did was somehow unprofessional.
I thanked Miss Falana and left.
Before the door closed I heard her shouting, “Roger McHenry, return to your seat!”
I RAN INTO ETTA outside of the maintenance office.
“What you gonna do about that dog mess?” she asked, referring to the smell that was coming from my hopper room.
“Etta,” I said, “I’m gonna head outta here. Listen. Don’t say anything about that dog, all right?”
“I ain’t gonna say nuthin’. But what about that mess?”
“Etta …”
“No.” She shook her head; her face was set and hard.
Mouse had left and the office was empty. I figured cleaning up dogdo wouldn’t take over a minute. But when I opened the hopper-room door I thought that Pharaoh must have had prunes for his breakfast.
It took a mop and bucket with ammonia solution to clean up that room. The dog had gone everywhere. Anything that was paper near the floor had to be thrown away. He had crawled up under the steel shelving and made a mess that took over twenty minutes of frantic cleaning.
I wanted to keep the dog a secret, and Pharaoh understood my plight. He sat back on his tail and laughed at me. He had on a dog grin with his pointy tongue lapping up my misery.
I understood why the dead man had wanted to kill Pharaoh. I was close to it myself. Instead I threw the mutt into a burlap sack that I’d been keeping for rags.
I know it sounds mean to treat a dumb animal like that. And I can’t say that I didn’t get a certain amount of pleasure out of his discomfort. But I had to do him like that. If somebody saw me in the yard with Idabell’s dog it could have caused trouble. That dog was her alibi for something. And I didn’t want to cause her any grief if I didn’t have to.
CHAPTER 7
MANY MEN WOULD HAVE drowned Pharaoh right then. He was no good to anybody. But I had lived a dog’s life and knew what it was to have the big world turn against you.
I drove about ten blocks from the school and then let Pharaoh out of his bag.
At least he wasn’t grinning at me anymore.
I TOOK SURFACE STREETS out of Watts, back toward West Los Angeles and my home. I was trying to live the quiet life with my kids back then, away from the people and problems that I knew during my earlier years in L.A.
It was a nice house. Three small bedrooms and a kitchen that looked out on a bright green lawn. I had rosebushes and dahlias along the back fence and no fence against the southern yard; there I just let my neighbor’s wild ferns and bamboo do the job.
“Daddy! Daddy!” Feather yelled as I came through the door.
Pharaoh leaped out of my arms and went straight for her.
“Watch out!” I shouted. But I didn’t have to worry. Pharaoh jumped up into Feather’s arms and started licking her face. She laughed and giggled. Pharaoh jumped away from her and then leapt back into her arms—then he jumped away again. It was like they had been playmates for years.
“Daddy, thank you,” Feather said. “He’s beautiful.”
“We’re not keepin’ him, honey,” I said. Feather’s instant frown made me dislike that dog even more. “He’s only gonna stay a day or two. I told my friend that you’d want to take care of him.”
“What’s his name?”
“Angina.”
“What?”
“Angina. It’s a French name,” I said. “Means a pain in my heart. Where’s your brother?”
“He went out with Eddie to the store.”
Jesus was supposed to stay with Feather until I got home from work. That was his job.
Feather didn’t look anything like me, and Jesus did even less. They were both pickup children that I’d managed to save during the years when my employer was the street. She was seven then with crinkled golden hair and cafe-au-lait skin. Her eyes were like topaz at that time but they had been changing color over the years. Jesus had made her braids like the horns of a ewe going back and following the curve of her skull.
She had on a green dress that she’d picked out herself, with a puffy pink sweater.
“I love you,” I said.
When I picked her up the dog started barking. She was staring down at him, and I kissed her chubby cheek. I felt something wadded up in her shallow sweater pocket.
“What’s this?” I asked, fingering the lump.
Feather’s expression said, Uh-oh.
In the floppy open pocket was a fold of six or seven twenty-dollar bills.
“Where’d you get this money, honey?”
“Um. I dunno. I fount it.”
