“Okay. I’m sorry if I bothered you.”
5
“No, you didn’t. Good-bye.”
6
“Bye.”
7
At one time I would have been near despair at that kind 8
of ending to a phone call. So few women ever seemed to 9
show an interest in me that if I had one on the line I never 10
wanted to let go. But that morning I wasn’t worried about 11
anything. I had discovered my calling. Or at least I had 12
found a door.
13
It was like a fairy tale my mother used to read to me —
14
looking for his cat, Bootsie, who had run away. The boy 16
searched and called and was very very sad when he came 17
upon an iron door in a tree. There was a tiny slit in the 18
door through which the boy could see a small elfin crea-19
ture — called a brownie — who was locked up and every 20
bit as sad as the child. They made an alliance, boy and elf, 21
that one would help the other and they would both be 22
happy ever after.
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I don’t remember the particulars, but the brownie was 24
freed and Bootsie was found. I spent years after that search-25
ing my ancestral woods for a door in a tree or the ground.
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I believed that somewhere there was a beneficent genie who S 27
I could free in exchange for happiness for all times.
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3rd Pass Pages
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Walter Mosley
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I had found that door after thirty years of searching. It 2
was the hatch to my own basement, and the brownie was 3
a white man who wanted to be caged. No matter the dif-4
ferences the main story was the same. I went to bed think-5
ing that I’d never fall asleep. But after only a moment I was 6
unconscious beneath the heads of my ancestors.
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