawlins.” Newgate held up the back of his hand and waggled his fingers at me.

“Mr. Newgate,” I said.

“Jacobi,” he said.

“Say what?”

“That jacket. Gino Jacobi line. Astor’s downtown is the only place that sells it.”

He knew his clothes. I did too. Ever since I wangled my job at the Board of Ed I decided that I was going to dress like a supervisor. I’d had enough years of shabby jeans and work shirts. That day I was wearing a buff, tending toward brown, jacket that had trails of slender green and red threads wending through it. My fine cotton shirt was open at the neck. The wool of my pants was deep brown.

“Aren’t you afraid to get those nice clothes dirty if you ever have to do some real work?” Newgate asked.

“You said you wanted to see me?” I replied.

Newgate had a smile that made you want to slap him. Haughty and disdainful, the principal hated me because I wouldn’t bow down to his position.

“I got a disturbing call this morning,” he said.

“Oh? What about?”

Newgate’s eyes actually sparkled with anticipation. “The man said that you’re the one who’s been stealing from the school.”

Over the previous year there had been three major thefts at the school. Electric typewriters, audiovisual equipment, and musical instruments. It wasn’t kids. The police thought that it was somebody who worked for the schools, because there was never any sign of a break-in — the thieves had keys.

But it wasn’t just Sojourner Truth that was hit. Almost every school in the district had been robbed at least once. The police were looking for someone who had access to a set of master keys. It was someone who moved from school to school.

It certainly wasn’t someone like me.

“It wasn’t just a prank?” I asked.

“He knew what was stolen. He told me about the three IBM Selectrics and the gold watch out of Miranda’s desk.”

“He said that?”

Newgate was watching me. I was used to it. White people like to keep their eyes peeled on blacks, and vice versa. We lie to each other so much that often the only hope is to see some look or gesture that betrays the truth.

“Why do you think that he would put the blame on you, Ezekiel?” Newgate asked, at once wondering and suspicious.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. But I wasn’t feeling honest. I had a long history with the police — and it wasn’t pleasant. The police would have been happy to investigate my activities on the nights of the crimes. They’d also wonder at how I came upon my responsible position at the school.

“You sure that you don’t know anything, Ezekiel?”

“No, Hiram,” I replied. I might as well have slapped him; no one called Principal Newgate by his first name.

His jaw set hard and his hands got restless.

“I just want you to know that I’m here, Rawlins. I’m weighing every piece of information. Every piece,” he said.

“Okay. Let’s call the police right now.”

“What?”

“I said, let’s call the police. That’s what I’d do. When I find out about some crime I call the police. I don’t have anything to hide.” Bluff was all I had left.

The blood was rising under Newgate’s pale skin.

“You’re right, of course. It’s a police matter. I didn’t call you about that anyway,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you about Archie Muldoon.”

“What about him?” I asked.

I never liked Muldoon. The white teachers and workmen would often take him to the side and confide in him. He was always coming to me with problems that the white staff seemed more comfortable discussing with him.

A short man and balding, he was in his early fifties but wore a faded White Sox baseball cap that made him seem younger; a trick to fool people into not taking him seriously.

“I think he’s being wasted down there with you scrubbing out toilets and mopping halls,” Newgate was saying. “I mean, I don’t understand how you made Burns the head man when you’ve got an obviously more experienced man like Archie.”

“Being young doesn’t mean you’re not experienced, Mr. Newgate.”

“Anyway,” he said, dismissing my words, “at least you could cut Archie loose and let him come up here to work with me. You know you’re, um, so, uh, busy that you’re sometimes slow reacting to my requests.”

He said more but I stopped listening. I was thinking about how I’d often catch Muldoon staring at me over the coffee-break table, or from across the yard. It was a piercing stare. A white man’s stare that set off an alarm in my southern heart.

Maybe it was Archie who called in blaming me for a thief.

“Mr. Newgate,” I said, interrupting whatever it was that he was saying, “you’re the boss of the school. You call the shots. I mean, if you see a problem you come to me and I’m supposed to take care of it. If I don’t perform to your expectations, then you call the area office to complain — that’s what it says in the rule book. That’s how it works.”

“It would be better if you tried to work with me, Mr. Rawlins,” he said. “I came to this school to straighten things out.”

“Oh? I thought it was because Mrs. Jimenez had a stroke and the three people higher than you on the eligible list didn’t want the job.” I had been a fool with Mrs. Turner and I kept it up with Mr. Newgate.

“Will you let me have Archie?”

“No,” I said.

“I want you to reconsider, Mr. Rawlins.”

“Mr. Muldoon works for me. Any jobs you need done will come through me. Me or Mr. Burns.” It felt good to be standing up for myself. Too good. It’s amazing how ten minutes with a woman can turn you silly.

“This isn’t over,” Newgate said.

“I have to go.”

I left the principal to make my rounds of the plant.

The school, like Los Angeles, was a hodgepodge of this and that, old and new. It was once a series of brick buildings at the top of a hill named after President Polk and populated with Irish, Italian, and Jewish kids — all of them working-class or poor. There had been a large empty plot of land down the hill that the school used for a garden. When the population changed, and grew, most of the plot had been paved over. The garden shrank but it was still the size of half a city block. Bungalows were moved in to accommodate the larger student body and the school was renamed. Sojourner Truth; evangelist, suffragette, abolitionist, and — by her own account — a woman who spoke personally with God. By that time the neighborhood was primarily black but there were Mexicans and Asians too. That was still back in the days when all dark people were the same color.

It would have been a fertile ground for a teacher like Miss Truth. But she was dead and her name meant no more to the students, teachers, or parents than did that of President Polk.

My day went on at a natural pace.

A toilet exploded with the help of a quarter stick of dynamite; probably the doing of Brad Parkerhouse, our resident bad boy. Jorge and Simona disappeared for a while but by the time I got to search for them Jorge pretended that he’d been looking for me to ask if we needed to restock the outside johns with toilet paper. There was a pigeon infestation along the gutters of the older buildings and I had to direct the exterminators where it was safe to lay their bait.

Every now and then Idabell crossed my mind. I wondered who might have blamed me for stealing from the school. But mostly I went about my job like half a million other working men and women in the L.A. basin.

There’s a routine wherever you find people; even in a condemned man’s cell. I missed lunch but made it back to the main office by one-thirty to make sure that my people had finished their midday break and were off at work.

EttaMae was the only one there.

“Hi, Easy,” she said.

“You not mad anymore, Etta?”

“I wasn’t mad in the first place. Maybe disgusted. Maybe I was worried about you jeopardizin’ your job. But I wasn’t mad.”

“Okay. What you doin’ still here?”

“It’s Raymond. I got to go get him.”

I could live to a hundred and still the mention of that name would send a chill down my spine.

“He sick?”

“Naw. The other car broke down an’ he cain’t get in here.”

“He stuck out there at the house?” I asked.

“Uh-huh. You mind if I go get him?”

“Yeah, I mind. You go back to work, Etta. I’ll go an’ get Mouse.”

Etta smiled. “You always did look after Raymond,” she said.