They were my work gang, my union brothers, my friends.
I had spent most of my adult years hanging on by a shoestring among gangsters and gamblers, prostitutes and killers. But I never liked it. I always wanted a well-ordered working life. The Board of Education didn’t pay much in the way of salary but my kids had medical insurance and I was living a life that I could be proud of.
After some coffee and laughs I gave out the special jobs from reports and requests left on my desk.
Everybody set out on their daily tasks and the special jobs I gave. The cue for them to leave was me standing up; that meant it was time to go to work.
One of the notes was a request for me to appear in the office of the principal, Hiram T. Newgate. I took the long tier of granite stairs up past the large hill of grass to the older campus. By afternoon any one of us could have taken those steps at a run, but the first time was always hard.
Idabell was coming out of the side door of the administration building when I got there.
“Hi, Easy,” she said.
“Mrs. Turner,” I said with emphasis.
“Easy.”
“What?”
“I’ve got to go see about something.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing important, I just have to leave the campus for a while.”
“You wanna get your dog?” I asked.
“No. No, I’ll be back a little later,” she said. “Easy?”
“Yeah?”
“What if Holly came down here to the school and tried to pull me right out of my classroom?”
“Don’t worry about that,” I said. A few kind words that I meant to keep her from fretting. But Mrs. Turner heard salvation in my voice.
“Oh, thank you,” she warbled.
She reached out for me but I pushed her hands down and looked around to make sure that no one saw.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that I haven’t met such a good man in a long time.” She stood there for a moment, a kiss offered on her lips. When she saw that I wasn’t going to collect right then she smiled and went slowly past.
As I watched her descend the stairs I remembered reading the words “A good man is hard to find.” With somebody like Idabell Turner looking for him I could see why.
3
Hiram Newgate had been principal at Sojourner Truth Junior High School for four months. In that time he had his office laid with thick maroon carpets, moved in a desk constructed from African ebony wood, and had teak shelving installed from ceiling to floor. He took the dictionary and its podium from the library and placed it in the window overlooking the coral tree that branched out over the main entrance of the school.
Principal Newgate, as he preferred to be called, always wore a dark suit with a silk tie of bold and rich colors.
“Come in, Rawlins.” Newgate held up the back of his hand and waggled his fingers at me.
“Mr. Newgate,” I said.
“Jacobi,” he said.
“Say what?”
“That jacket. Gino Jacobi line. Astor’s downtown is the only place that sells it.”
He knew his clothes. I did too. Ever since I wangled my job at the Board of Ed I decided that I was going to dress like a supervisor. I’d had enough years of shabby jeans and work shirts. That day I was wearing a buff, tending toward brown, jacket that had trails of slender green and red threads wending through it. My fine cotton shirt was open at the neck. The wool of my pants was deep brown.
“Aren’t you afraid to get those nice clothes dirty if you ever have to do some real work?” Newgate asked.
“You said you wanted to see me?” I replied.
Newgate had a smile that made you want to slap him. Haughty and disdainful, the principal hated me because I wouldn’t bow down to his position.
“I got a disturbing call this morning,” he said.
“Oh? What about?”
Newgate’s eyes actually sparkled with anticipation. “The man said that you’re the one who’s been stealing from the school.”
Over the previous year there had been three major thefts at the school. Electric typewriters, audiovisual equipment, and musical instruments. It wasn’t kids. The police thought that it was somebody who worked for the schools, because there was never any sign of a break-in — the thieves had keys.
But it wasn’t just Sojourner Truth that was hit. Almost every school in the district had been robbed at least once. The police were looking for someone who had access to a set of master keys. It was someone who moved from school to school.
It certainly wasn’t someone like me.
“It wasn’t just a prank?” I asked.
“He knew what was stolen. He told me about the three IBM Selectrics and the gold watch out of Miranda’s desk.”
“He said that?”
Newgate was watching me. I was used to it. White people like to keep their eyes peeled on blacks, and vice versa. We lie to each other so much that often the only hope is to see some look or gesture that betrays the truth.
“Why do you think that he would put the blame on you, Ezekiel?” Newgate asked, at once wondering and suspicious.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. But I wasn’t feeling honest. I had a long history with the police — and it wasn’t pleasant. The police would have been happy to investigate my activities on the nights of the crimes. They’d also wonder at how I came upon my responsible position at the school.
“You sure that you don’t know anything, Ezekiel?”
“No, Hiram,” I replied. I might as well have slapped him; no one called Principal Newgate by his first name.
His jaw set hard and his hands got restless.
“I just want you to know that I’m here, Rawlins. I’m weighing every piece of information. Every piece,” he said.
“Okay. Let’s call the police right now.”
“What?”
“I said, let’s call the police. That’s what I’d do. When I find out about some crime I call the police. I don’t have anything to hide.” Bluff was all I had left.
The blood was rising under Newgate’s pale skin.
“You’re right, of course. It’s a police matter. I didn’t call you about that anyway,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you about Archie Muldoon.”
“What about him?” I asked.
I never liked Muldoon. The white teachers and workmen would often take him to the side and confide in him. He was always coming to me with problems that the white staff seemed more comfortable discussing with him.
A short man and balding, he was in his early fifties but wore a faded White Sox baseball cap that made him seem younger; a trick to fool people into not taking him seriously.
“I think he’s being wasted down there with you scrubbing out toilets and mopping halls,” Newgate was saying. “I mean, I don’t understand how you made Burns the head man when you’ve got an obviously more experienced man like Archie.”
“Being young doesn’t mean you’re not experienced, Mr. Newgate.”
“Anyway,” he said, dismissing my words, “at least you could cut Archie loose and let him come up here to work with me. You know you’re, um, so, uh, busy that you’re sometimes slow reacting to my requests.”
He said more but I stopped listening. I was thinking about how I’d often catch Muldoon staring at me over the coffee-break table, or from across the yard. It was a piercing stare. A white man’s stare that set off an alarm in my southern heart.