I turned and saw two men and then Mouse rammed me with his shoulder. Two shots sounded and echoed in the chamber of walls. The side window of the car exploded. Mouse pulled a meat cleaver from his belt and sent it twirling at the man who had taken the shots. It was Joey Beam. He was taking aim at me when the spinning blade hacked into the side of his neck.
The next two shots caught Mouse. He grunted each time he was hit and sank to his knees.
Sallie Monroe was swinging to shoot me when I leapt up on top of the roof of Mouse’s car and landed on top of the fat gangster. He dropped his gun. I threw a left hook a little wide of his head.
Sallie jumped on me when I missed and bore me down to the ground with his weight. He was good with his girth. He’d let his stomach fall against my ribs and then, when I was stunned, he’d ball his fist and hit me in the head.
Sallie grabbed me around the throat and started to squeeze. Out of one side of my sight I saw Mouse trying to rise, but he failed. On the other side Joey Beam was doing his last dance lying flat on his back, yellow jacket sopping up his own blood.
Suddenly the little yellow dog came into view. He was snarling and snapping. I waited for his attack on Sallie to throw the big man off. I had remembered my pistol by then and only needed a little room to lay my hands on it. All I needed was Pharaoh’s distraction.
That’s when the yellow dog launched his attack on me.
I could hear the skin of my own ear ripping as Pharaoh lent his jaws to Sallie’s cause.
Hatred surged in my blood. I boxed Sallie’s right ear and then his left; I did it again and kneed him. Then I grabbed his neck like it was a fat eggplant and dug my fingers in and twisted with a frenzy that no sexual act has ever equaled in my life.
I watched Sallie’s eyes go from life to death. And then I was up trying to stomp the life out of Pharaoh. But the dog was too quick and made it under the car.
“Easy.” It was Mouse. He’d made it halfway to his feet and was leaning up against the wall. He had both hands over his chest. “Get the gun, man,” he rasped. “Get the knife.”
I got Sallie’s gun, which was lying at his side, and the meat cleaver that had come from my own kitchen drawer. I took them to the car and helped Mouse into the seat.
Once behind the wheel I was flying backwards.
“Take me home, Easy.”
“We better get you to a hospital, Ray.”
“Naw, man. I’m okay. We don’t wanna get tied up in no killin’s.” He was smiling. Smiling.
“How bad you hit?”
“Shoulder,” he whispered. “Just in the arm.”
“Man, I thought you said you were unarmed!” I shouted. I didn’t know why. I wanted to say that I was sorry, I guess.
“I just said that I didn’t have no gun, Easy. I got the knife at your house. You know a knife don’t hardly even count.” He laughed weakly and coughed hard.
I DROVE SURFACE STREETS down to Compton, mainly to keep away from red lights. I wanted to keep moving. With the window busted out I didn’t want people looking to see what we were up to.
When we were about half the way there I said, “Ray. Ray?” But he didn’t answer. I looked over and saw him slumped almost exactly the way Idabell had been.
I wanted to go to the hospital, and I didn’t want to. Raymond had told me that it was an arm shot. He wasn’t bleeding that badly that I could see.
Maybe he’d just passed out.
I drove on.
ETTA WAS THERE when I drove up on the lawn. She’d heard the car coming and came out to the door. She saw something in the way that I was driving and started to run.
“LaMarque, stay in the house!” she shouted.
I was letting Raymond out onto the lawn by the time she reached us.
His left eye was half open. The right one was closed. The shots were to his chest. Two wicked holes in his right breast.
“Lord, no,” was the only wasted breath that Etta had. “LaMarque! Call the emergency number. Tell’em a white man’s been shot here at the house.”
She bent down to Raymond and lifted his head. With her ear to his mouth she checked his breathing. Then she stared hard into his face as if she were willing her life into his.
She turned to me and said, “You better git, Easy.”
“Etta, let me explain.”
“Go on, Easy.”
It was a hard dismissal. I wanted her to forgive me, to tell me that it was okay. But she had turned her attentions to her man’s deep wounds.
“Daddy!” LaMarque screamed as he came running up to the scene.
When he yelled again Etta stood up and pointed her finger in his face. “Hush!” she commanded. He wilted and she asked, “Did you call emergency?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
