Blonde Faith

25

I could see the truth, all right. It was like swimming in a peaceful lake and suddenly seeing the beady eyes of a crocodile bearing down upon me.

I didn’t speed on the ride back to my house because I didn’t want to be stopped by the police and therefore lose time. Going to see Mama Jo was always a revelation. That’s why people shied away from her. Who wants to see the truth? Not the condemned man, the dying woman, the child who will be orphaned.

I decided somewhere in a corner of my mind to let go of Bonnie and move on. I would not go to the wedding. I would not grieve for my loss. The world did not revolve around me or my pain.

I went through a whole list of decisions that I had put on hold for the past year, mainly so that I wouldn’t think about what might have happened while I was wallowing around like a pig in its sty.

Sammy Sansoam, otherwise known as Captain Clarence Miles, knew my name and office address. And even though I was unlisted, it wouldn’t take much time for him to find my house. If he suspected for any reason that I was a friend of Christmas Black, then he might come for me. Jesus would die protecting Easter, so might Feather and Benita.

Fighting the men that killed Faith’s husband was like fighting organized crime or the FBI. They had limitless resources and were ruthless.

I pulled to the curb and jumped out of the car with my pistol in my hand. I ran to the front door, and burst in.

Jesus’s body looked like fresh kill spread out on the couch, with the fingers of one hand grazing the floor and the other hand over his forehead. His eyes were closed and in shadow.

“Juice!”

The dead boy opened his eyes and sat up with a quizzical look on his face.

“What’s wrong, Dad?” he asked.

Feather came running in with Easter and Benita right behind her. My heart thudded against its cage and the room shimmied. I lurched over to the couch and sat as Jesus moved his legs. I would have fallen otherwise.

Sitting there, I tried to control my breathing but could not. My heart was going so fast that I believed I was going to die right then. If there had been whiskey in the house, I would have drunk it. If there had been opium in the house, I would have swallowed it.

“What’s wrong, Daddy?” Feather asked.

She sat down beside me and wrapped her arms around my head while Easter sat on Jesus’s lap and put her hands on my thigh.

My heart thundered through all of that. My ears were hot, and I wanted to kill Clarence Miles.

All men are fools. The words came into my head, but I could not remember where I had heard them. The source did not matter, because the content was true. All men were fools and me most of all.

My children could have died while I was out acting like a child.

I stood up. Jesus did too, taking hold of my right arm. I put the gun in my pocket and said, “Pack up everything you need for a trip.”

“Where are we going?” Feather asked.

“Away for a while. There’s some bad men out there and they might come here.”

“But why?” Benita asked.

Jesus took his common-law wife by the hand and led her into the back room. Feather needed no direction. She packed her things in a small blue suitcase and put Frenchie in a bag made for the transportation of small dogs. Easter started to gather her things with military precision.

I took in a deep breath. I was a fool, but I was lucky too. Just that thought made me laugh. I lit a cigarette while Benita and Jesus argued and the girls packed. Fifteen minutes later, we were all crowded in the car, headed west.

WE ARRIVED AT A DOORWAY half a block from the Pacific Ocean on a street named Ozone. I knocked and rang and knocked again. Jewelle came to the door, wearing a yellow dress that perfectly accented her dark brown skin. As the years had passed, the plain-Jane girl had been supplanted by a subtly beautiful maiden. She had been the lover of my property manager Mofass until he died heroically and now she was with Jackson Blue, who was both the smartest and the most cowardly man I knew.

“Easy,” Jewelle said, looking at the brood that surrounded me. “What’s goin’ on?”

“I need help, baby. I need it bad.”

Jewelle smiled, and I remembered that she loved me in a way that she felt for no other man. She wasn’t sexually attracted to me, but she felt a connection like a daughter feels for her dad.

“Come on in.”

The doorway led to a long set of stairs that went down two floors to the apartment below. The ceilings were twenty feet at least, and the walls sported bookshelves from top to bottom.

Jackson Blue had read every book on those shelves at least twice. He kept only books that he intended to read again, and again. Jewelle had been working her way through Jackson’s library, having long discussions with him about the meanings and ramifications of the texts. Jackson was the first man she met who proved that he was smarter than she, and she loved him for it.

“HEY, EASY, what’s happenin’?” Jackson asked when we got to the main room at the bottom of the long stairway. He was wearing a dark red silk robe that was tied carelessly about his slender waist. He was yawning even though it was late afternoon.

“I wake you up?” I asked.

“I been workin’ day and night for the past three days at Proxy Nine,” he said. “They was puttin’ in this special line to pass information over the phone, but the technicians didn’t have it right. You know I had to roll up my sleeves, baby.”

“You installed a computer line all the way from France?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah.” Jackson sighed. He was lazy in everything but his mind. Physical labor was an abomination to him, but Immanuel Kant was a piece of cake.

“You don’t have any training in that,” I said, not because I believed it but to pull him out of his stupor so that I could ask for his help.

“Ain’t so hard, Easy,” he said. “The thing that gave me the most trouble was learnin’ French so that I could talk with the technicians overseas.”

“You speak French?” my daughter asked.

“Oui, mademoiselle. Et tu?”

“Un peu,” she replied modestly.

“Jewelle, can you take the kids out on the patio for a while?” I asked. “I need to talk to Jackson here.”

Feather, Jesus, Easter, and Benita with Essie followed the lady real-estate genius outside into her garden at the bottom of a well-like yard.

When they were gone, I told Jackson what had been happening.

“Damn, Easy,” he said when I was through. “Why don’t you get into somethin’ sensible? Shit. You think that they woulda really killed the kids?”

“I’m sure they would, man. Will you keep ’em for me?”

“Okay. No problem. I mean, it’a mostly be Jewelle takin’ care of them. I’m workin’ at the office, but she do most of her work over the phone.”

“How’s it goin’ with her?”

“She’s a silent partner in that new Icon International hotel goin’ up downtown,” he said proudly. “If it fly, she be so rich that we could live in downtown Rome, and I don’t mean Rome, New York.”

“I might need to call on you again, Jackson,” I said.

This request caused fear to rise in the small man’s face. He didn’t want to have anything to do with me. He had a good job and made more money than anyone we knew, except Jewelle. He wanted to kick me out of his house, but even a coward like Jackson knew when his debts had come due.

“I hope not, Easy,” he said. “But I’ll be there.”

I WENT OUTSIDE and explained to my extended family that they were to stay away from their friends and neighborhoods, their homes and schools. They shouldn’t make phone calls or answer them or tell anyone where they were.

“What if my mama wanna talk to me?” Benita asked.

“Tell her that Juice is taking you to Frisco for a few days, by boat. Tell her that, and she’ll wait for you to come back.”

“Are these men really all that bad?” Benita asked.

“They make Mouse look like Juice,” I said, and she didn’t ask any more questions.