Walkin The Dog

Dizziness assailed Socrates again. He felt like a boxer sucker-punched after the bell.

“ 'Cause you know, Socco,” Howard said, not yet tired of his own voice. “You done me some good turns. You helped me out an' ain't never axed me for nuthin'. Corina said that I owed you, man. An' I know that you an' the MacDaniels don't get along so good. But you know Darryl could come down here wit' you whenever you want. I mean me an' Corina'll have custody through the foster service but you could be like his uncle.”

Darryl rubbed his hand over the top of his head and stared at Howard the mountain, as Socrates' friend Right Burke used to call Howard Shakur.

“Well?” Howard asked Socrates.

Socrates was still reeling, looking for a reason to get mad. He wanted Howard to go away. He wanted Darryl to go away too, but then he didn't. He never felt like an old man before he walked out of that jail. But now just standing up seemed like a heavy chore.

“What you want, Howard, a medal?”

“At least a thank you.”

“An' if I was so sick that I was laid up in a hospital an' a nurse had to wipe my ass would I have to say thank you to her too?” Socrates watched Howard's back get straight. Howard was strong,and tough too. But for all his weight and youth he wouldn't have been able to prevail over twenty-seven years of studied violence.

Socrates could feel the fight gathering in his shoulders. The tick down along his spine that had almost set him against the police was throbbing again. There was no dizziness or weakness now. All Socrates had to do was straighten up like Howard had and there wouldn't be any question anymore about who was right or who was in charge.

“Hey, man,” the ex-con said instead of altering his posture. “I'm sorry. It's just that I don't know how to act when people get all in my business.”

“We were tryin' t'help.”

“I know. I know. An' I appreciate it. But you know when the shit come down I only know one way to be.”

It wasn't much of a thank you but it was enough to smooth out Howard's feathers. The fat man nodded, considered the ex-con's words and then shrugged his acceptance.

“Leave Darryl wit' me, Howard. I'll bring him out over to there tomorrow.”

The big man nodded and rose to leave. He rubbed the boy's head and walked out through the kitchen. Socrates followed him to the threshhold and watched him walk to his old Impala. At the last moment Socrates went out to his gate and waved as the Impala drove off.

“Why you wanna be tellin' my business all over the place, Darryl?”

“Huh?”

“Howard. Marty. Why you wanna tell them I was in jail?”

“I told the MacDaniels too but they said that they couldn't stand in the way of the law,” the boy said. “That's why I asked Howard if I could go live wit' them.”

“But why you wanna go tell Marty, man?” Socrates asked.

“They killed my daddy up in jail,” Darryl said. “I didn't try an' get him out. I didn't know.”

Cassandra Tuthill and her family lived at Stanley and Airdrome. Darryl and Socrates left home early and got to her house at just a little after seven in the morning.

“Yes?” Mr. Tuthill, a grayish looking Negro, asked at the door.

Socrates, his big hands on Darryl's shoulders, said, “Mr. Tuthill? My name is Socrates Fortlow. I'm Darryl's, um, Darryl's uncle.”

“I don't know Darryl.” Mr. Tuthill was small with sloped shoulders. He was wearing a brown suit with a vest and tie. He'd missed a small patch of hair in his morning shave and he was squinting.

“Darryl pushed your daughter at school,” Socrates said. “He got punished but I brought him over here to apologize. Because you got to answer for what you did wrong. That's what I know.”

Tuthill blinked twice and then took a pair of glasses from his breast pocket. He looked closer at the skinny boy and closer still at the man with the philosopher's name.

“Cassandra,” the gray father called without taking his eyes off of the man and boy standing at the front door.

The girl was a study in round and brown. She wasn't at all heavy but her dark eyes were like big marbles and her head was a pretty ball. The blue dress and yellow sweater set off her dark skin. Her cheeks were apples. Socrates couldn't help but smile.

“Yes, Daddy?” she said. Her eyes turned sullen when she caught sight of Darryl.

“This boy has something to say to you, honey.”

“I'm sorry, Cassandra,” the boy said immediately. “I'm sorry I pushed you. I didn't mean to hurt you or nuthin' an' it won't happen no mo'.”

“Uh-huh,” the girl said. She was just about to turn away when her father stopped her.

“Cassie,” he said.

“What?”

“This boy just came all the way to your house in the morning to say he was sorry.”

“I said all right.”

“You shake his hand and tell him that you accept his apology.”

The girl did as she was told. Both children were somber while the men smiled on them.

“Have you had breakfast, Mr. Fortlow?”

“We got to go,” the ex-convict said.

Officer Biggers was waiting for Socrates that evening when he got home. He was standing at the back gate smoking a cigarette and staring off into the distance.

“Officer,” Socrates said.

“Socrates,” Biggers replied.

“Am I under arrest again?”

“Not this time.”

“You got a question I ain't answered?”

It was time for the policeman to laugh.

“Sumpin' funny?” Socrates wanted to know.

“I don't think that you'd ever answer a question of mine straight.”

“So what you want?”

“I read the police reports from Indiana,” Biggers said. “What you said was true. Even the arresting officer said that you were more in shock than unrepentant.”

Socrates had never heard that. He wanted to know more but didn't ask.

“So as far Minnie Lee is concerned, well, it don't mean you did an' it don't mean you didn't. I wouldn't bet one way or the other on that.”

“So you gonna let up on me?”

Biggers shook his head. Maybe he was even sorry.

“No,” he said. “Beryl and the captain got a hard-on for you now. They gonna be down on you every time there's a crime within six blocks of here.”

“Shit. That's every other day.”

“Maybe you should move. You know if you leave the district they'll forget about you.”

Socrates felt a moment of dizziness but that passed quickly.

“Naw, man,” he said. “They know where they can come get me. I'll be right here they need to play around.”

what would you do?

W

hat would you do if you seen a dude stand up at that park bench over there an' then you see that his wallet done falled to the ground behind?” Little Willie Ryan asked.

“Gimme fifteen,” Socrates Fortlow commanded. He slapped down a four/six domino, placing it off of a double four branch in the long line of

bones.

“Was it a fat, brown, real leather wallet?” big-boned Brad Godine asked as if the event had actually occurred. “Or just one'a them paper jobs made up to look like it was leather?”

Young Tito Young, a man in his fifties, wrote down Socrates' score on his yellow legal pad, three vertical lines to start a new batch of twenty-five points. The five men were sitting at a picnic table in South Park playing dominoes for a penny a point. Lydell Samuels was searching his tiles for a good play.

“Man,” Little Willie complained. “It's a wallet. Don't matter if it cost a lotta money. What matters is if they's any money in it.”

“Yeah,” Young T Young said. “A man got a good wallet might be too smart to be carryin' a lotta money in it. It's a fool an' his cheap wallet more likely to have a fifty-dollar bill up in there.”

“You gonna play that bone, Lydell?” Socrates asked the carpenter.

“Yeah,” chimed Brad Godine. His face was like an African mask. The bones around his eyes were big and protruding, making the eyes seem like glass orbs in twin caves. His nose was broad and broken in at least three places. The triangle of his face was long and sharp. All in all Brad was the visage of a minor demon. Children loved him, which was lucky because, by his count, he was the father of fifteen by almost as many mothers.

“Hold on,” Lydell said. “I'm lookin'.”

“But maybe a good wallet have some credit cards in it,” Young T postulated. “Smart man gots to have a credit card. That's the way of the future.”

“An' what you gonna do with another man's credit card?” Socrates Fortlow, the deadliest man in sight, asked.

“Sell it down at Blackbird's bar. You know since Craig Hatter took over they give you fifty bucks for a credit card down there,” Willie Ryan said. He was a smallish man with rounded features. His hair was short cropped and dark except for his mustache, which had light red highlights. Women loved his perfectly sculpted lips.

“What would you do wit' that fifty dollars, Willie?” Socrates asked his park friend.

Quietly Lydell put down a three/four domino against one side of a three/three tile which had branched out along a tributary from the main stalk of the game.

“Hah!” Young T cried slapping down his bone. “Twenty points!”

The men went silent momentarily to check out the math on Tito's claim.

“What you axed me, Socco?” Willie Ryan asked.

“What would you do with the fifty dollars you got from that credit card?” Socrates gestured toward the bench where the phantom wallet had been lost.

“Shit, man. I'd get me some'a that good whiskey an' then I'd be down at Linda Harris's place. You know she let up on some leg if you buy her dinner an' fill her glass.”

“So you gonna mess up some man's credit and put him all out with his business so that you could have a hangover and a dose of the clap?” Socrates was smiling but Willie still cowered under his gaze.

“You gonna play, Willie?” Young T asked, still smug over his twenty-point coup.

“Yeah,” Lydell added. “Maybe if you pointed out that the man dropped his billfold he might give you sumpin' for that. Maybe if you did the right thing everything'd be better.”

“Well,” Young T said. “Maybe if you went after him and picked his wallet up. If you did that an' handed it to'im. But if you just said, ‘Hey, you dropped sumpin’,' he'd just give you the nod an' be on his way. You got to touch a man you wanna get touched. Uh-huh.”

Lydell frowned without responding. Willie played a three/two tile, making the board score twenty-two.

Brad Godine lost interest in the conversation for a moment as he studied the seven dominoes that he'd lined down the center of his large hand. Brad had big hands and black/brown skin except where his face bones protruded. Along these ridges Brad's skin was a lighter, almost reddish, brown.

Socrates was looking at Brad's hand. It was big and powerful but nothing compared to the

rock breakers

that Socrates had.

“What would you do if you found out that somebody sold your wallet to Hatter?” Socrates asked Willie.

“If I'd find the motherfucker,” Young T interrupted. “I'd make him wish that he'da left it alone.”

“Man, how the fuck you gonna do that?” Brad asked.

“I got me somethin' right here in my pocket for big-assed ugly niggers think they can weight lift you to death,” Young T replied. He slapped his windbreaker pocket and sneered.

“Oh yeah?” The dominoes folded into Brad's big fist.

“Yeah.”

“ 'Cause you know I'm half ready to whip yo' ass an' then plug it up wit' whatever it is you think you got in that pocket.”

“Hey, man,” Lydell said. “Cool it. There ain't nuthin' t'fight about here.”

Socrates wondered for a second, maybe even less, at the look on Lydell's face. He wasn't scared or even concerned, it was more like he was heartbroken. Heartbroken over two fools.

“Kill each other if you want,” Socrates said. “But you mess up the bones and you will answer to me.”

Whatever weapons Young T and Brad had, they weren't brave enough to use them against Socrates.

Brad carelessly played a two/six, bumping the table score up to twenty-eight.

Young T took a sealed half-pint of Jack Daniel's and a short stack of five plastic cups from the pocket that supposedly held a weapon. He poured everyone a shot and passed them around. Then he put the bottle back in his pocket just in case the police happened by.

Brad laughed when he got his shot. Young T nodded, agreeing that they were both fools.

“But if you did have a gun,” Socrates began. “You'd shoot'im?”

“Damn straight,” Young T said.

Brad and Willie agreed.

“So then you think it's wrong to take a man's wallet if he drop it.”

“It's wrong if you get caught,” Little Willie Ryan chirped.

Everyone, even Socrates and Lydell, laughed.

“Shit,” Little Willie continued. “You an' me would be best friends, until you find out I been doin' it wit' yo' ole lady.”

Socrates played a six/one, bringing the score back down to twenty-three. When you can't score the best thing to do is to limit the potential of the bones.

“And when I find out about it you dead,” Socrates said in a voice so clear that the men stopped and looked at each other like a room full of strangers who just heard a loud sound from outside.

Willie half rose from the table, looking quickly over his shoulder for a clear avenue of retreat.

Socrates stared at the little man. The look was in no way benign.

Lydell had forgotten it was his turn. His face was a study in grief.

“Hey, Socco,” Wille said through a nervous laugh. “Hey, man, I was just talkin'. Talkin' you know.”

“But if I come in my house an' see you stickin' it to my woman then you dead. Shit. If Young T right here pull me to the side an' say that he heard it from Brad who got it straight from Lydell who was told by his wife's girlfriend—just if that I'd prob'ly cut yo' throat right here. Don't give a fuck what the police say.”

A drop of sweat went down the right side of Willie's nose and into the cleft of his perfect lips.

“Now tell me somethin', Willie.”

“What, Socco, what?”

“When I come in on you with my butcherin' knife an' I knock you to the floor. When I let my knee down your chest wit' my full weight an' you feel your breast bone crack open. When I put that knife to your throat an' you feel it tearin' through your flesh and the blood goin' all down your chest. What would you do then?”

“Say what, man?” Willie managed to keep his shaking down to a fidget.

“If you could go back an' fix it. If you could go back an' when that woman smiled at you you just smiled back an' walked away. What if you could go back before I ripped your flesh open like that? What would you do then? That's what I'm askin' you, Willie.”

“You cain't go back, man,” Lydell said. “That shit is over. Nuthin' you could do.”

Brad Godine sat back and shook his head. “We gonna play dominoes or what?”

“It ain't ovah till it's ovah, man,” Socrates said. He was looking at Willie but talking to Lydell.

He knew what he was saying, he was sure of his words, more sure,maybe,than he had ever been. But still Socrates was confused. It was as if he had just come alive when Willie started joking about getting away with his little crimes against his best friends and brothers. He could feel his heart beating and his breath coming in and out. But he wasn't breathing hard. He felt the breeze over his bald head and an ache on the inner side of his right knee.

Socrates felt big and angry. He was like an animal who just caught a whiff of something. Like Killer, his two-legged dog, who for no reason sometimes in the middle of the night sat back on his legless haunches and cried for all he was worth.

All of that was clear to the ex-con. But what he wondered was where was he before Willie called him to life? What was he thinking? Was he just like a dog? Waiting for food or foe or sex to wake him from slumber?

He wanted to say something about all that but didn't know how.

“Socco,” Young Tito Young said. Maybe he'd said it more than once.

“What?”

“You okay, man?”

“I gotta go, Young T,” Socrates said. He fished three dollars out of his jeans pocket and handed them to the potbellied man. “Pay me up at the end an' gimme my change next week.”

Socrates left the unfinished game asking himself the same questions, questions that he could ask only himself.

Three days later Socrates had forgotten the game, the arguments, and the questions he had about himself. If anyone was privy to his inner thoughts and questioned why he had forgotten, he would have answered, “Man, I got a job, a dog who needs care, a boy I look after, and streets where you got to watch where you're steppin' elsewise you might just walk off a cliff.”

Socrates had learned how to survive in prison and you couldn't make many missteps among the convict population. He carried prison around in his pockets like a passport or a small Bible. Sometimes at night he'd wake realizing that even in his sleep he'd been listening to the noises, and silences, on the street just beyond the thin plasterboard wall.

His days were spent watching out of the corner of his eye while working or having conversation. He didn't remember faces so much as hand movements and body size. If two or more big men were walking down the street behind him, even a block away, he'd turn off into an alley or store and watch to see what they did when they passed by.

Socrates didn't have time to think about how his mind worked or how lonely his thoughts were for company. He didn't have much time to think at all.

“It's like in a fight,” Peter David, a heist man serving five years, once said to Socrates in the Indiana state penitentiary. “If you hesitate you're dead. If you think or wonder or ask why you might as well just put the gun to your head. Because there's no time for thinking on the job and a poor man is on the job twenty-four hours a day.”

Socrates was coming home from Bounty Supermarket. He'd been staring out of the bus window only barely aware of how the sights slowly changed from the west side to Watts, from lush green streets that sometimes seemed more like botanical gardens than neighborhoods, to hard cracked sidewalks where a choked palm tree could be found every quarter mile or so. From bustling shops, catering to women who had worked on their outfits and makeup for hours before leaving the house, to burnt out and abandoned businesses standing like barricades against gangs of laughing children watched over by tired mothers, sisters and friends.

Socrates got off the bus twelve blocks from his house. There was a closer stop but he wanted to walk down the street he'd been observing.

“Hey, Socco,” a man called.

Socrates had seen the man's white overalls when he'd scanned the street but dismissed them as being no threat.

“Hey, Lydell. What's happenin'?”

“Hey, Socco,” the slender carpenter repeated. His dark face was long and his features were fine. Again Socrates noticed the grief in that face.

“What's wrong, man?” the ex-convict asked.

“Nuthin'. Nuthin' at all. I just seen you. Thought I'd say hey.”

“Hey,” Socrates said.

“Hey.” Lydell smiled and winced at the same time.

The men stood in the street surrounded by children and old men. Standing still, Socrates became momentarily aware of laughter. It struck him as odd but he didn't think any more about it.

“Well,” he said. “I better be goin'. See ya, Lydell.”

“See ya, Socco,” Lydell said but he kept a steady gaze in Socrates' eye.

“Well, okay,” Socrates said. “I better be goin'.”

“You was up in prison, right, Socrates?” Lydell asked.

Socrates gave the carpenter a hard look but it was wasted on the deep sadness of the man.

“Yeah,” Socrates answered. “Yeah I was up there. Way up in there.”

“Me too,” Lydell said. “I killed a man an' they send me up there. Send me up there. Yeah, you know. For manslaughter.”

The street was full of people but there were no witnesses to Lydell's confession. No one but Socrates was listening to the anguished carpenter.

“You wanna go get a drink?” Socrates asked his newfound friend.

Bebe's bar was run by a black Chicano named Paolo Herrera who everybody called Chico. He got that name because of the hat he wore, which was reminiscent of the Marx brother's. Bebe's was one of the few places where the Latino and Negro races mingled around Socrates' neighborhood. That was because of Chico's appearance which he inherited from his mother, a descendent of a Brazilian woman from BahÍa.

Socrates went into Bebe's place now and then because it reminded him of prison. Only men patronized the bar. They played chess but there was no jukebox. They talked in low voices keeping secrets that no one cared about. And everyone was always watching, on the lookout for any trouble. Socrates felt safe among the denizens of Bebe's bar because he could relax a little surrounded, as he was, by sentries who he could trust to sound the alarm.

Socrates knew from the minute they went into Bebe's that Lydell had told the truth when he said that he was an ex-con. The carpenter shot glances in all directions, sizing up men and groups with immediate certainty. He looked around for a table against a wall but they were all taken.

“We could sit at that table over there,” Socrates told his companion. “Bebe's is cool.”

He pointed to a spindly legged wooden table that was almost black from cigarette burns and stains.

“Two beers, Chico,” Socrates said to the owner who stood behind the oak-stained pine bar.

“It's just beer and whiskey,” Socrates said to Lydell. “Scotch and gin. No brand names or special drinks. Chico got soda water but no tonic. And if you wanna sandwich you gotta bring it in yourself.”

The room was well lit. The pale linoleum floor was clean and swept. Lydell swiveled his head from side to side taking in the corners, but there were no hiding places at Bebe's.

“Where'd you do your time?” Socrates asked.

“Soledad. You?”

“Back east.” This wasn't Socrates' confession. He didn't feel the need to unburden himself.

The beers came with Chico, who sat down for a little while to say hello to Socrates and to check out the new man. Lydell passed the test because all he said was “Hello.”

“A man with no questions,” Socrates said to Lydell when Chico went away, “is a man you could almost trust.”

It was the first friendly smile to cross Lydell's lips that Socrates could remember. But the grin was followed by that pained grimace. Socrates could remember when happiness brought him pain. He was considering asking the carpenter what had he done but Lydell beat him to it.

“I killed my friend. My wife's boyfriend. Henry Wentworth.” Lydell looked at Socrates who held up his empty glass for Chico to see. “He was with my wife. In the bed. In my own damn bed. An' I killed him with a knife. Stabbed the motherfucker. Forty-two times they said.”

You got your crazies, your criminals, your slackards and your good men,

Cap Richmond, the seventy-year-old lifer, used to say.

Good man kill ya 'cause he just couldn't live knowin' you did him like that an' didn't pay for it.

“Henry was always hangin' 'round us. He used to always say how if I didn't marry Geraldine he would have. She liked him and I worked the night shift. Lotta times I'd come home and he'd be there watchin' TV or eatin'. I even liked it that he looked in on her. So you see,” Lydell said like some kind of law student, “it really was my fault in a way. You cain't be havin' no man comin' up in your house lookin' after your woman. Man starts to feel like he own a woman he's protectin'. She cain't help but to take on his scent too.”

“How many years?” Socrates asked when he realized that there was nothing he could tell Lydell.

“Sentenced to twelve but I got out in eight.”

Socrates figured that his drinking partner was mid-thirties, not much more. “How long you been out?”

“Six years, seven months, five days,” Lydell answered. “I went in when I was nineteen. My mother died the next year.”

“You done did all right, man,” Socrates said. “I mean you run that carpentry business, right?”

“What you mean when you say it ain't over till it's over?” Lydell asked.

“Huh?”

“That's what you said in the park this weekend.”

“I'idn't mean nuthin'.” Socrates was trying to remember exactly what he had said and why. “That was just some talk.”

“You said what would you do if you could go back. That's what you said to Willie Ryan. You said it like you was givin' him a chance, like there was somethin' he could do right now.”

Chico came with more beer. Socrates nodded and made a sign to keep them coming.

“What you askin' me, Lydell?” Socrates asked. “What you really wanna know?”

“They told me about you bein' in prison, man.” The carpenter rubbed his face pushing his jaw impossibly far to the right. “They said that you was all hard and mean when you got out but then you started doin' stuff. You know. How you help people and talk about what's right an' what's wrong. They said it was like you learned some-thin'. Like, like you … I don't know. Like you know you wrong and you figured out how to be right anyway.”

“That's just some talk, man. I ain't got nuthin' on nobody. You know. Shoot. I got a job as a boxboy an' my head don't feel right less I'm sleepin' or drunk.” The words came easily. They were all true but he was barely aware of a truth that lay just under their meaning.

Lydell felt that truth too.

“I don't sleep at all. Not really.” The thin black man started rocking gently in the chair. “I close my eyes. But you know you cain't block out that shit. It get worser every day. Every day that I'm up here an' Henry's in the ground. I try not to think about how it was my fault. And then I try an' do what you said to Willie. I try an' go back. In my mind I go back there tellin' myself that I set Henry up for that shit. I tell myself that he didn't deserve to die.” Lydell looked at Socrates with those ruined, heartbroken eyes.

Chico came around with two more beers. The ex-cons waited for the bartender to leave.

“… but when I get there,” Lydell continued, “an' I hear that noise she makes. I tell myself, ‘You could just hit him,’ but then the knife is in my hand again. Here I am tryin' to make it better in my mind but I just kill'im again. Kill'im again.”

Socrates jerked his head back because he felt something strange at his mouth. But when he looked it was just the forgotten beer glass in his hand grazing his lower lip. Again he wondered where he'd been.

“It's like I done killed ten thousand Henrys,” Lydell Samuels said. “You asked Little Willie what he'd do? Well I could tell ya: the same thing. That's what he'd do. No matter what you showed him or how hard he tried he'd'a been on the same killin' floor. 'Cause even though Willie don't want you to kill'im he still want that girl and that wallet.”

Socrates remembered the conversation clearly then. The domino game where they had argued over right and wrong. He could see that Lydell had turned it over in his mind again and again over and over until it was like a worn page in a condemned man's bible.

“You got to let it go, man,” Socrates said.

“Willie don't even want to do right except that he's scared,” Lydell said as if he hadn't heard. “Here I want it but I cain't help it but to do wrong.”

“He's dead, Lydell. He only died one time. It was wrong. All of it. Your wife, you, and him too. But it's over an' you got to let it go. I don't mean forget it. I don't mean you got to smile like they baptized your sin away.”

Lydell looked up at Socrates with fever glazing his eyes. He was jittery like Willie had been on the weekend but he wasn't afraid.

“I try to do right, man,” Lydell said. “I try but they don't let me.”

“Who?”

“I try to do right. I try to do like you told Willie.”

“I said that to Willie 'cause he ain't been on that floor yet. He just dreamin' 'bout another man's wallet and another man's wife.” Socrates felt, again, like he was back in prison, trapped in his own mistakes. “You'n me been there. You'n me got to take all we've seen and make somethin' new about it. It's not what would you do for men like us. It's what

will

you do that we have to worry about. For us it ain't no game. We got to see past bein' guilty. We already been there.”

“Like you mean we still got some place to go?” Lydell asked.

“This is life, Lydell. Life. What's done is done. You still responsible, you cain't never make it up, but you got to try.”

Lydell smiled again. This time the smile lingered. There was a question in his face and then a certainty. He nodded and grinned and ordered another drink.

Two weeks passed before Detective Biggers, the black cop assigned to keep tabs on Socrates, dropped by for one of his irregular visits. Socrates knew the policeman's knock and took his time getting to the door. Sometimes when Detective Biggers came by Socrates didn't even answer. Sometimes he'd just sit on his foldout bed reading the newspaper until he heard the gate to his yard open and close again.

But that day Socrates wanted company. He pulled the door open and said, “Afternoon, Albert.”

The burly cop always paused a moment in silent protest when Socrates used his first name. But he couldn't complain when he didn't have a warrant or a pressing reason to be at Socrates' door.

“You know a man named Samuels?” Biggers asked.

Just that quickly Socrates wanted to be alone again. He didn't want to answer any questions—or ask any.

“Do you?”

“What you want, man? I ain't had dinner yet.”

“Geraldine Samuels said that you and her husband had been friendly lately. She said that you and he were regulars over at Bebe's bar. She said that Lydell had been saying how you were so smart and wise and that you were helping him to figure out how he could live with what he had done.” Albert Biggers seemed to know that his questions would hurt Socrates, that the hurt would linger and blossom over time. “He was like you, you know, a murderer.”

“Did you say Geraldine?” Socrates asked.

“His wife,” Biggers said, nodding. “Didn't you know he was married?”

“Uh-uh. He never said a thing about that. I mean he said that he was married before, that he killed his wife's boyfriend. Her name was Geraldine too.”

“Same.” Biggers smiled. “She got sick after he went to prison. I guess she was pretty bad off when he got out. Some kind of nerve disorder. She's the one that found him. They slept separately. Cut his own throat in his own bed. I don't think Geraldine liked him much but he did pay the rent. Cut his own throat. You know that takes guts.”

Killer, the two-legged dog, jumped up buoyed by the harness attached to the line strung across Socrates' small yard. The dog padded his way to the door and pressed his snout against the ex-con's hand.

“What you want, Albert?”

“Was Samuels distressed? Was he depressed?”

The laugh that issued from Socrates' deep chest was hard earned. “You the one said he was livin' with a woman hated him. What do you think?”

“But you said you didn't know about his wife,” Biggers argued uselessly.

“You ever hate anybody, officer?”

“I asked you a question, Mr. Fortlow.”

“ 'Cause you see Lydell hated somebody. He hated a man and he killed him. He couldn't help himself. And if you put that man in front'a him today he'd kill him again. All he wanted was to wipe that man from his mind. That's what he talked about.”

“So he killed himself because he couldn't kill his wife's boyfriend again?” Biggers asked.

“I don't have no idea, man. I wasn't in his head. We just got drunk together.”

“So he didn't give you any indication that he intended suicide?”

“There weren't no play in Lydell, officer. No play at all.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” the policeman wanted to know.

“It means what it means, man.”

Socrates turned on his radio that night. There was jazz playing on the university station. Fats Waller. The image of a smiling fat black man came up in Socrates' mind. He was laughing and playing those ivories. He was cooing and wooing. Socrates knew that there must have been tears behind all of those funny lines. And then the announcer said,

Waller suffered a diabetic attack on tour and the all-white hospital turned him away. He died from the disease of racism and he left us his legacy like the smile an undertaker draws on his corpse.

Socrates wondered who he could blame for Lydell's death. He wondered that until he drifted off to sleep.

a day in the park

S

ocrates got to the front stairs of the house on Marvane Street at six fifteen that Sunday morning. The block was lined with a few large homes left over from the more prosperous days of South Central L.A. Most had been subdivided into rooms for let or knocked down and replaced by large stucco apartment buildings. There was the big brick house a few lots down, the one that the radical college students called the New Africans once occupied. It was vacant. The young college radicals had splintered into two smaller organizations, Socrates had heard, neither of which could afford the rent.

The police surveillance house across the street was empty now too. Without potential revolutionaries to spy on the police saw no reason to maintain their presence on the block.

The only industries left were Luvia's private retirement home and the crack house down toward the end of the block. Even at that hour there was a fat man in a cheap suit who had driven by for a quick blow job in the deep lawn. Socrates couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman down on one knee before the fat man.

Socrates was remembering the days when he and Right Burke sat out on the front porch of Luvia's and watched the cops sneak in and out of their nest. Right Burke had been Socrates' best friend but now he was dead.

It had been almost a year. Socrates wasn't invited to the service. Right's sister had come down from Richmond in the Bay Area and organized the funeral with Luvia Prine. The women had blamed Socrates for Right's death. They were angry because Right had gone out with Socrates one night and the next morning he was found at a bus stop, dead from an overdose of morphine complicated by a large quantity of alcohol.

He didn't blame them but still he'd gotten himself up and out of bed at five in the morning to come down to Luvia's retirement home.

She the onliest person I ever met who might be able to stare you down, Socco,

Burke had once said to his friend.

You know she ain't afraid of nuthin' but Jesus and I do believe that even he would say ‘yes ma'am’ to her.

Socrates remembered the suicide of his friend with no guilt or even remorse. He was dying to begin with. All those pills he took did what they were supposed to do—they stopped the pain.

Three young girls walked past the big man, looking frightened and beautiful in calf length pastel dresses that set off their dark skins like three flames. The smallest child, who must have been about ten, smiled at Socrates and waved as they walked past.

They got to walk through hell, he thought, just to get to Sunday school.

When the girls got past Socrates they began to run, giggling and laughing as they went. They looked back over their shoulders at Socrates and screamed as if he were a monster.

A car door slammed. The fat man had finished his business. He turned over the engine on his old Buick and cruised past Luvia's home looking straight ahead.

“Socrates Fortlow, what you doin' at my door?” She was at least five eight but weighed no more than a hundred pounds fully dressed. Luvia Prine had the stare of a heavyweight though.

“Miss Prine,” Socrates said as a greeting.

“Well?” She held a bunch of freshly picked dahlias.

“I heard that somebody picks you up here at six forty-five an' takes you to Right's grave on the first Sunday of every month. Topper Saint-Paul told me he heard that.”

The flesh around Luvia's watery eyes hardened into two tight squares. “What I do and where I go and who I go with ain't got nuthin' to do with you.”

“An' Right told me that you were a Christian woman.” Socrates fought to keep the humor he felt out of his voice. He enjoyed the vehemence of Luvia's hatred. He

was

a bad man. He had done awful things. And even if Luvia didn't know exactly what crimes he had committed, she could feel that he had done something. That intimacy, even though it was shown in distaste, made Socrates feel kinship toward the hard, churchgoing woman.

“And what do you mean by that?”

“I mean that a Christian woman, on a Sunday too, would not keep a man from paying his respects to his dead friend,” Socrates said.

“I ain't keepin' you from nuthin',” Luvia said angrily.

“You didn't let me come to my friend's funeral. You didn't even let me know where I could send no flowers or even a card to say I was sorry and sad.”

“You don't deserve to be invited with decent folk, Socrates. It's your fault he's dead. He was alive when he left wit' you and then the police called to say that they found him cold on a bus stop bench. And where were you? You don't deserve to stand at his grave. You ain't earned a place to pray.”

Socrates could tell by the waver in Luvia's voice that she felt deeply about his crime. He almost lost heart then and turned away, allowing her her victory over Satan.

Almost.

“You see?” he said instead of leaving. “What kind of real Christian woman would put herself in the place to make a judgment on a man's soul? It's a blasphemy for somebody to say that another man is unworthy in God's eyes. But here you go sayin' that I cain't pay my respects to my friend. Here you go actin' like the Lord give you the power to judge.”

The squares screwed themselves down to pinpoints. Luvia actually shook in her loose Sunday dress suit. Her fist grasped so tightly on the bunch of hand-picked flowers that he heard the stems cracking.

“You tell me that I killed Right but the truth is I saved him,” Socrates added.

“Saved him!”

“That's right. You had him up in that room moanin' from all the pain that that cancer could make. Your doctor couldn't get him the kinda medicine he needed to kill the pain. All you could do was leave him upstairs to wither and die. No dignity, no manhood. Just four walls and a Bible on his nightstand. You ain't never asked me about what happened, Luvia. You think you know but you wasn't there. You didn't see him in his final suit tellin' stories and laughin' about the short skirts some'a these girls wear out in the street. You didn't hear him say good-bye to Charla and then tell me t'leave him on the bench. He said that he wanted to stay and watch the lights, Luvia. What business did I have to tell him no?”

Socrates had lost his sense of humor. Luvia, from his experience, never had one to begin with. Socrates was wondering how far he'd have to go to look for a smile when a long, gold-colored Lincoln drove up behind him.

“Damn you, Socrates Fortlow,” Luvia said. “Come on.”

Luvia Prine whisked past the big ex-con and he turned around to see a dapper man standing at the open door of his car. He was about Socrates' age with a mustache and no beard. He was wearing a light brown sports jacket and dark brown pants but his red, yellow and green shirt was an African cut, as was his brimless and beaded hat.

“Luvia,” the man said. When he smiled Socrates could see that one of his bottom teeth was gold.

“This here is Socrates Fortlow, Milton,” Luvia said. “If you have any room he wants to go out and pay his respects, I guess.”

“Hey, my man,” Milton said extending a hand. “All I got is room in this boat. Ride on up front with me. You know Miss Prine always take the backseat.”

With that Milton pulled open the back door for Luvia. Socrates made his way around to the passenger's side and let himself in.

“Strap yourself down, brother,” Milton said as he turned the ignition key.

“Say what?”

Milton, who was the color of coffee mixed in with an equal amount of cream, turned and smiled brightly at Socrates. “Between alcohol and cigarettes, guns and blunt objects, between high blood pressure and low test scores in these piss-poor schools they—”

“Milton!” Luvia cried.

“Sorry about the language, Miss Prine,” Milton said and then he continued, “… caught in between all that I'm as cautious as butterfly in a hurricane.”

Socrates buckled his belt feeling a little foolish and not knowing exactly why.

They drove down Central for a long while, cruising, stopping at every third traffic light. Every now and then Milton would beep his horn at someone making their way to early service. He seemed to know a lot of people.

“Car's in good shape,” Socrates said. He knew that the compliment would get the driver to smile.

“Bought it new twenty-five years ago when I was a letter carrier with nuthin' but a room, a bed and this here car. I hate to let anything go. This the fourth engine on this sucker but you know I'd really be sad if I ever had to give'er up.”

Socrates turned away and looked out of his window. Luvia had moved to the seat behind him. She was staring out at the same street that Socrates was watching but he still wondered what it was that she saw. He knew that Luvia lived in a completely different world than he did. Maybe the world she saw had different colors; maybe there were truths revealed to her scrutiny that Socrates missed.

“You just like me, eh, my man?” Milton words were wrapped in the rhythms of sixties jazz.

“What you mean?”

“The name. Some old dead white man wrote a book an' our mommas hoped the name'd rub off on us. They didn't think that a famous black man is usually dead before his time.” The driver's laughter sounded hollow to Socrates.

“I don't know 'bout all that,” Socrates said.

“All what?”

“How you know that somebody's a white man? I mean Augustine was a African. Socrates come up around the Mediterranean, you know that's spittin' distance from the Arab world. Maybe your name is really a black man's name too.”

“Will you please keep it down,” Luvia said. “This

is

Sunday.”

“Sorry, Miss Prine,” Milton said. But he was thinking about Socrates then, casting sidelong glances at the man.

By then they were headed north on Highland up toward Barhum. The car

did

feel like a boat to Socrates. It almost floated on the streets of L.A., banking instead of turning, never jolting at a stop.

“Where'd you hear that about Saint Augustine?” Luvia Prine asked. Socrates was expecting the question but not from her.

“I got that at the Capricorn Bookstore. I used to go there before it got burnt down in the riots.”

“You knew the Minettes?” Luvia asked.

“Enough to eat at their apartment over here offa Forty-seventh Street.”

In the rearview mirror Socrates could see his words register on Luvia. He felt a childish glee that she had something close to respect for him if only just for a moment or two.

“I never heard'a that place,” Milton said.

“It was a black bookstore where anybody could go an' read and talk,” Socrates said. “They had art shows and poetry readin's but I didn't go in too much for that. I liked to read about all the history that we got an' we don't even know about. About alla the lies we tell each other but here we go thinkin' we tellin' the truth.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Milton wanted to know.

“Like Luvia.”

“What you mean like me?” the landlady said angrily.

“You didn't know that Augustine was African and you in church every minute you can find. Maybe your minister don't know it. All kinda stuff they teach us and then we go passin' it around like it was gospel. All up and down the street you got people believin' lies about each other and tellin' them lies like they was the Lord themselves.”

“I didn't tell you that I didn't know Augustine was an African,” Luvia said. “And why should I believe you anyway?”

“Oscar Minette was the one told me, Miss Prine. But that's okay. I didn't mean to insult you. I was just sayin'.”

The car went quiet after that. The gold Lincoln climbed up Forest Lawn Drive toward the cemetery.

They had to walk up a hill to get to the grave site. Luvia found it hard going. Socrates put his hand under her elbow for support. She almost balked but then she relaxed into the strength of his hand.

It was just a plaque of granite lying flat in the grass. EUGENE BURKE, 1923-1997. No poetry or catchy remembrances.

“Looks like a dinner plate,” Socrates said. “Seems like Right deserved something better.”

“He left all his wealth behind him,” Luvia said. “A bronze coffin and a fancy headstone won't get you into the Kingdom.”

“You sure cain't take it with ya,” Socrates agreed.

Luvia put down her injured flowers. Socrates took a crystal teardrop, the kind used in chandeliers, from his pocket and placed it next to the poor bouquet.

“What's that piece of glass supposed to be?” Luvia asked.

“Darryl give it to me to leave. It's his favorite thing. When I told him that I was gonna try an' find Right's grave he gimme that to leave.”

At first Socrates thought that Luvia was nodding, somehow agreeing that leaving the crystal was the right thing to do. And maybe that's how it began. But somewhere along the way the nod became crying. The quiet, tearless crying of a woman who had given up everything and never looked back.

Socrates watched her clutching her gloved hands and shaking like someone suffering from palsy. He reached out but she put up a tremulous hand.

“I don't need your help,” she said. “Just let me have my cry alone.”

Socrates walked down to the car where Milton waited leaning up against the hood. He was smoking a cigarette and staring peacefully at the wispy clouds snaking their way through the blues skies.

“Hey,” Milton said.

Socrates nodded.

“She usually spends a while up there. And when she comes down she's all quiet and smaller, you know? Like she got the weight of the whole world on'er.”

Socrates nodded again.

“I think she was in love with him. That's what Dottie Monroe told me. Dottie said that when Luvia talks about Right she just loses it. Even now he been dead almost a year all you got to do is ask her about him and she can't get out but a few sentences 'fore she choke up.”

“Yeah, well,” Socrates said. “Right was a good man. He never let the world break him down. He was old and crippled but he'd still stand up to anyone'a these young cowards you got runnin' around out here. I'm just surprised that he made it as long as he did.”

“You gonna pay half?” Milton asked.

“Halfa what?”

“I charge fifteen dollars for the ride up here an' back to ten o'clock service. I figure wit' you here she could save a little.”

Luvia's church was on Sixty-third Place near Hooper. It was a large salmon pink building with a white cross, almost three stories high, rising from its roof.

The congregation was coming from all over the street into the three double doors that stood atop the building's wide stone staircase. There was the flowery smell of women's perfume in the air. Socrates and Milton both got out of the car to help Luvia but she pushed them away.

Many well-dressed parishioners took a second look at the big ex-convict in his army fatigue pants and tight black T-shirt. His big hands and stern features marked him out from that God-fearing crowd.

“See ya in a few weeks, Miss Prine,” Milton said. He gestured as if he were doffing his hat but he did not do so.

“You're welcome to come into church, Milton Langonier,” Luvia said.

“I got to get another fare, Miss Prine. Maybe next week.”

Luvia turned quickly toward Socrates, almost, he thought, like a frightened leaf eater who suspected a predator stalking from behind.

“You could come to church too, Mr. Fortlow. They made church for sinners. And it's only God can tell them no.” Her left eye shut for a moment and her gloved hands made themselves into fists.

“Thank you, Miss Prine, but not today. I appreciate it though.”

Luvia actually sighed in relief. For the first time Socrates saw gratefulness in her eyes.

“Wanna go down to MacArthur Park?” Milton asked when they were driving again.

“How much that gonna cost me?”

“I'm off duty now, boy. You know I only do one ride on a Sunday and the rest I take off.”

They sat together on an iron bench that was painted pink. Milton brought out a pint bottle of peach-flavored schnapps and they passed it back and forth taking small swigs and gasping from the alcohol burn.

“She used to sit right over there on that bench,” Milton said, pointing to a tall pine tree.

“What bench?” asked Socrates.

“It ain't there no more. That was thirty-five years ago when I was a mail carrier and I used to come here on Fridays with my boss Moses Goldstein. Jewish man.”

Socrates took another drink and remembered that he hadn't eaten that morning. A warm fuzzy feeling nuzzled in around his ears.

“But who was sitting on the bench?” he asked.

“Cherry Winters,” Milton said. He took a drink and then lit a cigarette.

It was a sunny day and there were more than a few people out strolling in the downtown park. Pedal-boats were gliding across the man-made pond. Two young men were throwing each other long passes with a football. Socrates thought that they were imagining playing in the big game on TV, dreaming that they were sports stars running and passing to the shouts of a whole stadium full of fans. He could almost hear the cheers himself.

“Yep,” Milton said. “She used to sit right under that pine tree. It was smaller back then.”

“Who was she?”

“Black girl. Real real black and ugly from the way I looked at things. She used to sit right over there every Friday and me and Moses used to sit down at a redwood bench near the pond.” Milton smiled at the memory. “Yeah, yeah. We'd sit down on the bench and he'd bring peach schnapps and we'd pour it in these little Dixie cups. I was just a kid really. Moses was more than fifty. It took me a long time realize it but he had a reason to come down here with me. It was that Cherry.”

“What about her?”

“Moses was married. Had three kids and one grandchild. And here that fool falls in love with the ugliest black girl I could imagine. You know the kinda girl don't even style her hair but just comb it straight back and tie it up with a rubber band. Skinny and big lipped.You know back then I thought beauty was Sarah Vaughan or Dorothy Dandridge. That child just wore a one-piece dress and brown shoes that laced up like a man's shoes.”

“An' she would eat here on Fridays while you an' Moses was drinkin'?” Socrates asked. He was enjoying the way that Milton's story unfolded.

“Yeah. One day I figured out that it was because'a that girl that Moses brought me out here,” Milton said with wonder in his voice. “You see I was one of the few blacks they had workin' in his area. He'd been comin' down here for over a year already, watchin' that child.”

Socrates felt his mouth come open the way that it did when he was on the way to drunk. He smiled and looked up at the false horizon line of the trees, that jagged line of pines underscoring blue.

“He was in love,” Milton said.

“Love?”

“Crazy. That's what I said. Crazy. Here you got a old big-bellied Jewish man in his fifties actin' like a school kid over a black girl he ain't ever even been within arm's distance of. But that's what he said. After we been comin' to the park about two months. I guess he had a little too much peach schnapps that Friday an' he told me how much in love he was. I said, ‘Moses, why'ont you go ovah there an' say hey.’ You know I wasn't a day over twenty-five and arrogant the way young men can be. Moses just shook his head and blushed. Blushed!”

It was that last word that made Socrates understand that this long-ago talk had stayed with him, like that Lincoln Continental.

“I yelled over to the girl. Moses said not to but he really wanted me to call her. Why else did he bring me here? I yelled over for the girl to come to our bench. She was a little shy but I guess she figured what could we do in broad daylight in the park?”

Socrates was watching two young lovers, a dark-skinned Hispanic man and his fair Asian girlfriend. He didn't want to hear any sad story right then. The schnapps working its way through his brain only wanted candy colors and a pleasant nap.

“I told her that my friend liked her and she said go on but she sat down anyway. When I left Moses was still on the bench with that girl. I had to lie back at work and say that he ate something bad and went home.” Milton stopped there to take the final drink from the bottle. He lost the thread of his story with that last smacking swallow and sat still staring at the boats gliding across the lake.

“Right Burke was my best friend,” Socrates said. “It feels good to say that. You know? That somebody is your friend. Your best friend. Even though he's dead it's like he was here.”

Milton nodded.

A pair of policemen wandered by on horseback.

“It's nice here in the park, man,” Socrates said.

For a long while after that the two men sat in silence.

“So what happened?” Socrates asked.

“What?”

“With your boss and that girl?”

“Oh. Moses and his girl on the side.” Milton squinted his eyes, trying to remember. “Yeah. He set her up. Got her a little place down offa Adams. Went to see'er every day almost. She had a baby. Named him Moses. And you know I had it made after alla that. I mean Moses loved me almost as much as he did Cherry. After all it was me broke the ice. Every time a promotion was due I got it. I was his second in command after only three years. That way I could cover for him when he was spendin' the afternoon over with her.

“Oh yeah that was real love there. Even before she proved it I knew that Cherry loved that man. You know he couldn't leave his wife. All them kids and the grandkids kept comin'. Nobody would'a had no sympathy for him so they kept it quiet. Cherry didn't care though. She used to make his lunches and send 'em through me.She knit him sweaters, never complained as far as I knew. And when he got sick with the heart disease and he couldn't even get up outta the bed Cherry used to bring me little notes that I'd take up to his house on Fridays an' show'im. And every time he'd tell me to tell her that he loved her and that when he was better that he'd leave Sophie and come be her husband.”

Socrates noted the heaviness in Milton's voice.

“You know I don't think that they never knew each other at all,” Milton said. “I mean they was in love but the worlds they lived in was so different. It was just somethin' about the way she ate her lunch and the way that man loved her even though he had a whole world someplace else.”

“Did they ever get married?” Socrates asked.

“Naw,” Milton replied. “He got weaker an' weaker. Finally he just died. I took Cherry to the funeral actin' like she was my girlfriend. But I think Sophie musta known sumpin' wit' the way that Cherry carried on. You know I don't think that there was a black woman ever lived would cry so hard for me as Cherry did for that fat old Jewish man.”

Milton bit his lip and shook his head. He took the schnapps bottle out of his pocket but it was empty.

Socrates got down on the grass and stretched out. He put his hands behind his head and let his eyes wander with the big white clouds.

“They all gone,” said the man who was named after a poet.

“Who?”

“Yo' friend. My friend. Cherry's alive but she ain't here no more. It's just all like a dream.”

“What happened to Moses Junior?”

“I got him a job as a mail carrier. You know I tried to help Cherry out after Mo was gone. But I wasn't in on all that love.”

Those were the last words Socrates heard for a while. He fell asleep with blades of grass waving in the breeze, tickling his bare arms.

An hour or so later he woke up. Milton was still sitting on the bench, watching the boats.

They rode home in amiable silence. When Milton let Socrates off at his alley door he said, “See you in a month, Mr. Fortlow?”

“I hope so,” Socrates said.

“Did you go to Mr. Burke's grave?” Darryl asked Socrates early the next morning at Bounty.

“Uh-huh.” He was using the big floor buffer to strip the wax from aisle seven two hours before the doors to Bounty were due to open. Darryl had been given extra hours to help Socrates. He did that often so he could talk to the older man.

“Was you sad?”

“Sad?”

“Uh-huh.”

Socrates lost himself for a few minutes in the pivot from right to left as he let the big, rotating, steel wool brush grind away the yellowing wax. Darryl followed with his squeegee pushing the extra water along behind the big chromium machine.

About half the way through Socrates stopped and pushed the red button between the handlebars. The motor died and the brush slowed, making the sound of a snake through the dead grasses of summer.

“No, I wasn't sad,” Socrates said. “Uh-uh. I mean it was sad to see that nameplate on the ground. But you know Right made up his own mind. He took them pills.”

They were the only people in the store. Both man and boy liked the solitude and freedom of their early morning jobs.

“I put your crystal down there. Luvia thought it was real nice'a you. But I wasn't sad,” Socrates said again. “No, uh-uh. I went to the park with this man name'a Milton. We went to MacArthur Park downtown and he said about a man he knew that died. They was friends kinda like me an' Burke.”

“Did you have some wine?” Darryl asked.

“He had somethin',” Socrates said. “But I didn't. You know you don't always have to be high to have a good time.”

“Uh-huh, I know. I just asked is all.”

“It was real pretty yesterday,” Socrates said. “And it was strange too.”

“What you mean?”

“You ever see one'a them big mural paintin's that they put up on the wall? The kinds about a whole big place with lots and lotsa people? The kind where nobody is special but they just doin' what they do? Sittin' on a park bench or throwin' a Frisbee.”

“Yeah I seen 'em.”

“And the pictures of the people ain't real good like no photograph. You know. Maybe somebody's head is just a circle or sumpin' but you know what it means, you know that it's a man or woman.”

“Yeah.”

“When I closed my eyes I could see all the people in the park just like in one'a them murals. I mean they were still in my mind. But it was like Right was there too and also this Jewish man that Milton was talkin' 'bout. There was some girl he mentioned too. You know what I mean?”

“Uh-uh,” Darryl uttered, shaking his head to accent his confusion.

“It's like you take somebody with you even if they ain't there, even if they dead. It's like Martin Luther King. I can see him in my mind but I ain't never met him. Or like when I saw the boats they had on the pond there. I thought about you and how you'd like to get in one'a them and row around.”

“So? That just mean you thinkin' 'bout somebody.”

“Yeah. I was thinkin' an' I wasn't sad or mad. I was just thinkin' and everything was fine. Even though there was all this bad stuff and sad stuff in my mind everything was still fine. Yeah.”

the mugger

H

ey you! Yeah you, mothahfuckah!” The man was young, not more than twenty, but built for power. He swaggered as he walked and his eyes had as much murder in them as Socrates had ever seen.

It was just sunset and Socrates had taken a shortcut down one alley that led to the alley that he lived on. He had just come from Tri-X Check Cashing on Central and had his full week's salary in an envelope in his pocket.

There was nobody else in sight. And even if there had been Socrates doubted if they would have interfered with the trouble about to come down.

“Stop right there, mothahfuckah!” the big man commanded.

But Socrates had already stopped. He spread his legs wide enough to give him both stability and power as the young giant approached. Close up he looked impossible with muscle and rage. Those murderous eyes were squashed down, murky things that searched out weak spots and gazed down long corridors of pain.

“Gimme the money an' you might get off with a ass-whippin',” the man said.

Socrates noted the smallness of the mugger's head in comparison to his hard, prison-built shoulders. He wasn't a man but a killing machine built on the body of a boy who had been sent off to jail and forgotten.

“Or you could try'n stop me.” The young man reached for Socrates' neck. Socrates tried to block the hand but he was slapped down to the ground. Slapped down. The boy didn't even use a fist to knock Socrates to his knees.

The older ex-convict rose up delivering a powerful uppercut to the mugger's abdomen but he might as well have socked an oak tree or a granite rock. The mugger's next blow was a fist that sprawled Socrates out on the floor of the alley. Two kicks followed in quick succession. Then Socrates felt himself being lifted from the ground. He hadn't felt a sensation like that since he was a child. But this time it wasn't his mother taking him out from harm's way.

Even that powerhouse couldn't lift Socrates from his feet. There was more than two hundred and fifty pounds to the Indiana ex-con. He let his full weight hang dead and the mugger was forced to drop him.

“All right!” Socrates yelled from the ground. “You could have the money.”

With that Socrates Fortlow, who had never lost a fight because in the world he came from there was no rematch, picked himself up and produced the drab green envelope that contained two hundred nineteen dollars and eighty-six cents.

The mugger took his prize.

“Turn out your pockets, old man.”

“That's all I got,” Socrates said.

“Empty out yo' pockets, niggah, else I'm'onna hafta hurt you.” The mugger slapped Socrates across the face with the back of his right hand. It was too fast to block but Socrates didn't even try. The mugger was so smug that he didn't see the palm-sized stone that Socrates had picked up with his left hand. And once the slap was delivered the mugger had no limb with which to block the hard rock from crashing into the side of his head.

Socrates felt the bone crunching. He heard the high-pitched wheeze of the boy's last breath.

The killer child fell to his knees and then genuflected, pressing his meaty shoulder against Socrates' feet.

Socrates put the bloody stone in his pocket, reached down to retrieve his envelope, and walked the few back alley blocks to his home.

He washed the stone and threw it away. He cut his pants into strips and flushed them down the toilet because of the blood in the pocket. Then he sat in a chair and waited for the police to come.

The police always came. They came when a grocery store was robbed or a child was mugged. They came for every dead body, with questions and insinuations. Sometimes they took him off to jail. They had searched his house and given him a ticket for not having a license for his two-legged dog. They dropped by on a whim at times just in case he had done something that even they couldn't suspect.

Because Socrates was guilty, guilty all the way around. He was big and he was black, he was an ex-convict and he was poor. He was unrepentant in the eyes of the law and you could see by looking at him that he wasn't afraid of any consequences no matter how harsh.

The police were coming so he sat in his chair waiting and wondering if there was some other man like that mugger waiting for him in jail. He wasn't afraid but it was a new thing in his life to be kicked around and beaten by a single man. When he was younger no one could have done that to him.

Socrates went through it over and over, the whole ninety seconds, in his mind. The slap that floored him. The humiliation and the threat. The fear he felt when he realized that he could not hurt the mugger. But when he remembered the stone in his hand and the crush of bone, that's when Socrates paused.

He could feel the police coming after him; could almost hear his name along with the word murder.

“Most people don't kill,” he said to himself. “They don't have to go out and murder. But what else could I do?”

He wondered if there was a court somewhere back in the old days of Africa where a man could lay out what had happened and decide, among his peers, if there had been a crime. If there was a world where a man had a say and was concerned about his own guilt. He didn't want to plead but to understand.

He thought about the boy hunched down over his knees paying final homage to the violence he lived by. In some ways there didn't seem to be anything wrong. It was all natural. The man made into a wild thing going against his ancestor who was now half tame.

It was after midnight when Socrates decided to go to bed. The police hadn't made it yet and he was tired, very tired and sore.

They didn't show up at Bounty the next day either. Socrates was happy about that. He didn't want to embarrass his boss or to be humiliated in front of the people who saw him as a friend.

That evening he went to Iula's diner and ordered the fried chicken. It was the best-tasting meal he'd had in many years.

“This chicken's good, I,” Socrates told her. “You doin' somethin' different?”

“It's just the same old chicken,” Iula said. “An' it's just the same old me.”

You look as good as it taste

was what Socrates wanted to say but he didn't because he was a murderer again and a murderer had no right to flirt.

“What's wrong with you, Socrates?” Iula asked.

“How you'n Tony doin'?” Socrates asked back.

“He's okay I guess. He moved back out last Friday.”

“Moved out? I thought you two was gonna get married again?”

Iula rubbed the back of her neck, raising her elbow as she did so. Socrates remembered that gesture when she was relaxed at his house late in the evening.

“I should'a known that he wasn't no different. Naggin' me about why I couldn't close the restaurant down and spend the day with him. You know a business cain't run itself.” Iula looked directly into Socrates' eyes.

“I'm sorry about that, honey,” Socrates said. “You need a good man. And you deserve the best.”

“I don't know about all that,” Iula said. “But I sure could use some company.”

Socrates knew that in a few hours or a few days at most he was likely to lose his freedom, forever this time.

“Could I walk you home after?” he asked.

“If you want.”

“I'll just wait for ya then.”

“You will?”

“Yeah. Sumpin' wrong with that?”

“No. Nuthin' wrong but maybe just weird. I mean you don't come in on chicken night. An' you ain't been in at all in weeks. An' I thought you give up on walkin' me home, that you was with that Charlene Willert.”

“An' I thought you chose Tony,” Socrates replied.

Iula's nostrils flared. Socrates could see that she wanted to say more but didn't know how. She

had

decided on Tony. What Socrates did was none of her business.

“What night Topper come in?” Socrates asked hoping that he didn't sound desperate.

“Why?”

“Iula, can you get up off me an' be civil? I'm sorry if you mad. I thought you wanted to marry Tony. I stopped comin' 'cause I don't have no right to want you like I do if I cain't put up my nickel.”

Iula's orangish skin brightened and her lips quivered with words that she held in.

“He be in in about a hour,” she said finally.

When Socrates touched her arm she sighed.

“Hey, hey, Mr. Fortlow,” Nelson Saint-Paul, more commonly known as Topper, said. “How you doin'?”

“Not so bad I guess.” Socrates took a seat next to the pudgy undertaker who was named for the top hat he wore at services in his funeral home. “I mean I'm still breathin' and I'm still free.”

“Would you like something to eat?” graciously asked the undertaker.

“Take some coffee if you offerin'.”

“Done,” Topper said. “Mrs. LaPort, please bring my friend some coffee and a slice of coffee cake.”

Iula nodded but didn't move. There were a lot of customers in the diner that evening. Socrates didn't mind waiting. It was a little after eight o'clock and Iula wasn't off until eleven at the earliest.

He sat and discussed the day's events with Topper, who was one of the few men Socrates knew who read the newspapers each day. In prison there was a limited amount of news allowed to get out among the general population. Among a certain crowd talk about the news was like real cream in your coffee or a glimpse of the sea.

Sometimes Socrates sought Topper out to discuss the news but this day he had another purpose in mind.

After Topper and Socrates had dispatched with international and national events they discussed local comings and goings.

“I heard somebody got killed down near me,” Socrates said almost incidentally.

“You mean that Logan child?” Topper asked.

Socrates shook his head. “Was that his name?”

“Ronald Logan. He was raised not five blocks from your house. Fell in with gangsters. Went to jail and came out wrong. It's amazing to me how they take these children and turn 'em into something that isn't even human any more. That boy was a terror on the street for the whole time he was out of jail. Ten days. No. No I'm a liar. It was nine days. Nine days and then they found him dead in the alley right up the street here.”

“Somebody shoot'im?”

“Crushed his skull. That's what his mother told me. And you know I believe that she was relieved. Relieved that the evil she released on this world was gone.” Topper had a Bible group that met on Friday evenings at his funeral home, business permitting. He sounded like a minister but Socrates liked him anyway.

“You doin' the funeral?” Socrates asked as if just making conversation.

“When the coroner gets through with the body. When there's a murder the coroner has to take a look. He don't do much.” Nelson Saint-Paul sneered in professional disdain. “Just take a look and then release the body. Only it usually take him a whole week to get to it because of the backlog they got. Backlog of death. You know that's a shame.”

Socrates winced but remained quiet.

He was thinking about the bodies he had seen in his life. The dead men and women, almost all of them dead before they should have been. He considered Ronald Logan, who had just been a corpse until Nelson named him. Now he had a mother and a history.

“Socrates,” Nelson was saying.

“Huh?”

“Where are you, man? Here I am offerin' you employment and there you are examining your feet.”

“Sorry.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“You wanna try doin' a little work for me?”

“What you want? Some kinda janitor?”

“Naw. Janitor's easy to find. I need somebody to help with the embalming and the preparation for service. You know that's a real profession ain't gonna fall outta style.”

Socrates put both of his hands on the table to keep his balance. He felt as if he might fall right out of his chair. Dumb luck, that's what they called it in stir. Dumb luck.

In prison,

Cap Richmond used to say,

every day is April Fool's day. After 'while you begin to think that life is just one big gag.

“Lemme see 'bout that,” Socrates said. “You know I might have to go outta town a little while. But if I don't I'll be by.”

He stayed at Iula's house that night. They got there at about midnight. Four bright red numbers burned

03:39

when Iula finally said, “Baby, I cain't take no mo' right now. Not right now.”

Socrates rolled back on his side and reached for her in the darkness. She took his hand in hers.

“I'm sore all over, honey,” she said. “But that's not complainin'. I just ain't that young anymore.” She chuckled for a moment and then added, “Maybe I wasn't ever that young. You was goin' at it like you just got outta jail yesterday.”

Socrates woke up at five. He sat around the big living room thumbing through old

Jet

magazines and waiting for the sun. Every now and then he'd wonder if the police had been to his house, if they issued a warrant once they found him missing.

“Mornin',” Iula said, breaking Socrates' trance.

“Hey, baby.”

“What you thinkin' 'bout?”

“That it ain't true that a white man think we all look alike. That if there was a white man out there lookin' for me he'd know just who to look for.”

“Why a white man be lookin' for you?” Iula's question was pointed but Socrates didn't care. Iula was a sharp woman.

“Any reason. I owe him money, kissed his daughter, forgot to take off my hat.”

“Where you been wearin' that hat?”

“You ever?” Socrates said as the beginning of a question. But the question never came.

“I ever what?”

“You ever think that you the only one out here who cares? I mean that if the right thing gonna get done it's you got to do it 'cause nobody else even know?”

Iula frowned. She looked at the man who had worn her ragged with love. She shook her head and then turned to leave the room. A while later Socrates smelled coffee brewing. When Iula returned with her tarnished, silver-plated tray she was still frowning.

Socrates raised his head as she handed him a white diner mug.

“You a good man, Socrates Fortlow,” Iula declared. “Now drink your coffee and come on back down to earth.”

Killer was whimpering when Socrates got home. The ex-con thought his pet was hungry but the dog refused to eat and cried even louder.

That night Socrates let Killer's cries into his dreams. They were a perfect fit for his thoughts. Ronald Logan died over and over again against the screen of pain. And every time the boy fell Socrates sank lower. There were policemen eating ice cream cones, arresting old ladies and driving fast for fun. There were blind men walking past the murder scene ignorant of the criminal and the crime. Behind it all there was a trumpet playing. It was a jazz man playing but he was an angel too.

All angels ain't from heaven,

his skinny aunt Bellandra whispered.

But you cain't choose your angels so you better not mind.

In the morning Socrates realized that the police were not going to come, that he had gotten away with murder, that there was no price he had to pay.

He carried his freedom out the front door, past the whimpering dog, and on the bus to work. His freedom wasn't light or happy or proud. People spoke to him but he didn't understand and had to ask them to repeat what they'd said. They'd oblige but still Socrates didn't get it. Finally he'd just nod his head as if he knew what they meant.

“Sumpin' wrong wit' you?” young Darryl asked him on their one forty-five lunch break.

“I don't know if it's me or everybody else, Darryl. Damn.”

“What is it?”

Socrates looked at the boy. They were both killers. But Darryl still had a chance to be better.

“How you feelin', Darryl?” Socrates asked.

“Okay.”

“How is it out there with Howard and Corina?”

“Okay I guess. I mean Howard always talkin' 'bout how good he is. 'Bout his job an' how him an' Corina wanna buy that house they rentin'. It's like he braggin' all the time but he okay.”

“But you could talk to 'im, right?” Socrates wanted to know. “I mean if you got a problem you could talk to Howard.”

“If I got a problem I could talk to you,” Darryl said simply.

“But if you was home and you wasn't gonna come in to work,” Socrates argued. “If you couldn't see me for a few days you could talk to Howard and Corina, right?”

“I guess,” Darryl said, sounding no happier than Socrates felt.

It was sixteen miles from work to Socrates' home. He decided to walk part way, telling himself that it wasn't much longer than waiting for the bus to come.

On the way he had a talk with himself. A talk about what if.

“What if the cops drove up beside me right now?” he asked himself as he neared Robertson and Olympic. “What if they stopped me and said, ‘Hey, niggah, what you doin' walkin' on the street up here? You live around here?’”

Socrates thought he might say, “I live in this city. I pay the tax pay your salary and fix these here streets. I guess I could walk if I want to.” And then, in his daydream, he walked away from them.

But the cops followed him down the streets of his imagination. They stopped him on Fairfax and made him stand up against the wall. When they couldn't find anything in his pockets Socrates demanded their badge numbers because, he said, “Now you gone through my pockets and that's illegal 'less you got reason to 'spect me of a crime.”

The scenario played itself out in a dozen different ways. In some he was shot and others the policemen were killed. In one long fantasy the people in the street rose up in a riot that lasted for fifteen days and leveled the streets of L.A. into the rubble of rage.

After more than two and half hours, almost three, Socrates was tired but he hadn't been stopped by the police. He climbed into a bus and sat there exhausted. In the middle of a nap he decided to turn himself in.

It was well past dark when Socrates got home. He'd taken the shortcut past the place where Ronald Logan had died. He only remembered when he saw the spot where Logan had fallen. He stood there trying to feel something for the boy he had slaughtered but all he felt was wrong.

When he got home Killer was so sick that he couldn't even propel himself on his halter to greet his master. Socrates decided to put off turning himself in until the next day when he could make sure that his dog would survive.

He took the dog back to the veterinarian who saved his life when his legs were crushed. Dolly Straight told him that he would have to put the dog in a hospital where he'd have to undergo an operation if he were to survive. Socrates had never heard of an animal being operated on but he trusted the doctor and cared more about that dog than he cared for most people.

That night he considered Darryl and Killer, deciding that it would be wrong to leave either one by going to jail. Socrates wasn't afraid of prison; he wasn't afraid of anything. But he didn't need to prove that. What he needed was to make what amends he could and still meet his obligations.

“Okay now lift him,” Nelson Saint-Paul said to his temporary helper Socrates Fortlow and to Stuart Lane, a regular worker in the funeral home. The two men were big but Ronald Logan was heavy with death. They had him all dressed up in a suit that was slit in the back so that it would fit. Nelson had slipped white silken socks on Ronald's feet but there were no shoes for the coffin.

Socrates had asked Topper if he could try out there for a while without pay. The first day he had helped to connect the tubes under Ronald's armpit to suck out the blood and replace it with the embalmer's fluid, the formaldehyde. He watched as Nelson put a placid visage on the boy's face and as he used makeup to replace a little of the life that Socrates had taken. He couldn't fully straighten out the dent in the boy's skull. The head was still a little lopsided.

The smell of the formaldehyde and the clammy touch of the boy's skin dismantled the hardened ex-con. The boy's deadweight did not leave his shoulders or strained heart even after laying the load down. And Ronald Logan's eyes were not fully shut. Socrates could see the dulled glimmer of his eyeballs through tiny slits. He was no longer human but neither was he gone. Socrates dreaded the three days he spent around that corpse. Every evening coming home from Bounty he clenched up anticipating the sneaky peeking of the boy he'd murdered.

Every evening he'd gone to the pay phone to tell Topper that he couldn't come in. But he never dropped the dime. He was like a dog, he knew, that needed his nose rubbed in his dirty business.

“Killin' ain't like a crap you could flush down the toilet,” he said to Darryl one day before going down to Topper's. “The stink stays on you. Other people can smell it. I smell it in my sleep at night.”

The boy didn't know why Socrates chose that moment to lecture him about guilt but he nodded, submitting the ex-con's words to memory.

On the first day, when he was alone with the naked corpse, Socrates stared at him; even in death the mugger looked menacing. A scar across his upper lip left him with the slightest sneer. The feet were pigeon-toed and the penis was small but hard. The hair was still growing, Topper told him that.

Socrates wanted to cry but could not. The feeling he was left with was worse than prison had been. Ronald Logan was a broken promise laid out on that table.

“You will never be forgotten,” Socrates whispered. “Not as long as I live.”

“Okay, now settle him in,” Topper said. “You know how, Stuart. Make sure the fingers are in line, straighten out the suit. That's right. That's right.”

“We see it all in here, Mr. Fortlow,” Topper was saying. “They all come down to death. Even that princess over there in England. They had to bury her too just like anybody else.”

Mrs. Yolanda Logan and her mother, Roxanne, came to view the body that Saturday morning at eight fifteen. Socrates stood toward the back of the little chapel and waited for some kind of sign from the grief-stricken mother. Yolanda was somewhere in her thirties but she looked as if she'd lived more years than her own mother. She was a heavy woman and her shoulders were sagging. Roxanne, a big woman too, stood near at hand in case her help was needed.

“Oh no there he is,” Yolanda said. “There he is. It's him, Momma.”

“He looks nice,” said the boy's grandmother. “He looks peaceful. And his suit still fits him even after all that weight liftin' he did.”

Yolanda put her hands up between her and the coffin trying to deny either the boy or his death. Topper, wearing his signature hat, came up with a stool. Roxanne guided her daughter toward the seat and then she took her turn visiting the coffin.

Roxanne's face was a study in cautious anger. She raised her head as far away as she could while still trying to see the boy. Her inspection was close and complete. When she turned away you knew that she'd have no nightmares about Ronald returning.

They stayed with the dead boy for half an hour or so.

When they started gathering themselves together, Socrates left. He went outside the chapel door and waited.

He had bought black rayon slacks and a button-up tan shirt for that day. He felt hemmed in and itchy, like a schoolboy in a new uniform.

“Mrs. Logan?” he said when the women came out.

“Yes?” Yolanda said.

“I wanted to say how sorry I am. About your son that is. About what happened.”

The poor mother was beyond speech. She wore a dark brown dress and blue shawl with dark green and yellow flowers printed on it. She also wore white tennis shoes.

Yolanda took Socrates' hands in hers and stood there as if in prayer. The big man didn't pull away.

“What's your name?” Yolanda asked.

“Socrates Fortlow.”

“He was a bad boy, Mr. Fortlow. I loved him but he was bad, crazy bad. It was just like havin' a wild animal right up there in the house wit' you. It was like when a old man forgets who his family is. Like when he don't remember his wife or daughter. When I looked at Ronnie I didn't even know him.” Yolanda's hands were wet and so was her face. Socrates concentrated on keeping his grip from crushing her hands.

“That's enough now, Yoyo,” Roxanne said. She moved in to disengage the convict and his victim but they wouldn't let go.

“He loved you, Mrs. Logan. He prob'ly just forgot up in jail how to show it.”

“Who are you?” Roxanne asked.

“I'm Socrates. I been in jail. I know how it hurts you and the ones you love too.”

“Bless you,” Yolanda said. “Did you know my son?”

“No, ma'am, I didn't. But you be strong now.”

Roxanne pulled on her daughter's hands until finally she broke the bond. Socrates watched them climb into Topper's black Cadillac, which then drove off behind the hearse.

A policeman was standing in front of Socrates' gate when he got home from work the next day. Albert Biggers had on a blue suit and buff shoes. Socrates thought that he looked ridiculous in those colors.

“Officer,” Socrates hailed.

“Where you been, Socrates?”

“Nowhere. I ain't been nowhere. And I sure am tired so if you wanna arrest me please do it or let me pass.”

“Why would I want to arrest you, Socrates? Have you done something wrong?”

That's when Socrates realized that some time in the last week the violence had drained out of his hands. He didn't want to hurt anybody. He didn't care that Biggers stood there in that silly suit trying to act like he was going to trick Socrates into a confession. A confession to anything.

“Let me pass, man,” was all Socrates had to say.

that smell

A

man cain't be a man if he don't make the money, honey,” Leon Spellman said to Veronica Ashanti at the Saint-Paul Mortuary on a Wednesday night in June.

“An' here I thought you young men believed it was t'other way around.” Veronica blew out a sweet smelling cloud of smoke from her short cigar.

“What you mean by that, Veronica?” Chip Lowe, the neighborhood watch captain, asked.

“I thought these male chirren believed that you cain't get no honey,” Veronica paused for a beat between words, “ 'less you let up on some money.”

The older men, including Socrates, laughed at the joke. Leon glowered but even he smiled.

“All I'm sayin' is that a man has got to be responsible if he wants a woman to stand by'im,” Leon said. “I mean a black man has got to be the bread winner. He's got to be a father and he's got to make a home where his wife an' family are safe. A black man has got to guide his people.”

“And ain't that a man talkin',” Cynthia Lott chimed in. She was a tiny woman with a shrill voice that made Socrates' neck muscles tighten whenever he heard it.

“No need to attack the boy, Cindy,” Nelson Saint-Paul said.

“You men always think I'm attackin' you,” Cynthia said. “But I'm just sayin' what I hear. Leon wanna be the breadwinner, the father and the hunter all rolled up into one. What about the woman?”

“He didn't say that the woman couldn't help,” Chip said.

“Help?” Cynthia cried opening her eyes as wide as possible. “Black women the ones

need

help. That's just the problem. You got this boy all of a sudden realizes he ain't been doin' right and now he just wanna walk in on a woman and say, ‘Okay, baby, the boss is home now,’ when what he should be doin' is askin', ‘How can I help you, ma'am?’”

“An' does he have to get down on his knees too?” Chip asked angrily.

“Wouldn't hurt,” said Cynthia. “Wouldn't hurt one bit. You know women been down on their knees cleanin' and beggin' while their men be drinkin' that wine and jokin' out here on Central and a hundred and third.”

Socrates tried to hear past the piercing tones to get at Cynthia's words. He hadn't said much at Nelson's Wednesday meetings. Ever since he'd done a little apprentice work for Nelson, Socrates had an open invitation to the Saturday prayer meeting and the Wednesday night talk. Socrates usually spent his Saturday days with Darryl and most weekend evenings, lately, with Iula.

But Socrates came to Nelson's on Wednesdays and listened to the men and women talk. There was no dress code but the men often wore sports coats and ties. Socrates wore a pair of tan slacks and a black dress shirt with a Salvation Army pullover sweater even on a hot day like that one.

“All us men don't do like that,” Leon complained. “I'm here ain't I?”

“Here callin' me honey an' tellin' it like you was the boss.” Cynthia's anger drove her voice higher.

“But men should be the boss,” Leon argued. “Man was made to be the boss but somehow the black man lost his uh, his uh, authority.”

“Oh please,” Cynthia said with disdain.

“I agree with part'a what Cyn says,” Veronica agreed. She was a pear-shaped woman with large hips and a small chest. Her face was luxurious and full featured, as dark and shiny as polished ebony. “I mean I don't need no man comin' in on me an' mine all of a sudden sayin' he the boss. But I don't want no man on his knees either.” She paused, considering the imagined pose with her eyes. “Well, maybe sometimes.”

The sly grin that the cigar-smoking woman revealed got everybody laughing again.

“But what I mean is,” Veronica continued, “that I want a man to feel good about hisself. And men are different. They protect the home while the women raise chirren.”

“Black men don't do shit,” Cynthia said flatly.

“They come here,” Nelson said. “I open my doors for you. Chip works on the neighborhood watch.”

Socrates thought that Cynthia was biting her lip so as not to snap at Nelson. They all appreciated the Wednesday meeting because of the good conversation but also because of the chicken sandwiches and port wine that Topper served.

“Yeah,” Leon barked. “You always wanna make all that's hap-penin' bad the black man's fault. It ain't all our fault. If you'd back us up more better maybe we'd get somewhere.”

“You can't have it both ways Leon.”

Everybody turned when they heard Socrates speak. Even Cynthia seemed interested in what the quiet man had to say.

“What you mean, Socrates?” Nelson asked.

“I mean if a boy wanna be a man he cain't be askin' for help. He just got to pick up and do what he have to do. Now Cynthia over here don't want him. Well, okay, don't ask her for nuthin'. There's some woman out here want your help.”

“So you mean that it's on Leon not on black women?” Chip Lowe frowned. He was smaller than Socrates, but still large, with a gray mustache and black skin except for his hands and a big splotch on his face that had turned a milky white.

“It's on everybody, man.” Socrates fought to keep the anger out of his voice. “Everybody think it's them or their people got it bad. We all got it bad, all of us.”

“I don't know, Socrates,” Nelson Saint-Paul said. “Some people have it better, easier, than some others. Some have homes, some are homeless.”

“Yeah,” Leon said bitterly. “Some is white, the rest sleep outside.”

“You don't sleep outside, Leon,” Cynthia said. “You live at home with your mother.”

“All I'm sayin',” Socrates said. “Is that we all gonna walk out on Central Avenue when this talk is through. We all gonna be lookin' around in the shadows an' ain't nobody gonna feel friendly if you see a strange black face.”

“So you think we're all in the same boat?” asked Veronica Ashanti. It was the first time she'd heard Socrates speak and she smiled at him approvingly through a haze of cigar smoke.

“And the boat is leakin' an' here we are arguin' 'bout which way is land.” Socrates nodded with finality and everyone went quiet.

Even Cynthia was silent.

“Well,” Nelson said. “On that note I guess we should call it a night. We all have something to think about until next time.”

The watch captain Chip Lowe was the first one to stand up. Cynthia looked from side to side, scowling as if her final words were cut off.

“You wanna ride to your house, Ms. Lott?” young Leon asked.

“I guess so.” She had to hop out of her chair because her feet didn't touch the floor.

“I'll take Veronica,” Nelson offered.

They left through a door in the small back room that led to the chapel in the Saint-Paul Mortuary. At the front of the chapel stood a coffin faced by five neat rows of wood chairs. The ghostly audience seemed real to Socrates in the dim room. He wondered if there was a body up there waiting for the morning service.

Outside, Chip and Socrates saw the women and their escorts safely to their cars. Leon had a 1968 sky blue Pontiac. The prosperous undertaker drove a late model maroon BMW.

“You need a ride, Mr. Fortlow?” the watch captain asked.

“I could walk.”

“I thought you said that we were all scared walking down Central?”

“We are. But there's a difference with me.”

“What's that?”

“I ain't scared'a bein' scared,” Socrates said with a grin. “If I was I couldn't even sleep at night. But I'll take a ride I guess. You know I'd rather be scared than have my feet hurtin' like they do sometimes.”