Gone Fishin’

‘She sure have grown,’ Mouse said to himself as we took off.

It had been gray all morning but the drizzle didn’t start until we left Pariah. It wasn’t a rain that cleaned the leaves of dust but a mist that changed the dust to caked mud on everything. The whole world turned filthy and streaked.

Mouse said some things to me but I ignored him for the most part. There was a weight on me. It seemed like the air was too heavy and that the trees along the road were so loose that any minute they’d crash down on us. My fingers felt thick and numb.

Mouse was smoking store-bought cigarettes and whistling; you’d’ve thought the sun was shining on him.

When we got to the main road the bugs came out. We smashed them by the dozens on the windshield. They exploded into blossoms of blood and body parts, then they slipped away into the thin film of drizzle. Every time we hit one I thought of Clifton, with his dour expression, sitting in the backseat; I thought of Reese on his knees in front of his broken house.

There were dead animals in the road too. Armadillos, porcupines and even a couple of dogs. Cars ran them over in the night and kept on going.

Their bodies were torn open and they still seemed to be bleeding because the rain had kept the blood fresh. Flesh burst from the fur like cotton from a ripped sofa.

‘Here ya go, Ease, maybe this brighten up yo’ face.’ Mouse put a fat envelope, folded from a sheet of newspaper, on the dashboard in front of me.

‘What’s that?’

‘I might not be able t’read like ole Dom but I can count like anything,’ he said.

Another time that might have gotten a rise out of me but those days were over.

‘Yeah,’ Mouse said. ‘I cain’t read but I can count to three hundred in my sleep.’

I didn’t say a word. I wouldn’t even look at the envelope.

‘What’s wrong wichyou, man?’ he asked me.

‘Ain’t nuthin wrong.’

‘Then why you cain’t even talk?’

‘Ain’t got nuthin t’say, that’s all.’

‘Yeah. I know.’ He stared at me for a moment, then went on, ‘Easy, I want you t’take that money. It’s yours an’ it would be a insult t’me if you leave it lyin’ there fo’Otum t’take.’

I said, ‘Where you get that money?’

‘Fount it.’

‘Fount it where?’

‘Out t’Reese’s place. I mean he got a will say ev’rything go to Navrochet. But you know he owed me sumpin’ so I just look at it like this here money I got is mines.’

‘How much was it?’

He pointed to the envelope. ‘That there’s just a piece of it.’

I was quiet again.

‘You wanna know what happened, huh?’ He was grinning at me.

‘I don’t wanna know nuthin’.’

‘Yeah you do. You think I did sumpin’ wrong, don’t you? You think I murdered Reese, don’t you?’

Mouse sat back and put his foot on the dash. He was getting ready to tell me another story, but I had lost my love of his tales.

‘Ya see, Ease, it started wit’ Clifton. I knew he could he’p convince Reese about gettin’ up offa that money an’ I also knew that Ernestine was young enough and wild enough an’ she like Jo enough that she might give Dom a li’l pussy. You know Dom could use some’a that. So I went an’ tole Big Jim ‘bout what I knew ‘bout Clifton.’

‘You tole the law?’

‘Yeah, I can’t be lyin’ ‘round Jo ‘cause she so good she even got me. Anyway Clifton did beat that boy so it ain’t like I was lyin’ t’Jim. Only I didn’t tell Jim where Clifton was. Ya see, I’as givin’ him a chance.’

‘Uh-huh!’

‘I had Clifton buried out in the woods at night while I was layin’ up wit’ Theresa. I tole him that I was watchin’ for Jim. Clifton was so scared that he couldn’t even sleep. He’da done anything I said. So I warned ‘im that Big Jim was gonna get’im sooner or later unless he got far away, an’ then I tole him bout Reese’s money.

‘Ya see, I figgered we’d rob Reese, it was my due anyway. An’ Clifton went along wit’ it after some convincin’. I give Clifton a shotgun I borrowed from Sweet William. I tole Reese Clifton was a killer an’ we was gonna have it. He was a mess, Easy. He smelled from garlic, I guess he thought that would save him from voodoo. It was pitiful.’ There was glee in Mouse’s voice. ‘But I was gonna have that money. We put’im in that bamboo basket an’ told’im we was gonna shoot’im ‘less he climb outta there an’ show us to the money.’

Mouse was savouring every moment of the torture. He really believed that he hadn’t done anything wrong.

‘But then that fool Clifton had to grab me an’ th’ow off my kick. If you’d hadn’ta run Reese down I’d be dead now. Shit. I’m lucky my gun landed near Clifton, ‘cause you know Reese woulda beat me t’death with that shotgun.’

‘An’ then you fount the money?’ I asked.

‘Yeah.’ Mouse was staring out over the panorama of his brilliant future. He saw black-and-white dice through glasses of amber whiskey. He saw EttaMae in cashmere and silk. Somewhere there were children calling out, ‘Daddy.’ And all the while Reese lay in the ground, turning to sludge.

‘If you fount that money when he was dead, then why couldn’t you have fount it when he was packed in that box?’

Mouse laid those cold eyes on me.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘You right.’

‘And I don’t believe it, Raymond.’

‘You’ont believe what?’

‘I don’t believe that Clifton shot Reese. That boy had his hands full tryin’ t’hold his guts in.’

It was like I had forgotten who I was, and where I was; and who I was with. Maybe it was because I had a full stomach and I sat behind the wheel of a nice car. Maybe it was all that money up on the dashboard.

For a moment there I thought that the truth was more important than the need to survive.

Mouse winced and nodded. I realised that I had caught him in a lie.

‘You right,’ he said again.

I turned away from his cold stare only to see the red blood of a fat bug smear across the windshield.

‘An’ that’s why I need ya t’take this here money, Ease.’ He pointed at the envelope again. ‘Because you the on’y one got my confidence. You the on’y one know why I come down here an’ you the on’y one know what happened. If you don’t take that money then I know you against me.’ He looked at me with a plain face.

But this time that face wasn’t hiding laughter. His voice was the whisper of death, the slither of a snake over the nape of my neck.

Death had always been a part of my life. He lived in my neighbourhood, in my apartment building, right next door to me. But I’d never worried about him coming knocking. I was innocent and I knew that I would live forever.

But at that moment I realised that the wrong words would cut my life down to seconds or, at the most, just a few days. And I also knew that whatever I said would be my first words as a man in this world.

I reached out for the bundle and said, ‘Thanks, Ray.’

Mouse laughed and slapped my knee.

I had survived again. I had risked my life to save Clifton only to fail. But I had survived that failure. I was following in my father’s fleet footsteps: standing up when I couldn’t take any more and then running to fight another day.

Mouse started telling me how hungry Theresa was for love. I didn’t care.

When we saw Houston in the distance Mouse said, ‘You know, Easy, when I was standin’ there listenin’ t’Peters preach, somethin’ touched me, I don’t know if it was God or the devil or what, but it felt like all the pain and fear I ever known was gone. I been scared’a Reese day and night for my whole life and now he’s dead.’ A smile of pure joy spread across his face; tears sprouted from his eyes. ‘An’ I’ma be married and Fma be happy fo’ the rest’a my years.’

Chapter Fifteen

Back in those days rent was two dollars a week and you could eat your fill on a quarter a day. I had three hundred dollars; I could’ve lived for more than a year on that.

But I wasn’t careful. I bought a quart bottle of bourbon every other day and sat in that room, stinking and drinking. Most of the time I was too drunk to worry about it. But late at night the demons would come at me.

I was a part of the murder of a man’s father. Me, Ezekiel Rawlins, the man who worried after his own father for years. It’s not that I cared for Reese but murder is a sin that burns your soul.

And to help a man murder his father...

People came to my door but I didn’t answer it. They’d knock and call my name but I’d lie in the bed and bite my pillow. I’d shut my eyes tight against the sound and finally they’d leave.

Mouse would come to the door and call me. He’d rattle the doorknob and bang away. He talked to me as if he believed I was in, but I didn’t answer him. Our business was over with. There was nothing left to say.

Even today, six years later, I feel guilt and fear. The same fear I had when I thought my father knew everything that I did wrong; every thought that I thought wrong.

How could I have known? I asked myself.

How can anyone hold me responsible for the death of that man and that boy?

But then I’d think of standing there with Miss Alexander looking down on that wasted frame of flesh on brittle bones. A man who I helped to torment; a man whose murder goes unavenged.

I was unworthy. In my misery I told myself that that was why my own father never came back for me.

My mother was a churchgoer but I never had much use for it. Just as soon as I was old enough to hold back I fought with her on Sunday mornings so I could go out exploring the country and see my friends.

On Sundays my friend Holly, short for Hollister, and I would go to Tyler’s place out John Street because on Sunday mornings Lucy Jennings, the whore, would be there entertaining all of the husbands who got out of going to church. We hid in the bushes outside of her window and watched. I remember holding my breath when Robert Green would stand in front of her with his thing standing straight out; it was so big that we couldn’t believe it - Lucy told him that it was the most beautiful one she had ever seen... When I got home I felt guilty but I couldn’t tell my mother about it, it was so dirty and depraved.

I couldn’t tell anyone about Reese and Clifton either.

For the first time I thought about God. I wondered if he’d forgive me like Reverend Peters said. But I didn’t see how he could. I wasn’t going to the law, I wasn’t going to give myself up. I loved freedom and life and the only thing that would come from confessing was prison and death.

I took Mouse’s money. It’s true I was afraid not to take it but I didn’t throw it away. I could have found a worthy cause and given up my loot for that but I didn’t, and I wasn’t intending to do it.

All I could do was to lay up in my room and drink.

If things had continued like that I would have died there in Houston all those years ago; I’d’ve never learned to live with my guilt and remorse.

But then something happened.

Every time Mouse had come to the door he talked, as if I were in, about the wedding and how they wanted me for best man. I couldn’t talk to him. I sure couldn’t stand in a room full of people knowing what I knew.

Then one day a knock came at the door. It came again and a voice said, ‘Easy?’

It was EttaMae.

‘Easy, I know you’re in there,’ she said. ‘And I’m gonna wait here at the door until you open up and let me in.’

That’s all she said. I put my ear against the door and after a while I heard a rustle, so I tiptoed to my bed and bit the pillow. After what seemed like a long while I snuck back to the door and listened; and just when I was sure she’d gone I heard her sigh.

Etta was going to wait until I was ready to open up.

I moved quietly to the window but when I looked outside the sun was so bright and there were people in the street that knew my name; I went back to the room. As quiet as I could I went around picking up the clothes and trash from the floor; I pushed it all under the bed and into the closet. Then I went to the door she was still there.

I got the pan of water from the closet and tried to wash away the smell of two weeks without bathing. And then I hanged my clothes. All I had decent was an old pair of cutoff shorts and a flannel shirt. I rolled up the sleeves because it was so hot.

When I opened the door she was standing there; I was planning to act surprised like I had just gotten up but I knew when our eyes met that there was no sense in lying.

‘Easy.’ She smiled. Her dark brown eyes and deep brown skin were so beautiful. It seemed like years since I had seen her but she was still the same. Big and beautiful and so tender that I knew I would have crossed Mouse to have her for mine.

‘Can I come in, honey?’

I stepped back and she walked by me. She was wearing jasmine, I remember. I never thought much about perfume before but right then jasmine became my favourite.

‘Ev’rybody been lookin fo’ you, Easy. How come you been hidin’?’

‘Kinda sick, Etta.’

‘Raymond said that you come down wit’ sumpin’ in Pariah,’ she said. ‘He said that’s why you took so long out there.’

We sat down together on the bed. She put her arm around me and pressed my head down on her shoulder.

‘You gonna get well to be our best man?’

‘I dunno, Etta, I been real sick.’

She put her hand on my forehead. ‘You don’t feel hot.’

‘But I’m sick.’

With her arm still around me she turned to my face and said, ‘I know sumpin’ happened ‘tween you an’ Raymond out there, honey. I don’t know what it was an’ I don’t wanna know. But I do know that you two is friends an’ that Raymond will be sick if you don’t stand up for him. Outside’a me you the on’y close friend he got.’

I was looking down into her lap. She raised my face with her fingers and said, ‘Easy, you know we care for you. I been worried ever since I heard how you been actin’. No matter what’s wrong, baby, you gonna have to stand up to it.’

‘What if I cain’t stand no more?

‘Then you have to die, Easy. ‘Cause when po’ people like us stop movin’ fo’ward then we die. You know we cain’t hardly afford no vacation.’

It was my first good laugh in weeks.

It must’ve been a strange laugh though, because Etta said, ‘Come here, honey,’ and when she held me the laugh almost turned to tears.

I went through a whole war and I never cried and I never got sick. I saw my best friends die right there next to me with nothing more than a sigh but I felt less then than I felt in Etta’s embrace. I served under Patton where we froze and fought and then marched until we couldn’t march anymore; and when we couldn’t march we fought again; but I never even sniffled out there in those foreign lands. I was never wounded.

I did things far more terrible than Mouse could ever imagine but it never bothered me.

When she told me that I would die if I didn’t stand I knew it was true. I understood that I was alone and there was no one there to help me. Reese was dead, Clifton was dead, but I was alive. There was nothing more I could do; I was just a man.

I got Etta a drink. I sat across from her on the chair and asked her all about the wedding. She told me that it was going to be on Saturday, four days away, and that it was going to be held around the gazebo behind Victory Church. She was near tears herself, she was so happy about it.

I told her to tell Mouse not to worry. I’d be there with a tux and a smile. But I said that I couldn’t come to rehearsal because I was still sick and there was a lot to prepare. We hugged and laughed for the next hour. I felt closer to her as a friend than a lover.

After she left I went down to the Jewish tailor on Claxton to rent a tuxedo. Then I went to the train station to buy my ticket.

Late that night I went to the bathroom down the hall and bathed and shaved and got myself back together.

I slept for twenty hours after that.

When I woke up it was early evening. The sun was just down and people were in the street. Some were sitting out in front of their houses and others were wandering around; going to work or looking for a good time. I broke out some cheese and chocolate and brought a chair to the window. Watching them soothed me. People living their lives. I believed that they all had secrets like mine but they kept on moving.

At about midnight a fight broke out between two men who had been drinking together on a stoop across the street. They’d been throwing dice for an hour before one of them called the other one a liar.

I watched them beat each other. I saw the short one pull out a knife. The fat one grabbed at his chest and staggered down the street, one hand clutching the wall. A woman was screaming and people ran around like ants. I just watched it;

I knew that my day would come and I was in no rush to get there.

Chapter Sixteen

That was longest month of my life. Every minute stands out like an hour; every hour stands out like a day. I met the strangest people and went to places that I could never have imagined. I lost what a religious man would call his soul.

Pariah is gone.

Miss Dixon died a month after Mouse was married and her relatives came down from Chicago to split up the land. They levelled Pariah and moved all of the people out of the area. They charged back rent on the land, so everyone ran away; they didn’t have any money. Momma Jo and Domaque and Ernestine disappeared too. They didn’t come to Mouse’s wedding. I think that he didn’t want stories about Reese’s death to be around when he had so much cash.

On that Saturday every soul that I knew in Houston was at the biggest wedding Victory Church ever had. There must have been two hundred people there. Flattop and lips brought their band to play at the reception. Little Red was there, and Jellyhead, with his greased-back and conked hairdo. All of Mouse’s old girlfriends came; Etta’s admirers were there with them.

It was something else.

Etta and Raymond walked up to the gazebo. The minister stood there waiting. A breeze was blowing and the pastel silk flags that hung from the roof of the gazebo waved like angels calling out the great day. There were children who could barely hold in their excitement. The women were in fine dress; all of them in tears. I wondered if they cried because Mouse was going off the market or because they were so happy or because they knew how hard Etta’s life would be with a man like that. The bachelors were standing around snickering and wondering what being married meant —not in much of a hurry to test it out themselves.

The minister asked his questions and the wind blew harder. I stood there next to Raymond. He was sharp as a tack and so cool that you could almost see the mist rising from him. His eye was certain. Etta was beautiful at his side.

‘I do,’ Mouse said.

And when the question was asked of Etta she hesitated for just a second, less than that. And I remembered those boys Mouse had told me about; the ones that killed rats on the docks down in Galveston. I wondered how well Etta would stand up to Mouse’s harsh life but I was still happy for her. She was taking her chance and that’s all we can do in this life.

The party moved to the social club across the street. Flattop’s trio played music of the modern age: jazz. And we danced and drank hard until the milkman came to join us. Some people left the party to go to morning service in the church.

Etta kissed every man twice and Mouse got a chair and just watched her. He was so calm and so happy that it was hard for me to remember him desperate or mean.

‘Hey, Easy,’ Otum Chenier said to me when the party had just begun.

‘Hiya, Otum.’

‘Mouse say you two took my car down to Pariah fo’a week.’

‘Uh...’ I didn’t know what to say.

‘He give me the money.’ Otum opened up into a smile. ‘I guess you did right, I mean I could use that twenty-five.’

He laughed and I did too.

‘How’s yo’ momma, Otum?’

‘You know that’s what get me. Luanda got that call ‘bout Momma but when I got down there they said they didn’t call. I had me a good time though. You know what they got up here cain’t compare to the food they got down there.’ He patted his solid potbelly.

I said, ‘Drink up, Otum, whiskey gonna run all night.’

‘Yessir!’

The party was right. People came from all over Fifth Ward and beyond. There were churchgoers and gangsters, day labourers and cotton choppers from the farm. There were Mouse’s best friends and people we never knew who just heard about the party somewhere and came by to help us celebrate.

‘... an’ help themselves,’ Mouse said with a smile.

Everyone said that it was the best party that they had ever been to; it was even more than that for me.

I was feeling romantic that night. It wasn’t that I was looking for a woman; I had lost my wild passion for young girls after that night with Jo. Jo showed me something about love. She showed me that I didn’t know what it was... But I wasn’t feeling romantic toward a woman; I felt that way about my life - the life I had lived in Fifth Ward for years.

All of my friends, and people who could have been my friends, were dancing and drinking. Some of them were around Mouse, listening to his wild stories. It was so beautiful but it was my last night there. It was Mouse’s wedding party and it was my goodbye.

I couldn’t live with those people anymore. They were living on the edge of despair; like those two friends fighting on my street. I had the image that we were all, all of us in Houston and Pariah, living between Miss Dixon and Mouse. It was a deadly line we had to walk and the only thing that kept us going was some kind of faith. Either you believed in God or family or love. I didn’t believe in any of those things anymore. Maybe I never had.

So I had a ticket for Dallas, Texas, and a hundred dollars in my pocket. I was as happy as I could be at that party because I felt safe. I felt safer with that ticket in my pocket than I would have felt with a gun.

They couldn’t hurt me anymore. Mouse couldn’t come banging on my door in the middle of the night. Married women and old witches couldn’t seduce me on dirt floors.

I needed a place where life was a little easier and where nobody knew me. I knew that if I could be alone I could make it. All the people around me dancing, having a good time; they were just holding me back, wanting me to be the same old poor Easy — not a nickel in my pocket or a dream in my head.

I didn’t have a thing, just like everybody around me; all the money I had was in my pocket and all the clothes I had were on my back. That’s how life was back then. You couldn’t hold me responsible for anything because I didn’t have anything. And, realising that, it was time for me to go.

‘Hey, Easy.’ Mouse strolled up, pleased as he could be.

‘Sumpin’ else, man.’

‘Ain’t it.’ He flashed a smile. ‘I’m really happy you stood by me, Ease.’

‘I wou’n’ta missed it, Raymond.’

We shook hands.

‘I’ma take me a little trip after the weddin’,’ I said. ‘Gonna see what it’s like back east.’

‘Uh-huh.’ He watched me closely. ‘You think they got sumpin’ out there you want?’

‘We’ll see.’ I was looking him directly in the eye.

‘You take care, Easy,’ he said. Those were the last words we spoke.

Texas by train is a real desert. They have miles of flat gray stone and tumbleweeds blowing and plenty of nothing.

I watched the desolate earth through my reflection in the window with a deep feeling inside me. I was the only one who cared about my leaving. No mother or father to wonder where I was. I could be dead; Mouse could have shot me for refusing his gift and who would have known? He would come back to Houston and Etta would ask him, ‘Where’s Easy, baby?’ and he would answer, ‘Easy say he gone up to California, babe.’ And that would be it. I’d just be a corpse mouldering under some bridge or an ornament on Jo’s mantel.

Poor men like me are no more than a pair of hands to work, if there’s work to be had.

The train was loaded with people. All those Texans headed north. The only car with room to stretch out in was the colored car in back. There was just a few of us.

Sitting across from me in the almost empty car was an elderly couple from Galveston. He had a bent back from working around the docks for so many years and she had the peaceful face of a woman who is most at home in church.

They were quiet and well dressed, though I suspected that the clothes they wore were their only good clothes. He was very black and thin. She was the color of light sand. Her head and shoulders were small but the rest of her body blossomed out into a bulb of a body.

I didn’t talk to them much at first; I was too busy feeling the sweet pain of leaving. But I looked past them at the door to the car once when a porter came in to sit down and smoke a cigarette. She caught my eye then.

Her name was Clementine and her husband’s was Theodore. Russell was their last name.

‘We goin t’live with our son in California,’ she said, and he smiled.

‘What’s his name?’

‘John Alvin is what we called him. He has three brothers and a sister, but she died last spring.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it.’

‘It was terrible. Her husband passed just three months before, it was that influenza. Cut young people down like wheat.’

Mr. Russell said, ‘It was a shame but John Alvin took his niece and nephew an’ now he sent us a ticket.’ He smiled, showing me at least three missing teeth. ‘Yeah, he’s some boy.’

‘Sounds like it,’ I said. ‘What is it he works at?’

‘They let him be a machinist at the Arthur airplane factory out there. They need smart boys in them places. You should meet John Alvin, I bet he could help you find some work too.’

California was a little too far away for me then. At least I had heard of people going to Dallas. No. California would have to wait.

I saw three people die the first week I was in Dallas; two car accidents and a heart attack. I didn’t get a good job but I got gardening work. I learned how to read just about well enough that when Uncle Sam called on me he put me in a tent with a typewriter, with a rifle under my desk.

But through all of that I dreamt about Reese and Clifton almost every week. They were always covered with blood, gasping as if they were just about to die. But they didn’t die. They grabbed at Mouse’s cuffs while he was sitting in a big chair counting out my three hundred dollars.

‘I don’t know what you worried ‘bout, Ease,’ he said as he rubbed a blister of blood with the corner of a five-dollar bill. ‘You ain’t done nuthin’, man.’

Now I’ve been through a world war and I’m on my way back home. They’ve given us three weeks R&R in Paris. I’ve got a room at the Hotel Lutetia on the Boulevard Raspail. This hotel was recently vacated by the Gestapo and now houses our military elite. I got a room here because I saved a white major’s ass in the front lines and so he thinks I’m a hero.

I got tired of all the white soldiers calling me a coward for working behind the lines. So when the call came up for any soldier, black or white, to volunteer for Patron’s push I raised my hand. Maybe I thought I could make up for my failure in Pariah.

But being a white man’s hero doesn’t make any difference to me. Maybe that’s why I’ve spent the last two weeks remembering what happened in Pariah, and looking at the Eiffel Tower, rather than thinking about this white man’s war.

Maybe, if I have a son one day, and he asks me about the war, I’ll tell him about the time I had in Pariah. I’ll tell him that that was my real war.

When they asked me where home was I said Houston. It wasn’t until that night, hours after I was asleep, that I realised I had bought a ticket back to Etta and Raymond and everything I had left behind.

But it didn’t bother me. There were gangs of white American soldiers roaming the streets, killing solitary black enlisted men. There were gangs of black soldiers getting their revenge.

All over Paris there were thieves, escaping Nazis, and loaded guns in hungry men’s’ hands. I had a transport ship to survive and America yet to see again. Every step could mean death to a black man like me.

Why worry about the destination when the road is full of vipers? Mouse is probably dead by now anyway. How could a man so violent and reckless survive? And if he has endured, then married life has changed him. Maybe he’s fat now, working as a cook in some hotel.

There’s no way for me to tell the future from this room in Paris. All I can do is follow my footsteps, not at all like my father, and go back home.

The End