“It’s Mrs. Turner’s dog. They fumigated her house and she had to bring him in with her,” I said, happy that my old-time lying reflex was still intact. “I’ma put him back in the hopper room in the main office.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “Yeah.”
We walked across the playground, past the nine classroom bungalows, to the larger tan structure that was the maintenance building; a building that the custodians and workmen called the main office.
“Nice day,” I said.
“Uh-huh,” Etta replied.
She rolled back the steel-encased fire door and I followed her in. It was a large room with a long rectangular table down the middle. The cluttered table was strewn with newspapers and magazines that the janitors, carpenters, and electricians read on their union-guaranteed coffee breaks. The walls were lined with shelves that held various cleaning materials.
In the back corner stood a large ash desk where I sat every afternoon administering the laborers who kept the school running.
Behind the desk was a door that led to my personal hopper room.
I unlocked the door to the deep storage closet and tossed Pharaoh in among the steel shelves. He yelped when he hit the chilly cement floor and I felt a coldhearted satisfaction.
“I thought you couldn’t have no animals not in a cage around here, Easy?” Etta asked.
“It’s just a special thing, Etta. Dog’ll be gone tonight.”
“Uh-huh,” she said for the third time.
“What’s wrong wit’ you?” I asked.
“All I can say is that you could take a niggah out the street but you sure cain’t pull him outta his skin.”
“What the hell is that s’posed t’mean?” My language got closer to the street as I got angrier.
“What you doin’ moanin’ an’ groanin’ up in that woman’s classroom?”
“What you doin’ sneakin’ at the door?” I asked back.
If we were men it might have come to blows. But EttaMae was nobody I wanted to fight. She was a large woman with powerful arms and I’d been in love with her, off and on, for my entire adult life.
Before she could reply the fire door slid open and Jorge Pena walked in.
Pena was a red-colored Mexican-American who was loose-limbed, chubby, and fast with a grin. He had a deadly handsome mustache and dark eyes that laughed silently and often.
“Mr. Rawlins, Miss Harris,” Pena greeted us. “How are you?”
“Jorge,” Etta said, pronouncing the name in English fashion.
“Hey, Pena.” I waved and went to sit down at the head of the table. I lit up the best-tasting cigarette that I’d had in a month and remembered, with a slight shock, what had happened down in bungalow C2.
OVER THE NEXT FIFTEEN MINUTES my whole day staff reported in. First came Garland Burns, my daytime senior custodian, a hale vegetarian from Georgia who was the only black Christian Scientist I knew. Helen Plates dragged in moaning about how tired she was. Helen was an obese blond Negro from Iowa who claimed her good health was due to the fact that she ate a whole pie every day of her life. Archie “Ace” Muldoon was right on time; he was the first white man who was ever properly in my employ. And finally, last as usual, Simona Eng appeared. She was an Italian-Chinese girl who was working her way through night school.
They were my work gang, my union brothers, my friends.
I had spent most of my adult years hanging on by a shoestring among gangsters and gamblers, prostitutes and killers. But I never liked it. I always wanted a well-ordered working life. The Board of Education didn’t pay much in the way of salary but my kids had medical insurance and I was living a life that I could be proud of.
After some coffee and laughs I gave out the special jobs from reports and requests left on my desk.
Everybody set out on their daily tasks and the special jobs I gave. The cue for them to leave was me standing up; that meant it was time to go to work.
ONE OF THE NOTES was a request for me to appear in the office of the principal, Hiram T. Newgate. I took the long tier of granite stairs up past the large hill of grass to the older campus. By afternoon any one of us could have taken those steps at a run, but the first time was always hard.
Idabell was coming out of the side door of the administration building when I got there.
“Hi, Easy,” she said.
“Mrs. Turner,” I said with emphasis.
“Easy.”
“What?”
“I’ve got to go see about something.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing important, I just have to leave the campus for a while.”
“You wanna get your dog?” I asked.
“No. No, I’ll be back a little later,” she said. “Easy?”
“Yeah?”
