“Not too much. He’s married and got a whole house full’a chirren.”
“Where does he live?”
“On Sixty-third Street.” She recited the address, and I wrote it down, thinking that I had found more trouble in one day than most men come across in a decade.
I had called Mouse because he and Christmas Black were friends. I had hoped to find help, not give it. But when you live a life among desperate men and women, any door you open might have
3
I hadn’t imbibed any alcohol whatsoever in years. But since Bonnie left I thought about sour mash whiskey every day. I was sitting in the living room in front of a dark TV, thinking about drinking, when the phone rang.
Another symptom of my loneliness was that my heart thrilled with fear every time someone called or knocked on the door. I knew it wasn’t her. I knew it, but still I worried about what I could say.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Rawlins?” a girl asked.
“Yes.”
“Is something wrong? You sound funny.”
“Who is this?”
“Chevette.”
It hadn’t been a full day since I’d almost murdered a man over the woman-child, and already I had to reach for her in my memory.
“Hi. Something wrong? Is pig man botherin’ you?”
“No,” she said. “My daddy told me that I should call and say thank you. I would have anyway, though. He says that we gonna move to Philadelphia to live with my uncle. He says that way we can have a new start back there.”
“That sounds like a great idea,” I said with poorly manufactured enthusiasm.
Chevette sighed.
I got lost in that sigh.
Chevette saw me as her savior. First I took her away from her pimp and then I allowed her to see her father in a way he could never show himself.
I got lost trying to imagine how I could see myself as that child saw me: a hero filled with power and certainty. I would have given anything to be the man she had called.
“If you have any problems, just tell me,” that man said to Chevette.
The front door swung open, and Jesus came in with Benita Flagg and Essie.
“Okay, Mr. Rawlins,” Chevette said. “My daddy wanna say hi.”
I waved at my little broken family.
“Mr. Rawlins?”
“Yeah, Martel. She sounds good.”
“I’m movin’ us all out to Pennsylvania,” he said. “Brother says there’s good work at the train yards out there.”
“That sounds great. Chevette could use a new start; maybe you and your wife could too.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Martel said, treading water.
“Is there something else?” I asked.
Essie started crying then.
“You, um, you said that, uh, that the three hundred dollars was for the week you was gonna spend lookin’ for Chevy.”
“Yeah?” I said with the question in my voice, but I knew what was coming next.
“Well, it only took a day, not even that.”
“So?”
“I figure that’s about fifty dollars a day, excludin’ Sunday,” Martel argued. “You could get another job to make up the difference.”
“Is Chevette still there?” I asked.
“Yeh. Why?”
“I tell you what, Martel. I’ll give you two hundred and fifty dollars if Chevy could come spend the next five days with me.”
“Say what?”
I hung up then. Martel couldn’t help it. He was a workingman and had the logic of the paycheck wedged in his
