Black Hornet

stubble and memory.

The place was cheap because no one else wanted to live there-either in the neighborhood, or behind that house. Most of those who had moved in over the years never made the second month’s rent.

But I loved it. No one would ever find me here. It was like living in a secret fortress or on an island, cut off from the mainland by the house and high stone wall. And it was private, or had been until the house’s porch fell in and its baker’s dozen of renters all started coming and going by the back door, two yards from my front (and only) one.

Returning from my evening as a guest of the city, I walked through a gap in the wall and along the remains of a cement path that once ran the house’s length.

Someone stood knocking at the door of the slave quarters.

As I said, no one could find me here. No one’s supposed to find me here.

So what did no one want?

Instinctively slumping to make myself look smaller, I shuffled that way, talking as I went.

“See I’m not the only one looking for Mr. Lewis. No answer, huh? Man ain’t never home! This my third trip all the way up here. He owe you money too?”

The man took his fist away from the door and put it in the pocket of his blazer. It had made the trip before; the cloth there was badly misshapen and the coat hung low on that side. Tan slacks, a wrinkled white cotton shirt and loose brown knit tie that all somehow had the feel of a uniform about them, as though he might wear these same clothes day after day.

“Don’t suppose you’d have any idea where he is? Couple things I need to ask him about.”

“Man, I don’t even know what he looks like, you know? Boss just says: We got complaints on Blah-Blah, go find him. So I do. Usually do, anyway.”

“Possible I might be able to help you there, seeing as I have a pretty good description. Big man, usually wears a black gabardine suit, tie. Course, that could be most anyone.” He grinned. “You, for instance.”

“Well. No way you’re the Man, black as you are.”

He took the hand back out of his pocket and extended it. “You have to be Griffin.”

I shook it. “I do indeed. However hard I try not to be sometimes.”

“And you know, I bet sometimes you almost make it.”

“Almost.”

“Don’t we all, brother. And we just keep right on trying.” When we let go, his hand crept back to the pocket. I don’t think he even noticed anymore. “I’m Arthur Straughter, but everybody calls me Hosie. You got a few minutes?”

I shrugged, then nodded.

“Something I’d like to talk to you about. But not here. You ever take a drink this early in the morning?”

“It’s been known to happen. Especially when I’ve still not been to bed. But I’d have to ask, first, what your business is with me.”

“Fair enough. Miss Dupuy … Esme and I …”

He looked off at the wall. No cues written on it. His face every bit as unreadable.

“She meant a lot to me, Griffin. We were together almost six years. And I can’t begin to tell you what I’m feeling now. I’m not even sure myself. But you were with her at the end, you were the last person saw her alive. I thought maybe we could talk about that, what Ez did, what she said. I don’t know why I think that might help. But it might. What else do I have?”

“A few last words,” I said.

“Right. Like Goethe’s More Light! Thoreau’s Moose! Indians! Or the grammarian: I am preparing to, or I am about to, die. Either may be used. I did an article on last words once. Now the most important thing in my life’s just happened, and I know I’ll never write about it.

“But if you can spare me half an hour or so, Griffin, I’d appreciate it. And I’ll be in your debt.”

We walked toward Claiborne, to a place called the Spasm Jazzbar flanked by a storefront Western Union and Hit and Run Liquors, in one of those easy silences that can settle in unexpectedly. Two feet past the open door, the bar itself was as dark and fraught with memory as Straughter’s thoughts must have been. Whatever burdens came in here never left; they remained, became a part of the place, piled up atop previous layers.

A couple of walkers sat together at the bar. Both looked over their shoulders as we entered. I knew one of them, a friend of Verne’s they called Little Sister on the street, a white girl who always worked the colored parts of town. Little Sister said something to her companion and they both turned back to their daiquiris.

Straughter and I stopped off at the bar for double bourbons on our way to a table in the back corner. Chairs were still inverted on the table. Not that the place ever closed, but they shoved things around and ran a mop through from time to time. Then the invisible layers, the real refuse, would part to let the mop pass and close like a sluggish sea behind it.

“I’m sorry. I really don’t know what else to say. I’ve never had anyone I loved-” I became aware of my pause elongating “-die.”

But I went on to tell him about B.R., about the fight, how Esme and I had met in the wake of it all. The way she crossed her legs and slumped down in the chair and held her glass up to whatever light there was, constantly checking levels, color, how the world looked through that amber lens-as though placing it between herself and the light of some pending eclipse.

He must know all this, I said.

Yes, of course. But the particulars are what matter.

“We decided to go get some food. Dunbar’s, maybe. Or Henry’s Soul Kitchen. That time of night, a mixed party, choices were limited.”

She didn’t talk a lot about you, I told him.

When in fact she’d said nothing at all.

“Funny, but even after she called in her story and said now she could relax, she still listened more than she talked. Watching people, listening to them, the way they moved, how they leaned in and out of conversations. Always somehow apart. I guess she never got far away from that. All these stories, all these lives, went on spinning around her.

“So she didn’t say much. Asked me a lot of questions about my life. But about her own, from what little she did say, I definitely had a sense of strength at the center, at the core.”

“Me.”

“You.”

Straughter went up to the bar and brought back new drinks.

“Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate your telling me that. And I want you to know that my appreciation is in no way diminished by your story’s being an utter lie.”

I started to protest, but he cut me off.

“Ez would never have spoken to anyone about me. Not once in all these years did she talk to anyone else about our life together. She just plain would not do it.”

I spread my hands on the table between us. What could I say?

“But the rest, I’m grateful to you for that. Sometimes the smallest souvenirs turn out to be the best ones, with time.”

“I don’t really see how I could have helped.”

“But you did. Want one more?”

“Sure, but it’s my turn. Beer okay?”

I put the bottle in front of him and asked how he found me.

“You don’t know who I am, do you?”

Later, I’d learn about Hosie Straughter. How he came down from Oxford, Mississippi, at age seventeen, self- taught and dressed in hand-me-downs, and ten years later won a Pulitzer. How he got fired from The Times-Picayune for writing a series on race relations in the city (only a part of the first installment ever saw print) and, on a wing and a prayer and small donations from middle-class black families, began publishing