I was covered with blood. I knew from my experiences in the war that I would soon lose consciousness. Melvin would murder me. Everything was over.
Then I heard Melvin slump down and I gave a wide grin in spite of the terrible pain in my jaw. It was Melvin who had taken the bullet; I had just felt the concussion of the shot.
Melvin’s face was contorted in pain. A dark patch was forming on his shirt.
He was sucking down air and groaning, but Melvin was still trying to lift the pistol to shoot me. I took the gun from his blood-streaked hand and threw it on the bed. The craggy man groaned in fear as I stood over him. My jaw hurt me so bad that I had no desire to quell his fear. I tore a pillowcase in half and shoved it under Melvin’s bloody shirt until it was directly over the wound.
“Hold this tight,” I said. I had to lift his other arm and show him what to do.
“Don’t kill me, man,” he whispered.
“Melvin, you gotta get a hold of yourself. If you don’t start thinkin’ straight you gonna go into shock an’ die.”
I held his hand down hard over the wound to cause a little pain for him to focus on and to show him what he should be doing. The pistol he had was a. 25-caliber so the wound wasn’t too bad.
“Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me,” Melvin chanted.
“I don’t want you dead, Melvin. I ain’t gonna kill you, even though I should after this shit.”
“Please,” Melvin said again.
I pocketed the pistol and went to the bathroom, where I washed the blood off my shoes and from the cuffs of my black pants. Then I took an overcoat from Melvin’s closet and used it to cover the rest of me.
In the backyard the incinerator was smoking away at various official papers from First African. Melvin had been trying to erase the accounting trail of the theft he and the others had perpetrated against the church. I hosed down what was left.
Back inside I found that Melvin had crawled into the kitchen. He was holding himself erect at the kitchen counter. I figured that he was trying to get a weapon, so I helped him to a chair. Then I went to the phone on the kitchen table and dialed Jackie Orr. He answered on the seventh ring.
“Hello.”
“Hey, Jackie, this is Easy. Easy Rawlins.”
“Yeah?” he said warily.
“Melvin’s been shot.” There was silence on the other end of the line. “I didn’t shoot him, man. It was an accident. Anyway, he’s got a bullet in his shoulder and he needs a doctor.”
“You ain’t gettin’ me over there with that lie, Easy. I ain’t no fool.”
“What I want with you, man?”
“You want my money.”
“You got a thousand dollars in yo’ bottom drawer, right? If I didn’t take that then I don’t need no money you got.”
“I just call the cops, man.”
“You do an’ I hope you ready fo’jail, Jackie, ’cause I got all the proof I need that you been takin’ money out the church. But here, talk to Melvin.”
I cradled the phone next to Melvin’s ear and left them to whisper their fears to each other.
On the drive back to my house I almost passed out from the pain in my mouth. At home I changed clothes, downed a few mouthfuls of brandy, and got back in my car.
Jackson was still spending my five dollars on whiskey at John’s bar.
“Ease!” he shouted as I was coming across the room. Odell looked up from his drink. I nodded at him and he made to leave.
So I turned toward Jackson.
“I need you to come with me, Jackson,” I said as fast as I could. The pain was unbearable. John stared at me, but when I didn’t say anything he turned away.
“You know where I could get some painkillers?” I asked Jackson.
“Yeah.”
I handed him my keys when we got out to the car. “You drive,” I said. “I got a toothache.”
“What’s wrong, man?”
“Dude busted my tooth. He busted my fuckin’ mouth!”
“Who?”
“Some guy wanted to rob me outside of the African Migration. I fixed him. Oh shit, it hurts.”
“I got some pills at my place, man. Let’s go get ’em.”
“Oh,” I answered. I guess he knew that meant yes.
Jackson had morphine tablets. He said all I needed was one, but I took four against the bright red hurt in my mouth. I was doubled over in pain.
“How long ’fore it kicks in, Jackson?”
“If you ain’t et nuthin’, ’bout a hour.”
“An hour!”
“Yeah, man. But listen,” he said. He had a fifth of Jim Beam by the neck. “We sit here and drink an’ talk an’ fo’ long you will have fo’gotten you even had a tooth.”
So we passed the bottle back and forth. Because he was drinking, Jackson loosened up to the point where he’d tell me anything. He told stories that many a man would have killed him for. He told me about armed robberies and knifings and adulteries. He named names and gave proofs. Jackson wasn’t an evil man like Mouse, but he didn’t care what happened as long as he could tell the tale.
“Jackson,” I said after a while.
“Yeah, Ease?”
“What you think ’bout them Migration people?”
“They all right. You know it could get pretty lonely if you think ’bout how hard we got it ’round here. Some people just cain’t get it outta they head.”
“What?”
“All the stuff you cain’t do, all the stuff you cain’t have. An’ all the things you see happen an’ they ain’t a damn thing you could do.”
He passed the bottle to me.
“You ever feel like doin’ sumpin’?” I asked the little cowardly genius.
“Pussy ain’t too bad. Sometime I get drunk an’ take a shit on a white man’s doorstep. Big ole stinky crap!”
We laughed at that.
When everything was quiet again I asked, “What about these communists? What you think about them?”
“Well, Easy, that’s easy,” he said and laughed at how it sounded. “You know it’s always the same ole shit. You got yo’ people already got a hold on sumpin’, like money. An’ you got yo’ people ain’t got nuthin’ but they want sumpin’ in the worst way. So the banker and the corporation man gots it all, an’ the workin’ man ain’t got shit. Now the workin’ man have a union to say that it’s the worker makes stuff so he should be gettin’ the money. That’s like com’unism. But the rich man don’t like it so he gonna break the worker’s back.”
I was amazed at how simple Jackson made it sound.
“So,” I said. “We’re on the communist side.”
“Naw, Easy.”
“What you mean, no? I sure in hell ain’t no banker.”
“You ever hear ’bout the blacklist?” Jackson asked.
I had but I said, “Not really,” in order to hear what Jackson had to say.
“It’s a list that the rich people got. All kindsa names on it. White people names. They movie stars and writers and scientists on that list. An’ if they name on it they cain’t work.”
“Because they’re communist?”
