“I read the papers and all about anything I have an interest in.
I read about a group of African dignitaries getting the Senegalese award of service that was symbolized by a bronze pin with a little design enameled on it — a bird in red and white . . .”
There was no panic on Bonnie’s face. The fact that I knew that she had recently received such an important gift from a suitor only served to sadden her.
“He was the only one who could get Feather into that hospital, Easy . . .”
“So there’s nothing between you?”
Bonnie opened her mouth but it was her turn not to lie.
“Thank him for me . . . when you see him,” I said.
I walked past her and up into the plane.
“ w i l l y o u c o m e
and see me in the Alps, Daddy?” Feather asked as I buckled her seat belt.
The plane was still empty.
“I’ll try. But you know Bonnie’ll be there to look after you. And before you know it you’ll be all better and back home again.”
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“But you’ll try and come?”
“I will, honey.”
I walked past Bonnie as she came up the aisle.
Neither of us spoke.
What was there to say?
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19
From the terminal building I could make out the white bow in Feather’s hair through a porthole in the plane. And even though she looked out now and then she never saw me waving. Her skin had been warm when I buckled her in but her eyes weren’t feverish. Bonnie had Mama Jo’s last ball of medicine, I’d made sure of that. Bonnie wouldn’t let Feather die no matter who her heart belonged to.
The passengers filed on. Final boarding was announced. The jet taxied away and finally, after a long delay, it nosed its way above the amber layer of smog that covered the city.
I stayed at the window watching as a dozen jets lined up and took off.
“Mister?”
She was past sixty with blue-gray hair and a big red coat made 1 2 3
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from cotton — the Southern California answer to the eastern overcoat. There was concern on her lined white face.
“Yes?” My voice cracked.
“Are you all right?”
That’s when I realized that tears were running from my eyes. I tried to speak but my throat closed. I nodded and touched the woman’s shoulder. Then I staggered away amid the stares of dozens of travelers.
i d i d n ’ t t u r n the ignition key right away.
“Snap out of it, Easy,” a voice, only partly my own, said. “You know once a man break down the wreck ain’t far off. You don’t have no time to wallow. You don’t have it like some rich boy can feel sorry for hisself.”
I drove on surface streets with no destination in mind. Even the next day I couldn’t have recalled the route I’d taken. But my instinct was to head in the direction of my office.
I was on Avalon, crossing Manchester, when I heard two horns. I looked up just as my car slammed into a white Chrysler.
The next thing I did was to check out the traffic light — it was against me. I had been distracted and a fool for the past few days, but something told me to take that German pistol out of my pocket and hide it under my seat before I did anything else.
I jumped out of my car and ran to the boatlike Chrysler.
There was a middle-aged black couple in the front seat. The man, who wore a brown suit, was clutching his arm and the woman, who was easily twice the man’s size, was bleeding freely from a cut over her left eye.
“Nate,” she was saying. “Nate, are you okay?”
The man held his left arm between the elbow and shoulder.
I opened the door.
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“Let’s get you outta there, man,” I said.
“Thank you,” he mouthed, his face twisted with the pain.
When I got him set up against the hood of his car I went around to the passenger’s side. It was then that I heard the first siren, a distant cry.
“Is my husband okay?” the woman asked.
She and Nate both had very dark skin and large facial features. Her mouth was wide and so were her nostrils. The blood was coming down but she didn’t seem to notice.
“Just a hurt arm,” I said. “He’s standing up on the other side.”
I took off my shirt and tore it in half, then I pressed the mate-rial against her wound.
“Why you pushin’ on my head?”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I am?” she said, the growing panic crowding her words.
When she looked down at her hands her eyes, nostrils, and mouth all grew to extraordinary proportions.
She screamed.
“Alicia!” Nate called. He was shambling around the front of the car.
A lanky woman came up to steady him.
There were people all around but most of them stayed back.
Three sirens wailed not far away.
“It’s okay, ma’am,” I was saying. “I stopped the bleeding now.”
“Am I bleedin’?” she asked. “Am I bleedin’?”
“No,” I said. “I stopped it with this bandage.”
“All right now, back away!” a voice said.
Two white men dressed all in white except for their shoes ran up.
“Two, Joseph,” one man said. “A stretch for each.”
“Got it,” the other man said.
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The nearest ambulance attendant took the torn shirt from my hands and began speaking to the woman.
“What’s your name, lady?” he asked.
“Alicia Roman.”
“I need you to lie down, Alicia, so that I can get you into the ambulance and stop this cut from bleeding.”
There was authority in the white man’s voice. Alicia allowed him to lower her onto the asphalt. The other attendant, Joseph, came up with a stretcher. This he put down beside her.
The lanky woman was helping Nate to the back of the ambulance. She was plain looking and high brown, like a polished pecan. There was no expression on her face. She was just doing her part.
I looked down at my hands. Alicia’s blood had trailed over my palms and down my forearms. The blood had splattered onto my T-shirt too.
“Are you hurt?” a man asked me.
It was a policeman who came up from the crowd. I saw three other policemen directing traffic and keeping pedestrians out of the street.
“No,” I said. “This is her blood.”
“Were you in their car?” The cop was blond but he had what white people call swarthy skin. The racial blend hadn’t worked too well on him. I remember thinking that the top of his head was in Sweden but his face reflected the Maghreb.
“No,” I said. “I ran into them.”
“They ran the light?”
“No. I did.”
A surprised look came into his face.
“Come over here,” he said, leading me to the curb.
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He made me touch my nose then walk a straight line, turn around, and come back again.
“You seem sober,” he told me.
The ambulance was taking off.
“Are they gonna be okay?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Put your hands behind your back.”
t h e y t o o k a w a y my belt, which was a good thing. I was so miserable in that cell that I might have done myself in. Jesus wasn’t home. Neither was Raymond or Jackson, Etta or Saul Lynx. If I stayed in jail until the trial Feather might be kicked out of the clinic and die. I wondered if Joguye Cham, Bonnie’s African prince, would help my little girl. I’d be the best man at their wedding if he did that for me.
I finally got Theodore Steinman at his shoe shop down the street from my house. I told him to keep calling EttaMae.
“I’ll come down and get you, Ezekiel,” Steinman said.
“Wait for Etta,” I told him. “She does this shit with Mouse at least once every few months.”
“ c i g a r e t t e ? ” my cellmate asked.
I didn’t know if he was offering or wanting one but I didn’t reply. I hadn’t uttered more than three sentences since the arrest.