stood outside the vehicles, chatting near the sign that read TAXIS ONLY. They seemed wholly indifferent to his approach, indifferent to the possibility of a fare. At a third taxi, a black woman had already prepared the passenger door for arrival.
Now she was calling to Earl’s dog, “Here, boy! Bring your daddy right on in. Let Loretta give you fine gentlemen a ride.”
Earl crossed past the two Middle Easterners, who found need to voice objection now. Loretta flipped them off and waved Earl and his dog on over.
The idea that Earl was blind and that Melon was his service dog was a ruse they played routinely. It got them onto public transportation together and into the bars along Vermont Street back in LA. And so far, it had won them a few courtesies here in the South. Few seemed to question it. The dark glasses also served to shade Earl’s aging eyes from the light. They were both getting old, he and Melon. They depended on each other for their respective advantages.
Earl folded himself into the backseat, saying, “Up,” for Melon to join him. The dog found his place on the seat, and they both settled in for the ride.
“You know where Cabbagetown is?” he said as his lady driver slid in behind the wheel.
“Sho’ do,” Loretta said, cranking the engine. “I know where e’thing is. North to Buckhead, east to Conyers. You ain’t really blind, is you?”
“How could you tell?”
She was looking at Earl in the mirror. “I seen blind folks; they’s always hesitant. You seem to know where you goin’. Dog’s somethin’ else, though. Playing along like a regular little con man.”
“He’s the one that’s blind,” Earl said.
“You say! I saw the way he come jumpin’ off the bus. Must trust his master somethin’ fierce.”
“We’ve been together for a while,” Earl said.
They had come off Forsythe Street onto Memorial Drive heading east. It had been forty years since Earl had last been in Atlanta, the place of his birth. The city didn’t seem much different really from what he remembered. Maybe a few more glass-and-chrome buildings was all. It still had the same shady streets, the same sleepy feel to it. LA, by comparison, never seemed to stop.
“What’s your name, big man?” Loretta asked, nosing the cab through traffic.
“Earl . . . Earl Lilly . . . but most people call me Little Earl.”
“Cause you so tiny and all,” Loretta said, metering out the sarcasm.
“Yeah, ’cause of that,” Earl said.
“So, what brings you two good-looking dudes to Hotlanta? Come to howl at the moon?”
“I think we’re both a little too old to be howling at anything, except in pain. Actually, I’m here to find someone,” Earl said. He fished a photograph from inside his jacket and passed it across the seat to her. “You ever seen this young lady?”
Loretta looked briefly at the photo, keeping an eye on the traffic ahead. “She a beautiful young woman. One of yours?”
“She’s my granddaughter,” Earl said. “I’m sure you get around;you ever run across her, by chance?”
“She look a little familiar. But then, I see a lot these young girls on the streets. They’s all just faces after a time. Know what I mean?”
“I guess I do,” Earl said.
“Still, I should remember this one. Pretty an’ all.” Loretta took a last look at the photo and passed it back. “What she do?”
Earl had little to go on, just the name of a gentlemen’s club where his granddaughter worked and a return address on her letters, presumably where she lived. “She tells me she’s going to school during the day. Wanting to become a physical therapist. And dancin’ nights to pay her way. A place called Bo Peep’s Corral. You ever hear of it?”
“Peep’s? Yeah, I know somethin’ about the place,” Loretta said. Her response was heavy with disdain. “Might not look it now, but I used to dance there myself. Was a good-paying job, but I got fed up with the owner. Always trying to get me to do things I didn’t want to do. If you know what I mean.”
“Still the same owner?”
“Ray Tarvis,” Loretta said, a nod to Earl in the mirror. “Red-neck asshole from the word
“That’s what she tells me.”
“Your grandbaby got a name?”
“India,” Earl said.
“That her real name?”
“What she tells me.”
“You don’t know?”
“Actually, I didn’t even know I had a granddaughter until a few months back. I’ve never met her mother — my daughter. I went off to prison a month before she was born. After I got out, my wife and I just never reconnected. Somehow, little India ran my address down and started to write to me. Says her mother is probably dead or eaten up by the streets.”
“This town can do that,” Loretta said, grim eyes looking back at him in the mirror. “Either you claim it or it claims you.”
Earl considered the woman driver in the seat ahead of him. It appeared the town had claimed her. She may have, in fact, been pretty once. But she looked nothing short of used up these days. She was possibly only thirty- eight, thirty-nine, but could pass for fifty. She was painfully thin. Deep lines were etched in her forehead. Her eyes were darkly cratered.
“So, you were sayin’?” Loretta said.
“Well, I was getting letters from her almost every day. Exchanging pictures and the like. Then about four weeks ago they just stopped coming. Then I got one last letter asking for my help.”
“Help in what?”
“That’s just it. She didn’t say.”
“An’ you jumped on a bus and rode all the way out — what? three, four days? — just to see what she want? You gotta be grandpappy of the year, sugar. Have to hand it to you.”
“Well, I haven’t had anyone in my life for a good long time. ’Cept Melon.”
Melon lifted his head at the sound of his name. Earl gave the dog a stroke for reassurance.
“I was enjoying her letters,” Earl continued. “Made me feel connected a little. See, my life hasn’t been what you would call exemplary. You get to a certain age, you start adding up your markers. I added mine and found I didn’t have all that many. I don’t know how much time I’ve got left. Me or my dog.”
“I guess I see what you sayin’.”
“I’m guessing she needs money. I’ve got a little tucked away from my photography,” he said, lifting the camera for her to see in the mirror. “I figure maybe she wants help with her tuition and all.”
“You take pictures?”
“Photos of life on the streets. Things that just happen. Some of my work hangs in a gallery in Beverly Hills. It’s all on consignment, but now and then one of them brings a price.”
“Well, I hope financial support is all your grandbaby is asking for. ’Cause that joint, Bo Peep’s, is no place for a fine little African princess like your granddaughter. You find her, you tell her to get her ass over to Starbucks or someplace. Or” — Loretta caught his eye in the mirror to make sure he was paying attention —“she end up like me. This here’s Cabbagetown, you got an address?”
They had rolled into an aging area of the city known for the cotton mill that once turned out bags for the agricultural industry; Loretta told him all about it as she drove. There were remnants of shotgun houses along the streets — little box huts that looked like they might have housed dwarfs or something. They were intermingled with modern apartment buildings. The mill had been converted to lofts. “We becoming yuppies,” Loretta said. “That number again?”
“Six-six-two,” Earl said, consulting the envelope from his granddaughter’s last letter.
“Here you go,” Loretta said pulling the taxi to the curb.
Earl ran his eyes along the series of stores on the street; 662 was a glass-fronted building sitting right ahead
