“Are you crazy, Easy?”
“They don’t do it out at Sojourner Truth but maybe two times in a year. And you know that’s wrong.”
“And me throwin’ rocks gonna change that?”
“Maybe not for you.”
“Definitely not,” Jackson said. “Especially if I get arrested or killed.”
I could still smell the smoke from the streets in my office.
“I need to find this man Harold,” I said. “You got any ideas?”
“I’m not gonna get my hands dirty, Easy. I’ma take this here job as a computer man and I ain’t never gonna be in these streets again.”
“Okay,” I said. “You just point me in the right direction and pull the trigger. That’s all you got to do.”
I could feel my language turning toward my southern roots. Jackson brought out the country in me.
“There’s a flop house over on Manchester near Avalon. You know it?”
“Gray bungalow,” I said, “with boarded-up windows.”
“That’s the place. White guy run it. Man named Bill. I think he was a preacher or a priest or sumpin’ but he got the call and put that place in. He wanna help people when they down. You know I been there a few times myself. Before I got it together and started —”
“Livin’ off of Jewelle,” I said, cutting off whatever story he’d invented to make it seem like he was making it on his own.
“Why you wanna fuck wit’ me, Easy? Fuck wit’ me and then ask me for my advice.”
“Excuse me,” I said. “Go on.”
“Bill’s a good guy. He likes Negroes and he knows about that foot on the neck thing you talkin’ ’bout. I mean, he’s part of the problem but he mean well.”
“What’s that supposed to mean —‘part of the problem’?”
“It’s like when the doctor I used to have would give me a penicillin injection and every two weeks later I’d come down sick again,” he said. “Finally after about a year I went to the medical library at UCLA and looked up about those antibiotics. I realized that he never gave me enough. That way he had me comin’ back for more. You know that doctor wasn’t no better than a pusher. The only difference with Bill is that he don’t have enough medicine to pass around. One bowl of soup and a sandwich and a cot—that’s all he can give ya. And you know, Easy, when you only give enough medicine to keep the disease down, it gets stronger down there and come back with a vengeance.”
“So you think Father Bill there would know about Harold?” I asked.
“Yes sir. I sure do. Every brother been down on his luck been to Brother Bill’s mission at one time or other. Everybody.”
“So what should I do?”
Jackson smiled and hunched his shoulders.
“I ain’t gonna get my hands dirty, Easy,” he said. “But that don’t mean you have to come out clean.”
ON THE RIDE back to my house we talked about the internally rhyming irony of the phrases “space shots” and “race riots.” Using that as his argument Jackson postulated that there was some sort of mathematical and poetic necessity that brings about a balance in scientific, economic, and social extremes.
“You can’t have a rich man if you don’t have a poor one, Easy,” he said. “You can’t have a clean floor unless you got somewhere to put the dirt.”
“What you gonna do if you get that job, Jackson?”
“Work.”
“I mean really.”
“I’m a changed man, Easy,” the man who most resembled a black coyote said. “No more shit, brother. I’ma make a nest for Jewelle and feather it with hard-earned cash.”
I rubbed my bristly chin and wondered. Maybe the world had changed in the fires of the riots. Maybe I had to let go of the order of things that I had always known.
It made me feel unsure and hopeful like a man weak from hunger who stumbles upon an empty store filled with delicacies. How much could I eat before they came to take me away?
28
Jackson left me on the sidewalk in front of my house. He climbed into a yellow pickup truck. I was sure that there was some story around him driving that truck but I didn’t ask. It was very late and he wanted to get home and tell Jewelle about his new job.
BONNIE WAS NAKED on top of the covers. She moved her head and gasped when I came into the room but I could tell that she was still asleep.
“Mama?” she cried.
I whispered, “It’s okay.”
“Papa?”
“Go to sleep.”
