never lied to Harold. I told him that Miss Ostenberg was his mother and I was just his big mama. I guess I shoulda taken him wit’ me when I left. But you know I didn’t have the strength.”
“Did he come to you after he ran away?” I asked.
“He’d come stay with me and Sienna May now and then. But you know he was so wild. Most the time he was out in the street, livin’ in empty lots or shelters.”
“Didn’t the state come after him?”
“They did but Harold would just run away. They didn’t want him all that bad and he always looked older than he was. That’s because his face was so hard.”
“Do you know where I can find him, Miss May?”
“He comes by here once a year or so,” she said to the floor. “Last time was four or five months ago. He said that he liked the north side of Will Rogers Park because there was some good guys like to play dominoes there.”
“I won’t kill him, Miss May,” I said. “I want to but I won’t. I’ll just make sure the police get him.”
She looked up at me with those big eyes.
“I can tell that you’re a good man, Mr. Rawlings,” she whispered. “But I know Harold too. He wanna be good but he just don’t know how.”
“Do you have a picture of Harold that I can show to them?”
There was a tiny chest of three drawers next to the Murphy bed. She pulled open the middle drawer and took out a simple dark-wood frame. She handed this to me.
Harold was in his twenties when the picture had been taken, wearing a coat that was too large for him, probably borrowed from the portrait photographer. His eyes weren’t as dull and there was some hope in him at that moment. I wondered if he had already started murdering women then.
“Can I have it back when they’re through, Mr. Rawlings?” Honey May asked me.
“Just as soon as we’re through with it,” I said.
We looked at each other, both knowing what my words meant.
44
It was nearly ten at night. No domino players would be out that late. I drove back to my office and called home.
“Hello,” Feather said.
“What are you doing up so late, girl?” I asked the daughter of my heart.
“Daddy!” she shouted. “It’s you.”
“Sure it is, baby girl. Did you think I ran away?”
“I was scared that you were hurt down in the riot places.”
“No, baby. I’ve just been workin’ at my office. You know sometimes grown-ups have to work day and night.”
“But why can’t you come home, Daddy? I miss you.”
“I’ll be home when you wake up in the morning, baby. I promise.”
“You promise?”
“Cross my heart,” I said. “Is Bonnie there?”
“Uh-huh. Here.”
“Where are you, Easy?” Bonnie asked.
“At the office. What’s wrong?”
“A woman named Ginny Wright called at about eight. She said that Benita Flag had been looking around for sleeping pills. She tried to call Raymond but he wasn’t home. She said that you might want to know that.”
I took a deep breath. The world was feeling too big for me to handle. I wanted to go home and see my family. I wanted to sleep for a week. And when I got up I wanted to go to my job at Sojourner Truth Junior High School, mopping up spilled milk and checking to see that there was no litter in the schoolyard.
“I was gonna come right home, baby,” I said. “But I better look into this. Benita is one’a Raymond’s friends and she’s been under a lotta pressure lately.”
“That’s okay, Easy,” Bonnie cooed. “Jesus is here and he’s going to wait until you get back before he goes out on his boat again.”
WHEN NOBODY ANSWERED I knocked the door in. If I was wrong about Benita I could always put it back on its hinges. Living poor and black had done many things for me. It had made me a plumber and a carpenter, an electrician and a mason. I could put in windows, take a car engine apart, pave a highway, or run a steam engine. Being poor made more out of many men than any Harvard or army could imagine.
Benita Flag was on her bed with white foam coming from her mouth. She didn’t respond to shaking or slaps or cold water in her face.
I could have called an ambulance but poverty had taught me a lesson about that too. I had her at Mercy in less than twelve minutes. They pumped her stomach and shot medicine in her veins. A doctor named Palmer told me that she was so close to death that he didn’t know if they had done enough.
“You did the right thing,” he told me.
