“I’ll try. But you know Bonnie’ll be there to look after you. And before you know it you’ll be all better and back home again.”
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“But you’ll try and come?”
“I will, honey.”
I walked past Bonnie as she came up the aisle.
Neither of us spoke.
What was there to say?
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19
From the terminal building I could make out the white bow in Feather’s hair through a porthole in the plane. And even though she looked out now and then she never saw me waving. Her skin had been warm when I buckled her in but her eyes weren’t feverish. Bonnie had Mama Jo’s last ball of medicine, I’d made sure of that. Bonnie wouldn’t let Feather die no matter who her heart belonged to.
The passengers filed on. Final boarding was announced. The jet taxied away and finally, after a long delay, it nosed its way above the amber layer of smog that covered the city.
I stayed at the window watching as a dozen jets lined up and took off.
“Mister?”
She was past sixty with blue-gray hair and a big red coat made 1 2 3
W a lt e r M o s l e y
from cotton — the Southern California answer to the eastern overcoat. There was concern on her lined white face.
“Yes?” My voice cracked.
“Are you all right?”
That’s when I realized that tears were running from my eyes. I tried to speak but my throat closed. I nodded and touched the woman’s shoulder. Then I staggered away amid the stares of dozens of travelers.
i d i d n ’ t t u r n the ignition key right away.
“Snap out of it, Easy,” a voice, only partly my own, said. “You know once a man break down the wreck ain’t far off. You don’t have no time to wallow. You don’t have it like some rich boy can feel sorry for hisself.”
I drove on surface streets with no destination in mind. Even the next day I couldn’t have recalled the route I’d taken. But my instinct was to head in the direction of my office.
I was on Avalon, crossing Manchester, when I heard two horns. I looked up just as my car slammed into a white Chrysler.
The next thing I did was to check out the traffic light — it was against me. I had been distracted and a fool for the past few days, but something told me to take that German pistol out of my pocket and hide it under my seat before I did anything else.
I jumped out of my car and ran to the boatlike Chrysler.
There was a middle-aged black couple in the front seat. The man, who wore a brown suit, was clutching his arm and the woman, who was easily twice the man’s size, was bleeding freely from a cut over her left eye.
“Nate,” she was saying. “Nate, are you okay?”
The man held his left arm between the elbow and shoulder.
I opened the door.
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“Let’s get you outta there, man,” I said.
“Thank you,” he mouthed, his face twisted with the pain.
When I got him set up against the hood of his car I went around to the passenger’s side. It was then that I heard the first siren, a distant cry.
“Is my husband okay?” the woman asked.
She and Nate both had very dark skin and large facial features. Her mouth was wide and so were her nostrils. The blood was coming down but she didn’t seem to notice.
“Just a hurt arm,” I said. “He’s standing up on the other side.”
I took off my shirt and tore it in half, then I pressed the mate-rial against her wound.
“Why you pushin’ on my head?”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I am?” she said, the growing panic crowding her words.
When she looked down at her hands her eyes, nostrils, and mouth all grew to extraordinary proportions.
She screamed.
“Alicia!” Nate called. He was shambling around the front of the car.
A lanky woman came up to steady him.
