Walter Mosley - Bad Boy Brawly Brown

Xavier and Tina wouldn’t meet my gaze.

“I think I must agree,” Strong said.

“Okay. All right then.” I opened the door and got out. As soon as I was on the curb the lime Caddy took off.

There I was, at least three miles from my car, but I wasn’t unhappy. I walked four blocks to a small diner and called the Ajax Cab Company. They sent a red and white car straight off to pick me up. A friendly driver named Arnold Beard from North Carolina took me to my car.

He didn’t ask me why I was out and so far away from my car, and I felt no need to explain.

I was at my house by eight-thirty. The volume on the TV was turned up high; I could hear it from the front porch. I knew what I would find when I got inside. Feather would be sitting almost on top of our console TV while Jesus slept behind her, sprawled out on the couch.

Frenchie, the little yellow dog, growled at me from under the TV set. I was so happy to be home that even that foul mutt’s snarling felt like a welcome.

“Shhh, Daddy. Juice sleepin’.” She wore her pale blue pajamas with decals of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans pasted all over them.

“Hey there, cowgirl.”

“Shhh,” she said, and then she giggled as I picked her up.

“Are you baby-sitting for Juice?”

“Uh-huh.”

Feather put her soft arms around my neck and laid her head just below my chin. She always fell asleep in my arms at night when I came home late. She would try her best to stay awake until I got there, but the moment I picked her up she was on her way to dreamland.

By the time I had her under the covers she was in a deep sleep.

I left Jesus on the couch. It was hard to wake him up, and it had been years since I could carry him to bed. After all, he was almost seventeen years old. He’d wake up at some point and look in to check on Feather and then me before going to bed.

I put away the dishes that Jesus and Feather had washed and left in the rack to dry. Then I went to my bedroom. Frenchie followed me, snarling and crouching as if he were about to pounce. But he was no larger than a big rat. He knew that he couldn’t do the kind of damage he wanted.

I stripped off my T-shirt and looked at him in the doorway.

“What you want?”

Confusion replaced hatred for a moment and then he snarled again. I threw my T-shirt on his head, causing him to yelp and run from the room.

It gave me a kind of perverse pleasure to know that there was someone close to me who was always planning my demise. Frenchie hated me, that much was sure. He blamed me for the death of his mistress, and forgiveness was not a part of his nature. Every time I saw him he reminded me that there’s always somebody out to get you, that you better keep your guard up because there’s no such a thing as safe.

I went to bed feeling lonely. That’s what Bonnie had brought into my life — loneliness. Before her, my company was the best company. I loved my kids but they were children; they were going to grow up and go away, and I felt that I could let them. But now my bed felt as though it were missing something when Bonnie was gone. When she was off on her flights to Europe and Africa, I never got a satisfying sleep. And when she was home, even though I was miserable over the death of Raymond, I found an island in my dreams that was the closest thing to home that I had ever known.

No one had ever really been there for me before. I never talked to my first wife. Back then I thought that a man was supposed to be strong and silent; he was supposed to make her safe and warm while paying the bills and siring children.

But Bonnie changed all that. She was on my wavelength. And she was an independent thinker. She could take an action for herself without anybody else’s approval. I knew that because she’d once killed a man who attacked her and then went on with her life. Sometimes I’d wake up at night and look at her, knowing that she had crossed the same line I had. But I was never afraid. I felt like some ancient nomad who could depend on his woman to fight at his side, tooth and nail, against the wild.

That night had me wide-eyed but it wasn’t just missing Bonnie. Neither was my insomnia due to the police raid or the pistol in my face. All that was just a small part of the obstacle course that had been my life. I was an orphan at eight years old in the Deep South. I had fought, and won, against men when I didn’t even have hair in my armpits.

No, neither the Urban Revolutionary Party nor their cop enemies bothered me. But dead men were different.

In the cool darkness of my room I wondered about the dead man and Alva’s plea to find her son. It would have been easy enough for me to go to John and tell him that murder was more than I had signed up for. I didn’t even have to tell him, because it was bound to get around about the death in Alva’s cousin’s home. John would know that I couldn’t get involved with that kind of trouble. He knew what trying to make a normal life meant.

I decided to call him and say that I’d gone to the First Men, that I saw Brawly and he looked fine. He would have heard about the murder by then. He’d understand.

I breathed a deep sigh, relieved that my insanity was only a twelve-hour bug. But when I dozed off I found myself in the middle of a very real dream. I walked into a room where Mouse was seated at a small round table. He was wearing a dark suit and a short-brimmed hat. I remained on my feet and told him the story of my day. He was looking down while I spoke, listening to my words with gravity. When I finished he looked up with his gray eyes glittering. He shrugged as if to say, Hey, man, what’s to worry?

I felt that giddiness in my gut again. I woke up in the middle of the night realizing that I was trying to stifle a laugh.

“Mouse! Hey, Raymond, wait up!”

He was walking down the street a block ahead of me. I increased my pace but couldn’t manage to gain on him.

“Wait up, man!” I cried.

And then, suddenly, he turned around. His pistol was in his hand and he opened fire. I froze in place, knowing the deadly accuracy of his marksmanship. He let off five or six rounds and I was still standing. I looked around behind me and saw three dead men on the ground. When I looked back in Mouse’s direction he smiled and tipped his hat to me. Then he turned and walked away quickly. I wanted to follow but was so frightened that I couldn’t make my legs move.

“Daddy.”

I felt a slight nudge at my arm.

“Daddy, wake up,” Jesus said. He was kneeling over me.

I was on the floor next to the bed, partly wrapped in sheets and covers. I wondered how I got there. I didn’t think I could have fallen. Maybe I was trying to hide from those killers under the bed.

“Uncle John’s here,” the boy said.

“What time is it?”

“About eight o’clock.”

“Go out and tell him I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Fifteen minutes later I strode on cramped feet into our small living room. John was standing there looking like a fish out of water in his overalls and work boots.

“Easy.”

“What can I do for you, John?”

“I need your help.”

“Didn’t we already have this talk yesterday?” I asked.

John shifted his shoulders, looking all the more uncomfortable.

“You want some coffee or something to eat?” I asked him.

“I got to get down to the lots.”

“Come on in the kitchen anyway. I just woke up.”

“I ain’t got time to fool around, Easy. I need your help and I need it now.”

I turned my back on him and went into the kitchen.

I always liked the kitchen in the morning because that’s when the sun flooded the windows. While I was filling the percolator with tap water, John walked in.