Farewell, Amethystine

7

Karin walked me toward my car, parked across the street. When I stepped off from the curb, I guess I forgot that my foot had to go down so far. Balance failed and suddenly I was falling. But before I could hit the ground Karin bear-hugged me from behind and somehow held me up. I grabbed for the side of a car parked there and managed to stand again.

Walking me across the street she said, “You can’t drive, Uncle Easy. You had too much to drink.”

I gazed into the somber face of the pale brown youth and nodded.

“You can take my bed and I will sleep with my mother,” she offered.

“I got to get home. Maybe I’ll call a cab.”

It was late and we both knew that a taxi driver, in that part of town, might refuse the fare when he saw my complexion. After the Watts riots, white people were more cautious of Blacks.

“I could drive you and come back in the morning,” she offered.

“Your mom wouldn’t mind?”

“No. I’ll just go tell her.”

“Say that one of the guys who guards the mountain will bring you back tonight.”

She smiled, nodded, and then skipped her way across the street to deliver the messages.

I leaned against the hood of my car and took a deep breath.

It was near midnight in Los Angeles on a Monday. At that time the city was populated by workingmen and — women, and schoolchildren — all of them at home in their beds. Now and then I could hear a car whooshing down Melrose, but the Vosgeses’ block was silent and still.

I closed my eyes and thought about Mississippi-born Albert Grimes, a Black man, the grandson of slaves, who went to Europe, killed white men, and married a white woman who had had it even harder than he had.

I heard the car driving up the street. I wasn’t concerned, even when it stopped; after all, there was always someone working late.

“Excuse me, sir,” an unrepentant man’s voice declared.

Opening my eyes I saw the two young white men, barely older than Karin.

“Evenin’, Officers.”

They flanked me and I remained motionless, propped up on the hood with both hands visible.

“What you doin’ here, son?” the young man on the left asked.

I breathed in deeply, found that I couldn’t talk with that much air in my lungs, exhaled, and then said, “Waitin’ for my goddaughter. She’s gonna drive me home.”

“You live around here?” the right-standing cop asked.

“No.”

“Where do you live?”

“Over on Forty-Second near Central,” I lied.

“You been drinking?”

“Two shots with Karin’s mother.”

“Why don’t you stand up and show us some ID?” the left cop suggested.

“Uncle Easy,” she called from behind my inquisitors.

Both cops turned to see who it was. I realized that I was scared because I had to suppress the urge to run.

Using these few moments, Karin crossed the street.

“Good evening, Officers,” she greeted. “Is something wrong?”

“Do you know this man?” asked the cop on the right.

“Of course I do. He’s my godfather.”

While they talked, I played out the probable scenario in my head. Karin was light-skinned but that didn’t matter; a Black woman was a Black woman in America’s eyes. She was young, but her race trumped the presumption of innocence. They would have to make sure she lived there. They’d go to Penelope’s house, and she’d give them a tongue-lashing...

“You live in that house?” a cop, I’m not sure which one, asked.

“Yes.”

That one word was like a stress crack in thawing ice. The cops looked at each other and, silently, the decision was made.

“Are you driving him home?” my right-side cop asked.

“Yes. He’s tired and asked me to.”

They weren’t friendly to us. They would most certainly have arrested me for standing drunk next to my car. But they decided to believe Karin, that she lived there and wasn’t burgling the tiny house. The world was changing in increments so small you’d have had to be a victim to feel it.

“All right then,” the same cop said. “Drive safely.”

“You’re a good driver.” I was sitting in the passenger’s seat while Karin tooled up La Cienega toward Sunset.

“Been driving Mom since I was sixteen,” she bragged. “I love it.”

“Makes you feel free, huh?”

“Sometimes I go all the way out to Joshua Tree National Monument and just sit at one of the picnic tables until the sun goes down. In the night there are more stars than you can believe.”

“I remember when I bought my first car,” I said. “I asked the dealer how fast it could go.”

“What did he say?”

“Not fast enough.”

That put a damper on the next few minutes.

“The turnoff’s just about half a mile up on the right,” I instructed.

“I know. I came up there one time to swim with Feather.”

“Oh yeah.”

She made the turn and drove until we passed the last driveway.

Even though there were no electric lights, the three-quarter moon made everything visible. No houses at that point on the path, just shrubs and grasses, a tree now and then.

After we turned on the one-and-a-half-lane road that led to my mountain home, the tenor of our conversation changed.

“Uncle Easy?”

“Yeah?”

“Were you afraid when those policemen stopped to talk to you?”

“I can’t say that I was actually afraid, but just aware that there was trouble. I mean, you’d have to be a fool to feel good up against men with batons and guns. But it’s happened enough times that I can tell pretty quickly what’s prob’ly gonna go down.”

“The police murdered my father.”

“That they did.”

“He was the kindest man in the world.” There were tears in her voice.

“He was that.”

“We went to church every Sunday, just me and Dad. Mom said that she couldn’t come with because she lost God in the bombing of Nuremberg.”

“Albert loved you so much,” I said. “Sometimes he’d come visit me and talk about how smart and pretty and kind you were. He loved it that you were there with him at church every week.”

“I haven’t gone since he died.”

While we talked, the paved road turned into a dirt lane.

“You know what my mother said when I told her you had a ride back for me?” Karin asked.

“What?”

“She said that I didn’t have to come home.”

“She was angry about you drivin’ me?”

“No. She wants me to marry you.”

I wanted to make light of this ridiculous request on the part of Penelope Vosges but couldn’t find the words.

The rest of the drive took about twelve minutes, no more than that. Trees had begun to fill out the desolate landscape and we’d started up a mild incline, finally reaching a natural cul-de-sac at the foot of the sheer side of a mountain. There were nearly a dozen cars parked on the left side of the turnaround. I recognized all but one of them.

At the foot of the mountain was a small wooden structure just large enough to hold a table and two chairs. Behind this shack stood an iron gate.

“Good evening, Mr. Rawlins,” said a man with strongly accented words.

He was an inch shorter than Karin and hirsute in the extreme. His skin was Caucasian-dark and his eyes, I knew, were blue like the Mediterranean Sea. You could tell by his broad shoulders that he was a man of exceptional strength.

“Hey, Cosmo. This is my goddaughter, Karin.”

“I remember. She throws the javelin and loves numbers.”

“Hi, Cosmo,” Karin said shyly.

“She needs a ride home.”

Moving his chin up and down in a curt, almost military, nod, the night watchman turned and went back into the sentry’s hut. There he got on the wireless system that his whole Longo family used to protect the mountain. On the air he spoke in gruff and guttural Italian.

“I always meant to ask you,” Karin said. “Who are Cosmo’s people?”

“Sicilians. Four sons and a father who had to leave home over some century-old feud.”

While I spoke, a loud mechanical sound arose. That was the funicular used to ferry guests and residents up and down the mountainside.

Cosmo came out and used three big keys to unlock the metal gate.

“It’s beautiful out here at night,” my goddaughter said, maybe to herself.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Cavemen and dinosaurs would look up at that same sky.”

The funicular reached the gate and Gaetano Longo emerged. Big and bearlike, the elder brother of the clan came out smiling.

“Easy,” he proclaimed. Then with joyous surprise: “And Karin.”

“Hi, Gaetano,” she said softly. “Can you give me a ride?”

“Anywhere.”

He walked off toward the small car park and Karin kissed me on the cheek, near my lips.

“We love you, Uncle Easy,” she said.

“And I you.”

I watched them get into the family pickup truck and drive off. Seeing the back lights disappear into the wilderness of my last home made me melancholy. That’s when I remembered how drunk I was.

“Mr. Rawlins?”

“Yes, Cosmo.”

“You have a guest.”

“Who?” I turned and saw her standing in the doorway of the guard shack.