A Red Death

30

John’s place was empty except for Odell sitting in his corner, eating a sandwich. He wouldn’t even return my nod. It was hard to lose a friend like that, but things were so twisted that I couldn’t really feel it, except as a pang in my lower gut.

As John served me whiskey I asked him, “You seen Jackson t’day?”

“No,” John answered. “But he be here. Jackson need to be in a bar where they don’t allow no fightin’.”

“You gotta save his butt a lot?”

John shrugged. “Lotta people cain’t stand the man. He smart but he stupid too.”

I took the drink to the far end of his bar and waited.

John always had his share of drunks and a few businessmen plying their various trades. Every once in a while there’d be a woman doing business, but that was rare, as John didn’t want trouble with the police.

Jackson Blue came through the door at about four-thirty.

“Hey, Easy,” he squealed in his high, crackly voice.

“Jackson. Come on over here and have a seat.”

He was wearing a loose and silvery sharkskin suit. His coal-black skin against the light but shadowy fabric made him look like the negative of a photograph of a white man.

“S’appenin’, Ease?” Jackson greeted me like I was his best friend.

Once, five years earlier, I came close to being murdered by a hijacker named Frank Green. I was never sure if Jackson was the one who told Frank Green, now deceased, that I was on his trail. All I know is that one day I was talking to Jackson about it and that night Frank had a knife to my throat. It really didn’t matter if it was Jackson, because he didn’t have anything against me personally. He was just trading in the only real business he knew-information.

“It’s bad, Jack, bad as it could be. You wanna drink?”

“Yeah.”

“Bring Jackson his milk, John.”

While John served the triple shot of scotch, Jackson smiled and said, “Whas the problem?”

“You know what happened at First African, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure. You know Rita dragged me there Sunday ’fore last. Said she’d keep me company on Saturday if I took her t’church.”

This satisfied look came over Jackson’s face and I knew that he was about to start bragging on the acts of love Rita had performed. I interrupted his reverie, saying, “You hear anything ’bout them killin’s?”

“How come?”

“Poinsettia got herself hung a while back and I found the body.”

“Yeah, I heard,” he said. Then a light went on in his yellowy eyes. “An’ you fount the minister too. They think it was you?”

“Yeah, and the cops don’t even know who the girl was. They’d like to say it was me.”

“Shit,” Jackson snorted. “Mothahfuckahs couldn’t fines no clue if it was nailed to they ass.”

“You know sumpin’ ’bout it, Jackson?”

Jackson looked over his shoulder, at the door. That meant he knew something and he was wondering if he should tell it. He rubbed his chin and acted cagey for a half a minute or so.

Finally he said, “What you doin’ at City College, man?”

“What?”

“You go there, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So what you takin’?”

“Basic like, remedial courses. Gettin’ some basic history an’ English I missed in night school. I got a couple’a advanced classes too.”

“Yeah? What kinda history?”

“European. From the Magna Carta on.”

“War,” he stated simply.

“What’s that you say?”

“Whatever it is I read about Europe is war. Them white men is always fightin’. War’a the Roses, the Crew-sades, the Revolution, the Kaiser, Hitler, the com’unists. Shit! All they care ’bout, war an’ money, money an’ land.”

He was right, of course. Jackson Blue was always right.

“You wanna go to school there?”

“Maybe you wanna take me t’class one night. Maybe I see.”

“What about the church, Jackson?”

“You say the cops don’t even know who that girl is?”

“Nope.”

“Maybe I go t’school an’ be a cop.”

“You gotta be five-eight at least to be a cop, Jack.”

“Shit, man. If I ain’t a niggah I’m a midget. Shit. You wanna get me another one, Ease?”

He pointed a long ebony finger at his empty glass.

I signaled for John to bring another. After he’d moved away Jackson said, “Tania’s her name. Tania Lee.”

“Where she live?”

“I’ont know. I just got it from one’a the young deacon boys-Robert Williams.”

“He didn’t know where she from?”

“Uh-uh. She just always tellin’ him t’be proud’a his skin and to worship Africa.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Jackson grinned. “You know I ’preciate a girl like a dark-skinned man but you ain’t gonna find me in no Africa.”

“Why not, Jackson? You ’fraid’a the jungle?”

“Hell no, man. Africa ain’t got no mo’ wild than America gots. But you know I cain’t see how them Africans could take kindly t’no American Negro. We been away too long, man.” Jackson shook his head. He almost looked sorry. “Too long.”

Jackson could have lectured me on the cultural rift between the continents all night, but an idea came to me.

“You ever hear of a group called the African Migration, Blue?”

“Sure, ain’t you ever seen it? Down on Avalon, near White Horse Bar and Grill.”

I had seen the place. It used to be a hardware store, but the owner died and the heirs sold it to a real estate broker who rented it out to storefront churches.

“I thought that was just another church.”

“Naw, Easy. These is Marcus Garvey people. Back to Africa. You know, like W.E.B. Du Bois.”

“Who?”

“Du Bois. He’s a famous Negro, Easy. Almost a hundred years old. He always writin’ ’bout gettin’ back t’Africa. You prob’ly ain’t never heard’a him ’cause he’s a com’unist. They don’t teach ya ’bout com’unists.”

“So how do you know, if they don’t teach it?”

“Lib’ary got its do’ open, man. Ain’t nobody tellin’ you not to go.”

There aren’t too many moments in your life when you really learn something. Jackson taught me something that night in John’s, something I’d never forget.

But I didn’t have time to discuss the political nature of information right then. I had to find out what was happening, and it was the African Migration that was my next stop.

“Thanks, Jackson. You gonna be ’round fo’a while?” I put a five-dollar bill on the counter; Jackson covered it with his long skinny hand. Then he tipped his drink at me.

“Sure, Ease, sure I be here. You prob’ly find ’em too. They got a meetin’ there just about ev’ry night.”

There was a meeting going on in the gutted hardware store that evening. About forty people were gathered around a platform toward the back of the room to listen to the speakers.

A big man stopped me at the front door.

“You comin’ to the meetin’?” he asked. He was tall, six-four or more, and fat. His big outstretched hand looked like the stuffed hand of a giant brown doll.

“Yeah.”

“We like a little donation,” the big man said, unconsciously rubbing the tips of his fingers together.

“… they don’t want us and we don’t want them,” I heard the female speaker in the back of the large room say.

“How little?” I asked.

“One dollar for one gentleman,” he smiled.

I gave him two Liberty half-dollars.

The people in the room were a serious sort on the whole. Most of the men wore glasses, and every other person had a book or papers under their arm. Nobody noticed me. I was just another brother looking for a way to hold my head up high.

Among the crowd I made out Melvin Pride. He was intent on the speaker and so didn’t notice me. I moved behind a pillar, where I could watch him without being seen.

The speaker was talking about home, Africa. A place where everybody looked like the people in that room. A place where the kings and presidents were black. I was moved to hear her.

But not so moved that I didn’t keep an eye on the deacon. Melvin kept looking around nervously and rubbing his hands.

After a while the crowd broke out into a kind of exultant applause. The woman speaker, who wore wraparound African robes, bowed her head in recognition of the adulation before giving up the podium to the man behind her. She was chubby and light brown and had the face of a precocious schoolgirl, serious but innocent. Melvin went up to her, whispering while the next speaker prepared to address the crowd.

What looked to be a wad of folded money changed hands.

The man on the platform spoke in glowing terms about a powerful Negro woman who had shown leadership beyond her years. I knew it had to be Melvin’s friend, because she took out a moment from her transaction to make eye contact with the speaker.

Melvin had finished his business anyway; he headed for the exit.

“… Sonja Achebe,” the speaker said. The crowd applauded again and the young woman headed for a doorway at the back of the room.

“Miss Achebe?”

“Yes?”

She smiled at me.

“Excuse me, ma’am, but my name is Easy, Easy Rawlins.”

She frowned a bit as if the name meant something to her but she couldn’t quite remember why.

“Yes, Brother Rawlins.”

The mood of the Migration, like that of so many other black organizations, was basically religious.

“I need to talk to you ’bout Tania Lee.”

She knew who I was then. She didn’t say anything, just pointed at a doorway. We walked toward it as another speaker began to preach.

“What is it you wanted to know about Sister Lee?” she asked. We were in a large storeroom that was cut into tiny aisles by rows of slender, empty shelves. It was like a rat’s maze, dimly lit by sparse forty-watt bulbs.

“I need to know who killed her, and why.”

“She’s dead?” Miss Achebe made a lame attempt at surprise. “Com’on, lady, you know what happened. She’s one’a you people.” I was reaching but I thought I might be right.

“You tell the police that?”

I stuck out my bottom lip and shook my head. “No reason. Least not yet.”

Miss Achebe didn’t look like a little girl anymore. The lines of an older woman etched her face.

“What do you want with me?” she asked.

“Who killed your friend and my minister?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have anything to do with killings.”

“I saw you with Melvin and I seen him with Tania and Reverend Towne. Somethin’s goin’ on wit’ you and the church. I know they gave you at least thirty-six hundred dollars, honey, but you see I don’t care about that. The police lookin’ at me for murder an’ I cain’t be worried ’bout you-all’s li’l thing.”

“We didn’t kill Towne.”

“Why’m I gonna believe that?”

“I don’t care what you believe, Mr. Rawlins. I didn’t kill anyone-nobody I know killed anyone.”

“Maybe not.” I nodded at her. “But all I gotta do is whisper a word to the man and he might just wanna prove that you did.”

She snorted in place of a laugh. “We live with danger here, Mr. Rawlins. The police and the FBI make weekly visits. They don’t scare me and you don’t either.”

“I don’t wanna scare ya, Miss Achebe. What you got here looks good to me, but I was in the wrong place at the wrong time an’ I gotta have some answers.”

“I can’t help you. I know nothing.”

“Didn’t Melvin say anything?”

“Nothing.” She shrugged and glanced over my shoulder.

“Okay. But I gotta know…” I was interrupted by a heavy hand on my shoulder.

I turned to look up into the face of the man who took my money at the door.

“Anything wrong?” he asked.

“Yes, Bexel,” Sonja said. “Mr. Rawlins here thinks that we’re somehow involved with the murder of Reverend Towne.”

“He do?” You could see how it hurt the big man that I could think such a thing.

Sonja smiled. “He wants to tell the police that.”

“Naw?” When Bexel balled his hands into fists the knuckles of his fingers did an impression of popping corn.

I guess that my fights with Willie and Agent Lawrence had made me a little cocky. I made like I was going to step away from the sergeant-at-arms and then I dropped my right shoulder to deliver an uppercut to his lower gut.

It was a perfectly executed blow that I followed with an overhand left just below Bexel’s heart. I danced backward until I felt a row of shelves behind me. It wasn’t far but I didn’t expect my quarry to be in any shape to trap me.

Then I looked up into his placid, smiling face.

Bexel leaned forward and pushed me with his great padded paw. My hurtling body shattered the shelves behind and the shelves behind them. My lungs collapsed in my chest and I felt pain in places that I’d never felt before.

Still smiling, the big man grabbed me roughly by both shoulders and lifted me until our faces almost touched.

I kicked him. Hard. And, to give myself a little credit, his left eye winced for a split second. But then he let go of my shoulders and grabbed me by the head.

“Bexel!” Sonja Achebe shouted. “Release him!”

I hit the floor certain, at least for that moment, that these were not the killers. I was fool enough to go into their den and blame them for the crime of murder. They could have killed me. Should have done.

I was on the floor thinking about cooked spaghetti and wondering if I was bleeding when Sonja asked, “Are you all right, Mr. Rawlins?”

“No, I sure ain’t that.”

Bexel was still standing before me. I was looking at his bloated black brogans. They were the largest shoes I had ever seen. He grabbed me by my jacket and lifted me to my feet. That was the first time that night that I had the sensation of flight.

“You should go now,” Sonja Achebe said. “We didn’t do anything wrong, but I don’t expect you to believe that. It doesn’t matter what you think, however, because we are not afraid.”

I looked at Bexel. He wasn’t even breathing hard. I remember hoping that I had finally learned to be cautious. But somewhere in my heart I knew that I’d never learn.

“Sorry,” I said.

I shook Sonja Achebe’s hand. “I know you might not believe this, but I was moved by your speech. There’s a lotta people need what you have to offer.”

“Not you?” She smiled for the first time and became a young girl again.

“I got me a home already. It might be in enemy lands, but it’s mine still and all.”

I liked Sonja Achebe and what the Migration stood for. I didn’t want to see them come to harm. I found myself hoping that they hadn’t been involved in Towne’s death. I found myself wishing the same thing about Chaim Wenzler. It seemed to me that I was on everybody’s side but my own.