Little Scarlet

12

I did a U-turn on Florence even though there was a National Guard bivouac across the street. I wanted to see if the Guard were enforcing traffic laws—they were not.

Three blocks from Juanda’s aunt, on the opposite side of the street, was an unscathed two-story building that had a large white tarp hanging from the second-floor window. The red letters spray painted on the tarp read SOUL BROTHER. Sitting on the front porch of the barbershop-turned-bookstore was Paris Minton, the sole proprietor of Florence Avenue Bookshop.

I pulled up to the curb and jumped out. The exuberance I felt over Juanda now fastened onto my joy that Paris’s bookstore was saved.

The little bookworm rose to greet me.

“Hey, Easy,” he said. I could hear the exhaustion in his voice.

Paris was short and had a slight build. His skin was the same dark brown as mine.

“Paris. What you doin’ outside?”

“Been sittin’ out here for six days and nights, man. Me an’ Fearless tryin’ to keep people from bustin’ up my store.”

“Damn. You didn’t get any sleep?”

“Not too much,” Paris said ruefully. “Every hour or so some new mob come by and wanna set a torch to my walls. But Fearless stood ’em all down.”

Paris’s friend, Fearless Jones, had his name right up there next to Mouse as being the most dangerous man in L.A. Fearless had been a commando in World War II. I had heard about him when I was in France. They said that he and one general made up for a whole battalion. The general, Thompkins, would point Fearless at the enemy and then pull the trigger. Both of them came out of the war with more medals than they could wear.

“Where is Mr. Jones?” I asked Paris.

“He left me last night,” Paris said. “Him and this girl Brenda went down to San Diego for a few days.”

Paris sat back down on his wooden stairs and I leaned against the banister.

The avenue before us was well traveled by National Guardsmen and cops and lined with burned-out, gutted structures.

“So what you think, Paris?”

“Ain’t had much time to think, Easy. I had to do some fast talkin’ to keep my store here. They burnt down the market next door. I had to keep that side of the house soaked with a hose to keep the flames off.”

“You talk to many of the white people owned these stores?” I asked.

“A few came back yesterday,” he said. “Some more today. They’re like in shock. I mean, they don’t know why it happened. They don’t see how it is that black people could be so mad at them. One guy own the hardware store up the block said that if he didn’t put his store in, then there wouldn’t be no hardware store. He said that the people who live around here don’t want to own a business.”

“What’d you say to that?” I asked.

“What can I say, Easy? Mr. Pirelli works hard as a motherfucker out here. He don’t know how hard it is to be black. He can’t even imagine somethin’ harder than what he doin’. I could tell him but he wouldn’t believe it.”

I liked Paris. He was a very intelligent man. But he was a pessimist when it came to human nature. He didn’t think that he might teach that hardware store owner anything, so he just nodded at the man’s ignorance and let it ride.

Who knows? Maybe Paris was right.

WHEN I LEFT Florence Avenue Bookshop I was a little lost. There were a few places I could go but I wasn’t sure which one I should try first. With no other choice in mind I drove over to Sojourner Truth Junior High School, where I held the position of supervising senior head custodian.

The main building on the upper campus showed some signs of the rioting. There was a blackened window or two and a great many more that had their panes smashed. The front door was open and a Negro National Guardsman stood sentry there, stepping aside now and again for men in uniform coming in and out.

The sentry was brown; actually, he was little more than tan. He was holding a machine gun and staring out into space as if maybe he were standing guard at the great expanse in front of the Pearly Gates.

“Halt!” he cried when I had only set one foot upon the concrete stairway.

I kept on walking.

“I said stay where you are,” he said loudly, hefting the machine gun but not exactly pointing it at me.

“I work here, brother.”

“School’s closed. National Guard using it as a base.”

“I’m the building supervisor. I want to see what damage there’s been.”

“Mr. Rawlins,” a woman’s voice called.

I looked to my right and saw Mrs. Masters, the school principal, waving at me from her office window, about a hundred feet down the salmon-colored plaster wall.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she shouted. “Things are terrible.”

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine but our poor school . . . Come to my office.”

“I’d like to,” I said. “But the general here has orders to keep me out.”

“It’s all right to let him in, sir,” the small woman said.

“No ma’am.” He kept his eye on me. “I have orders that only the military and police can get in here.”

“What rank is she?” I asked the sentinel.

He didn’t dignify the joke with a reply.

“At ease, soldier,” a white man in a colonel’s uniform said from just inside the wide double doors. “This man works here.”

“But sir —,” the guard began.

He really didn’t like me. He was willing to argue with his superior officer over orders that would allow a smart-mouthed Negro like myself into the compound.

“That’s enough, soldier. This man is allowed in.”

I smiled at my brother. He scowled at me before standing aside.

And there I was again, caught in the contradictions brought to the surface by the riots.

The sentry took his job seriously. Who was the enemy? Black people. Even though he was colored himself it was his job to bar our entry and he intended to keep us out. Even though I didn’t know it at the time, that was the beginning of the breakup of our community. It was the first time you could see that there was another side to be on. If you identified with white people, you had a place where you were welcomed in.

I walked past him and nodded to the officer.

The white man merely watched my passage. As soon as he saw that I was headed in the right direction he turned on his heel and marched off, leaving the sentry and me at the opposite ends of a struggle that neither one of us had asked for.

“OH, MR. RAWLINS,” Ada Masters cried.

We were on the third floor of the main building. Almost every door had been broken open and furniture was strewn in the halls. Here and there you could see where someone attempted to start a fire. But school buildings don’t burn easily. The wood was thick and the walls were as much stone and brick and plaster as they were anything else.

The damage looked bad but it wouldn’t take long to put everything back in order. I’d need painters and glazers, probably a carpenter or two, but I figured that the whole plant would be back to full capacity in two weeks’ time.

I told the principal this.

“It’s not just that, Mr. Rawlins,” she said. “It’s what they tried to do. Why would people want to burn and destroy their own community?”

She began to tremble and cry.

I folded the small white woman in my arms.

“It’s okay,” I crooned as if talking to a child.

“How can you say that? This is as much your neighborhood as the one you live in.”

“That’s just why I can say it,” I said.

“I don’t get what you mean.”

I let her go and sat two chairs upright for us. When she was comfortable and a little more relaxed, I said those things that I wished Paris had said to the hardware store owner.

“This is a tough place, Ada. You got working men and women all fenced in together, brooding about what they see and what they can’t have. Almost every one of them works for a white man. Every child is brought up thinking that only white people make things, rule countries, have history. They all come from the South. They all come from racism so bad that they don’t even know what it’s like to walk around with your head held high. They get nervous when the police drive by. They get angry when their children are dragged off in chains.

“Almost every black man, woman, and child you meet feels that anger. But they never let on, so you’ve never known. This riot was sayin’ it out loud for the first time. That’s all. Now it’s said and nothing will ever be the same. That’s good for us, no matter what we lost. And it could be good for white people too. But they have to understand just what happened here.”

Ada Masters had a look of both awe and terror on her face. It was as if she were seeing me for the first time.

At the far end of the hall I saw a soldier come up the stairs. When he saw us he waited around to watch.

“I’m going to have to be off the next few days, Mrs. Masters,” I said. “The police asked me to help them look into something.”

“The police?”

“Yeah. I’ll be here Monday. But if you need anything before then, call my house.”

I stood up but she remained in her chair.

“You coming?” I asked.

“Not right now,” she said. “I have to think, think about what’s happened and, and about what you said.”