Fear of the Dark

Chapter 15

I knew it too well.

Fearless dropped me off at my place at about six.

There was a cardboard box on the front porch. The flaps were folded together and there was an envelope taped to its side. I unlocked the door and kicked the box inside. I sat on the first chair near the entrance and flipped the box open.

Books. Books in which there were many dog-eared pages. I opened the sealed envelope. It was from my literary girlfriend, Ashe Knowles.

There were eighteen hardback books in the box. Each one had anywhere from five to fifteen dog-eared pages proving Ashe’s claims. She had a relentless, steel-trap kind of intelligence. And I had to admit there was something to her assertion. There must have been thousands of times that I had come across statements in books that insulted and lied about Negroes in America and abroad. Hegel had done it and Karl Marx too. But without a definitive list of these misdemeanors, how could we complain? Even the librarian had denied the allegation until Ashe showed her proof.

I decided to put the books down in the onetime crypt of Tiny Bobchek.

I was happy to have received that box of books, first because of the fact that no one had stolen them from off my porch. Nobody stole books. These bound and printed stacks of paper were the most precious things in the world, and yet no one would have picked them up. That box could have sat on my porch for a week and those books would have gone unmolested and unread.

The second thing that made me happy was that Ashe had distracted me for an hour or so from the worries that had settled all through my mind.

I thought about Ashe and her bumbling brilliance. She would have done much better for herself if she had gone to college and committed all of the plays of Shakespeare to memory. That way the white professors, deans, and provosts would have seen her as some kind of anomaly who would have fit well in the lower echelons of the university hierarchy. There she could have waited until such time that a catalogue of racist quotes in American and English literature might have been presented on a grand stage.

But Ashe could only see truth — not strategy. She worked as a teacher’s assistant at a private Baptist elementary school down on Eighty-third Street. They paid her twenty-two dollars a week, and she lived somehow, sometimes unable to buy even a pencil.

Again I thought of how I could have loved a woman like that. But loving her, I knew that I should leave her alone.

I wasn’t hungry and so I went up to bed at eight. My jaw was aching and my right arm felt weak. I had pains up and down my right side and a thick copy of Titus Groan on my night table. I wanted to read it, but I was experiencing too many aches to grapple with that hefty tome.

So instead I started thinking.

I knew that I shouldn’t have cut off Fearless’s question about Tiny Bobchek’s death. Tiny’s dying like that was just the kind of trouble that Useless would bring down on you. But Useless wasn’t a killer and he’d gone. I hadn’t even let him through the door, so why would he have come back? And I was sure there wasn’t any connection between Useless and Jessa.

When I’d met her, she talked all the time about how she’d never seen a black man up close. She’d play with my hair and place her white hand against my skin to marvel at the contrast.

And Jessa was a brass tacks kind of girl. I paid her rent and made an exotic entry in her life. If she was working with somebody who was counting money in the thousands, she wouldn’t have had a moment for me.

No. Jessa had nothing to do with Useless and Useless had nothing to do with the murder of Tiny Bobchek.

But where had Jessa gone?

I closed my eyes, but I could tell by the thrumming at the back of my head that sleep would not be coming any time soon.

I had an inspiration then. So I got dressed, went down to my car, and drove over to the blue house in front of Man’s Barn.

It was almost nine, well beyond the time when decent people dropped in on one another. Man might have turned me away, but I had a plan to get by him.

I rang the bell and stood there in my brown jacket and black trousers. I was sporting alligator shoes and a blue pullover shirt that had a one-button collar.

Man wore a white T-shirt and navy blue pants that had a drawstring at the waist.

“What the hell do you want?” he asked me. “Do you know what time it is? My little girl was asleep before you started pushin’ on that bell.”

I twisted my face into a wordless apology. “I didn’t wanna disturb ya, but I thought you’d appreciate me coming here over the alternative.”

“What the fuck are you talkin’ about, Negro?” he said. He grabbed the door as if he were about to slam it in my face.

“Fearless Jones,” I said.

For a moment time ceased to pass on Man Dorn’s face. Then he looked at me, wondering how to avoid the two words he’d just heard.

“What’s Mr. Jones got to do wit’ me?”

“You know that woman I was here wit’ today?” I asked. “The one that paid Useless’s rent?”

“Yeah?”

“She took me ovah to Mad Anthony’s, and he got kinda riled...”

“That don’t have nuthin’ to do wit’ me,” Man claimed.

“Yeah. I know.” I was feeling sorry for Man. “But then Three Hearts went to Fearless and Fearless broke Tony’s jaw. Then she said that she was here and she thought that you knew more about Angel than you was sayin’ and that maybe he could come on by. I told Fearless that we didn’t need to go through all’a that. I said that I was sure you’d give Three Hearts what she needed.”

“Hold on,” he said, retreating into the blue home.

He left the door open. There was a television on in a room next to the one the door opened onto. Through the second doorway I could see two black women sitting on a couch, illuminated by the light of the TV. They were peering out at me. They looked like dark sisters, maybe a year or two apart. I tried to think of what their relationship to Man might have been but failed.

I did know that neither one of them was his wife.

Man returned with an eight-by-six glossy photograph. It was of a stunningly beautiful woman. She had medium brown skin, straight or straightened hair, eyes filled with knowing surprise, and parted lips that could teach you how to kiss a Greek goddess.

“This Angel?” I asked.

“When she told me that she was a actress,” Man said, “I asked her if she had a publicity picture. You know, a lotta these girls got bikini pictures for their Hollywood agents. It wasn’t that, but she’s pretty, though. Nice girl. She just had bad taste in men.”

“Anything else?”

“Naw, man. That’s it. I told you everything else.”

“How about the car the guy drove her off in?”

“I don’t even know, brother. I didn’t really care.”

“Man?” a woman said. She was standing at the inner door.

She was a shortish woman with big kissy lips and startled eyes.

“Go on back in the TV room, Doretha,” Man said. “We almost through here.”

She backed away fearfully.

“Couple’a my tenants come up to watch TV,” he told me. “So Fearless don’t have to come by now, right?”

“No, sir, Mr. Dorn.”