I knocked. It was like banging on a redwood tree with a bag of mushrooms. I picked up a rock and banged again. This caused some reverberation, but no answer came. I tried a few times more, breathing a little easier after each attempt.
“I don’t think he’s here, Auntie,” I said, not able to keep the relief out of my voice.
“How can we find him?” she asked.
“I think we might have to go to Fearless,” I said.
That got my worried relative to smile.
“That nice Fearless Jones?” she asked.
My mother and Three Hearts had come once to visit me and Useless in L.A. Three Hearts was very taken with Fearless; most women, no matter their age, were.
“You think he’d agree to help us some?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am. Fearless is my friend and he likes Ulysses.”
This was true. Fearless had a good time with Useless. But, then again, Fearless would have thought that a lion cub was cute or that an eleven-foot crocodile was grandfatherly.
“Well, let’s go and see him, then,” Three Hearts said.
That was fine by me. It had taken all of my courage just to darken Mad Anthony’s door. We turned back and walked toward the civilized world of paved streets and real white doors.
Half the way toward this goal we ran into a roadblock.
He was so wide that you didn’t think that he was as tall as he was.
He must have seen us from some secret lookout and decided to come around from behind.
“What the fuck you niggahs doin’ beatin’ on my do’ wit’
that rock?” Mad Anthony roared.
71
Walter Mosley
“We, we, we, we, we,” I said.
“I’m lookin’ for my son,” Three Hearts told him with nary a stammer. “Ulysses S. Grant the Fourth.”
“Useless? That piece’a shit is your son? He need to die.
Motherfuckin’ bastid need to have my knife diggin’ all up in his asshole.” And to prove the point, Anthony revealed a ragged blade with his right hand.
Fearless has often told me that between the two of us I was the brave one. “Man like me,” he would say, “man not afraid of heaven or hell, is too stupid to be scared. You cain’t be brave if you don’t know fear.”
I understood his pronouncement on that afternoon. Because you know the minute I saw that knife all I wanted to do was run. I knew I could outrun Anthony. Hell, I could have outrun Jesse Owens right then. My thighs felt like they had motors in them. My feet were pistons waiting to go off.
But I didn’t run because that would have meant leaving my auntie, and that was something I just could not do.
“Where the fuck is he, bitch?” Anthony bellowed. He grabbed her by that loose dress and actually lifted her up off the ground.
“Oh,” Three Hearts shouted, more in surprise than fear, I think.
“S-s-stop,” I managed to stutter. “P-put her down, Anthony.
She don’t know where Useless is. She here askin’ you where.”
I know it might sound like a pretty light challenge when I write it down here. But I would like to see how you would respond faced as I was by a man who might just as well have been a hungry tiger lunging at you from the depths of an Indian rain forest.
Anthony pushed Three Hearts against the wall of a 72
FEAR OF THE DARK
dilapidated and condemned building. They were a few feet from me.
It was the perfect moment to run. I could have said that I was looking for help. I could have called for the police.
Tiny Bobchek returned to my mind at that moment. I didn’t know why. Months later, when I was sitting up wide awake in my bed at 3:00 a.m., it came to me that I felt guilty about not being able to do more for him than just take him out in the middle of nowhere, strip him of his identity, and drop him into a shallow grave. I had to do it, but it seemed that I should have done more.
I wasn’t aware of all that in Mad Anthony’s alley. All I knew was that Tiny was in my mind and I was running toward a man who could have beaten me with both arms tied behind his back.
I leaped and struck out while the behemoth raged at my auntie.
Mad Anthony released my auntie, grabbed me, and delivered what might have looked like a halfhearted slap.
I actually bounced upon hitting the ground, first on my left side and then on my stomach. I came to a stop on my back, looking up into a blue, blue sky edged by branches from trees on the eastern side of the alley.
I tried to sit up. For a moment I felt that I’d succeeded, but then I realized it was my will that had risen while the body stayed down.
