Farewell, Amethystine

24

Bernard lived in a small rented house on the 5000 block of McKinley Avenue down in South Central LA. Set back from the street, the front of the house was also behind a screen of bushes and two trees. He led us into the front room and turned on the overhead light from a wall switch.

“Anybody here with you?” I asked.

“My girl’s up in Sacramento with her sister.”

“Anybody comin’?” Fearless wondered.

“Not that I know of.”

“Okay then,” I said. “Let’s get to it.”

The only bedroom was small but had an unusually wide and deep double-doored closet. Inside that closet most of the clothes were piled on the floor, emanating a strong musty odor. Benny rummaged around for and found a small flat sixteen-millimeter-film container box with the words Sex Film scrawled upon it.

“Here you go,” our temporary prisoner said, handing me the little package. “Now, where my money at?”

“This ain’t over yet, brothah,” I said.

“Why not? You got what you asked for.”

“I need to see it.”

“Hold it up to a light,” he said, trying to dismiss my request.

“No, man, no. You gonna show us this shit or you’ll spend the rest’a your life wishin’ you had.”

The concern and contradictory craftiness on Kirby’s face caused me to raise the pistol and pull back the hammer.

“Hey, hey, hey, hey,” the boxer complained while holding up his hands. “That’s the tape you aksed for right there.”

I wanted to kill him. I did.

“If you don’t have a film projector somewhere in that mess, I’m gonna shoot you right here on this bed,” I said.

“It’s, it’s, it’s in the checkered box ovah on the right side, in the corner.”

Fearless pulled out the projector and started setting it up on the long bench placed at the foot of the bed.

“Is this the right tape?” I asked our prisoner.

“Naw. That was another one Tommy had me do. I figured it would’a looked good if you didn’t have no projection.”

“You better have the real one.”

“In the night table draw.”

We projected the real film on the pink door of Kirby’s moldering closet. Six minutes in length, it depicted Laks standing between two young women, one white and the other Black — both on their knees.

The white one had her face buried in his butt while the Black one was playing flute along his stubby erection. I wondered if whoever saw this tableau would hate the Black girl for being Black or the white one for the tattoos on her side and ass. In those days tattoos were the domain of merchant marines, Japanese gangsters, and convicts who hated everything, even their own skins.

“You got my money?” Kirby demanded.

I eased the hammer back into place and then hit Kirby upside his head, harder than I remember ever hitting any man, or beast. He was out before landing on the mattress. After that I sprinkled the money on his chest.

“Let’s go,” I said to my friend.

“What’s wrong with you, Easy?” Fearless asked as we drove west down posh Sunset Boulevard.

“What you mean? I’m all right.”

“Naw, naw, don’t be fuckin’ around. You know what I mean. You don’t go round beatin’ on some niggah just ’cause he got a bad attitude. Shit. We the ones put him in that mood.”

The road was nearly void of traffic. We passed huge mansions, UCLA, and vast, parklike lawns. It would have been a lovely journey except for the fact that we were two Black men in a part of town that wasn’t particularly welcoming. The white residents were wary of men like Fearless and me, and the police were given more or less free rein to make sure we felt unwelcome. But that was business as usual and I was acquainted with most of the patrolmen who haunted Sunset.

I wasn’t looking over my shoulder for official threats. I was looking for an answer to Fearless’s question, but there was no clear explanation.

After a long internal search, I only managed to come up with a tale from my youth.

“When I was a young man,” I said, “maybe nineteen, I was down in Fifth Ward Houston raisin’ hell and believin’ I was grown.”

“I remember them days,” Fearless said. “Shit. Back then even the cops kept away after the sun went down.”

“Yeah.” Slowly, the thoughts that bound me were becoming not so much clear but... present.

“One night back then I got a message from EttaMae Harris,” I said. “She sent Little Liam over to the place where I stayed. He told me that Etta said that Raymond was at the Blacksmiths’ Bar and that I should get over there quick. I asked him should I talk to her first and he said that she said I could talk to her after.

“I loved Etta. Mouse was my best friend, still is, but I loved Etta. She was the kinda Black woman stand right by you, no matter what.”

“Yes, she is,” Fearless said. “She used to bring her son down to Paris’s old bookstore in the day. Just the way she looked at you made you feel like bein’ a man was all right by her.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Anyway. I found Raymond at Blacksmiths’ Bar maybe two in the mornin’. I knew there was trouble because the other bargoers were more quiet than usual. Raymond was sittin’ at a table by hisself and the tables on either side of him were empty.”

“Uh-oh,” my passenger said.

“Yeah. I walked up to where he was sittin’ and said his name. He looked up, squinted, waited for almost a full minute or more before sayin’, ‘Ease.’

“I sat, drank from his bottle, and waited till he started talkin’ all on his own.

“He told me that he was at a woman’s house the night before. Her name was Bertha Bee. And after a drink or two they started fuckin’ like wolves out on the plain — his words. They just couldn’t stop. Mouse had been with a lotta women but he said that he nevah felt that strong before. And then her boyfriend, Nate Grimly, came home. He grabbed for his pistol but Mouse switched it up, he threw a chair at his ass. When he went down, Raymond jumped up an’ started beatin’ him like he was his daddy. He told me that he had every intention of killin’ that niggah. But Bertha put her arms around his shoulders and pulled him away to the bed. She started kissin’ an’ tellin’ him that she needed it bad...’”

“Damn,” Fearless uttered. He could feel the conflicting passions in Raymond’s secondhand memories. “What happened?”

“That’s what I asked him. He told me that Bertha dragged him to the bed and fucked him till he couldn’t no mo’. Then she fed him whiskey till he passed out.”

“What happent to Nate?”

“Bertha drug him to a hospital and sat ovah him for three days till he opened his eyes. Mouse tried to get in touch with her, but she let him know that she wouldn’t be with him ever again.”

“Whoa,” said Fearless Jones. “She realized how much she loved her man while Raymond was just about killin’ ’im.”

“Yeah. He been lookin for that kinda love ever since.”

“He didn’t feel it with Etta?”

“I guess not.”

“Okay, okay. All right. But that was a long time ago and you ain’t Mouse. What any’a that got to do with you hittin’ Benny like that?”

“I don’t know,” I lied.