“That’s what I’m thanking you for.”
22
Hello?” a black woman said in a gruff but not unfriendly tone.
“Juanda there?” I asked.
As the words came out of my mouth my heart twitched and my stomach turned. I had convinced myself that I was calling the fine young woman because I needed her help. And as I look back on the situation I realize that I really did need her. But there was more than that to the call. I loved Bonnie and had no intention of changing my situation but still I yearned to be in the presence of the chattering young woman who lied to save me and then led me to freedom.
“Hello?” she said in my ear.
“Juanda?”
“Mr. Rawlins.”
“Easy,” I said. “Call me Easy.”
“I was hopin’ you would call,” she said. There was no pretense in this woman. She wanted to know me and she let me know it.
“Yeah. Well, I think I might need some more help from you if you wouldn’t mind.”
“I don’t mind. You gonna come pick me up?”
I gulped and said, “Yeah.”
She gave me her address on a sigh.
I said that I’d be around in the early afternoon.
My next call was to Bonnie.
“Rawlins residence,” she said into the receiver.
“Were you ever thinking that we’d get married?” I asked without preamble.
Her response was silence.
“I didn’t mean to drop it on you, baby,” I said. “I mean . . . I guess I feel a little crazy out here.”
“Are you okay, Easy?”
“No.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t think that white boy killed Nola.”
“That really isn’t up to you, is it?”
“No. But if I don’t look at it closely I can’t be sure the police will either.”
“Why not? That’s their job.”
“At best their job is keeping the peace,” I said. “And right here the peace will be best served by this white man takin’ the heat.”
“Oh,” she said.
“And if he didn’t kill her, then somebody else did. But the cops won’t care about that. They never worry about exactly who did what. Catchin’ crooks is like herdin’ cattle for them. So what if one or two get away? They’re bound to be caught somewhere down the line. And if they round up an innocent man, they’ll just tell ya that he probably did somethin’ else they didn’t catch him for.”
“But Easy,” Bonnie said.
“What?” I lit up a Lucky Strike.
“You don’t have the kind of resources that the police do. You can’t go out there and find some killer that you know nothing about.”
“You’re right about that, honey. But . . .”
“What?”
“That’s why those people were out there shootin’ and burnin’ and throwin’ rocks. Because they’re sick and tired of knowin’ that they can’t ever get it right. They’re tired’a bein’ told that they can’t win.”
“Did they win?” she asked me.
“They mighta been wrong,” I said. “But at least they tried.”
“Okay.”
It was more than her giving in to my hardheaded ways. She knew that I needed her blessing to go out so far from safety.
“I love you,” we both said together.
After she hung up I slammed the pay phone handset down so hard that it broke in my hand.
I DROPPED BY my office at Sojourner Truth before going to meet Juanda. I had an extra suit of clothes in a locked closet there. It was a rabbit gray two-piece ensemble with a single-button jacket. I also had a cream-colored shirt and bone shoes. I took the clothes down to the boy’s gym, where I showered and shaved,
