Fear of the Dark

Chapter 17

Loretta kissed me when we stopped in front of her parents’ home. It was a long, juicy kiss. I was working with her, but she was definitely the captain of that boat. She licked my throat and nipped my ears, caressed the side of my neck in a way no mother had ever done a child’s. Two of her fingers found their way into a small opening between the buttons of my shirt. When she pressed against my nipple, I jumped a little.

“I’m not finished yet,” she whispered, just in case my flinching meant that I was ready to walk her to the door.

There was no hurry to Loretta’s passion, but my heart was thumping like a lonely puppy’s heart does when his master returns after leaving him tied up for hours.

When we finally separated, I felt as if I had spent a lifetime with her.

“I understood what you were saying,” Loretta whispered. “I do love Milo, but we aren’t like that. And you know, Paris, I need a man to make me whole.”

I had nothing to say but I opened my mouth anyway. Loretta put two fingers to my lips and said, “Let’s go.”

Before we got to her front porch, the door flew open. Loretta’s parents were huddled there — a two-headed warden. Loretta kissed me again and then was enveloped in the frightened arms of their love.

I went to my trunk and brought out the whiskey and soda. I sat there smoldering cigarettes and imbibing alcohol until the fervor abated and the swelling went down.

I didn’t make it home until after four.

Sometime in the early afternoon I headed out looking for Tommy Hoag. Schuyler Real Estate was a small office wedged in between a hardware store and a barber’s shop on Hooper. The office was red of color and less than six feet in width. There were three desks along the crimson aisle. The first was at the window on the right, the second was just behind that on the left, and the third was against the back wall, removed from the other two by at least seven feet.

For years Schuyler’s had had three white agents sitting in that crooked line. The head man was always the one at the back of the room. You had to get past the first two barriers to reach him. These first two agents dealt with colored people wanting apartments and storefronts, churches, and small garages. The last agent always dealt with white businesspeople coming down to open big businesses like supermarkets and lumberyards.

Knowing the system, I was surprised to see the one colored face manning the hindmost desk.

It was one fifteen and I was dressed in my blue suit. Where I had been feeling cursed and oppressed for the past few days, I now was blessed with thoughts of Loretta and her amazing understanding of my heart. I kept moving forward because that was all I could do. But she was at the back of my mind, kissing my neck and making sounds of whoopee.

“Yes, sir?” the half-bald white man in the green jacket and black trousers asked. He had risen either to greet or to expel me.

“Mr. Hoag, please,” I said.

“Do you have an appointment?” the middle-aged roadblock asked, an apology already etched around his eyes.

“It has to do with this photograph,” I said, handing Angel over into his bone-colored grasp.

“I don’t understand?” he said, looking at the picture and registering something.

“He will,” I assured the salesman.

The first man, whose nameplate read ROGER, moved to negotiate between the desks, making his way toward the back of the aisle. The man behind him sat tall and thin, swathed in brown. He smiled and nodded.

“Nice day,” he said.

One of the things I love about America is that if you are a potential customer almost everyone is nice to you. They might hate your guts and wish you dead, but face-to-face they smile and nod and talk about the weather in a neighborly cadence.

Roger had made his pitch to Tommy and was returning without the photo. He nodded at me and smiled as he approached and then said, “He has a few minutes before his next meeting. He’ll see you now.”

I careered around Roger’s desk and the next and then set my pace for the well-dressed man at the back of the room.

He stood up to a good five eleven and put out a hand that had a double fold of fine white cotton and cuff links at the wrist. Tommy Hoag was light skinned and auburn eyed at a time when freedom for black people depended on how closely we could approximate being white. His Caucasian-like features had served him well. His expression told you that he knew it and that he knew that you knew it too.

“Mr. Hoag?” I asked.

“Pleased to meet you, Mister...?”

“Minton,” I said. “Paris Minton.”

“Have a seat, Mr. Minton.”

I sat, looking around.

On the wall behind his desk hung a framed parchment claiming that Thomas Benton Hoag had earned a bachelor of arts degree from Howard University.

The chair was walnut and the desk was walnut veneer. The black carpet would wear down in six months and the walls might as well have been paper. But Schuyler’s was an institution in Watts.

“Damn,” I said.

“Do I know you, Mr. Minton?”

“No. You might know my cousin, though. Ulysses S. Grant the Fourth.”

His eyes registered yes.

“No,” he said, shaking his head to prove it.

“Useless, that’s what most of us call him, is Angel there’s boyfriend.” I pointed at the photo on his desk.

“She’s a pretty girl,” he said noncommittally.

“She’s more than that, I hear.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Minton?”

“Can you explain the theory of evolution?” I asked.

“Say what?” he asked. I could almost hear the Negro at the end of the sentence.

“You got a college degree, brother. You know that’s more rare for a black man than someone actually born in L.A.”

Tommy smiled. He liked a quick wit.

“I could explain, but that would take too long,” he said. “You’d have to do some background reading, the original texts, you know.”

“I done read The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man,” I said. “I understand the position, but what I always wonder about is what I call the horizon point of the phenomenon.”

I was actually reciting arguments that Ashe had made to me back when she thought I was some kind of genius simply because I owned a bookstore.

Tommy didn’t know what the hell I was talking about, and so before he could embarrass himself I added, “You know, Darwin says that a species evolves. But a species ain’t one thing, it’s millions, maybe more. So outta all the people in the world, are we all at the same place on the evolutionary ladder? Is there just one ladder or a thousand of ’em? Some people smarter than others, some stronger. You got a genius like George Washington Carver and a beast like Adolf Hitler. How are they related? Are they at the same place?”

“That’s what the Constitution and the Bill of Rights say,” Tommy offered weakly.

“True,” I agreed. “But that’s a moral stance, not a scientific one. And the original document only referred to white, Christian, male landowners. Darwin throw a much bigger net than that one there.”

Somebody overhearing our words would have thought that I was going down the wrong road. But that someone wouldn’t have been listening between the lines. In his own estimation Tommy was a superior specimen. He only dealt with white people and was better educated than 99 percent of the Negro race. He would have felt that he could dismiss me unless I intimidated him physically or intellectually.

Tommy could have kicked my ass up and down the block, so I used the only muscle I had.

It worked too.

“Angel Allmont and I used to go out,” Tommy told me. “We saw each other for a couple of months. But I had to let her go. She was pretty and everything, but I need a lighter-skinned girl in the business I do, and she had a wild side.

“And now that I think on it... her new boyfriend might have been called Useless. Something like that.”

“Have you talked to her in the last week or so?” I asked.

“No. She was goin’ out with your cousin and they got tangled up with a flimflam man named Hector. I think that’s what she said his name was.”

“Hector what?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“How you know he was bent?”

“Angel said that they were doing business where they were going to make ten thousand dollars in a month,” Tommy said in a muted voice. “That kinda money don’t evolve from honest labor.”

I smiled at his inside joke.

“You know where I can find her?” I asked.

“Man’s Barn.”

“She moved outta there.”

“Oh,” Tommy said, not really caring. “I don’t know, then. All I can tell ya is that the one time I met your cousin he told me that he played billiards at Jerry Twist’s and that he could get me in there any time I wanted.”

He looked at me.

I returned the stare.

“That all you after, Mr. Minton?”

“I guess so.”

“Any time you need me to tell you more about Darwin, you just drop on by.”

I wondered as I left if he believed that he had lectured me.