“What did he leave?”
“He didn’t say that either. He just said to tell you. You in trouble, Easy?”
“Is the sky blue?”
“Not right now. It’s evenin’.”
“Then wait a bit. It’ll be there.”
Etta chuckled and so did I. She was no stranger to violent death. She’d once shot a white man, a killer, in the head because he was about to shoot me. If we couldn’t laugh in the face of death there’d be precious little humor for most black southerners.
“You take care, Easy.”
“Tell Mouse I need his advice.”
“When I see him.”
i s p e d o v e r to Primo’s place worried about having given his number to Philomena. Primo was a tough man, a Mexican by birth. He had spent his whole life traveling back and forth across the border and south of there. On one trip through Panama he’d met Flower, his wife. They lived in a house I owned and had more than a dozen kids. They took in stray children too, and animals of all kinds. Any grief I brought to them would cause pain for a thousand miles.
But Primo was sitting out in the large yard. He was laid back in a lawn chair, drinking a beer and watching six or seven grand-children play in the diminishing light. Flower was up on the porch with a baby in her arms. I wondered if it was her baby or just a grandchild.
2 2 2
C i n n a m o n K i s s
As I approached, half a dozen dogs ran at me growling and crying, wagging their tails and baring their fangs.
“Hi-ya!” Primo shouted at the animals.
The children ran forward, grabbing the dogs and pulling them back. A pure-bred Dalmatian eluded his child handler and jumped on me, pressing my chest with his forepaws.
“That’s my guard dog,” Primo said.
He put out a hand, which I shook as the dog licked my forearm.
“Love thy neighbor,” I said.
Primo liked my sense of humor. He laughed out loud.
“Flower,” he called. “Your boyfriend is here.”
“Send him to my bedroom when you finish twisting his ears,”
she responded.
“I wish I had time to sit, man,” I said.
“But you want them papers.” Primo finished my sentence.
“Papers?”
All the children, dogs, and adults crowded through the front door and into the house. There was shouting and laughing and fur floating in the air.
While Primo went into the back room looking for my delivery, Flower came very close to me. She stared in my face without saying anything.
She was a very black, beautiful woman. Her features were stern, almost masculine, most of the time, but when she smiled she honored the name her father had blessed her with.
At that moment she had on her serious face.
“How is she, Easy?”
“Very sick,” I said. “Very sick.”
“She will live,” Flower told me. “She will live and you will have a beautiful granddaughter from her.”
I touched Flower’s face and she took my hand in hers.
2 2 3
W a lt e r M o s l e y
The dogs stopped barking and the children hushed. I looked up and saw Primo standing there, smiling at me.
“Here it is,” he said, handing me a brown envelope large enough to contain unfolded pages of typing paper.
“Who left this?”
“A black boy. Funny, you know?”
Raphael.
“What did he say?”
“That this was what you wanted and he hopes you do what’s right.”
I stood there thinking with all the brown children and red-tongued dogs panting around me.
