Devil in a Blue Dress

Chapter 7

When i finally made it back to my house, on 116th Street, it was another beautiful California day. Big white clouds sailed eastward toward the San Bernadino mountain range. There were still traces of snow on the peaks and there was the lingering scent of burning trash in the air.

My studio couch was in the same position it had been the morning before. The paper I’d been reading that morning was still folded neatly on my upholstered chair. The breakfast plates were in the sink.

I opened the blinds and picked up the stack of mail the mailman had dropped through the door slot. Once I’d become a homeowner I got mail every day — and I loved it. I even loved junk mail.

There was a letter promising me a free year of insurance and one where I stood a chance of winning a thousand dollars. There was a chain letter that prophesied my death if I didn’t send six exact copies to other people I knew and two silver dimes to a post office box in Illinois. I supposed that it was a white gang preying on the superstition of Southern Negros. I just threw that letter away.

But, on the whole, it was pretty nice sitting here in the slatted morning light and reading my mail. The electric percolator was making sounds from the kitchen and birds were chirping outside.

I turned over a big red packet full of coupons to show a tiny blue envelope underneath. It smelled of perfume and was written in a fancy woman’s hand. It was postmarked from Houston and the name over the address read “Mr. Ezekiel Rawlins.” That got me to move to the light of the kitchen window. It wasn’t every day that I got a letter from home, by someone who knew my given name.

I looked out of the window for a moment before I read the letter. There was a jay looking down from the fence at the evil dog in the yard behind mine. The mongrel was growling and jumping at the bird. Every time he slammed his body against the wire fence the jay started as if he were about to fly off, but he didn’t. He just kept staring down into those deadly jaws, mesmerized by the spectacle there.

At the first words I went to my closet. I don’t know what I wanted to do there, maybe pack my bags and leave town. Maybe I just wanted to hide in the closet, I don’t know.

When we were young men, in Texas, we were the best of friends. We fought in the street side by side and we shared the same women without ever getting mad about it. What was a woman compared to the love of two friends? But when it came time for Mouse to marry EttaMae Harris things began to change.

He came to my house late one night and got me to drive him, in a stolen car, down to a little farming town called Pariah. He said that he was going to ask his stepfather for an inheritance his mother had promised him before she died.

Before we left that town Mouse’s stepfather and a young man named Clifton had been shot dead. When I drove Mouse back to Houston he had more than a thousand dollars in his pocket.

I had nothing to do with those shootings. But Mouse told me what he did on the drive back home. He told me that he and Clifton held up Daddy Reese because the old man wouldn’t relent to Mouse’s claim. He told me that when Reese got to a gun Clifton was cut down, and then Mouse killed Reese. He said all that in complete innocence as he counted out three hundred dollars, blood money, for me.

Mouse didn’t ever feel bad about anything he’d done. He was just that kind of man. He wasn’t confessing to me, he was telling his story. There was nothing he ever did in his life that he didn’t tell at least one person. And once he told me he gave me three hundred dollars so he would know I thought he had done right.

It was the worst thing I ever did to take that money. But my best friend would have put a bullet in my head if he ever thought that I was unsure of him. He would have seen me as an enemy, killed me for my lack of faith.

I ran away from Mouse and Texas to go to the army and then later to L.A. I hated myself. I signed up to fight in the war to prove to myself that I was a man. Before we launched the attack on D-Day I was frightened but I fought. I fought despite the fear. The first time I fought a German hand-to-hand I screamed for help the whole time I was killing him. His dead eyes stared at me a full five minutes before I let go of his throat.

The only time in my life that I had ever been completely free from fear was when I ran with Mouse. He was so confident that there was no room for fear. Mouse was barely five-foot-six but he’d go up against a man Dupree’s size and you know I’d bet on the Mouse to walk away from it. He could put a knife in a man’s stomach and ten minutes later sit down to a plate of spaghetti.

I didn’t want to write Mouse and I didn’t want to let it lie. In my mind he had such power that I felt I had to do whatever he wanted. But I had dreams that didn’t have me running in the streets anymore; I was a man of property and I wanted to leave my wild days behind.

I drove down to the liquor store and bought a fifth of vodka and a gallon of grapefruit soda. I positioned myself in a chair at the front window and watched the day pass.

Looking out of the window is different in Los Angeles than it is in Houston. No matter where you live in a Southern city (even a wild and violent place like Fifth Ward, Houston) you see almost everybody you know by just looking out your window. Every day is a parade of relatives and old friends and lovers you once had, and maybe you’d be lovers again one day.

That’s why Sophie Anderson went back home I suppose. She liked the slower life of the South. When she looked out her window she wanted to see her friends and her family. And if she called out to one of them she wanted to know that they’d have the time to stop for a while and say hello.

Sophie was a real Southerner, so much so that she could never last in the workaday world of Los Angeles.

Because in L.A. people don’t have time to stop; anywhere they have to go they go there in a car. The poorest man has a car in Los Angeles; he might not have a roof over his head but he has a car. And he knows where he’s going too. In Houston and Galveston, and way down in Louisiana, life was a little more aimless. People worked a little job but they couldn’t make any real money no matter what they did. But in Los Angeles you could make a hundred dollars in a week if you pushed. The promise of getting rich pushed people to work two jobs in the week and do a little plumbing on the weekend. There’s no time to walk down the street or make a bar-b-q when somebody’s going to pay out real money to haul refrigerators.

So I watched empty streets that day. Every once in a while I’d see a couple of children on bicycles or a group of young girls going to the store for candy and soda pop. I sipped vodka and napped and reread Mouse’s letter until I knew that there was nothing I could do. I decided to ignore it and if he ever asked I’d just look simple and act like it never got delivered.

By the time the sun went down I was at peace with myself. I had a name, an address, a hundred dollars, and the next day I’d go ask for my old job back. I had a house and an empty bottle of vodka that had made me feel good.

The letter was postmarked two weeks earlier. If I was very lucky Etta had already taken Mouse back in.

When the telephone woke me it was black outside.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Rawlins, I’ve been expecting your call.”

That threw me. I said, “What?”

“I hope you have some good news for me.”

“Mr. Albright, is that you?”

“Sure is, Easy. What’s shaking?”

It took me another moment to compose myself. I had planned to call him in a few days so it would seem like I had worked for his money.

“I got what you want,” I said in spite of my plans. “She’s with—”

“Hold on to that, Easy. I like to look a man in the face when we do business. Telephone’s no place for business. Anyway, I can’t give you your bonus on the phone.”

“I can come down to your office in the morning.”

“Why don’t we get together now? You know where the merry-go-round is down at Santa Monica pier?”

“Well, yeah, but…”

“That’s about halfway between us. Why don’t we meet there?”

“But what time is it?”

“About nine. They close the ride in an hour so we can be alone.”

‘I don’t know… I just got up…”

“I am paying you.”

“Okay. I’ll get down there soon as I can drive it.”

He hung up in my ear.