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the main office, where the custodians congregated, and let him know, in no uncertain terms, what would happen to him if I were to lose my temper.
I was on excellent terms with Ada Masters, the diminutive and wealthy principal. Between us we had the school running smooth as satin.
I entered the main building and started my rounds, going down the hallways looking for problems.
A trash can had not been emptied by the night custodian, Miss Arnold, and there were two lights out in the third-floor hallway. The first floor needed mopping. I made meaningless mental notes of the chores and then headed down to the lower campus.
After checking out the yards and bungalows down there I went to the custodians’ building to sit and think. I loved that job.
It might have seemed like a lowly position to many people, both black and white, but it was a good job and I did many good things while I was there. Often, when parents were having trouble with their kids or the school, I was the first one they went to. Because I came from the South I could translate the rules and expectations of the institution that many southern Negroes just didn’t understand. And if the vice principals or teachers overstepped their bounds I could always put in a word with Miss Masters. She listened to me because she knew that I knew what was what among the population of Watts.
“Ain’t is a valid negative if you use it correctly and have never been told that it isn’t proper language,” I once said to her when an English teacher, Miss Patterson, dropped a student two whole letter grades just for using ain’t one time in a report paper.
Miss Masters looked at me as if I had come from some other planet and yet still spoke her tongue.
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“You’re right,” she said in an amazed tone. “Mr. Rawlins, you’re right.”
“And you’re white,” I replied, captive to the rhyme and the irony.
We laughed, and from that day on we had weekly meetings where she queried me about what she called my ghetto pedagogy.
They paid me nine thousand dollars a year to do that service.
Not nearly enough to float a loan for the thirty-five-plus thousand I needed to maybe save my daughter.
I owned two apartment buildings and a small house with a big yard, all in and around Watts. But after the riots, property values in the black neighborhoods had plummeted. I owed more on the mortgages than the places were worth.
In the past few days I had called John and Jackson and Jewelle and the bank. No one but Mouse had come through with an idea. I wondered if at my trial they would take into account all of my good deeds at Truth.
a t a b o u t a q u a r t e r to seven I went out to finish my
rounds. My morning man, Ace, would have been there by then, unlocking the gates and doors for the students, teachers, and staff.
Halfway up the stairs to the upper campus I passed the mid-way lunch court. I thought I saw a motion in there and took the detour out of habit. A boy and girl were kissing on one of the benches. Their faces were plastered together, his hand was on her knee and her hand was on his. I couldn’t tell if she was urging him on or pushing him off. Maybe she didn’t know either.
“Good morning,” I said cheerily.
Those two kids jumped back from each other as if a powerful spring had been released between them. She was wearing a 2 4
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short plaid skirt and a white blouse under a green sweater. He had the jeans and T-shirt that almost every boy wore. They both looked at me speechlessly — exactly the same way Jesus and Benita had looked.
My shock was almost as great as those kids’. Eighteen-year-old Jesus and Benita in her mid-twenties . . . But my surprise subsided quickly.
“Go on up to your lockers or somethin’,” I said to the children.
As they scuttled off I thought about the Mexican boy I had adopted. He’d been a man since the age of ten, taking care of me and Feather like a fierce and silent mama bear. Benita was a lost child and here my boy had a good job at a supermarket and a sailboat he’d made with his own hands.
Thinking of Feather dying in her bed, I couldn’t get angry with them for hurrying after love.
The rest of the campus was still empty. I recognized myself in the barren yards and halls and classrooms. Every step I took or door I closed was an exit and a farewell.
“ g o o d m o r n i n g ,
Mr. Rawlins,” Ada Masters said when I appeared at her door. “Come in. Come in.”
She was sitting on top of her desk, shoes off, rubbing her left foot.
“These damn new shoes hurt just on the walk from my car to the office.”
We never stood on ceremony or false manners. Though white and very wealthy, she was like many down-to-earth black women I’d known.
“I’m taking a leave of absence,” I said and the crease twisted my heart again.
“For how long?”
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“It might be a week or a month,” I said. But I was thinking that it might be ten years with good behavior.
“When?”
“Effective right now.”
I knew that Ada was hurt by my pronouncement. But she and I respected each other and we came from a generation that did not pry.
“I’ll get the paperwork,” she said. “And I’ll have Kathy send you whatever you have to sign.”
“Thanks.” I turned to leave.
“Can I be of any help, Mr. Rawlins?” she asked my profile.
She was a rich woman. A very rich woman if I knew my clothes and jewelry. Maybe if I was a different man I could have stayed there by borrowing from her. But at that time in my life I was unable to ask for help. I convinced myself that Ada wouldn’t be able to float me that kind of loan. And one more refusal would have sunk me.
“Thanks anyway,” I said. “This is somethin’ I got to take care of for myself.”
Life is such a knotty tangle that I don’t know even today whether I made the right decision turning away from her offer.
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Ihad changed the sign on my office door from easy rawlins — research and delivery
to simply investiga-
tions. I made the switch after the Los Angeles Police Department had granted me a private detective’s license for my part in keeping the Watts riots from flaring up again by squelching the ugly rumor that a white man had murdered a black woman in the dark heart of our boiler-pot city.
I went to my fourth-floor office on Central and Eighty-sixth to check the answering machine that Jackson Blue had given me.
But I found little hope there. Bonnie had left a message saying that she’d called the clinic in Montreux and they would allow Feather’s admission with the understanding that the rest of the money would be forthcoming.
Forthcoming. The people in that neighborhood had heart disease and high blood pressure, cancer of every type, and deep 2 7
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self-loathing for being forced to their knees on a daily basis.
There was a war waging overseas, being fought in great part by young black men who had no quarrel with the Vietnamese people. All of that was happening but I didn’t have the time to worry about it. I was thinking about a lucky streak in Vegas or that maybe I should go out and rob a bank all on my own.
Forthcoming. The money would be forthcoming all right. Rayford would have a gun at the back of his neck and I’d be sure to have a fully loaded .44 in my sweating hand.
There was one hang-up on the tape. Back then, in 1966, most folks weren’t used to answering machines. Few people knew that Jackson Blue had invented that device to compete with the downtown mob’s control of the numbers business. The under-world still had a bounty on his head.