I saw him face down three men who had gotten it into their heads to disfigure a pretty boy who had taken away a girl they all wanted. The men threatened to cut Fearless too. “Maybe you will,” he said to them, “and then again, maybe you won’t.”
Fearless was more free in that iron cage than I was, or would ever be, on the outside.
I met Fearless in San Francisco after the war. His dress uniform was covered with medals. Around him were three young ladies, each one hoping to be his friend that night. I bought him a drink, saying that it was because I respected a soldier when really I just wanted to sit down at the table with those girls. But Fearless didn’t care. He appreciated my generosity and gave me a lifetime of friendship for a single shot of scotch.
“Fuckin’ four-F flat-footed fools,” a snaggletoothed white man was saying to me through the bars. “They get mad when a black man’s a hero ’cause they ain’t shit.”
The rake gave the white prisoner a stare, which was answered by a clown’s grimace. When I nodded to the white con, he smiled in answer, Nuthin’ to it.
Fearless was released from the cage. His irons were taken off. From under the table the rake brought out a gray cardboard box and handed it to Fearless.
When the guard pointed at a pen and a stack of forms, Milo spoke up.
“You should check your property before signing the release, Fearless.”
“Aw, that’s all right, Milo,” Fearless said in that careless friendly voice of his. “Why they wanna steal my paper wallet? Wasn’t no money in it in the first place.”
“Check anyway, son.”
6
MILO LEFT US in front of the municipal building. I was wearing the same black slacks and loose yellow shirt I had on when Elana Love dropped in on me — the only clothes to my name since the fire. Fearless wore gray pants and a black silk shirt with two lines of blue and yellow diamonds down either side of the chest. As I said before, I’m a small man, five eight and slim. Fearless is tall, over six feet, and though he’s slender, his shoulders warn you about his strength. He’s also a good-looking man. A group of passing black women attested to that with their eyes. Even a couple of white women glanced more than once.
But it wasn’t just a case of simple good looks. Fearless has a friendly face, a pleasant openness that makes you feel good. If you look at him, he’ll nod and say good day no matter who you are.
“Fearless,” I said.
“Before you say anything, Paris, I have to have me a cheddar cheese omelet, pork patty sausages, and about a gallon’a fresh orange juice. I got to have it after three months under that jail.”
“Momma Tippy?” I asked.
“They ain’t nobody else,” Fearless said, grinning.
Momma Tippy had a canvas enclosed food stand on Temple Street not twelve blocks from where we stood. In normal times we would have driven there or at least taken the streetcar, but, finances the way they were, we walked.
Fearless limped slightly, but he could walk at a fast clip. On the way, he regaled me with tales from the county lockup. He told about the man he had to beat to be left alone and about the guards who didn’t like him because he never got bothered or upset.
“I tried to tell ’em that I was a soldier,” Fearless reasoned. “That I knew how to take a order if I was in the stockade. But somehow they was mad just ’cause I wasn’t sour and moody. Can you believe that?”
Momma Tippy, a small nut-brown woman from Trinidad, served up seconds and thirds for Fearless at no cost because she felt bad that he had been locked up in a cell.
“M’boy didn’t deserve it,” she said. “Dey always be takin’ ’em. N’you know it ain’t right.”
After commiserations and eggs, Fearless reached across the table and put his hand on my shoulder.
“I know you need me, Paris,” Fearless said in an unusually somber tone. “And whatever it is I’m’onna help ya. ’Cause you know I got it.”
“Got what?”
“At first I was mad that you didn’t pay my fine. But then I was talkin’ to Cowboy —”
“Who?”
“That white dude said about me bein’ a war hero.”
“The one at the courthouse?”
“Yeah. He asked me if you owed me money, and I told him no. Then he asked was we related or if I had ever pulled you outta jail. I didn’t tell ’im ’bout them cops — that’s between us an’ them dead officers. But I started to think that over the years you done helped me again and again and I just kept on takin’ like some kinda dog can’t do for himself.” Fearless pointed a long finger at a spot over my head. “And that’s wrong, man. You don’t owe me to pay my bail. Uh-uh. So from now on it’s even Steven. I’m’a help you and pay you back, and the only time I’ll come to you is for a good meal or a good laugh.”
It wasn’t true. Fearless couldn’t stay out of trouble. But still, I was the one who was wrong. He proved that by forgiving me.
I told him about Elana Love and Leon Douglas.
“Damn, that’s some costly lovin’,” he said when I was through. “So you worried that they still gonna be after you?”
“That, yeah, but I also need to build back my store. I mean, damn, I didn’t do nuthin’. Dude kick my ass then shoot at me down the street. Burn down my store. He got to pay money for that.”
Fearless was looking down at his hands. He didn’t nod to agree with me or say anything at all.
“What you thinkin’ ’bout, Fearless?”
“Jail.”
OUR FIRST STOP WAS the Bridgett Beauty Shop on LaRue. Layla Brothers, Fearless’s last girlfriend before he got arrested, worked there fighting the kinks out of black women’s hair. She seemed happy to see Fearless, though she hadn’t even written him a card while he was in jail.
“You know, honey,” she said unashamedly to my friend, “I been goin’ out with Dwight Turner, and he’d’a got jealous if I started writin’ letters back and forth to you.”
Fearless didn’t seem to care. “We need some wheels, Layla,” he said. “Do you mind if we use your car?”
“ ’Course not. Here.” She took the keys from her purse. “What you doin’ after?”
“Well,” Fearless hesitated, “Paris and I might need the car for a couple’a days.”
“That’s okay. I can use my mama’s car. But you got to sleep at night, don’t you?” Now that Fearless was out of jail, Dwight Turner wasn’t even a consideration.
“Yeah, but…”
“But what?”
“Paris’s place burnt down, and you know I don’t have no apartment. So until we get some business done, we bound at the hip.”
Layla was taller than I with skin the color of unburnished brass. Her long hair had been dyed gold. She was prettier than she made herself, buxom and thin. She looked at me with a sneer that tried to be a smile and said, “I ain’t that greedy.”
Fearless laughed and touched her elbow.
He said, “I understand, babe,” then walked off with me and her keys.
LAYLA’S CAR WAS a big Packard. The pink sedan had a straight eight engine that guzzled gas at the rate of ten miles a gallon. We cranked down the windows and lit up Pall Mall cigarettes. Fearless had a perpetual grin on his face, and I was pretty happy too. It had been an act of will for me to leave him in that jail cell, mind over matter. I knew when we were driving that we were supposed to be together, rolling along like two carefree dogs with the wind in their faces.
The Tannenbaum house was just off Brooklyn Avenue in East L.A., the once-Jewish neighborhood that was being repopulated by Mexicans. The house was a smallish yellow job. With two floors and six windows facing the street, it had a few bushes but no trees. The lawn was lovely, however, green and manicured.