Bad Boy Brawly Brown

— 11 —

I got to John’s lots somewhere about noon.

There were other houses under construction on that block but nobody was out there on Sunday, nobody but John’s crew.

Mercury and Chapman were sitting on the skeleton of a front-porch-to-be, drinking from small paper cups.

“Wanna snort, Mr. Rawlins?” Mercury asked as I approached.

“What’s John gonna say if he see you out here throwin’ back liquor on the job?” I asked.

Since I’d recommended them, I felt somewhat responsible for their actions.

“John’s a bartender, ain’t he?” Chapman whined. “An’ anyway, he left for home a hour ago. He said that he’d see us tomorrow.”

“You want us to tell ’im you come by, Mr. Rawlins?” Mercury asked.

I picked a newspaper out of a big trash bin, unfolded it, and set it out on the unfinished porch. Then I sat down.

“Actually it’s good that John’s gone, because I wanted to talk to you boys when he wasn’t around.”

Mercury and Chapman exchanged glances. I was glad to see that they were bothered. It meant that they wanted to protect my friend.

“Don’t worry, boys,” I said. “It ain’t nuthin’ against John. Really it’s to help him out.”

“What is it?” Mercury asked.

Chapman clenched his hands together and stared off toward his right.

They were a good team. Chapman was the smart one but Mercury had the personality. He’d asked the questions while Chapman contemplated the answers.

“It’s about Brawly,” I said.

“What about him?”

“What do you boys think?”

“Think about what?” Mercury asked.

“About him quittin’ this job and cuttin’ it off with his mother.”

“We don’t know nuthin’ about their family life, Easy,” Chapman said. “I mean, not no more than might come up in normal conversation while workin’ around here.”

“Like what?” I asked.

Mercury looked to Chapman, who stuck out his lips and nodded almost imperceptibly.

“Brawly’s a good kid,” Mercury said. “Strong as a motherfucker but not no bully. He got temper, though. When Brawly blow his stack you better stand back. One day he got mad at John an’ almost—”

Chapman brushed his hand against his lips, and Mercury switched gears.

“... anyway... Brawly’s a good kid. He just young and stupid.”

“Stupid how?”

“For about a couple’a months now he been talkin’ that Revolutionary Party bullshit. John didn’t like it and Alva didn’t, either, to hear Brawly tell it—”

“Brawly said that they told him he had to quit goin’ to those meetins, or he was gonna be out the house,” Chapman threw in.

That reminded me of something.

“Kicked outta where?” I asked. “You couldn’t squeeze three people in that place they live in.”

“They paid the rent on a studio in that buildin’ they lived in. Brawly stayed down there,” Mercury said, “on the first floor.”

“Studio?” I said. “What in the hell is it that John got?”

“That’s a one-bedroom,” Chapman said. “A deluxe one-bedroom, if you believe what the manager say.”

Chapman and Mercury laughed. I joined in with them. It was only the tip of the iceberg of what was to come in L.A., but right then it was rare enough to be funny.

“What did Brawly say about that political group?”

“Not much,” Mercury mused. “Not too much. He liked it that they were so mad and that they wanted to do somethin’. You know that’s just youth, Mr. Rawlins.”

“He ever talk about his father?” I asked.

“Now and then,” Chapman said. “Not too much.”

“Yeah,” Mercury said while staring down at his work boots. “He only said that him and his old man had a, whatyoumacallit, a disagreement. But that was a long time ago.”

“They have a fight?” I asked.

“Somethin’ like that,” Mercury said. “The boy said somethin’ that they had a fight over his mother or somethin’ like that a long time ago and his old man hit him so hard that he knocked out one’a his teeth. That was when he was still a teenager. Then he tramped on down to his cousin Issy. Now her I done seen. You know that there’s the kinda cousin your orphan boys dream about.”

Chapman let out one of his big laughs. I didn’t find it funny, but I knew what he was saying.

“Where’d you see Isolda?” I asked.

“She drop by now and then to pick up Brawly,” Mercury said. “You know, family stuff, I guess. She’d take him for burgers. It was always on the sly, like. I don’t think her and Alva got along too well.”

Chapman looked at me then. He held out his hands halfheartedly asking, Is that it?

“Well,” I said. “I guess you boys better be gettin’ back to work.”

“I guess so,” Chapman said.

On the ride home I wondered about the complex weave of John’s problem. His wife, her murdered ex-husband and brother, her son living with her cousin while she was suffering from a nervous breakdown, and the black revolutionaries with their hopeful anger, and the cops breathing down their necks.

By the time I got home I was ready to talk to my son.

He was in the backyard setting up three sawhorses, each one spaced about four feet from the next. He also had out a few planks of wood about ten feet long and four feet wide. They were between one and a half and two inches thick.

“What you doin’?” I asked him.

“I’m gonna build a boat,” he said.

“Where’d you get the wood?”

“Bought it from Mr. Galway at the lumberyard.”

“He deliver it?”

Jesus nodded.

This was a new phase in his life. Jesus had never before spent money on himself. Ever since he was quite young he saved his money, for fear that I’d lose my job or be put in jail. He worked four afternoons a week at a local market, bagging groceries and making deliveries for old women. Every cent went into a coffee can in his closet. In his mind everything would always be fine because if I fell down, he would be there to take up the slack.

I tried to convince him that he didn’t have to worry, that he could buy himself toys or clothes or anything he wanted. But Jesus had spent his younger years with my friend Primo. In Primo’s world a boy was just a smaller version of a man; he might not have been able to do as much as his larger counterpart but he was expected to do all that he could manage.

“What kinda boat?” I asked.

“Sail,” Jesus said.

“You know how to build a sailboat?”

“There’s a book.” Jesus pointed at a large paperback that he’d gotten from the library. It was lying on the back porch, open to a page that showed three sawhorses spaced four feet apart. “It says that there’s one hundred and sixty-one steps to build a sailboat.”

“Come here and sit down with me,” I said.

We sat together on the concrete porch. I was looking at Jesus as he stared at the grass beneath his bare feet.

“What’s this about droppin’ out of school?”

“I don’t like it there,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t like the kids or the teachers,” he said.

“You got to say more if you want me to understand you, Juice. I mean, did somebody do something to make you mad?”

“Uh-uh. They’re just stupid.”

“Stupid how?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must have some kind of example. Did somebody do something stupid last week?”

Jesus nodded. “Mr. Andrews.”

“What did he do?” I was used to asking Jesus questions. Though he had been speaking since he was twelve, words were still a rare commodity for him.

“Felicity Dorn was crying. She was sad because her cat died. Mr. Andrews told her that she had to be quiet or he was going to send her to the vice principal’s office and she would miss a big test. And if she didn’t take the test, she’d probably fail out.”

“He was just trying to keep her from distracting the class.”

“But her mother died just last year,” Jesus said, looking up at me. “She couldn’t help how bad she felt.”

“I’m sure he didn’t know that.”

“But he should know. He’s the teacher. All he knows is the states and their capitals and what year the presidents died.”

“Are you gonna let somebody like that keep you from going to college and bein’ something?”

“He went to college,” Jesus said, “and it didn’t help him.”

I managed to keep the smile off my face. Inside I was proud of the man my son was becoming.

“You can’t decide to leave school because one teacher’s a fool,” I said.

“That’s not all. They think I’m stupid.”

“No.”

“Yes, they do. They don’t wanna teach me. They give me homework but they don’t care if I turn it in. They like it that I run fast but they don’t care.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

Jesus got up and moved toward his sawhorses. I touched his elbow and he stopped.

“We need to talk about this more, Juice. We need to talk about it until we can both decide. You hear me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. Go work on your boat.”