could have.
She was shivering, so I put my hand out to cover hers.
The white cook came out from behind the counter and a few people turned all the way around in their chairs to watch.
Shirley didn’t notice it.
She said, “He wanted to get out of the country, Easy.”
“An’ we gotta get outta here,” I said.
When we got back to my house I asked her in. I don’t know why. I was dirty and hurting and the last thing I wanted was to be entertaining some young woman, but I asked and she accepted, so we walked past the daylilies and the potatoes and strawberries up the dirt path to my house. And when I was fishing around in my pocket for the key she looked up at me and I stopped to look at her for a moment or two. Then I decided to kiss her. I leaned forward kind of quickly…
It wasn’t the shot that bothered me.
It wasn’t the hole torn in my front door or the car taking off down the street; nor was it the little yell or the look in Shirley Wenzler’s eye, the look that could break a man’s heart, that got to me. It wasn’t bad luck or broken teeth or the remnants of a hangover or the whisper of a breeze that suggested death at the back of my neck. It wasn’t political ideas that I didn’t care about or understand that made me mad.
It was the idea that I suffered all of this because I wasn’t, and hadn’t been, my own man. I didn’t even know who it was who was shooting at me in front of my own house! People hanging and shot dead for no real reason; that’s what got me mad. Real mad. Something I could feel, like I felt the stirrings of an erection for Shirley when what I really wanted was a good night’s sleep, a competent dentist, a peaceful death at the hands of a jealous husband or a racist cop.
Like most men, I wanted a war I could go down shooting in. Not this useless confusion of blood and innocence.
I stood there looking into Shirley’s frightened face. She was shivering. I put my arms around her and said, “It’s all right.” Then I took her into my house without even looking after who it was that shot at us. I decided then that he was a dead man, whoever he was. I was going to start killing him at the soles of his feet. Whoever he was, he was going to remember me in hell.
“Do you think it was the government?” Shirley stammered as I helped her get the glass of whiskey to her lips.
“Prob’ly,” I said, but I really didn’t believe it. “They think you might get away wit’ them papers.”
“Oh, Easy!” She grabbed my arm. “What can we do?”
“You gots to run. Run hard.”
“Where? Where can I go?”
“There’s a hotel downtown called the Filbert. You go there and take a room. Call yourself Diane Bowers. I once had a girlfriend called that. Call me when you check in. I might not be here right when you call, but if I’m not I’ll get to you under that same name, Diane Bowers.”
She shuddered and pulled close to me.
“Let me stay for a while before I go. I’m too scared to drive.”
And so we took off everything but our underclothes and my pistol. We lay in my bed holding each other until she stopped shivering and we both fell to sleep. I held her tightly, more for my own comfort than hers. I dreamt that there was a trapdoor next to my mother’s deathbed. I fell a long way down a passage that was similar to a well. At the bottom was a long river, but I knew it was a sewer, and there were men, desperate white men, searching for me. Sometimes the men would change into crocodiles and search for me in the water, sometimes the crocodiles would change into men. I was pressing back against a rocky wall, hiding. My hand, every now and then, unconsciously pushed into the recess of the wall, and every time that happened the wall hurt. It was a terrible pain and I came half awake massaging the side of my jaw where Melvin had broken my tooth.
I winced in pain, almost coming awake when I saw Mofass laughing behind his desk and then asking me about how could the IRS let me off. I saw him bad-mouthing Poinsettia and refusing to help sign my papers over to him.
Dreams are wonderful things, because they’re a different way of thinking. I came to, for just a moment, with a clear idea of the path I should take. I knew who killed Poinsettia and I knew why. Even in my dream I knew it; even in my dreams I was plotting revenge.
33
We began kissing in our sleep. It was passionate and sloppy kissing while we were still unaware. When we came awake it was still dearly felt but neither of us wanted it to go anywhere. She got up and wandered around the room, maybe as her father had. I went up to her and kissed her again. I pressed her against the wall, she wrapped her legs around my hips and held on tight…
Rather than sex it was a kind of a spasm, like vomiting or cramps. The sounds we made were the sounds boxers make when they take a blow to the body.
We didn’t whisper about love. We didn’t say anything until it was over.
Then all I said was that I’d call at the Filbert as soon as I could. I gave her EttaMae’s number and told her to call if she couldn’t get to me.
“Tell Etta what you need and tell her I said to call Mouse.”
“Who?”
“A friend’a mines,” I said.
“Oh, I remember.” She smiled for the first time. “He’s the man you said reminded you of Poppa.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
I didn’t know what was going to happen with Shirley. All I could think about was vengeance, and, I thought, I knew how to go about getting it.
It was just getting dark outside and I saw Shirley to her car, pretending all the while that I was looking out for a bad guy. But I knew that shot was meant for me. And I knew who took that shot.
There was ice in my veins.
Primo’s place was out in East Los Angeles, the Mexican neighborhood. He used to own a big house and rent out rooms to illegal aliens, but the board of health got down on him and condemned the place. So he put three hundred dollars down on a two-story house on Brooklyn Boulevard in Boyle Heights and tore out all the walls on the first floor. He and his wife, Flower, and all their eleven children lived on the upper level while Primo and Flower ran an informal luncheon cafe downstairs.
It was a dark room with bare, unfinished beams that were once hidden by walls. A few mismatched tables and chairs here and there. Flower was from Panama originally, but she knew her Mexican cooking well enough to make an egg-and-potato burrito and fried sausages to make you cry. Any Mexican day laborer within three miles came to Primo’s for lunch. There was tequila and beer from the package store next door and smells so good that a Tijuana man might think he was back home with his family.
It was late when I got there, but I knew the family would be downstairs. Dinner with Primo started at about five and went on until the older children carried their sleeping brothers and sisters to bed.
“Easy! Hola! ” Flower shouted when I stuck my head in the door. I never knocked at the family hour because there was too much noise for that type of pleasantry.
She crossed the large room and folded me in her soft embrace. Flower was bigger than EttaMae, and obviously a Negro, but we still considered her Mexican because she was from south of the border and cursed in Spanish when she got mad.
“Easy!” Primo said. He shook my hand and pounded my shoulder. “Get him a drink, somebody. Jesus! It’s your godfather Ezekiel. Get him a bottle of beer.”
Silent and shy, the little child jumped up, running the obstacle course of children, dogs, and furniture for the
