Уолтер Мосли - Odyssey

The boys loved telling the story to their grandfather because he used the word shit and that was taboo in their house.

“You’re my brother,” Eddie said, “and I had to come to make sure you’re all right.”

“Are you in danger of being arrested?”

“Some. But you know the men lookin’ for me don’t have any idea of who I am or where I might be. They lookin’ for a smell rather than a style, and so we could pass each other in the street and they would never know.”

“I’m okay, Eddie. I mean, it was worth a few months being blind if when I opened my eyes you were here like you are right now. I missed you.”

“What about this Toni Loam?” Drum-Eddie asked.

“Monte told you about her?”

“That’s why he was here... to find out about you.”

“What’d he say about Toni?”

“That she was street. That she seemed to care about you. That you reached out and touched her every few minutes or so and she smiled whenever you would.”

“I did?”

“You don’t remember?”

“I’ve been in kind of a dream, Eddie. I know what I’m thinking but that’s about it. I like Toni. I like her a lot. And she likes me but it’s complicated. Her boyfriend, the one I almost killed, is still in her life. He’s in a coma but she’s worried about him. And I don’t know what to think.”

“About her and the boyfriend?”

“No. I don’t care about that; I just know it. What I’m trying to say is that either I wasted my life or I left it behind. It’s like I wake up every day without the slightest idea what will happen. It might be a war or the Garden of Eden out there.”

“I could promise you both,” Drum-Eddie said. “Come on down to South America with me, Sovereign. Learn Spanish and Portuguese and we could go into business together.”

“What kind of business?”

“Import, export, and services rendered.”

“Legal?”

“Whatever you do, it’s legal one place and a death sentence in another. You know that, Sovy.”

“Why are you here, Eddie?”

“Mama asked me to come.”

“Mama?”

“Yeah, man. I hope you don’t think that Lurlene Twyst is checkin’ up on you because you were her favorite cousin. It’s because Mama is her favorite aunt. Mama don’t care that you turned your back on her. She will not do that to you.”

“I haven’t called for one birthday,” Sovereign said.

“She’s had seventy-seven birthdays, Sovereign. She don’t need no reminders.”

“I can’t go,” Sovereign said.

“Why not? You want to give the district attorney the chance to put you in jail ’cause a man broke into your house?”

“I’m not afraid.”

“So? If you get in the ring with a man can’t punch, that don’t mean you don’t put up your gloves. Survival is practice. That’s an exercise you got to do every day.”

“Granddad told me that another man fathered Pops.”

Drum-Eddie was good-looking but not extremely so; that was what Sovereign was thinking. The potency of Drum was the way he talked and how he paid attention. Just seeing him you knew that this was someone you had to take seriously.

“Who?” Eddie asked.

“Grandpa Eagle didn’t know,” Sovereign said, and then added all the rest that he knew.

“But you never told me?” Eddie said.

“I wasn’t supposed to,” Sovereign said, feeling like a little boy again. “Maybe... maybe if I had you wouldn’t have ever robbed that bank.”

“That’s what you think? You think that it was your fault that I did what I did? You got that on your shoulders too?”

“You and Pops were always fighting, Eddie. I think that if he knew better, if he knew the kind of love that Granddad had for him, then maybe he would have tried harder with you.”

“Damn,” Drum-Eddie James said. His grin seemed to fill the room. “Sovy, there you were, quiet as a mouse, thinkin’ that everything was your problem and your fault.”

“I knew about Eagle’s pistol,” Sovereign said.

“So did I,” Eddie replied. “So did Zenith. All the kids knew, man. And me an’ Pops fought because I’ve always been what I am. You know I was born to live my life, brother. Born to it.”

“But you were just a kid.”

“Not really, Sovy, not really at all. By the time I was thirteen I’d had sex with half a dozen girls. At fifteen I’d already stole a car with Porky Kidd. We sold it to a chop shop that Porky’s brother knew about in L.A. and took the bus home.

“No, Sovy. I wasn’t a kid long enough to talk about, and I’m grateful for the life I got.”

“So if that’s true,” Sovereign James said to his long-lost and now found brother, “it means that I was born to my life and I should be grateful for what I got.”

Eddie smiled and held up his hands.

“That’s your problem right there, JJ,” he said. “You think that life is an argument. There you are, thinkin’ that if you could just say the right words then you could make everything make sense. But you know that ain’t so, brother. It’s not some game you playin’ that you just count up the points at the end of the night and go to bed havin’ played your best. People wanna bring you down, Jimmy J. And even if you got the high score at the end, they’ll just say you cheated and throw you in jail anyways.”

Sovereign understood the wisdom of his brother’s words. He appreciated the fact the Drum-Eddie had risked his own liberty to give that speech eye-to-eye.

“You’re right, Eddie,” Sovereign said. “I know you are. I knew before you got here, but hearing it makes me know even better. You got to understand, man; you got to understand that I’m not like you are. I don’t know how to pick up and run. I’m like a tree, rooted in the ground. For me there’s only here where I am and that’s it. There’s no there. There’s no elsewhere. There’s only right here where I am.”

“So you not comin’ down to Brazil?”

“I can’t.”

“What if you went to sleep tonight and then when you woke up you found yourself in a cottage on the shores of Bahia? What if you didn’t have to move but somebody dug up your roots and replanted you on a beach somewhere?”

“You could do that?”

“Man, the government and the television got people thinkin’ that they ain’t free, not really. They make you believe that the only way to get to the end of the road is to follow the street. But the street is a lie, man. The street is a lie. You got alleys and buildings and shortcuts. You got the long way ’round and you don’t even have to go where they say you wanna go. They don’t own you. They don’t own the street. They don’t own a mothahfuckin’ thing. All they got is you agreein’ that they know and they own and they control. But all you got to do is say no and that’s all she wrote for them.”

Sovereign realized that his uneducated brother had encapsulated his entire graduate career in those few words.

“I want to wake up in my own bed, Eddie. I know I’m small-minded and a slave to the system of my mind. I know too that the thoughts in my head don’t belong to me, that what I see isn’t necessarily what’s there. I live a life informed by corporations, ancient religious belief systems, and governments that care more for their own maintenance than the people who comprise them. I used to think that it was racism that blinded us, but now I know that all of us, except for the special few like you, are tied by our necks to an unstable anchor — that that weight can pull any or all of us down at any time.

“It’s like living at the base of an active volcano or volunteering for the army while there’s a war raging. There’s nothing wrong with giving up, brother, not while there’s people like you out there keeping the truth alive and refusing to accept the lies.”