Blonde Faith

28

Someone shouted out a desperate plea, but I didn’t understand the question. The words were clear, but I couldn’t make sense of them. I wanted to understand what was being said and who was speaking, but not enough to open my eyes. The shelter of sleep was too delicious.

The mattress under me was ponderous and heavy, like thick mud under a thin layer of straw.

Someone screamed and then laughed.

I opened my eyes in the shadowy room. I could make out a desk piled with papers and a bookshelf that held everything from a Bible to a set of wrenches.

There came more screams and laughter, the thudding of running feet and the smell of something frying. On the other side of that closed door was a whole house full of children about their morning business. Yellowy green shades were pulled down to cover the windows, but there were small holes in the fabric and a strong sun on the other side. Tiny wires of light were suspended above my head, attended by dancing motes of dust.

This was a man’s room, I could tell from the sour smell. And the child’s question had been phrased in Spanish, a language I loved listening to but did not understand.

I thought about sitting up. The various governing bodies in my mind all agreed that this would be a good thing, but there were disputes over the timetable.

Two boys started shouting, and I was reminded of Mouse and Pericles Tarr. Pericles went to a bar every night with Mouse to get away from his noisy household, but Primo, the master of this house, only went out drinking one night a week. Primo loved being with his children, even though he seemed to ignore them most of the time, and at this late date, most of his charges were not sons and daughters but grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and wandering waifs plucked from the street.

That room and the whole house belonged to me. It was the first piece of property that I had ever owned. I hadn’t lived there for nearly twenty years, but I couldn’t bear to let it go. Primo, his wife, Flower, and an endless flow of children they raised lived there rent free because that lot was more my dream than it was real estate.

Pericles Tarr. I wondered why I was thinking about him; this brought to mind Faith Laneer. Making love to her had, at least momentarily, dislodged my depression over Bonnie. Bonnie was still there in my mind. She and I had visited Primo and the Panamanian Flower a dozen times. She, Bonnie, was still the love of my life, but the pall of her leaving, even her upcoming marriage, had blown away.

I remembered being enraged over Sammy Sansoam’s breaking into my house. This also helped to dislocate the sadness.

Finding Mouse meant finding Pericles Tarr.

I sat up with all the ruling bodies of my mind in harmony. I was wearing a pair of cotton trousers and a white T-shirt that had seen better days.

In the hallway I encountered two small children, a girl and a boy. They looked to be five and distantly related. They were picking at each other’s hand-me-down pajamas when the door to Primo’s office opened. The boy’s eyes widened when he saw me. The girl grabbed his top and dragged him toward the kitchen, shouting something frightened in that beautiful tongue.

I followed them into the large kitchen that had once been my domain.

With my permission, Primo had expanded the kitchen to accommodate an oak table that could seat sixteen. The shortish brown emperor of that table was sitting there among the knights and ladies from two to sixteen, eating beans and tortillas with eggs, chorizos, and crumbly white cheese.

“Easy,” Primo said, and the din at breakfast subsided. When the master had a guest, the children knew to keep it down.

“Hey, Primo. Thanks for lettin’ me in last night, man.”

“You looked like you were going to kill somebody, my friend.”

I didn’t respond to his insight. Instead I turned my gaze to the sink, where the scared kids who had seen me come from their guardian’s inviolate den had run to hide behind Flower’s bright blue skirt.

I went to the black-skinned Panamanian and kissed both her cheeks.

A few of the middle children ooed.

Primo leaped from his chair, knocking it to the floor, and said, “What? You are kissing my wife right in front of me?”

He ran at me, and for a moment I shared the fear of his big extended family. But then Primo put his arms around me and hugged me tightly.

I could tell how ragged my feelings were, because the embrace brought air to a gasping emptiness somewhere in me.

The children cheered, and we all ate breakfast together.

Flower never sat down. She made tortillas, wheat and corn, from scratch and kept frying the beans and sausages and eggs while the children downed plate after plate.

I ate heartily and shared jokes with my old friends.

I was in no hurry. It was early, and my new plans needed time to ripen in the desert heat.

AFTER FLOWER HAD hurried the school-age kids off, Primo and I went out on the front porch to sit. It was then that he had his first beer of the day. He offered me one even though he knew I didn’t drink. I would have accepted his offer if I wasn’t afraid of losing the edge of my rage.

“How’s Peter Rhone doin’ at your garage?” I asked my friend.

“I like him there because Mouse comes by now and then with this wonderful tequila he gets from a man he does business with. It’s the best tequila I ever had in my life.”

Raymond had his fingers in many pies by 1967. One thing he did was smuggle goods and people back and forth over the border from time to time. He liked Primo because Primo liked to laugh.

“At first I told Pete,” Primo continued, “that he should move away from that house. I told him that Raymond was a bad hombre and that sometimes he killed people for no reason. But you know, the riots changed everything for good and bad.”

“What do you mean?”

“Pete works hard and he makes good money for the job, but he gives it all to EttaMae and he lives on the porch. I ask him why he does this to himself.”

“And what does he say?” I asked.

“He says that he’s making up for all the bad things his people have done. I told him that he was loco, that he didn’t owe me or Mouse or Etta anything.”

“Yeah? And what he say to that?”

“That he did owe us because nobody ever made him do what he was doing. He said that because it was his choice to serve her family, that proved he was guilty.”

I had rarely talked to Rhone since clearing him of the murder of his black lover Nola Payne. But hearing his claim, I understood that he wasn’t just another crazy white man. He was nuts, no doubt about that, but the madness was brought about by his sensitivity to sin. I might have spent some hours discussing this oddity with Primo or Gara or even Jackson Blue, but I had other problems to solve.

I told Primo the story about Mouse and Pericles, including a description of the Tarr household, which so reflected his own.

“It’s funny, Easy,” Primo said. “For a man like me, children are a treasure. You raise them like crops and they pay off or die. You love them as Christ loves them, and they love you like God. I feel like this because I am from another country, where my people have a place. Maybe we’re poor, but we are part of the earth.

“But your man Pericles is not like me. Every new child makes him afraid of what will happen. I see it in my own children. In the United States, we are not of the earth but the street. Pericles has known this, but his wife is fertile and he is just a man.”

“You know Perry?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. Mouse and him bought a dark blue Pontiac from me three weeks ago.”

“Together?”

“They came together.”

“Really?”

A whole new train of thought opened for me. I would have left that very moment if Primo had not put his hand on my arm.

“I am moving from your house, my friend.”

“Back to Mexico for a while?”

“East LA, where the Mexicans live.”

“You lonely for your amigos?”

“The boys fight all the time with black children now. Especially our grandchildren who look Mexican. It’s the riots. Now all the peoples hate each other.”

Pericles flitted out of my mind as if I had never heard his name. My home was passing from me. I felt that loss deeply.

“You know my lawyer, Tina Monroe?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Go to her next week. I’ll sign a paper selling you this house for a hundred dollars. Sell it and buy you a place wherever you goin’.”

We stared at each other awhile. I could tell that it meant a lot to him, my gift.

“It’s just ’cause I need a place to go now and again,” I added. “I look at it like rent for the future.”