fear fled my heart. At close quarters her scent was floral, but it was also sharp, like the smell after lightning strikes.
“You got some water in the back?” she whispered.
I nodded and led her through the heavy burlap curtain to the back room and put her on my cot. She was mumbling and crying.
“Are you okay?” I asked, perching next to her.
“Where did they go?”
I couldn’t find the words to hurt her again.
“What am I gonna do?” she cried, turning her head, looking around in the dark as if the room might somehow transform itself into the church she sought. “Reverend Grove is the only one who can help me now.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked, thinking, even then, that I didn’t really want to know.
“I have to find William. If I don’t —” She broke off in tears. I tried to console her but she was bereft.
After a moment or two I heard the front door to the store come open. She heard it too and took in a quick breath. Her fear made me wary again. I rose up and went through the curtain to the store.
The man standing there was a study in blunt. His hairless head was big and meaty. The dark features might not have been naturally ugly, but they had been battered by a lifetime of hard knocks: broken nose, a rash that had raged and then scarred over the lower left side of his face. His eyebrows seemed to be different sizes, but that might just have been the product of a permanent scowl.
“Wherethegurl?” he said in a tone so guttural that for a moment I couldn’t make out the words. “Wherethegurl?”
He was about six feet tall (I’m only five eight), but he had the chest and shoulders of someone who should have been much taller. He was a volcano crushed down into just about man size. His clothes were festive, a red Hawaiian shirt and light blue pants. The outfit was ridiculous, like a calico bow on an English bulldog.
“I don’t —” I said.
“Wherethegurl, muthahfuckah!” He had the build of a fireplug but moved like a cat. He had me by the arm and in the air before I could invent a lie.
“Where is she?” He looked around the room and saw that the burlap curtain was the only exit besides the front door. He threw me at the curtain, and I tore it down falling into the back room. He came in right behind me, looking at all the corners and then at the bed.
My eyes were on him.
“This your last chance,” he said, threat heavy in each word.
I dared a glance at the bed and saw that it was empty.
“I don’t know, man,” I said as bravely as I could. “She come an’ asked about a church used to be around here. I told her that they were gone. So then she said she had to go to the bathroom.”
I gestured with my hand. He saw the door and flung it open with so much force that one of the hinges ripped loose from the wall. All that was revealed was a lidless commode and tin sink.
“Where is she?” He dragged me to my feet with one hand.
“She must’a gone out the back, man. I don’t know.”
I think he slapped me, but I’ve been hit by blackjacks that had more give than his fingers. The taste of salt came into my mouth and the lightbulb on the desk multiplied into a thousand stars.
“Wherethegurl?” a parrot somewhere said.
“She must’a gone out the back,” I repeated.
“I’ll kill you, niggah, no lie.”
He slapped me again and I tried to think of what I could say to save my life. But I didn’t know anything, not even the frightened woman’s name. I decided that, since he was going to kill me anyway, I would go out bravely. For once I would be as brave as my friend Fearless. I had never stood up to a bully in my life. So at least this one last time, in a back room in Watts, Paris Minton would show some backbone.
“Please don’t, brother.” My trembling words betrayed me. “I don’t know nuthin’.”
He slapped me again. My head turned around so far that I was sure my neck had broken.
“You a dead man,” my attacker said.
