A Little Yellow Dog

34

Bonnie was in the kitchen when I got there. She was talking to Jesus while Feather fooled around with Pharaoh. There was a pile of freshly made chocolate chip cookies on the table.

“What’s goin’ on here?” I asked from the doorway.

They were all smiles and giggles.

“Hi, Daddy,” Feather said. “We made cookies.”

Bonnie looked proudly down on my girl.

Something good had happened while I was gone. I tried to remember the last time in my life that someone, other than Jesus, took care of something for me, without me having to ask; the last time that I could lay back and relax, sure that someone else was at the wheel. I thought all the way back to my childhood but I couldn’t remember it still.

Don’t look too close, a voice said in my head. I shuddered and blinked and turned away from Bonnie Shay.

“What’s wrong, Easy?” she asked.

“Nuthin’,” I said.

“Huh?” Feather said, voicing the question for everyone in the room.

“Nuthin’,” I said again. “Here, let me throw some dinner together.”

“That’s okay, Easy,” Bonnie said. “You just sit with the kids.”

Bonnie had been preparing dinner while the kids ate cookies. We had thin string beans made with slivered almonds sautéed in butter and drop biscuits that were very short. The main course was omelets made with fine herbs and white cheese. Feather made herself a can of tomato soup too.

After dinner Jesus went to bed while the rest of us watched TV; Rawhide, half of The Jimmy Dean Show, and then Hazel. Feather loved Hazel but she fell asleep before Jimmy Dean.

Then Bonnie cleaned up in the kitchen and I bundled Feather off to bed. When I came back Bonnie was sitting on the sofa looking sad. Pharaoh was nuzzling her thigh with the side of his snout.

Maybe that dog and I hated each other because we were so much alike.

“Hi,” I said.

Bonnie looked up at me and smiled. She extended her hand to draw me down next to her.

“You have a beautiful family, Mr. Rawlins.”

“They look even better wit’ you.”

That’s where the conversation stopped. We sat there listening to Pharaoh move his nose on her leg. I felt so comfortable right then that I had the urge to pet the dog.

“I’ve got to get my clothes, Easy,” Bonnie said. “Do you think it’s safe?”

“That depends,” I said.

“Depends on what?”

“On how deep you’ve gotten yourself into this mess.” I believe that Bonnie would have talked to me before then — if she could have gotten the words up to her mouth. She needed to be primed.

“What did Idabell do with those croquet sticks when she got off your plane, Bonnie?”

“Roman was waiting for her. He was in his red Mustang convertible out front. I remember Ida was all slumped over because she was so embarrassed. But Roman waved just like he was happy to see me.”

“Did she leave with Roman?”

“No. She threw the sticks in the backseat and then I waited with her until a taxi came. They won’t take nonemployees on the Air France shuttle bus.”

“But I don’t understand,” I said. “She told you that it was Holland who took the dog.”

“Yes.”

“Then why wouldn’t Holland…”

“They were always competing,” Bonnie said. “One was always trying to outdo the other one. Holland used to come up to see me when Roman was out of town. He wanted to kiss me but it was just because I was with Roman.”

“You kissed him?” I asked, but she didn’t answer.

I wanted to kiss her.

She wanted to kiss me.

But there had been too much kissing lately and none of it had come to any good. That voice in my head, a voice that I rarely heard, was trying to protect me from any more pain.

I must’ve been looking pretty hard at Bonnie. She bowed a little and said, “I’ll sleep on the couch, Easy.”

I didn’t argue.

She leaned over and kissed me on the lips, lingering for a moment. She moved away and then back to kiss me again. I touched her hair.

I felt very close to her at that moment; and then the doubt flooded back in.

“What are you doing here, Bonnie?”

“What do you mean?” she asked softly.

“I mean, why would you trust me? Why would you come to my house here when you don’t know a thing about me?”

“But I do know about you. I knew who you were when you came to my apartment the first time.”

“How?” I asked, but I already knew the answer.

“Idabell told me. She called after she ran from the school. She told me what happened between you in the classroom and she said that you took Pharaoh. So when you came over asking about her I knew that you could be trusted.”

“How’s that?”

“Because you were trying to protect her.”

I leaned over, not necessarily for another kiss, but she moved away.

“We have time,” she whispered.

“You take the bed,” I answered. “I got some stuff to think about out here.”

She rose and went back to my room.

The phone rang an hour later. When I put the receiver to my ear the first thing I heard was a blaring horn. Then:

“Easy!”

“Yeah?”

“It’s me, Jackson!”

“I can hear ya, Jackson. I know who you are.”

“I’m in trouble, man.”

“What kinda trouble? Are you at the motel?”

“Naw, I’m outside’a this pool hall down in Venice.”

“Pool hall?”

“I didn’t hear from you, man. I was goin’ crazy in that room. I didn’t even have no book or nuthin’.”

“So why’nt you go to a bookstore?”

“Shit, man. You know,” Jackson said. “I wanted a drink and some music, that’s all.”

“Somebody see you?”

“Yeah. Guy named Paul Dunne. He’s a pool hustler down on Jefferson. I never knew he made out this far west.”

“Paul gonna turn you over?”

“They got money on my head, Easy. Anybody turn me over for cash.”

“Get back to the motel, Jackson,” I said. “An’ keep your nose inside too. I’ll be there tomorrow at the latest. Okay?”

“Okay, man. Okay.” He sounded scared. I liked that, because the only time Jackson ever did what he was told was when he was scared.

After i got off the phone with Jackson I went back to thinking. Thinking about Idabell making love to me on that early-morning desk; about Roman lying dead in the garden while we did; about the dog and the croquet set; about Holland laid up dead; and then about Idabell dead in my car.

It all came down to Bonnie Shay. The killer waiting in front of her house and then even coming back. Yes, coming back. I was sure that it had been Rupert who killed Ida. And he was coming back for Bonnie.

I didn’t want to think about how good Bonnie was because thinking about her sooner or later would lead me back to thinking about her role in Idabell’s plight.

“Bonnie.” I shook her bare shoulder. “Bonnie.”

There was a peaceful look on her waking face. A trusting, good-morning kind of look.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“What you do with the heroin?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“Come on now, Bonnie. Tell me.”

She sat straight up. “What are you trying to say?”

“The only reason Beam would send his killer after you is because you stole from him. And the only thing you could have stolen is the heroin.”

For the first time I noticed that she was bare-chested. There was a small blemish over her left breast about the size and temper of an inflamed pimple. She saw my eyes and pulled the sheet to cover up.

“I… I threw it away,” she said.

“Come on now, Bonnie. You could do better than that.”

“I’m not lying, Mr. Rawlins,” she said with dignity that was barely forced.

“Naw.”

“Yes. I threw it away. Ida had unscrewed the mallets and balls and taken out the heroin.”

“How’d she know about the heroin? You said you didn’t know when Roman was movin’ it. Why’d him or Holland even take a chance on tellin’ her?”

Bonnie’s face relaxed and she sighed. I could tell that all the lying had gone out of her.

“Roman didn’t want her to know,” she said. “But Holland did. He gave her a sachet of potpourri and an empty can of baby powder. He wanted her to open up the hammers and balls and put the heroin in the can. He gave her the glue and said that she could refill the balls with flour and then seal them.”

“So if Holland was supposed to get the drugs, how’d you end up with ’em?”

“He never got them.”

“How’s that?”

“Ida put flour and the potpourri in the empty can. She had the heroin in a hot-water bottle in my travel bag.”

“A hot-water bottle?”

“I didn’t know about it until the plane was almost landing, Easy. That’s the truth. She’d done everything on her own. She was keeping the drugs as insurance that Pharaoh would be safe.”

“She put her life on the line, and yours, for a dog?”

“That was her heart.”

I could have cried. Pharaoh definitely had to leave from my house.

“And so you threw it away?”

“It was an evil thing and I wouldn’t trade my life for my soul.”

I was trying to understand; trying to believe. But I couldn’t.

“Where’d you throw it?”

“In the trash,” she said as if I were some kind of simpleton.

“You mean in one of those cans behind your building?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“The morning after we got back from France. Right after Idabell called and said that she had Pharaoh.”

“And when’s garbage pickup?”

The question startled her. “Oh. I… Today, I mean… tomorrow… this morning coming up.”

I looked at my watch. It was still a while until Mouse got off of work. Even if I was late he would wait for me, because I had his car.

I was going through the fourteenth trash can and wondering at what a fool I was. If any of the neighbors heard me the cops would come. If Rupert was still waiting out front, which he probably was, I was dead from his hand.

And there I was sifting through soggy newspapers and greasy brown paper bags. One can held a half-eaten ham that was alive again with a thriving colony of leaping maggots. Ants crawled along my ankles. A dog barked out of a corridor that led to the main body of the building.

I was there because I wanted to believe in something — in Bonnie Shay. I wanted her to be what she said she was; a good woman with a strong mind who did what she knew was right. I couldn’t live in the streets, and the workaday world wasn’t enough — not without some kind of faith.

Maybe I was more like Mouse than I thought. Maybe somebody looking at me would have thought that I was insane. Maybe that was what Sanchez thought.

In the fifteenth can there was a bag of greasy bones and coffee grounds. Under that were various newspapers, beer cans, and a broken green glass. Finally there was a large red rubber water bottle. It was heavy, maybe three pounds. The white powder it contained wasn’t flour.