“Yeah. Ain’t you heard about it? I mean, I don’t talk to nobody and I heard it.”
I felt that I was in a dream and that I had been walking down the street naked. One thing for certain, I didn’t need Sigmund Freud to interpret that.
54
C l e e t u s c a m e b y exactly a week after the death of Tiny Bobchek — I had learned his last 9 name from his driver’s license before I burned it along with the wallet in the incinerator in my backyard. I spent the rest of the day trying not to worry about the police asking about the big white guy chasing me down the street.
Fearless dropped by that evening.
“You think I need to worry about Sir and Sasha?” I asked my friend.
“Sasha Bennet?” Fearless asked.
“I don’t know her last name.”
“Girl named Sasha Bennet called up to Milo’s the other day and asked for me. She said that she was a friend’a yours and that you said maybe we should all get together sometime.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s her. They the ones saved me from Tiny.”
“Then you better not think about ’em, Paris. Let it ride.
Don’t talk to nobody about problems you worried about. Espe-cially don’t talk to Van about it. You know he only know one way to solve problems.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. I ain’t talkin’ to him. I’m talkin’ to you.”
“Nobody thinkin’ that the white dude chased you is the one 55
Walter Mosley
dead out there, man,” Fearless said. “You think it ’cause you know.”
“Cleetus said it.”
“But he didn’t think they was the same guy.”
“I’m just scared, Fearless. What if the cops come around here askin’ ’bout that boy? What if Jessa go to them?”
Fearless hunched his shoulders.
“We could run,” he suggested.
“Run where?”
“I ’on’t know. New York. We could check out Harlem. I bet you you could start a great bookstore there.”
“Just pull up stakes and go?” I asked.
“Why not? You know we always on the edge, brother. You don’t have to do sumpin’ wrong for the cops to get ya and the judge to throw you ovah. All you got to do is be walkin’ down the street at the wrong minute. Shoot, Paris. You always got to be ready to run.”
He was right. My mind was about to get me in trouble. I had to forget Sir and his wayward girlfriend. I had to forget Tiny in his makeshift grave.
I nodded and Fearless poured me a shot of peach schnapps.
“Drink deep and sleep well,” he advised.
I walked up to my bedroom, slept nine and a half hours, and woke up free from fear. The cops might brace me, but I was innocent in my own heart.
Th e n e x t m o r n i n g I was sitting down to a plate of pinto beans, white rice, and chicken necks that I had simmered in tomato sauce. The whole meal, including the gas it took to 56
FEAR OF THE DARK
cook it, couldn’t have cost more than a dime. I had learned from a lifetime of poverty to live on almost nothing.
I nearly missed the soft knock at my front door.
Two days earlier I wouldn’t have answered it.
I shouldn’t have answered that morning.
I n m y s e c r e t m i r r o r I spied a middle-aged Negro woman of normal height and slender frame. She was wearing a blue-and-white dress that was loose but stately. She also wore a dark brown hat which brought an extra touch of elegance to her presence.
I wanted to slip away, to call Fearless and say that I was ready to hightail it to Harlem. I wanted to run, but I had not been raised to turn away from that knock.
I opened the door and said, “Hi, Aunt Three Hearts. How are you?”
“Fine, Paris, and you?”
“Fine. Good. Great.” I took a deep breath. “Come on in.”
There was a carpetbag on the porch next to her. I hurried out and picked it up, ushering her inside as I did so.
I carried her bag past the entranceway–reading room, through the aisles of bookshelves, and into my back porch and hot-plate kitchen. That was my social room.
“Paris,” she said. “I like your store. You live here too, right?”
