Little Scarlet

30

I camped out at the far end of the sofa furthest away from the desk. The snaky man, Lewis was his name, was a little too interested in the whereabouts of Jackson for me. So I sat there and read the papers.

Gemini 5 was ready to take off. The Russians offered hope for a peace treaty in Vietnam. But mainly the news was about the riots and race relations across the nation.

The news was all the more fuel for Gerald Jordan’s fears. A Catholic priest and a seminary student had been gunned down by local lawmen in Hayneville, Alabama. It seems that they had been trying to integrate a country store. Lyndon Baines Johnson declared that the rioters in the streets of L.A. were no better than Klan riders. Two more people died, so the official death toll in the riots had risen to thirty-five. In a statement Martin Luther King made before leaving L.A. he said that he couldn’t find the kind of creative and sensitive leadership among our elected officials to solve the problems that caused the riots.

Even Martin Luther King had given up on a nonviolent solution.

“Hey, man,” someone said.

I looked up to see a tall young man with bright eyes and a nice smile except for one broken and brown tooth.

“Hey,” I replied.

He sat on my couch, about three hand spans distant, looked me up and down and asked, “Where you from?”

“Galveston.” It was true pretty much. I had come from a lot of places. Baton Rouge, New Iberia, New Orleans, Houston, Galveston, and many other towns. I had been to Africa, Italy, France, and Germany during the war. And someone had shot at me at least once in every location.

“You know a man name of Tiny?” the young man asked me.

“I know a whole slew’a Tinys: A man, another man, a woman, and one don’t know what he is.”

The young man smiled again.

“You read?” he asked.

I nodded and folded the newspaper across my lap.

“I wanna read,” he said.

“Why?”

“What you mean ‘why’? You read, don’t you, niggah?” Just that fast the pleasant young man was ready to fight.

“All I did was ask you why, man,” I said. “You know, people always got a reason t’do somethin’ and I collect reasons.”

“Collect ’em?”

“Yeah. Somebody tell me they go to church I ask ’em why. I wanna know if they go there because they love the Lord or because they afraid’a hell. Somebody tell me that they like America I ask ’em why. You know, I once knew a woman loved a man so hard that she’d do anything for him. But he beat her just about every Saturday night. When I asked her why she said, ‘’Cause he give me flowers every Sunday—just about.’”

By the time I was through with my explanation the young man’s anger was gone.

“You crazy, niggah,” he said.

“You know a old boy name of Harold?” I asked then. “Short guy, kinda wide. His hands is kinda fat like.”

The young man shook his head. “Naw. You got two dollars?”

“I got half a pack of Lucky Strikes. You want one?”

We smoked for a while and two other men came up to us. They looked like brothers with their coal-colored skin and bloodshot eyes. They both had long hair that was matted and infused with dust.

“Mickey,” one of the men said to me.

“Terry,” the other said.

We shook hands and I supplied them with cigarettes. We all smoked and talked about the streets. I lied. They lied. We all laughed. And slowly I began to get used to the heat and electric light, the smells and despair.

AT ABOUT SIX, three black men—one old, one young, and one in between—all dressed in clean white pants and white T-shirts, came out with bent-up pewter bowls that they placed around the large table. They also put out steel-ware cutlery and blue and green plastic tumblers. The residents had just started to rise and move toward the table when a door behind Lewis’s desk opened and a big white man came out.

He was very fat. So much so that his eyes were almost shut from the flesh pressing from all sides. After taking in his girth I realized that the man was also tall. Taller than I am and I’m six one, at least I was when I got drafted. They tell me that you shrink with the years of worry we go through.

That fat man didn’t look like he ever worried about anything.

“Hey, Bill!” Lewis shouted.

Ten or twelve of the residents echoed the snake’s greeting.

Bill smiled. He wore a green jacket and black trousers. His shoes reminded me of catcher’s gloves and he carried a cane whose tip never touched the ground.

His hands were enormous with fingers that might have been babies’ limbs. His dense brown hair only covered the sides of his head and his crown rose from the thicket like a battlement or a moon.

I was fascinated by this massive Caucasian the way some white children in Germany were amazed by me and my black skin.

Maybe he felt my gaze. He turned his head toward me and strode toward my couch. I rose to meet him—half out of respect and half from fear.

“Bill,” he said introducing himself.

“Willy,” I said, but I was so impressed I almost said Easy.

“Short for William?” he asked.

“Yes sir.”

“Me too. We have the same name, you and me.”

I thought that there wasn’t anyone in the world who could do for a name what he could. He could have been Emperor Bill, Conqueror Bill, Bill the Magnificent.

Even though he turned out to be important to my investigation, Bill’s effect on me had to do with something else. He had all of the charisma of Mouse in a package that was appropriate for such grandeur. A giant who dominated all that he saw, was aware of everything in his world. I was sure that Lewis’s greeting was normal fare in Bill’s life. He would command respect without asking for or even desiring it. I had only been in his presence for a minute or two and I’d already forgotten that he was a white man.

“Down on your luck, Willy?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess there’s a lotta others got it worse. I’d like a place to sleep, though.”

“Done,” he said. “Come, sit with me.”

I followed the big man to a seat at the table and sat on his left side. Lewis took the chair to his right and then the rest of the men took their seats. The men in white brought out a large tureen and went from man to man, ladling out a stew of potatoes with beef, lamb, and chicken. They also put down cheese sandwiches as they went.

The food was good. Very good. I ate heartily, realizing that I hadn’t eaten much or slept at all since Detective Suggs had drafted me into service for the LAPD.

“Where you from, Willy?” Bill asked.

“Galveston,” I remembered. “From down around the docks.”

“Never been there,” he said. “What do you think of this place?”

“L.A.?”

“No. The shelter.”

“We sure could use it,” I said. “You know, it was better bein’ poor down south. At least there you could go back to the country and find a barn to sleep in, catch some fish, sumpin’. Here they would just as soon see you starve.”

“Amen,” Bill said, and it didn’t seem forced. “How long have you been in town?”

“I been in and around L.A. for years,” I said. “It’s just that I can’t seem to catch hold of enough money to make a go of it. But I ain’t give up yet.”

Bill turned his attention to his other guests after that. He talked to everybody, even the man who talked only to himself.

That man was named Roderick, and when Bill asked him how he was, Roderick said, “Somebody wants to know how you doin’, Rod.” And then he answered, “I’m doin’ pretty good, they keep them doctors off and don’t let ’em put them needles in my eyes.”

That made me think about Geneva and Geneva reminded me of Nola Payne. Before you know it Harold was on my mind.

The dinner went on for about forty-five minutes or so. I didn’t want to be too obvious about Harold because someone there might warn him off. So I just ate and marveled at Bill the Shelter King.