Bad Boy Brawly Brown

— 18 —

Jesus, Feather, and I all got home at about the same time. I picked them up as they got off the blue bus at Pico and Genesee.

Feather had a homework assignment that she was so concentrated on, she didn’t even take time for her snack before she was hard at work at the kitchen table.

“It’s a book about a girl who fought in a war,” she told me, “in Frenchland. I have to read it and write a book report.”

“What girl?”

“Joan Arks,” she said.

“Did she have a gun?” I asked.

“No, un-uh, a sword. A big sword.”

“And did she cut off people’s heads?”

“No. She just held it up over her head and ran after the enemy and they got scared and run.”

It was a real book, about thirty pages, with large print and a black-and-white illustration every six pages or so. The cover showed Joan with the sword held high, men on their knees before her and men shouting her praises from behind. Feather studied each page with rapt attention.

“You want peanut butter an’ jelly, sis?” Juice asked her.

“Um, uh-huh.”

He made her the sandwich and poured some milk while I put rice on to boil and took frozen oxtails, which I’d cooked a week before, from the freezer. I also had a bowl of green beans and ham hocks on ice. When Feather had snacked and the food was all cooking, Jesus and I went into the backyard, where his long planks and sawhorses stood.

“So you still think you gonna build that boat, huh?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And what about school?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“If you wanna drop out, I got to sign a paper, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you have to look me in the face and talk to me, ’cause I don’t see any reason at all that you can’t go to school when every other kid in Los Angeles seems to be able to.”

“Not everybody,” he said.

“No. Pregnant girls and juvenile delinquents don’t go. Kids acting in the movies and little kids don’t have no parents to show ’em the right way to go. But everybody else makes it.”

Jesus turned away. He was probably going to leave, but I took his arm before he could make a move.

“Talk to me.”

He sat on the grass and I did, too. When he started rocking back and forth, I put my hand on his knee.

“I love you, boy,” I said. “You know when I was a kid I lost my parents, too. I know what it’s like to be in the street. That’s why I wanna see you get an education. What I never had.”

He stopped fidgeting and looked into my eyes.

“I can’t learn in class,” he said.

“Of course you can,” I said.

“No.” His tone and demeanor could not be denied. “I don’t want to listen to them anymore. They act like we should just listen and believe. They say things that are wrong. They lock the gates. I don’t want to be there anymore.”

“But you just have a little bit more than a year to go.”

“I want to build my boat.”

“Will you stay in school and try hard if I tell you to?” I asked him.

After a moment’s hesitation he said, “I guess I will.”

“Then let me think about it for a couple of days.”

We had a great time at dinner. Feather regaled us with fragments of “Joan Arks” while we ate. After dinner she read to us from her paper. Jesus went to bed early, reading his book on how to build a single-masted sailboat. Feather and I watched The Andy Griffith Show. She loved little Opie.

“Because he’s so nice,” she said.

“Daddy? Daddy.”

I had just walked into a graveyard’s warehouse where dozens of occupied coffins had been stockpiled, waiting to be buried. It seemed that there was only one man, armed with just a shovel, whose responsibility it was to inter all those dead souls. I looked from one casket to another, but none had Raymond’s name on the little bronze nameplate placed at the foot of each box.

Somebody called my name. Somebody held out a shovel. He wanted me to get back to digging.

“What?” I said. And then I remembered: I was the man in charge of burials, I was the gravedigger for all the dead black men and women.

“Daddy.”

“What?” I said.

“You’re asleep, Daddy.”

I opened my eyes. There was a static buzz coming from the television. Feather was pressing against my chest with both hands.

“We fell asleep,” she said.

I carried her to her room and put her under the covers fully dressed.

The phone rang but at first I thought it was the alarm. Who set the alarm, anyway? I called out Bonnie’s name. I knew that it must have been her, that she had some early flight and set the alarm and now was going to sleep through it.

“Bonnie, shut that thing off,” I said.

And then I remembered that Bonnie was out of town. She was in an airplane somewhere. I imagined a plane high in the sky. I was sitting in the pilot’s seat, looking out of the broad windows at the panorama of deep blue. There was no limit to the space overhead.

Then the phone rang again.

“Mr. Rawlins?” a deep voice asked when I answered.

“Who is this?”

“It’s Henry Strong,” he announced.

“Man, what time is it?”

“I must speak with you, Mr. Rawlins. It’s urgent.”

I looked at the night table. The clock’s turquoise luminescent numerals read 3:15. I blinked and started to slide into that big sky again.

“Mr. Rawlins, are you awake?”

“There’s a doughnut shop on Central at Florence,” I said. “It’s an all-night place that they use for the Goodyear tire plant down there.”

“I know it.”

“Be there in forty minutes,” I said, and then I hung up.

I turned on my back and took a deep breath. Graveyards and blue skies. The phrase ran through my mind. It was a good title for a jet-age blues song.