A Red Death (25 page)

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?”

Jackson nodded. “They even got the guy invented the atomic bomb on that paper, Easy. Big ole important man like that.”

“So? What you sayin’?”

“Yo’ name ain’t on that list, Easy. My name ain’t neither. You know why?”

I shook my head.

“They don’t need yo’ name to know you black, Easy. All they gotta do is look at you an’ they know that.”

“So what, Jackson?” I didn’t understand and I was so drunk and high that it made me almost in a rage.

“One day they gonna th’ow that list out, man. They gonna need some movie star or some new bomb an’ they gonna th’ow that list away. Mosta these guys gonna have work again,” he said, then he winked at me. “But you still gonna be a black niggah, Easy. An’ niggah ain’t got no union he could count on, an’ niggah ain’t got no politician gonna work fo’ him. All he got is a do’step t’shit in and a black hand t’wipe his black ass.”

— 32 —

I
WOKE UP IN MY HOUSE, hung over and in profound pain. I got Jackson’s bottle of morphine from my pants on the floor and took three pills. Then I went into the bathroom to wipe off the grime and smell of the night before.

Jackson’s words stuck in my head like the pain of my tooth. I wasn’t on either side. Not crazy Craxton and his lies and half-truths and not Wenzler’s either, if indeed Wenzler even had a side.

I thought of going to a dentist. I was even looking in the phone book when the knocking came at my door.

It was Shirley Wenzler, and she was in worse shape than I was.

“Mr. Rawlins,” she said, her lower lip trembling. “Mr. Rawlins, I came here because I didn’t know. I mean, what else could I do?”

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Come with me, Mr. Rawlins, please. It’s Poppa, he’s hurt.”

I got my pants and my pullover sweater. She walked me to the car.

“Where to?”

“Santa Monica,” she said.

I asked her if she had called a doctor and she answered, “No.”

On the ride out she gave me more instructions, but that was it. I was nauseous and in pain, so I didn’t push her. If Chaim needed a doctor I could figure that out when we got there.

I
T WAS A SMALL HOUSE across the street from a park. The park was small too. Just one little grassy hill that rose up to the street on the other side. No trees or benches. Just a hill that was only fit for the two little children who rolled down it, pretending that they’d lost control.

I expected Shirley to have a key in her hand but she just pushed the door open and walked in. I limped behind her. The morphine dulled the hurt in my jaw, but then I could feel the tenderness of my left ankle and thigh.

The house was decorated in some cool, dull color, green or blue. The ceiling was so low that I remember ducking to go through the door from the living room to the bedroom.

The color there was red death.

Chaim was hunched over a chair. Most of the blood was right there under him. But there was also blood on the dresser and in the bathroom. Blood on the phone, in the dial. There were bloody handprints on the wall. He’d gone all the way around the room, propping himself up with his bloody hand.

Next to his body was a light green cushion, splattered and clotted with blood. He’d pressed the cushion to his chest, trying to staunch the bleeding, but he must have known that it wasn’t going to work.

Shirley’s eyes were wide and she wrung her hands. I pushed her back through the door. It was then I noticed the few drops of blood on the living-room carpet. I hadn’t seen them before in the unlit room.

“He’s dead,” I told her. Even though she already knew it, she needed someone else to pronounce him gone.

There were two small-caliber bullet holes in the door. Maybe somebody had knocked and when Chaim asked who, they shot him through his own door.

“Let’s get to the car,” I said. I tried smudging any surface I’d touched, but there was no telling where a fingerprint might show up. I let my head hang down when we left the house and when we got in the car I sat so low that I could barely see over the dash. I didn’t sit up straight until we were far from there.

We got to a small coffee shop in Venice Beach. A little place that had sandy floors and nets with seashells that hung from the ceiling. Our window looked out onto the shore. It was a cool morning; no one was out yet.

“When’d you find’im?”

“This morning. Poppa,” she said and then she choked on a sob. “He wanted me to bring him something.”

“What?”

“Money.”

“How’d you know where to find me?”

“I called the church.”

I had a coffee. I had to drink it carefully, because if I let the warm liquid on the wrong side I got a stabbing pain from my tooth.

“What did he need the money for?”

“He had to run, Easy. The government wanted him.”

“Government?” I said as if I had never heard of the FBI.

“Poppa’s a member of the Communist Party,” she said, looking down into her knotted fists. “He got something, some papers, and the FBI has been hounding him. The last time they came by, last night, they said that they’d be back. Dad thought they’d take him, so he called me to bring him some money.”

“Those FBI men at the house when I was there last week?”

I asked just to see what she’d say.

“Yes.”

“What is it he had?”

She looked reluctant to talk, so I said, “He’s dead, Shirley. What we do now we gotta do for you.”

“Some kind of plans. He got them from a guy at Champion Aircraft.”

“What kind of plans?”

“Poppa didn’t know but he thought that they were for weapons. He was sure that the government was making weapons to kill more people. Poppa hates the atomic bomb.

He thinks that America will kill millions more due to imperialism. He says the plans are for a new bomber, maybe for atomic weapons.”

The fact that she spoke of her father as if he were still alive bothered me, but I couldn’t see setting her straight.

“What was he going to do with them?”

She shook her head, weeping.

“I don’t know,” she moaned. “I don’t know.”

“You gotta know.”

“Why? Why is it important? He’s dead.”

“I didn’t know him too long, but Chaim was my friend. I’d like to know that he wasn’t a traitor.”

“But he was, Mr. Rawlins. He believed that the kind of government we have only wants to make war. He wanted to take America’s secret weapons plans and give them to a socialist newspaper, maybe in France, and to have everybody know about them. He wanted to make it so everybody was aware of the danger. He …” She began crying again.

Chaim was my friend and he was dead. Poinsettia was my tenant and she was dead too. One way or another both deaths were my fault. Even if it was only because of me not telling the truth or not having compassion when I 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.

W
HEN 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 —

W
E 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.