Bad Boy Brawly Brown

— 30 —

“Olympic and south flower,” I said into the pay phone. “Could you come and get me?”

“Sure, honey,” Bonnie said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“And don’t forget to bring me some cigarettes from the closet,” I added.

I waited on a bus stop bench until Bonnie could get to me. Sitting there in the chilly morning dew, I thought about how alone I had been for most of my life. Mouse had been my closest friend, but he was crazy. The kids and I had a bond as deep as it gets, but they were still children with needs and desires that kept them from understanding the adult world.

But Bonnie was in every way my equal. She took life head-on, and though I had known her for only a few months, I felt that I could call on her no matter how bad it got.

She sidled up to the curb and I jumped into her small blue Rambler. My knees were up against the dashboard and there seemed to be space for only one of my arms, but I didn’t care. Bonnie gave me a deep soulful kiss and then took off down the street with no idea or care for where we were going.

The first thing I did was open the pack of Chesterfields and light up. That was good. Six months later I would think back on that first drag with the memory of deep pleasure.

“I got arrested last night,” I said after a few blocks.

“Do you have to come back for a trial?”

“No. They didn’t have anything on me and just cut me loose.”

“Where are we going?”

“My car’s parked over on Grand,” I said. “I’m sorry ’bout this.”

“Is this boy worth the risk you’re taking?” she asked me.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I’m not doin’ it for him.”

“Then who?”

“Partly it’s John. You know we been friends for over thirty years. There was times that I’d go to John and ask him to hide me. He never asked me why and he never said no.”

“What’s the other part?”

“You were right when you said I’ve been sad. I know I got to get out there and find out what happened after EttaMae took Raymond from that hospital. But it’s been hard to push myself there. While I’m lookin’ for Brawly I kinda like lose myself in his problem and maybe, when it’s all over, I’ll find the old Easy and he’ll be able to go out there and find out the truth.”

Bonnie didn’t say anything. And after a while we came to BobbiAnne’s apartment building.

I kissed her again.

“Call me in sick at work,” I said, then opened my door.

“Easy?”

“Yeah?”

“You said that you lose yourself.”

“Yeah?”

“That’s not right,” she said. “What you should be doing is finding yourself, not this boy.”

I drove directly over to John’s place. I knew he’d be gone to work, but that was what I wanted.

Alva opened the door with hope in her eyes. But when she saw me, the hope turned to fear.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Can I come in?”

I took the hassock I’d sat in a few days before while Alva put on water for tea.

After composing herself over the stove, she came to sit across from me.

“What is it, Mr. Rawlins?”

“We need some straight talkin’, Alva.”

“Is Brawly hurt?”

“Not that I know of, but I’m pretty sure he’s in trouble. He is in trouble,” I repeated myself for effect, “and only you tellin’ me the truth is gonna help me help him.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“The kind of trouble that comes from hotheaded young men with wild women and guns everywhere.”

“Oh.”

It was the short syllable that preceded a big fall. I didn’t want to hurt her. From the beginning, my job had been to keep her from unbearable pain. But sometimes you have to feel pain before you get better. I hoped that this was one of those times for Alva Torres.

“Why is Brawly mad at you?” I asked.

“He thinks I don’t love him,” she whispered. “He thinks that I abandoned him when he was a child.”

“Why he think that?”

“Because I sent him to his father. He was so headstrong and physically he was strong, too. I’d tell him to go to bed or come back in the house and he’d just push me aside, just push me aside like I was one of the kids at the playground. And then...” She let her words trail off and stared at a point somewhere behind me.

“Yes? And then what?”

“His uncle died in a bank robbery attempt.”

Alva caved in on herself in the chair. She wept. I wanted to touch her, to reassure her, but I didn’t. The pain she felt was beyond my reach.

“When was this?”

“Nineteen fifty-four,” she said. “It was a Bank of America down on Alvarado. He went in there with a stocking mask and they shot him in the street with forty-two hundred dollars in his pocket.”

“Were him and Brawly close?”

“Yes, they were. Leonard would come over and Brawly would act right. Brawly and me both loved Leonard.”

“So what happened after he died?” I asked.

“The police kept comin’ ovah, askin’ ’bout what I knew about Leonard and his partner.”

“What happened to this partner?”

“He got away with most of the money. And the cops thought I knew about it. They kept comin’ over until I just couldn’t take it and they had to put me in the hospital.” Alva clutched her hands together.

“You let yourself get that sick rather than turn in Aldridge?”

Alva looked up at me with both surprise and relief in her eyes.

“I didn’t know until a long time later that it was Aldridge,” she said. “I would have never sent Brawly to live with him if I knew.”

“How did you find out?”

“Aldridge told Brawly and they fought.”

“When Brawly was fourteen?”

Alva nodded. “He told me when he came down here to live.”

“He didn’t tell you when you were in the hospital?”

“I don’t think so. But I don’t remember everything,” she said pitifully. “They give me drugs. Brawly said that he came and saw me and I told him that I wasn’t his mother and he should go away. But I don’t remember that. Then he went to stay with Isolda.”

Hatred replaced sorrow in Alva’s voice.

“And what happened then?”

“She twisted him,” Alva said. “She did dirty things to him and turned him against me.”

“Why she do that?”

“Because she’s wicked, that’s why.”

There didn’t seem to be much further I could get with that line of questions, so I switched gears.

“When did Brawly move away from Isolda?”

“When he was sixteen he got in trouble with the police. They said that he stole a radio out some store and put him on trial. If he was a white boy, they would have threatened him and let him go home. But bein’ black up there, they put him on trial and convicted him. He had to live in a residence for delinquents and report to this juvenile detention center until he was nineteen. He was on probation until twenty-one. That’s when I told him that he could come down here and I’d help him finish his high school degree and go to college. After he dropped out, John said that we could rent him a room in our building and he could work for us.”

“Did he steal the radio?” I asked.

“Yeah. But it was just a boy’s mistake. Brawly ain’t no thief. He’s just angry. And why shouldn’t he be? He had his childhood taken away from him.”

“Why’d you and Aldridge break up?” I asked.

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Well,” I said, “that’s why Brawly lost his childhood, ain’t it? Maybe that’s the key to me talkin’ to him when I finally pin him down.”

Alva looked at me then. Before that day I had always thought that a man or woman who had a mental breakdown was weaker than other people. But I could see in her eyes the strength to handle more pain than I could imagine.

“It was the same old thing”— her voice wavered —“same old thing. He couldn’t keep his hands off the girls. Finally he found someone he liked so much that he didn’t even come home half the time. I put his things on the front yard one night, and in the morning they were gone.”

Many thoughts went through my mind but I kept them to myself.

“Can you save my son, Mr. Rawlins?”

I reached out and took both of her hands in mine.

“If it’s at all possible, I will bring him back here to you, Alva,” I said. “Even if I have to hog-tie him to the roof of my car.”

She giggled, and then she grinned.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m sorry I misjudged you, Mr. Rawlins.”

I smiled and patted her hands. I nodded, accepting her apology, but I knew she had not misjudged me. She had seen me for what I really was. The only mistake she’d made was believing that she’d never need my kind of help.