Little Scarlet

15

The only one home when I got there was Frenchie the dog. He barked from the moment I walked in the door. It was a high-pitched, yapping sort of a bark that told me who my mother was and who my father was and how badly my butt stank. Accepting the abuse, I read the newspaper while sitting on the love seat in the no-man’s-land between the kitchen and the living room.

The police had opened fire on a Muslim mosque on Fifty-sixth and South Broadway. They rushed the building and found nineteen men sprawled on the blood-stained floor. No one was shot, the article said, but they were lacerated by flying glass.

The reason given for the attack was that a shot was fired from an upper floor of the building. But the real reason was in the adjacent article saying that twelve of fifteen thousand National Guardsmen had been pulled out of Los Angeles overnight. The police were afraid of losing their authority, so they responded with deadly force.

Nola’s death took on a new importance as I read the reports. I didn’t want the police killing our dark-skinned citizens any more than the deputy commissioner wanted to rekindle the riots. Gerald Jordan and I probably wouldn’t agree about what time the sun rose in the morning but we were together on wanting to find Little Scarlet’s killer.

Gemini 5 had lifted off by then and the Marines claimed to have killed 550 Vietcong guerrillas in a coordinated attack. Martin Luther King had been in Watts talking about the aftermath of the riots with Negro leaders, and astrophysicists were worried that an asteroid named Icarus would collide with Earth in three years’ time.

To some people that space rock would have come as a blessing from God. Something sent down to Earth to shake off the invisible chains and manacles holding down five people for every one that’s walking around free.

The school bus brought Feather home a few minutes shy of four and Bonnie came home only moments later. Those kids were less hers than mine but she loved them as much as two blood mothers. The fact that she was a few minutes late made her very unhappy. But Feather didn’t notice because she had me there. And she was a daddy’s girl from the word go.

Feather read to me from her textbook. It was a story about an old walrus who had to swim five thousand miles from somewhere in South America to Antarctica. Along the way the walrus saw all kinds of amazing things in the water and on the shore. He saw whales as big as islands and sea birds of every size and shape.

Feather started reading her lessons out loud because that’s what I had done with her brother when he dropped out of school. She loved Jesus more than anyone else in the world and patterned herself after him even though she was a much better student.

After the reading we talked and after that we watched TV as a family. I had my hand on Bonnie’s thigh and my mind a little further up than that but our night of passion was not to be.

The phone rang at 8:30, half an hour after Feather had gone to bed and in the middle of the dishes. I thought it would be Juice telling us that he was staying with friends at the shore but it wasn’t.

“Easy,” Bonnie said after answering the line. “It’s Raymond.”

Taking the phone I said, “Hey, Mouse.”

“Hey, Easy. You callin’ for a discount?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I figure you musta heard that I’m in business and you callin’ in for some cut-rate prices.”

“What kinda business?”

“Sellin’,” he said impatiently.

“Sellin’ what?”

“You name it, Ease. I got everything from steaks to Smirnoff, from stuffed chairs to diamond rings.”

It made perfect sense that Mouse would have been a part of the black market that had to grow up out of the riots. He had already been in the business of moving merchandise stolen by people he knew who worked at various warehouses. A looting event like the riots would have presented itself as a golden opportunity. And Raymond Alexander wasn’t one to let an opportunity go to waste.

“I don’t want to buy anything, Ray.”

“Then why you callin’?”

“I need some help, man.”

“Help?”

“I’m lookin’ into this thing and I might need somebody to stand at my back.”

“Easy, I’m doin’ business here, brother. I can’t be runnin’ around like it was a party. I got to be at work.”

I smiled to myself. If Raymond were going out to rob a bank, he’d have EttaMae make him a sandwich for lunch on the run.

“That’s okay, man. You all right?”

“I got money comin’ outta my pockets, they so full.”

“Okay. I’ll call you later.”

“Hold up, Ease.”

“What?”

“You in trouble?”

“Naw. Don’t worry. It’s just somethin’ I’m lookin’ into.”

“What is it?”

I told him about Nola Payne and her aunt, about the white man and the car thief named Loverboy.

“Okay,” he said. “You know I got to go make a pickup anyway. You wait at your place and me an’ Hauser be over in forty-five.”

“Where you comin’ from?”

“Santa Monica. That’s where I’m set up.”

I TRIED TO apologize to Bonnie but she kissed it away.

“I know you have to go, baby,” she told me. “I’m proud of you.”

“I like to spend time with you when you’re home, honey,” I said. “I just have to go out and —”

“Be our hero,” she whispered.

We were standing on the front porch, between the spaces where I once grew roses to celebrate our love. Later I cut the roses down when I thought Bonnie loved another man. I did it to show her how angry I was but somehow the emptiness came to mean more to us than the flowers had.

A big Andy’s Supermarket truck was rumbling up the street. I was surprised to see such a big truck on a side street. I was amazed to see it stop in front of my house.

“Easy!” Mouse yelled from the passenger’s window about two stories high. “Come on up, man.”

Bonnie and I laughed and embraced each other. She kissed me again and I ran toward the semi.

I remember thinking, as Mouse reached down to help me, that it was as if I were living in one of Feather’s fairy-tale books. Only this was an adult fairy tale. So instead of a flying carpet I had a six-axle produce delivery truck and instead of an evil ogre I had a well-to-do white man who shot virtuous young black women after raping and strangling them.