She gave Hannibal an injection that put him out. Then she went about removing the bullet while I held his legs still. She sewed him up and gave us a bottle of antibiotic pills that he was to take over the next ten days.
After the doctor left, there was only Amethystine and me standing over my sleeping boy.
“He looks a lot like you,” she said.
“He does?” I really didn’t see it.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “How’s your wound?”
“It burns a little, that’s all.”
“So it isn’t making you feel weak or anything?”
“No. I’m fine.”
“Then why don’t you take me upstairs and make me a little one like this big one here?”
27
Making love to Amethystine blocked out everything that had come before. It was as if I were a kid again experiencing the world for the first time: colors, textures, breath. The feelings were so strong that it felt somehow impersonal, like I was drifting through another man’s dream.
“What you thinkin’?” Amethystine asked.
“That I’m happier than I should be.”
“Why not be happy?”
“Where I come from, if you take a break of any kind from the job at hand, then the ground will crumble from under your feet, and you’ll fall all the way down, into an early grave.”
She sat up in the bed beside me staring hard, not at me but at the words spoken.
After maybe a minute she said, “I know. I know you better than you think, Easy. I do. From the first time in your office when I came to get you to find Curt. I knew right then that we were meant to be together. Or... maybe not definitely, but if the stars aligned, then we could make something out of — of — I don’t know, that we could make something more out of what we are.
“Does that make sense?”
“Yeah. But at the same time, I got a thirty-eight-year-old son downstairs that I didn’t even know about before two days ago. His brother been murdered and the same folks wanna kill him too. And here I am... happy.”
“Here you are,” she said, taking my hands in hers. “Here we are.”
“Tell me somethin’.”
“What’s that, my love?”
“Where’d you get that bullet scar from?”
She took her time, watching me, maybe even glaring a wee bit. The wait was so long that I thought she wouldn’t respond. This was, in some ways, a relief, because part of me really didn’t want to know what happened.
“About a year and a half ago I met this guy,” she said out of nowhere. “His name was Chandler, and he had a doctorate in modern philosophy. I liked the way he thought about things, the way he talked. We spent some time together. His parents liked me. They had money, I don’t know where from. You hadn’t called, and I was, I don’t know, I was feeling like... lost. He took me to Paris over a long weekend. After that we spent time up north in Berkeley, where he was the youngest professor of philosophy that UCB ever had.
“But you know me, Easy. One day I woke up and realized that I was using him for filler in the space you left in my heart. I told him that I wasn’t going to marry him, and he said that I would. So, I walked out. I mean, there’s not a motherfucker on this planet gonna make me be somethin’ other than what I am. Not one. Not even you could do that, Mr. Easy.”
I smiled at myself, enjoying the way she told her tale, making me a part of what happened.
“What does any of that have to do with your scar?” I asked.
“As I was walking away to my car, he shot me.”
“Shot you?”
“Uh-huh,” she grunted in a tone that I could only call defiance. “I don’t know if he was aimin’ for my butt or what, but he didn’t shoot anymore, and so I got in the car and drove to the hospital. Lucky I got some paddin’ back there. They treated me and I came back down to LA.”
“What happened to Chandler?”
“I don’t know. The emergency room physician called the police, and I made up some story about bein’ on Isabella Street in Oakland. I told them that I had been lookin’ around for a friend of mine that lived up there and then somebody, I didn’t know who, shot me.”
I sighed broadly.
“What?” she asked.
“I don’t know, baby. If somebody asked me right now, what should I do, I’d be at a loss. But I could tell ’em this: you are my woman, as long as it lasts. And here I am, between right here and some other place.”
“You see?” she said.
“See what?”
“There Chandler was with his Plato and his Nietzsche. For him it was all just words. But you, Easy Rawlins, you got your feet on the ground, toes dug deep in the soil beneath your feet. I know exactly where I am when I’m with you.”
My mother died when I was seven. I loved her more than anyone I had ever known up until the day I met Amethystine. I tried to jump into the grave they laid my mom in. For years I dreamed of going back there and digging my way down to her. My mother tended my cuts and scrapes, bathed me in a tin tub next to a chicken coop, told me that I was the smartest person she’d ever known. When she died a light went out.
I went downstairs to see the man my wild oats had sown. He was unconscious. Dr. Lambert had told me he would probably sleep for hours.
“What you doin’?” Amethystine asked. She had come up behind me, speaking those words as she leaned up against my back.
“I gotta go do somethin’.”
“What?”
“A chore for my other son.”
“What can I do?”
“Fearless is coming here with Hannibal’s girlfriend, and I left my number with Anger, also called Lutisha. Can you be here for them?”
My best thinking is most often done behind the wheel of a car. I don’t even have to be driving. Just sitting there, I feel powerful, like some barbarian god on a throne of skulls seeing everything I need to and deciding on what had to get done.
The first and most important problem was Waynesmith the rich man. He was after my family. I was safe from most dangers on my mountaintop but not from Von Crudock or cancer. He wasn’t a criminal in the eyes of the law because he had never been, and would never be, convicted of a felony. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t receive punishment. Mouse would kill him if asked to. I mean, that would be human justice. Von Crudock had had both me and my son shot that very day. Murdering the man would be both justified and expedient. But maybe there was another way. My driving mind told me that I should at least try to find a nonlethal alternative.
The city of West Covina was a long drive from my home. But the journey, I knew, would be worth it. Nestled in the bosom of the San Gabriel Valley, the small municipality was a subject of the County of Los Angeles. I got there around sunset and, after consulting my forty-page Southern California map, I made my way to East Thackery Street. There I came upon a faded house that was in dire need of a paint job and a gardener. It was a big house that sat upon a hill of writhing weeds.
I parked out front and scaled the uneven stone pathway to the front door. The doorbell made no sound that I could hear. When I was just making up my mind to knock, the door slowly opened, revealing an older gray-haired white lady with a soft-skinned face and lantern-like green eyes.
“Yes?” she asked on a wisp of a voice. “Can I help you?”
“Hi,” I said brightly. “I came to ask a young man name of Terry a question or two.”
“What kind of questions?” I noticed that her right hand was reaching beyond the door jamb.
“My son, Jesus, is trying to figure out this problem he got, and he told me that Terry knew at least part of the answer.”