I’d never looked at it that way.
“No,” Christmas said. “Germany lost because they fought for pride and not for logic.”
“What’s that mean?” Mouse asked. He liked talking about war.
“Hitler believed in his mission above the materials and the men at hand. He didn’t take into account the deficits of his own armies and therefore paid the price.”
“Hitler was crazy,” I said.
“War is crazy,” Christmas countered. “If you’re a general, you have to be insane. But that doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility of your position. When you lose, you lose. That’s all there is to it. If I send you and Raymond out to take a tower, but before you get there they blow the tower up, then you failed . . . we failed.”
“And Faith Laneer is the tower,” I said.
He did not reply.
“So she dies for nuthin’?”
“She died for what she believed in,” he said. “She died being who she is.”
I knew then that they had been lovers somewhere along the way. Maybe a week ago, maybe five years. For some reason this made me love her more. She had lived within the madness of Christmas Black.
“What about her son?” I asked.
“What about my daughter?” he replied.
46
We parked in an unpaved open lot on the outskirts of downtown. I switched the ignition off and pulled up the parking brake, but before opening the door I turned to address my deadly passengers.
“You men need to stay here and wait,” I said.
“What for, Ease?” Mouse asked, while Christmas just stared out the window.
“The cops want you dead, Ray.”
Reading the subtle emotional changes in my best friend’s face was a lifelong study. His eyes could shift from pleasantries to murderous intent with barely a twitch. Right then a steeliness crept into his gray eyes and the corners of his mouth.
“What cops?”
“I don’t know,” I lied, hoping that Mouse couldn’t read me as well as I could him. “Suggs told me about it. They think that because you murdered Perry your career should come to an end.”
“That don’t mean I got to hide in no car.”
“Ray, hear me, man,” I said, softly and clear. “I got it covered. I know what I’m doin’. Just stay in the car and do what I say for a few days and it’ll blow over. You know Etta be mad if I let you get killed . . . again.”
It was the joke that clinched it.
On the day that JFK was assassinated, Raymond Alexander had agreed to accompany me on a minor errand. Things got out of control and Ray wound up shot, almost dead. Mama Jo brought him back to life with her Louisiana magics, and I promised myself that I would never again be the cause of his death.
“Okay, brah,” Mouse said. “I’m tired anyway.”
“I’ll be back in a minute.”
“HELLO, Jewelle speaking.”
“Hey, honey. How’s my family?” I said into the pay phone, thinking, wistfully wishing actually, that some five years before, I had married Jewelle and now I’d just be calling to say hi. That would have been a whole different life, but she’d be mine and we’d love each other and the children we’d no doubt have had. Jackson and Mofass would have been mad, but I’d be happy and Bonnie could do whatever she wanted to.
“What’s wrong, Easy?” she asked.
Maybe the desire showed up in my voice.
“It’s not easy bein’ me,” I said.
She giggled and asked, “Do you have a pen?”
I took out the yellow number two I used for notes and calculating bullet trajectories, and Jewelle rattled off an address on Crest King, a street that began and ended in Bel-Air.
“What’s this?” I asked her.
“Our place is too small for your whole family, so I decided to put them in a house I own up there.”
“You own a house in Bel-Air?”
“Yeah. One’a Jean-Paul’s friends owned it, but he needed some quick money, so I liquidated a few lots and paid him in cash. I figured that you or Mouse or Jackson would need it one day, and in the meantime I’d hold on to it ’cause you know the prices are bound to rise.”
“And what are the neighbors up there gonna think when they see a whole houseful of Mexicans, Vietnamese, and Negroes.”
“That’s no problem, Mr. Rawlins,” she said fetchingly. “You’ll see.”
CHRISTMAS WAS QUIET the rest of the ride. He was a soldier in defeat. There was no revenge or retaliation that would relieve him.
