Fearless Jones

28

WHEN I GOT TO the hospital it was almost eight. I left Charlotte with the promise to call in a few days; just that little pledge made me feel that I might be alive and free after this mess was over.

The hospital room smelled sour, like a mound of dead skin.

Fearless was sitting at Sol’s bedside speaking in low tones. That made me happy because it meant that Sol was listening and talking.

“They brought me here to die,” a voice to my left said.

I turned to see an ancient white man sitting up in a bed. He was so small that he seemed like an infant allowed to sleep in a grown-up bed. The odor was coming from him.

“What?”

“They brought me here to die,” he said again. “The doctors and the lawyers and Marjorie.”

“Are you sick?” I asked.

He raised a skeletal hand and waved me to his bedside.

I glanced at Fearless, who had stopped talking for a moment to look in the direction of the voices. He saw me and then turned back to continue his conversation with Sol.

“They’re trying to kill me,” the man said after I had moved to his bedside.

“Who is?”

“They all are. They bring me here and stick me with needles and make me take poisons and hope that I die. They aren’t going to operate,” he said indignantly. “I don’t have fever. Here, feel my forehead.”

He was cool as a cucumber, as my mother often said.

“See? I’m not hot or bleeding. Why would they leave me here without my things? Why would they leave me with all these sick people’s germs if they’re not trying to kill me?”

I had no answer. I once heard a sermon in my uncle’s church where the minister claimed that there was no Earth, only Hell and Heaven. Where we were was an upper level of Hell. And when we died, we either tumbled the rest of the way down the mountainside or rose on an angel’s wings. I wasn’t sure about the Heaven part, but life sure was feeling like Hell to me.

“Fearless knows,” the aged gray-headed man said. “Fearless knows.”

I wondered if Fearless had gotten us mixed up in yet another hopeless cause, but then I remembered the troubles we were in were of my doing.

I went to Fearless ready to ask if I had to carry that old man out on my back. But the words died in my throat when I peered over his shoulder.

Sol’s face was shrunken and blue. His teeth glistened between parted lips, and he wasn’t breathing. He hadn’t drawn a breath in some time.

But still Fearless babbled on.

“Fearless.”

No reply.

“Fearless!”

“What? What you want, Paris?”

“Who are you talkin’ to, man? He’s dead.”

“I know that. You think I don’t know a dead man?”

“Then who are you talking to?”

“His soul,” Fearless said. There was a hint of embarrassment in his voice.

“What?”

Fearless put up his hands to silence me. “My momma used to say, a long time ago when I was a boy, that when a man dies, his soul is lost at first ’cause he don’t know he’s dead. It wanders around and could be lost forever. But if he sees you and he knows who you are and he knows that you’re talkin’ to him, then he tries to answer back. But when you don’t answer, he knows that he must be a spirit. Your voice becomes the messenger, and he realizes what has happent an’ he knows to go for Heaven.”

Then, instead of getting up and talking to me about our business, he turned back to Sol and started muttering again. I sat in a chair far away from the tiny man and waited until my watch said eight-thirty, then I went to Fearless again.

“How long you plan to keep this up?” I asked.

“Momma said to do it till dawn.”

“Visitors’ hours end at nine, Fearless. We don’t want the nurse to see you hoverin’ over no corpse.”

Fearless hesitated, then he turned away from his divine mission. “I guess that’s enough. I think he must’a heard me.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Now let’s get the fuck outta here.”

“WHEN DID he die?’ I asked Fearless in the parking lot.

“I don’t know. I mean, he was dead when I got there.”

“And the nurse didn’t come in to see him?”

“No. He was dead,” Fearless assured me.

“But how could that be? Aren’t the nurses supposed to check?”

“How should I know?” Fearless said defensively. “Maybe they looked in and saw that he looked peaceful. I don’t know.”

“So he didn’t say nuthin’?” I asked.

“How he gonna say somethin’ if he’s dead, Paris?”

I had no reply, no question to follow up. I wanted Sol to be alive more than anything. He was the only one who really knew about the money everybody was after. And that was the only reason I was still looking for answers. At least with some cash, I could rent another bookstore. But now that he was dead, I knew that it was time to move on.

“You want to go down to Louisiana and visit my mother?” I asked.

“Sure,” Fearless said. “Right after I find who killed Sol and Fanny.”

“The trouble is too deep,” I said. “It’s time for us to split.”

“You go on, Paris. It’s my word on the line here.”

“Your word what? You didn’t promise to find out who killed them.”

“But I promised to protect Fanny, and I didn’t. I bet because she wasn’t comin’ here, that’s why Sol died.”

“Mr. Jones,” I said as a plea.

“You go on, man. You didn’t promise.”

“I was with you, wasn’t I? I got you here. Maybe I even think you’re right, but I’m scared, man, scared to death with all these men fightin’ and killin’.” The truth came out of me without my intention.

Fearless put his steely hand on my shoulder.

“You scared, but you ain’t no coward, Paris. Uh-uh. Matter’a fact, you a hero.”

“What?” I never knew Fearless to try and play anybody, much less me, his best friend.

“Yeah. Hero is just bein’ brave when there’s trouble. An’ bein’ brave means to face your fears and do it anyway. Shoot. You can’t call me a hero ’cause I ain’t scared’a nuthin’ on God’s blue Earth.”

He got me again. Shamed me into going in on something that I should have left alone.

“You go on home,” I said. “I’m’a go over and see Gella and the fool. I’ll be back later on.”