A Little Yellow Dog

42

Mouse was at Temple hospital. He was in a coma and fading out. Etta wouldn’t come to the phone.

“Momma said that you should stay away from here, Uncle Easy,” LaMarque told me over the phone.

“How are you, LaMarque?” I asked him.

“Is my daddy gonna die?” he cried.

I watched the news all evening. All about our president and his last days; his last moments. The whole world had turned on that tabletop with Idabell.

Bonnie called and I told her that she could come back in the morning.

“The kids need to be with you, Easy,” she said. Her voice was so soft and caring. It had the promise of daylight and love; it was like the lie of peace and brotherhood that had hoodwinked so many of my kind.

She brought them home at just past midnight. She was driving my car, which Primo had fixed. Jesus went right up to his bed and Feather fell asleep on Bonnie’s lap. She wanted to see the TV.

“I wanna see if he’s still alive,” she kept saying.

Somehow she didn’t hear it when we told her that he’d stay dead.

“Why’d you kill Holland?” It was past three. Bonnie and I were lying together in the bed, fully dressed.

She sat up and asked, “What?”

I didn’t have the strength to sit; I couldn’t even repeat the question.

“What?” she asked again.

“It’s okay, Bonnie. Nobody else knows. And I don’t plan to tell anyone.”

“Tell them about what? What are you saying?”

“It was when I saw that lipstick kiss you left on the note for me,” I said. “That’s when I knew for sure.”

She shook her head, and I got up on one elbow to face her. I was tired.

“Holland had a big kiss, that same dark color, on his face.”

If I wasn’t sure before, I was then. Bonnie’s look of dismay gave her away.

“That’s not enough, I know, but I was already half sure when I saw that broken green glass in your trash. You might have had the same kinda glasses as your friends, but probably not. All I wanna know is if you kissed Holland before or after you shot’im.”

Bonnie put her hand over her mouth.

“He… “ she said.

“Holland?”

“Yes. Yes. He called me after he got home. When he found Ida gone he called me looking for her. I told him that she was gone; that she had left the state. I thought that that would send him off looking for her. But instead he said that he wanted me to come over to his house right then.”

“Why?” I felt sorry for her in spite of myself.

“He said that he had the forms I’d filled out the night I went back to the airport, the night I forgot those damned carpet balls. Roman kept the copies that the customs official gave me. He said that he had the balls too. They had official seals glued to them. He said that if I didn’t come over right then he’d give it all to the police.”

“And you went?”

“He was excited when I got there. He told me that he wanted sex and for that he’d give me back the things he had.”

“Did you do it?”

She didn’t want to nod. “I didn’t… he raped me. He took me to the bedroom and made me…. He had this big black knife.”

I remembered the pillows piled high in the center of the bed, the blood on the sheets, and the cut that I thought was a pimple above her breast.

“It was over in just a minute. Holland was laughing kind of crazy. He was all sweaty and his eyes were shiny, like he had a fever. He put on his clothes and then when I asked him for the carpet balls he laughed and told me that I was going to work for him. He said that I owed him because of what Ida did.”

“And so you killed him?”

“He said that I was going to be his new wife now that Roman was dead and Ida was gone. He made me get dressed. He made me sit on his lap and kiss him. It was like you said. I got the gun from his drawer while he was in the bathroom. I shot him. I did.”

“He told you that Roman was dead?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“And then you called Idabell at the school and told her, right?”

“I told her to come over but I didn’t say that Holly was dead. We packed her things. I took my carpet balls and she took the croquet set. I took the glass because I just didn’t know what to do with it.” She looked me in the eye as if to say that she couldn’t help it; that she’d had to kill him.

I was in no place to pass judgment.

I slept on the sofa that night. In the morning I drove her back home while the country mourned JFK.

I went to Arno T. Lewis from Bonnie’s house and told him that I couldn’t find Idabell. He told me that they’d identified Idabell’s corpse the night before.

I had found, I said, that Bill Bartlett was Holland’s partner in the little paper route business that worked out of the shack that held the stolen goods. A few days later there was an account in the paper of how Roman and Holland and Bartlett were in business stealing from the schools. Roman, who had obtained his job under an alias with forged references, had abused his power as a nighttime building consultant. In a falling-out among thieves, the article speculated, Bartlett had killed Roman and then Holland. Later on, after meeting with Bartlett at Whitehead’s restaurant, Idabell Turner was found dead.

Traces of heroin had been found and Bartlett was being sought for questioning. However, his house had been broken into and a goodly quantity of blood had been found. Foul play had not been ruled out in his case.

Jackson Blue disappeared with Jesus’s life savings.

For a week the nation mourned the passing of JFK. Everybody wondered would things ever get set straight again; they never did.

I wanted to call Bonnie, but Holland Gasteau’s lip-branded corpse came to mind whenever I thought of her. Holland and also Sallie Monroe. Sallie’s death had settled into my finger bones. I found myself rubbing my hands together with the strange feeling that my fingers had gone numb.

After the week was out I got the courage to go down to Temple Hospital. EttaMae hadn’t shown up for work at all, nor had she answered her phone.

I had friends at the front desk. They sent me to the intensive care unit to talk to a woman named Norva Long. I asked her about Mouse.

“Dead,” she told me.

“What?”

“Doctor told Mrs. Alexander five days ago that it was only a matter of a day or two. She said no and that she was gonna take him home. But the doctor wouldn’t release him.” Norva’s tone took the doctor’s side.

“An’ he died?” I asked.

“I was on duty with an orderly named James Pope. There was supposed to be another man but he came down with flu and stayed home. Maybe if he was with us we could have stopped her, but… “ Norva twisted her lips and shook her head. “But I doubt it.”

“What happened?”

“EttaMae come about two in the morning. I told her that visitin’ time was over and that’s the last thing I remember, except her ham fist.”

EttaMae had a strong arm.

“James said that he tried to grab her,” Norva said. “But she threw him up against a wall and laid him low with a metal tray. James was two floors down with a concussion for forty-eight hours. His momma say they gonna sue.”

“What happened to Raymond?” I asked.

“Front desk said that she carried him out the front door in her arms. The security guard was gonna take her but then she come out with his gun. He said he wasn’t gonna get in no shoot-out with a woman.”

“Why wasn’t any of this in the paper?”

“They kep’ it pretty quiet, I guess. James prob’ly get some money out of it, after all.”

“Then you don’t know that Raymond’s dead,” I said. “He could be alive.”

When Norva shook her head it broke my heart. She was sorry to tell me that Mouse had been in a coma and that he had been steadily fading over the days. Their house was abandoned. There were still dirty dishes in the sink.

I was in the maintenance office a few days later waiting to interview the replacements for Etta and Mouse. When the door slid open I was surprised, and not very happy, to see Sergeant Sanchez. He’d come alone.

“Mr. Rawlins,” he said from the door.

He wanted for me to say come in, and I did.

He came up to my desk, did not offer to shake hands, and sat down.

“I don’t like you, Mr. Rawlins,” he said straight out. “I just came from your principal’s office and he doesn’t like you either.”

“You come all the way down here to tell me that?”

“No. Lewis has me looking for evidence about Bill Bartlett. I told him that he’s wrong about that but I guess you have more friends than I knew about.”

Our eyes met and we were equals at last.

“Were you here when Bartlett was?” he asked.

“No,” I said truthfully. “I replaced the man but we never met.”

“I know that you were in it, Ezekiel. And when we find Bartlett I’m going to prove it.”

I didn’t think that he’d ever locate Bartlett. If I’d read the man right he was too smart to stay in L.A. He was a black man who was implicated in the murder of other black people. There wouldn’t be any national manhunt. They’d wait for him to be arrested on some other charge and then hope that fingerprint checks would do their job. But Bartlett wasn’t the kind of crook who was arrested often, if ever. And even if he did get caught, he didn’t have anything on me. I was innocent of everything except the murders of Sallie Monroe and Raymond Alexander. One I regretted and the other haunted me.

The phone rang as Sanchez was leaving.

“Where’s my car, Easy?” John asked in my ear.

We drove around L.A. that evening picking up cars. We went up to the hill behind the Black Chantilly to retrieve Primo’s wild roadster. I paid Primo by letting him sell Mouse’s car off for parts. I retrieved the bookie boxes and dropped them off at the Chantilly. To Philly Stetz, but Rupert took them.

It was when we were headed over to Bonnie Shay’s block that John got serious with me.

“Easy, I thought you had got yourself out the street,” he said.

“Yeah, me too.”

“You know you can’t be livin’ like this, man. You too old for this shit. Things gettin’ serious in this town, Easy. People turnin’ mean. Even Mouse got hisself killed.”

“I know, John.” I said it so softly he might not have heard.

“Easy, you need a woman,” John said. “A woman who wants a home an’ ain’t gonna take no shit.”

Bonnie Shay came to my mind. She smiled and carried no weapons.

We picked up John’s car and drove back to his house, me in Alva’s Buick and him behind his own wheel. I knew that Alva had made some headway against me, because John didn’t invite me in.

“I’ll drive you home, Easy,” he said.

On the way I asked him about Grace.

“I did what I could, Easy. After a day and a half she called that white man and he came and got her. She said she was gonna try’n go straight.”

We drove almost the whole distance in silence.

Two blocks from my house he said, “You can’t be out here actin’ like you can do anything an’ get away wit’ it, Easy. You ain’t drinkin’, but you might as well be, the kinda life you live.”

Pharaoh greeted me with a snarl at the front door. The children were already asleep. I sat down in a chair with a glass of lemonade. The little yellow dog curled down, just out of reach, and bared his fangs. He’d tasted my blood and was hungry for more.

As the days passed I began to accept him as a part of my life; the dark, dangerous part that always threatened. As long as Pharaoh was around snarling and cursing I’d remember the kind of trouble that a man like me could find.

I only had two choices. One was straight whiskey. Instead, after nine days, I dialed a number.

“Yes?”

“Hey, Bonnie. It’s Easy.”

There was a long silence and then a cough.

“Hello.”

“I wanted to say hey,” I said. “I mean… I wanted to see you.”

“I’m sorry, Easy, but I’m leaving for Paris tonight.”

“For good?”

“No. Just for a few days. But I’m changing my home city back to Paris at the end of the month. I’ll still be working this route but I’ll be staying there.”

“Oh.”

“Well,” she said. “I’ve got to get ready.”

“Uh, yeah, but…”

“But what, Easy?”

“But I need to see you, Bonnie. I mean, I really do. I can talk to you and I need that, I mean I really need it.” I could only hope that she understood how hard it was for me to beg.

“Can you hold it for a few days?” Her voice was gentle.

“Yeah. I been holdin’ it seems like forever. A few more days won’t mean a thing.”

“I’ll be back Friday morning. You could call me then,” she said.

“What time?”

“Any time, Easy.”

“An’ we could talk?”

“Sure. If you think you can. I mean, seeing everything you know about me.”

“None of that matters, Bonnie. I trust you. I know you did what you had to do.”

Neither of us said a word for the next five minutes.

“I’d like to talk, Easy.”

“An’ we could get together too,” I said.

“Maybe.”

When I hung up I felt as if I was an astronaut who had completed his orbit of the earth and now I was pulled by some new gravity into a cold clean darkness.