Bad Boy Brawly Brown

— 25 —

Feather ran at me the second I came in the door.

“Daddy, I got a B-plus on my Joan Arks book report,” she shouted.

She ran up and tackled me around the waist.

“Do you have to jump all over me?” I complained.

“I got a B-plus, Daddy,” she said again, ignoring my objections.

“Let me go,” I said.

Feather backed away from me with pain in her eyes.

The little yellow dog came up behind her, baring his teeth.

“I got a B-plus,” she said, and the first tear appeared.

“I’m sorry, baby, but I had a hard day. That’s good about your B. It’s good.”

“It’s a B-plus.”

“Hi, honey,” Bonnie said from the kitchen.

It struck me then that there was the smell of cooking in the air.

She was wearing a yellow wraparound dress with a red and blue silk cloth coiled in her hair. Her feet were bare.

“I forgot you were coming home today,” I said.

“You say that as if you want me to leave.”

“No. No, baby.”

Feather moved over to Bonnie and leaned against her side, frowning and staring at my shoes.

“Did you hear about Feather’s B-plus?” Bonnie asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s really great. I mean, I think we should have some special ice cream for dessert after a grade like that.”

Feather’s frown softened and she looked up as far as my shoulder.

I heard the faint sound of sawing coming from the backyard.

“What’s that?”

“Jesus working on his boat.” It was Bonnie’s turn to frown.

“We’re talking about it,” I said.

“A child does not have the right to make up his mind whether or not he’s going to school,” she said.

“Jesus been a man as long as I can remember,” I told her. “If I died tomorrow and you disappeared, he would raise Feather all by himself. You could bet the farm on that.”

“Are you sick, Daddy?” Feather asked.

“No, honey. I’m fine.”

“All I’m saying,” Bonnie continued, “is that he needs to finish his education. He needs to understand how important it is.”

“How the hell you gonna tell me what that boy needs an’ you didn’t even know he was alive six months ago?” I said. “You don’t know. You don’t know what he’s thinkin’ or where he’s goin’. There’s all kindsa people up and down this block got education way over me. But we still livin’ on the same street, goin’ off to work every day. How am I gonna tell Juice that he got to do somethin’ I ain’t never done? How am I even gonna believe that shit?”

“Easy,” Bonnie said.

She glanced down at Feather, who was transfixed by my anger.

“I just mean let me work this out on my own, okay?”

“I’ll get dinner,” Bonnie said.

She headed for the kitchen. Feather followed in her shadow.

I reached for my shirt pocket but it was empty. I’d discarded the pack of Chesterfields earlier that day. There was half a carton on the top shelf of the hall closet, I knew. But I clenched my teeth and sat in my recliner. Nothing was going to beat me. Not Jesus’s demands or Lakeland’s designs, certainly not a flimsy little cigarette.

The fabric of the chair smelled of tobacco smoke. So did my fingertips. For five minutes all I could think about was smoking, or not smoking.

When I finally calmed down, Brawly Brown was waiting there in my mind. Big and clumsy, strong and easily influenced. Or was he smarter than he seemed? Was he the First Men’s fool, or was it John and Alva who were fooled by him? I couldn’t trust Alva’s opinion. John only cared about his woman.

If the heavyset man who’d come to Tina’s with Conrad was Aldridge, then I had at least one other person who was connected to both men.

I took a deep breath.

Something was missing.

What was I missing?

A cigarette.

“Dinner,” Bonnie called out the back door.

Brawly had to be involved in something serious. That’s the only way I could see the ambush set up outside of the housing tract near John’s places. There was no other way. Anyway, Strong told me that he was bringing me to Brawly, but that could have been a lie.

But if Brawly tried to kill me, if he murdered Henry Strong, then there was nothing I could do to help him. At least there was nothing I should do.

“Sure I killed him,” Mouse once said to me about a man who had been his friend. “Motherfucker turned on me. An’ you know once a dog taste your blood, he always got a hunger for more.”

How could I put a murderer back in the house with John? Back on the street with the rest of us?

“Easy.” Bonnie was standing there over me.

“Yeah?”

“Didn’t you hear me? Dinner’s ready.”

Bonnie’s Lasagna was always a treat. The tomato sauce was dark red and spicy. She used four kinds of cheese and shredded veal rather than ground round. The salad had lots of Parmesan cheese and garlic in the dressing. The food tasted wonderful but it was somehow weaker than usual. I craved a cigarette. I kept taking deep breaths through my nose, but still I had the feeling of slow suffocation.

“Is something wrong, Easy?”

“No,” I said sharply. “Why you keep askin’ me that?”

“Because you keep sighing,” she said.

“Listen, if a man can’t sit down to a meal and take a deep breath, then maybe he shouldn’t even come home. You been pesterin’ me since I come in the door. What do you want?”

That silenced the table for more than a minute. It would have been even longer but I spoke again.

“I’m goin’ out for a while,” I said, standing up from the table.

“Don’t go, Daddy,” Feather pleaded.

“Where are you going, Easy?” Bonnie asked in a maddeningly reasonable tone.

I took another deep breath that came out in a sigh.

“To the market,” I said. “For our B-plus special ice cream. You want pistachio or chocolate chip, Feather?”

“Both,” she said.

The little market down the street was always open until ten. Mr. Tai was a night owl and everyone around the neighborhood knew that his was the only place, besides the overpriced liquor stores, where you could get prepared and packaged foods after eight.

“Sweet tooth tonight, Mr. Rawlins?” Tai asked when I brought the two half-gallon containers up to the register. I also had a pint of vanilla, which was for me.

“Good grade,” I said. “Feather got a B-plus.”

“That’s good. I got one girl get really good grades. She likes the books and the homework.”

“What about your other kids?” I asked.

I liked Tai. He had a slight build and a gentle disposition but he also had a vicious scar down the left side of his face. I’d once seen him throw a six-foot drunk on his ass out in front of his store.

“Two more girls. They will get married and make my grandchildren. One boy who fail everything,” Tai snickered. “Everything. If they gave him a test on what he ate for breakfast, he would fail that, too.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“No.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I wait till he’s sixteen and then he come here and work with me. Eight o’clock we open up and ten we go home. If that don’t make him go back to school, then I have a partner. Tai and Son.”

The grocer gave me a wide grin.