“Okay,” I said. “You just point me in the right direction and pull the trigger. That’s all you got to do.”
I could feel my language turning toward my southern roots. Jackson brought out the country in me.
“There’s a flop house over on Manchester near Avalon. You know it?”
“Gray bungalow,” I said, “with boarded-up windows.”
“That’s the place. White guy run it. Man named Bill. I think he was a preacher or a priest or sumpin’ but he got the call and put that place in. He wanna help people when they down. You know I been there a few times myself. Before I got it together and started —”
“Livin’ off of Jewelle,” I said, cutting off whatever story he’d invented to make it seem like he was making it on his own.
“Why you wanna fuck wit’ me, Easy? Fuck wit’ me and then ask me for my advice.”
“Excuse me,” I said. “Go on.”
“Bill’s a good guy. He likes Negroes and he knows about that foot on the neck thing you talkin’ ’bout. I mean, he’s part of the problem but he mean well.”
“What’s that supposed to mean —‘part of the problem’?”
“It’s like when the doctor I used to have would give me a penicillin injection and every two weeks later I’d come down sick again,” he said. “Finally after about a year I went to the medical library at UCLA and looked up about those antibiotics. I realized that he never gave me enough. That way he had me comin’ back for more. You know that doctor wasn’t no better than a pusher. The only difference with Bill is that he don’t have enough medicine to pass around. One bowl of soup and a sandwich and a cot—that’s all he can give ya. And you know, Easy, when you only give enough medicine to keep the disease down, it gets stronger down there and come back with a vengeance.”
“So you think Father Bill there would know about Harold?” I asked.
“Yes sir. I sure do. Every brother been down on his luck been to Brother Bill’s mission at one time or other. Everybody.”
“So what should I do?”
Jackson smiled and hunched his shoulders.
“I ain’t gonna get my hands dirty, Easy,” he said. “But that don’t mean you have to come out clean.”
ON THE RIDE back to my house we talked about the internally rhyming irony of the phrases “space shots” and “race riots.” Using that as his argument Jackson postulated that there was some sort of mathematical and poetic necessity that brings about a balance in scientific, economic, and social extremes.
“You can’t have a rich man if you don’t have a poor one, Easy,” he said. “You can’t have a clean floor unless you got somewhere to put the dirt.”
“What you gonna do if you get that job, Jackson?”
“Work.”
“I mean really.”
“I’m a changed man, Easy,” the man who most resembled a black coyote said. “No more shit, brother. I’ma make a nest for Jewelle and feather it with hard-earned cash.”
I rubbed my bristly chin and wondered. Maybe the world had changed in the fires of the riots. Maybe I had to let go of the order of things that I had always known.
It made me feel unsure and hopeful like a man weak from hunger who stumbles upon an empty store filled with delicacies. How much could I eat before they came to take me away?
28
Jackson left me on the sidewalk in front of my house. He climbed into a yellow pickup truck. I was sure that there was some story around him driving that truck but I didn’t ask. It was very late and he wanted to get home and tell Jewelle about his new job.
BONNIE WAS NAKED on top of the covers. She moved her head and gasped when I came into the room but I could tell that she was still asleep.
“Mama?” she cried.
I whispered, “It’s okay.”
“Papa?”
“Go to sleep.”
I sat down on the bed next to her and put my palm against her forehead.
I sat there looking at her body. Bonnie had a curvaceous but lean body with a great mound of pubic hair and powerful thighs that had been made strong by walking thousands of miles through her Guyanese childhood.
“I love them,” she said.
“Who?”
“Both of them.”
She could have been talking about the children or her parents, who she thought had come into the room. But my suspicious imagination jumped to another conclusion.
“Easy and Joguye?”
“I want to go fishin’,” she complained.
“Who?” I asked again.
“We can ride the big fish and go down to the seas and under the coral.”
“Who?”
“What?” she asked, still asleep. “What did you say?” she asked, and I knew she was awake.
“I didn’t mean to wake you up,” I said.
“What did you ask me, Easy?” She sat up without covering herself.
“You were talking in your sleep.”
“What did I say?”
“Something about fishing and coral at the bottom of the sea.”
Bonnie smiled.
“About my home,” she said. “Papa used to take me fishing but he stopped when I started to become a woman.”
“Why wouldn’t he take you then?”
“Because he didn’t want to make me into a boy, that’s what he said.”
I wanted to ask her if Joguye Cham had taken her fishing when they spent their holiday on Madagascar. But my courage fled when she was awake.
I stood up and took two steps toward the door.
“Are you coming to bed?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
“What time is it?”
“Late. You get back to sleep.”
I went out into the little living room. A few moments later Bonnie followed wearing her robe. I knew that Jesus must have been home because she only put on that garment to hide from his eager teenage eyes.
“You want some tea?” she asked me.
“Yeah.”
WE SAT AT the small table in the living room drinking tea, using the lemons from our own tree for spice.
I told her about Harold and Suggs and the women who were murdered but no one knew that there was a connection between them.
She asked me to come to bed but I told her to go on, that I wasn’t tired.
“But you have to sleep,” she said.
“All I have to do is die and pay taxes,” I replied.
After that we talked about all kinds of things. About how Jesus seemed to be becoming a man without all of the teenage rock and roll nonsense that was going on in every other house on the block. We talked about liquored plantains and fruitcakes and how she used to swim naked in the ocean.
“I would swim out so far that I could hardly see the shore,” she said. “I’d do that in the summer when it was hot and only very far out did the water turn cool.”
“Swimmin’ instead’a riotin’,” I said.
“I suppose we were freer then,” she agreed. “I mean inside of us. We were colonized but still our home belonged to us.”
“I wish I could have seen you way out there,” I said. “I wish I was a fisherman and you got hung up in my net. That’s a fish story right there.”
Bonnie kissed me and then turned so that she could lean against my chest.
I held her, thinking about the southern oceans surrounding her as I did with my arms.
29
At sunup Bonnie and I went down to a breakfast stand facing the beach in Santa Monica. The sands were empty at six-fifteen. We talked about nothing for a while and then we turned up our cuffs and walked along the shore.
Bonnie was the first woman ever to make me feel guilty about being a man. I felt bad about my heart racing whenever I saw Juanda. Here I had a wonderful woman who knew the world from a whole different perspective. She read Latin and had traveled extensively in Eastern Africa and elsewhere. She was beautiful and trusting and she never questioned my crazy little office or the work I did in the divide between the police and black L.A.