“They ain’t nobody else,” Fearless said, grinning.
Momma Tippy had a canvas enclosed food stand on Temple Street not twelve blocks from where we stood. In normal times we would have driven there or at least taken the streetcar, but, finances the way they were, we walked.
Fearless limped slightly, but he could walk at a fast clip. On the way, he regaled me with tales from the county lockup. He told about the man he had to beat to be left alone and about the guards who didn’t like him because he never got bothered or upset.
“I tried to tell ’em that I was a soldier,” Fearless reasoned. “That I knew how to take a order if I was in the stockade. But somehow they was mad just ’cause I wasn’t sour and moody. Can you believe that?”
Momma Tippy, a small nut-brown woman from Trinidad, served up seconds and thirds for Fearless at no cost because she felt bad that he had been locked up in a cell.
“M’boy didn’t deserve it,” she said. “Dey always be takin’ ’em. N’you know it ain’t right.”
After commiserations and eggs, Fearless reached across the table and put his hand on my shoulder.
“I know you need me, Paris,” Fearless said in an unusually somber tone. “And whatever it is I’m’onna help ya. ’Cause you know I got it.”
“Got what?”
“At first I was mad that you didn’t pay my fine. But then I was talkin’ to Cowboy —”
“Who?”
“That white dude said about me bein’ a war hero.”
“The one at the courthouse?”
“Yeah. He asked me if you owed me money, and I told him no. Then he asked was we related or if I had ever pulled you outta jail. I didn’t tell ’im ’bout them cops — that’s between us an’ them dead officers. But I started to think that over the years you done helped me again and again and I just kept on takin’ like some kinda dog can’t do for himself.” Fearless pointed a long finger at a spot over my head. “And that’s wrong, man. You don’t owe me to pay my bail. Uh-uh. So from now on it’s even Steven. I’m’a help you and pay you back, and the only time I’ll come to you is for a good meal or a good laugh.”
It wasn’t true. Fearless couldn’t stay out of trouble. But still, I was the one who was wrong. He proved that by forgiving me.
I told him about Elana Love and Leon Douglas.
“Damn, that’s some costly lovin’,” he said when I was through. “So you worried that they still gonna be after you?”
“That, yeah, but I also need to build back my store. I mean, damn, I didn’t do nuthin’. Dude kick my ass then shoot at me down the street. Burn down my store. He got to pay money for that.”
Fearless was looking down at his hands. He didn’t nod to agree with me or say anything at all.
“What you thinkin’ ’bout, Fearless?”
“Jail.”
OUR FIRST STOP WAS the Bridgett Beauty Shop on LaRue. Layla Brothers, Fearless’s last girlfriend before he got arrested, worked there fighting the kinks out of black women’s hair. She seemed happy to see Fearless, though she hadn’t even written him a card while he was in jail.
“You know, honey,” she said unashamedly to my friend, “I been goin’ out with Dwight Turner, and he’d’a got jealous if I started writin’ letters back and forth to you.”
Fearless didn’t seem to care. “We need some wheels, Layla,” he said. “Do you mind if we use your car?”
“ ’Course not. Here.” She took the keys from her purse. “What you doin’ after?”
“Well,” Fearless hesitated, “Paris and I might need the car for a couple’a days.”
“That’s okay. I can use my mama’s car. But you got to sleep at night, don’t you?” Now that Fearless was out of jail, Dwight Turner wasn’t even a consideration.
“Yeah, but…”
“But what?”
“Paris’s place burnt down, and you know I don’t have no apartment. So until we get some business done, we bound at the hip.”
Layla was taller than I with skin the color of unburnished brass. Her long hair had been dyed gold. She was prettier than she made herself, buxom and thin. She looked at me with a sneer that tried to be a smile and said, “I ain’t that greedy.”
