Walter Mosley - All I Did Was Shoot My Man

She wasn’t yet thirty but had a sharp mind and a focused intelligence.

“What do you think, Mr. McGill?” Lemon’s girlfriend asked.

“About what?”

“The most important book.”

The only way to explain my reaction is to say that I cast my gaze upon her. It’s a heavy stare replete with violence and the ability to absorb pain. For a fraction of a second Morgan wondered if she wanted an answer to her question.

“All the religions got their books,” I said. “They know for a fact that there’s only one thing written that makes any difference.”

“Are you religious, Mr. McGill?” Tourquois asked.

“No.”

“Then what book do you nominate for most important?” Morgan insisted.

“Not one book but four,” I said. “And even if they had a great impact on the twentieth century, just two of them were written in that time period.”

Before that little preamble Morgan had seen me as an uneducated criminal friend of the object of her affection, the fixer-upper named Stanford “Sweet Lemon” Charles. I think that she was more than a little surprised at this street thug’s pedestrian grasp of the can of worms her pronouncement opened.

“What books?” she said. It was a challenge.

“Capital,” I said, raising up my left thumb, “ The Interpretation of Dreams, The Descent of Man , and the collected essays that explain the Theory of Relativity.”

“And why those books?” Tourquois asked, suddenly engaged.

“Because,” I said, “those books tell us why we don’t know what’s happening but that it happens, and continues to happen, in spite of our necessary ignorance.”

Morgan wanted to argue, to say something about poetry and the depth of its heart. But she was distracted by the possibilities that my suggestions glanced upon.

“That sounds like something Bill Williams would have said,” Tourquois said.

Bull’s-eye!

“Yeah,” I replied. “Lemon — I mean, Stanford here — said that you knew this Williams.”

“He took a class from me five years ago. I was impressed by his stories.”

“What was he like?”

“An older gentleman. He was probably in his early seventies. From the little he let drop I got the idea that he had led a very political life and had turned to literature when the Revolution didn’t pan out the way he expected it to.”

“He was writing a novel?”

“It’s said that Gogol had called his great unfinished work, Dead Souls , a poem. In the same way I believe that Bill’s work was a prose poem in development.”

“What was it about?”

“It was couched in the South American style of magical reality. The main character was a man born a slave who escaped his masters and traveled the country exhorting his brethren to either live as free men and women or to die trying to achieve it. This man, Plato Freeman, lived for many years and never aged. But, as time passed, who he was and what he knew were so roundly ignored that he became transparent to the modern world. In this ghost-like form he moved from place to place, following his descendants, primarily two great-great-grandsons that he could watch but they could not see him.”

I wasn’t dizzy but I doubt if I could have gotten to my feet just then.

“Why are you looking for him?” Tourquois asked.

“You know that book he was working on?”

“Yes?”

“I’m the Number One Great-Great-Son.”

I didn’t get home until a little after midnight.

The dinner with Lemon and his friends was unique, in my experience. I was trapped at that table like a fat and furry black fly on a sheet of old-fashioned flypaper. I wanted to bug out of there but the bait, as much as the glue, held me fast.

Tourquois Wynn had known my father for eighteen months. He took her classes and worked on his novel. She had the feeling that he never intended to finish the book; that it was more like a penance than something to be published or even read by anyone outside the workshop.

He always wore a dark suit with a collared shirt but no tie. He drank coffee continuously, and whenever he went out with the group for the end-of-semester class party he smoked real Cuban cigars.

He never said where he lived but that didn’t bother me. I could always get Bug to hack the school records.

“He was always very present,” Tourquois said. “You didn’t need to know about where he came from or who his people were because — I don’t know how to explain it, exactly — he was right there in front of you, sharing ideas and listening very closely. The usual banal questions just didn’t seem to matter.”

She hadn’t heard from him since the class, and her phone number had changed a few times over the years. Twice during the meal Lemon had excused himself to go outside for a smoke. I went with him for the second break.

He offered me one of his Parliaments and I accepted, the first cigarette I’d had since being the cause of the young men’s deaths.

“I do good, LT?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “like a drug dealer at the back door of a rehab program.”

“He really your father?”

I took a deep hit off the cigarette before saying “Yeah” through a cloud of fumes.

“How long since you seen him?”

“Not since before Tourquois was born.”

“Damn. You want me to ask around some more?”

I left him with my phone number and my apologies to the ladies.

I crushed out the cigarette and stomped the pavement as far as Forty-second Street before taking a cab the rest of the way home.

As i was making certain that the security functions of the front door were activated I could hear Katrina’s loud snoring.

Before finding the source of her susurrations, I went down the sleeping hall and glanced into Twill’s room. That was habit. He wasn’t there and I wasn’t bothered by that fact. He was usually out in the world at night. Katrina was sprawled out on the daybed in my office; one foot was shod in a blue pump while the other shoe lay on its side on the floor. She was wearing an old housedress and smelled strongly of alcohol.

Her right arm was thrown up, covering her face, and the left lolled out over the side, lifting and falling slightly with her raucous breathing. For all that was on my mind, Katrina brought a smile to my lips. There was more warmth in that knowing grin than the night of sex we’d just experienced.

She had never sought refuge in my office before — as far as I knew.

When I lifted her into my arms she stopped snoring.

“Huh?” she squeaked. “What is it?”

“I’m taking you to bed.”

“Oh, Leonid. You are so strong.”

There are some things that a man just likes hearing. It doesn’t matter how predictable or clichéd they are. A man wants the woman in his arms to be charmed by his strength. So what if it gets him killed one day? Everybody’s got to die sometime.

I took off Katrina’s clothes and then disrobed myself.

Naked under the covers, with Katrina breathing easier, I was surprised at how tired I was. Before I knew it I had passed through the veil of sleep, transformed into a little boy at the best amusement park in all the world.

There was a real spaceship and live elephants. The elephants walked under beautiful waterfalls, depositing me in front of a hall of mirrors containing half a dozen giggling naked women reflected a thousand times.

My eight-year-old heart was pounding so hard I worried that I might die before seeing all the other wonders of the park...

There came three dissonant chimes. Each was a different length and tone — and they were loud.

I recognized the sounds. I had chosen them because they were so jarring and unpleasant. The excitement of the dream helped the adrenaline work even faster.