Little Scarlet

23

I knocked on the bright orange door. Then I knocked again. I don’t know how long I stood there. I was in no hurry. I had death and sex and race on the brain. No matter which way I turned in my mind, there was one of those vast problems.

“That’s the problem with most’a you black mens, Easy,” Jackson Blue had once said to me. “White people think we stupid but it’s the other way around. We got so much on our minds all the time that we ain’t got no time for little things like exactly what time it is or the rent. Shit. Here he askin’ you about long division and you thinkin’ ’bout Lisa Langly’s long legs, who you gonna have to fight to get next to her, and why this ugly white man think anything he say gonna make a bit’a difference to you when you get out in the street.”

I smiled remembering the cowardly genius’s glib words. Jackson was the smartest man I had ever known. I thought that maybe I should talk to him about the riots when I was finished with my official work.

The orange door came open. A tall man in a crimson minister’s suit was standing there before me.

“Yes?” he asked.

“Are you Piedmont?”

“No. My name is Lister, Reverend Lister. Who are you?”

“My name is Easy Rawlins, Reverend. And I need to have a conversation with a man named Piedmont.”

“Brother Piedmont isn’t here right now,” the minister said with a paper-thin smile on his sculpted lips. “What is your business with him?”

Lister was the color of tanned leather that had been left out in the sun too long. He wasn’t light skinned but he was lighter than he had once been. All of his facial features were small but well arranged. His hands were weak and he had big bare feet. His shoulders were small but he carried them with authority so I decided to treat him with the respect he demanded.

“Mr. Piedmont gave a man a ride the other night. That man is in some trouble and Piedmont is the only person who might clear him.”

The cherry-frocked minister pondered me for quite a while and then he smiled and nodded.

“Come in, Brother Rawlins,” he said. “We can wait for Harley together.”

We entered a large room. It must have been almost the whole first floor of the three-story house. The pine floor and walls and ceiling were painted bright red. This chamber was bare except for a twelve-foot gray couch against the far wall with a small raised dais set opposite.

This room, I was sure, was Lister’s church. When the congregation was having a service, they would come out with folding chairs for his acolytes.

We walked to the long gray couch and Lister gestured for me to sit. After I was situated he sat a few feet away. As soon as he was comfortable a woman wearing a wraparound purple dress came in. She had a glass in each hand and a yellow cloth wrapped around her head.

She stopped a few feet from Lister and nodded.

“Lemonade?” she said.

“Yes, Vica,” Lister said. “Mr. Rawlins?”

“Sure.”

The woman, girl really, served the minister first and then handed me a glass. She looked directly at me and smiled. Her earnestness called up a moment’s shyness in me, so I looked down. It was then I noticed that she too was barefoot.

“Vica,” Lister said.

“Yes, Reverend?”

“When Brother Piedmont comes in will you tell him that there’s a Mr. Rawlins here to see him?”

“Yes, Reverend.”

She left the room.

“Won’t Brother Piedmont be coming through the front door?” I asked.

Instead of answering me Lister asked, “What is his name?”

“Who?”

“The man that needs Harley’s help.”

“DeFranco,” I said easily. “Bobby DeFranco. He’s a white boy.”

“I see.”

“Do the bare feet mean something?” I asked.

“Jesus went barefoot in the world,” Lister said. “So did our ancestors under the African sun.”

I wondered if Africa was all that barefooted but I didn’t want to argue. I wanted to keep the minister talking so as not to have to tell him too many lies.

I took a sip of the lemonade. It was sweet for my taste but fresh-squeezed.

“What about Vica?” I asked.

“What about her?”

“She work for you?”

“She works for our master, as we all do, brother.”

There was a minor strain of fanaticism in the minister’s tone. But I didn’t care. I once heard that extreme times call for extreme measures. Living in Watts was extreme three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

“Twenty-three adults live here among us, Brother Rawlins,” Lister said. “The women serve and raise children while the men work to pay for our bread.”

“I don’t hear any kids.”

“The school is in the basement.” He smiled and then added, “I thought that you had come to join us.”

“Join you what?”

“We’ve had six converts since the riots,” he said. “People looking for hope in a world gone crazy.”

“Might not be a bad idea,” I speculated. “What do you have to do to join up?”

“Not much. Give yourself over to our master. Dedicate your life and worldly possessions to our family.”

“That’s all?”

Reverend Lister smiled.

“Do you know him, Harley?” he said, looking at me but talking to someone else.

“No suh.”

The voice came from a door behind the red minister. A tall brown man with long arms and bulging eyes came out. He wore a gray Nehru jacket and blue jeans. There was a raised mole in the center of his forehead.

As Piedmont approached us the minister rose.

“I will leave you men to your business,” he said. “And, Brother Rawlins . . .”

“Yes sir?”

“Your life is the only thing you truly have to give.”

He turned and walked away. I watched him, thinking, rather resentfully, that what he had said might prove to be the most important lesson of my life.

“Do I know you, brother?” Piedmont asked as he lowered himself onto the couch.

“Nola Payne,” I said. “And Peter Rhone.”

Even as I spoke he rose up.

“Let’s take it outside,” he said.

Piedmont had long legs too. I had to jump up and scurry to make it with him to the door. He went through and I followed but after I crossed the threshold I turned to look once more at the consecrated living room. Vica had come back and was removing the lemonade glass I’d put on the floor in my haste to leave. She had gotten down on one knee, a voluptuous purple sail with a yellow flag dipping into a crimson sea. My breath caught as Piedmont pulled the orange door shut.

I believed at that moment that I would one day be compelled to give up my life and that when the time came I would go gladly.

I shivered at the thought and turned away.