Charcoal Joe (5 page)

I called Jewelle from John's phone in the back office.

“Hello?”

“That you, Feather?”

“Hi, Daddy! Are you okay?”

“Yeah. How come you answered the phone?”

“Jewelle's with the baby and everyone else is gone. Are you okay?”

“I wouldn't go that far, Sweet Pea, but I still got my shoes tied and I haven't had anything stronger than Dr Pepper. How's Jewelle and Jackson?”

“Olivia is beautiful. Aunt Jewelle let me hold her while she cooked and stuff. I'll do my homework after dinner and Uncle Jackson's going to take me to school in the morning.”

“I'm sorry if I threw you off schedule.”

“Uh-uh, Daddy. I know you got a lot on your mind.”

“Tell Jackson that I'm gonna call him soon.

“Okay. I will.”

“I love you.”

“Me too.”

John lived at his bar. There was a whole one-bedroom apartment behind the office. When business slowed down, Brawly Brown, John's stepson by his ex-wife, showed up to tend bar.

John took me into the kitchen, where he made a dish of fried sausages, new potatoes, onions, peppers, and chilies. It was a meal you wouldn't find on any restaurant menu—not even in Louisiana.

After eating he leaned back in his chrome and yellow vinyl chair and stared.

“Why you here, Easy?”

“Food and friendship.”

“If that was it you'd be home with your child. You give your liquor to Hollis so you still on a wagon.”

“You evah hear of a man named Rufus Tyler?”

John let his chair settle back down so that he'd be on four solid legs. That was enough to let me know the depths I'd entered.

“Charcoal Joe,” John intoned.

“That's what Mouse said.”

“Joe was Mouse before there was a Mouse.”

I felt a tickle at the base of my skull.

“Joe,” John continued, “has been in turn what they call a prodigy, an undertaker, thief, artist, grim reaper, card counter, riddle-maker like you wouldn't believe, rich as Midas, and as close to a fallen angel that a mortal man can get.

“He was born in New York City to parents from North Carolina, I believe. They all came out here in the late teens, early twenties, where Edgar Tyler started a mortuary and his wife, Sharon, stayed home while Rufus went to school. Boy could drain a corpse, play cello, and do your portrait all in the same day.

“At seventeen he got the gambling bug and won at every game he played. A white dude named Foner found out how good Rufus was and would bring him out to rich white men sayin' that he got a nigger could beat any or all of them. These was mostly oilmen from Oklahoma so their pride was threatened 'fore their billfolds got emptied out.

“One man, I forget his name, said that he was gonna kill Foner and Joe. He was known as a man of his word but Joe didn't care; he cut a deal with Foner and the oilman's wife. For twenty thousand dollars he'd kill the rich man so that nobody would evah know any of them were involved.”

“And did he?” I had to ask.

“The man was killed and all three had alibis so tight that not even the KKK would have indicted Joe.”

“How'd he do that?”

“I don't even wanna know, Easy. You don't either. Rufus Tyler don't play according to our rules. He got a whole other thing goin' on. If you after him—stop. If he want somethin' from you then give it up and move on.”

“What if he wants to hire me?”

John met my eye and then shook his head slowly like a soothsayer reading his favorite child's bad fortune.

“Then it's like my mother used to say,” he said.

“What's that?”

“When the evil eye is on you, all you can do is hope that there's a God out there with your name somewhere on his mind.”

I smiled at the blessings of black mothers.

“You wanna sleep on the couch?” John offered.

It was late and I'd just lived through six or seven days rolled into one. I nodded and he went to get me a blanket.

The old red leather sofa had been with John for many years. He had it through half a dozen bars, two marriages, in storage during a three-month stint in the county jail for assault, and even for a while there when he was homeless and EttaMae Harris kept it for him in her garage.

It was worth it. That was the most comfortable couch I'd ever encountered. When you sat on it, it was both soft and supportive; when you laid down it was as if a celestial hand was holding you in inevitable sleep.

I dreamed about Bonnie.

She was naked coming out of the Caribbean ocean with water flowing down from her head and over her breasts. She smiled at me and I felt the pain of loss.

“You missed your chance, Easy,” she said.

“I know.”

“Are you going to do anything about it?”

Now she was wearing that yellow dress and the question took on new meaning.

I looked at her pretending, even in my dream, that I was actually considering the question.

“No,” I said. “No. You were meant to be a queen and I'm just a man without a country.”

“I love you more than anything, Easy.”

“I couldn't ask for more than that.”

Something fell somewhere.

I opened my eyes and saw a figure in the dimly lit living room. It was a young, very young, brown woman with a red towel loosely wrapped around her otherwise naked body.

“I'm sorry,” she said, smiling and moving her left shoulder in an apologetic gesture.

I sat up and inhaled.

“Easy Rawlins,” I said.

“Monica Fairfield,” she replied.

“You with John?”

“Is that his name?” she answered.

I stood up, fully dressed.

“I was lookin' for the toilet,” she said.

“Second door on the left over there,” I obliged.

She smiled again. Even in the dim light I could see the beauty of her youth.

She went into the toilet and the light in the living room came on. John was standing there behind me in a blue robe that might have been as old as his sofa.

“Pretty girl,” I said.

“Soul leave me some company now and then so he can do business in the bar.”

“She didn't even know your name,” I said.

“I don't talk much to most people, Easy,” he said. “They don't understand where men like us is comin' from.”

On that early morning ride from Watts to the sea I considered John's words. We came from dark skins, darker lives, and a slim chance of survival. The fact that we once knew each other in Fifth Ward, Houston, Texas, and that we were both still alive and ambulatory, was a miracle in itself. Where we came from
he's dead
was as common a phrase as
he's sick
or
he's saved
. People died in our world with appalling regularity. That child keeping him company overnight would understand the meaning but not the feeling of the words John had to say.

I got to Venice Beach at a few minutes before 7:00 a.m. The waves were lackluster and the skies still misty before the sun's full force cleared them. But the air was crisp and the breezes salty. I had come a long, long way to get there: from Jim Crow through Hitler's war to a place that would seem deadly to most but was like a refuge to me.

“Excuse me,” a man asked.

“Yes, Officer?” I turned to face the two white cops that had trudged through a hundred yards of sandy beach to get to me.

“Can we help you?”

“No, sir,” I said with absolutely no anger in my heart. “I'm going to visit my cousin at the Avett Detainment Facility. They got him in there for huntin' rabbits within the city limits. I'm bringin' him a carton of Lucky Strikes and news from his wife who is sick and can't come herself.”

“Avett's visiting hours don't start until eleven,” one cop, the one with blue eyes, said.

“I know. But you see, I live out in Compton, been out here from Texas for four years and I've only seen the ocean twice. I figured that I'd leave early and get in a few rays before sittin' down with Junior.”

What could they say? It was a public beach made for loitering. I wasn't drinking or exposing myself (other than my black skin, that is).

“Stay out of trouble,” the brown-eyed cop commanded.

“Yes, sir,” I said, “that's what I tell myself every morning I'm blessed enough to wake up.”

The Avett Detainment Facility was the most informal jail I had ever seen. It stood against a hill behind a salmon adobe wall that was maybe four feet high. There was a sentry at the gate but no barbed wire, restless German shepherds, or armed guards on raised turrets.

I drove my car up to the wire fence thinking I could ram right through with four armed confederates and free or kill anyone I wanted.

“Yes, sir?” the middle-aged, paunchy guard asked me. He had grayish skin but still would have been called white. His eyes were pale with no discernible color. Deciphering his age would have required an algebraic equation that depended upon the variables of
smoking
and
liquor consumption
.

“I'm here to see Rufus Tyler,” I said.

Those misty eyes doubted me.

“Name?” he asked.

“Ezekiel Rawlins.”

He took a clipboard from the desk in his little booth and read with the help of an unsteady finger.

“No E. Rawlins on the list.”

“I was told that you were expecting me,” I lied.

“Who said that?”

“His lawyer.”

“Hey,” the guard said. “Don't I know you?”

“Not that I remember.”

“You were an inmate up at Chino five, six years ago.”

“Not I,” I said, trying to keep the fear from coming out in my words.

I had not been incarcerated at Chino, or any other prison, but I was afraid of what that minimum-wage white man could make out of fancy or spite. In my fears (if not in reality) I believed that he could have me dragged from that car and put me in a cell belowground for no reason except his faulty or fabricated recollections.

“What's the lawyer's name?” the guard asked, just that quickly losing interest in his own imagination.

“Sweet,” I said, “Milo Sweet.”

Milo
had
been a lawyer, and his name sounded like some shyster in a storefront promising accident victims that they could retire for life on a broken leg or paper cut.

“I don't have it here,” the guard said, “but you could follow this path up to the main building. Maybe they got an update or something in Records.”

The asphalt lane leading to the main building was a city block in length. The ways in and out were divided by a row of especially tall lemon bushes. Three prisoners, identified by their pink overalls, were tending the fruit trees.

I could have been driving up to the administration building of a small college.

I parked my car unchallenged and approached the front doors, which were at least locked. Peering through the wire-laced, possibly bulletproof glass, I waved at a tan white man sitting behind a small metal desk. He saw me but didn't respond so I tapped on the glass with a silver quarter.

The guard took this as an affront and jumped to his feet. He raced toward the door I stood at and yanked it open.

“Who the hell are you?” he challenged.

He was a skinny man, what some people might call an ectomorph. The waist of his pants was no more than twenty-eight inches and still loose. His belt was secured by its last eye, and the gun belt he wore over that seemed about to fall around his hips and knees to the floor.

For all his apparent frailty the white man with the tan skin was quite aggressive, jutting at me like a Jack Russell terrier harrying a lion.

“They sent me from the front gate,” I said, half answering the question. “I'm here to see Rufus Tyler.”

Charcoal Joe's given name had had no impact on the front gate, but the Barney Fife inner guard got a canny look on his mug when I mentioned the name.

“Who are you?” he asked again.

I told him.

“You have some kind of documentation?”

“You mean like a driver's license?”

“Hell no. I mean something telling us that you're here to see the prisoner.”

“Mr. Tyler's lawyer didn't tell me that I needed it.”

“I don't have any record of you,” the angry man said.

“I don't wanna be rude, sir, but you haven't checked.”

Easy in Wonderland, that's who I was. I had driven down the rabbit hole and found myself in a world where the rules were cracked and cockeyed. The thin-framed guard took my words as some kind of incantation. His anger disappeared and he shrugged.

“Behind me and down the hall to your left,” he said, “second door on the right.”

Without further engagement I followed the directions to a dark wood door with an opaque glass window dominating its upper half. Stenciled on the window were the words

DOROTHY STIEGLITZ

ASSISTANT TO THE ADMINISTRATOR

I knocked.

“Come in,” a friendly female voice said.

I opened the door onto one of the smallest offices I had ever been in. No more than seven feet deep and a little less than twice that in width, there was only room for the assistant to the administrator, a slender desk constructed from a plank of wood held up by two metal filing cabinets, and a visitor's chair.

She stood up straight, looking quite nice in her gray pantsuit and red-rimmed glasses. Ms. Stieglitz was near my age with a Dorothy Lamour figure and graying black hair that made her look striking rather than old.

I suppose my eyes said what I was thinking, because the hint of an inviting sneer crossed her lips. For a man in my emotional state that smile was a boon.

“Yes?” Ms. Stieglitz said. “May I help you?”

“My name is Ezekiel Rawlins and I'm here to see Rufus Tyler,” I replied, instead of giving her the answer on my tongue.

“Have a seat,” she said.

I accepted the offer. It was a small, metal, institutional chair not made for form or comfort.

Sitting, I appreciated her again. She sneered nicely.

“Do you have the proper documentation?” she asked.

“The man at the front door asked me that,” I said. “I told him that Mr. Tyler's lawyer hadn't apprised me of that necessity.”

I thought she'd like fancy words. I was right.

Dorothy gave me a broad grin and said, conspiratorially, “We cannot allow visitation without documentation.”

“If that's so, I've come a long way for nothing,” I lamented.

“What is your business with Mr. Tyler, Mr. Rawlins?”

“That's between him and his lawyer.”

“What's the lawyer's name?”

“Milo Sweet.”

“Do you have his number?”

I did.

I waited patiently while the handsome assistant to the administrator dialed, listened, and then said, “Yes, may I speak to Mr. Sweet?…Dorothy Stieglitz from the administrator's office at Avett Detainment Facility.” A moment passed while, in some distant part of town, Loretta Kuroko called into the open door behind her, and Milo got on the phone.

“Yes, Mr. Sweet, I have an Ezekiel Rawlins here saying that you have directed him to meet with inmate Rufus Tyler….You are Mr. Tyler's lawyer?…But we don't have any record of that request….I see. Yes, Central Records is notorious for dropping the ball. You should have contacted us directly….I understand….Yes, yes.”

She hung up the phone and smiled at me.

“Everything seems to be in order, Mr. Rawlins,” she said. “Mr. Sweet made his request through Central Records, and even though that is perfectly acceptable the people there aren't always running on a cogent time schedule. His request was probably lost between offices. But even though I believe you, I don't have the authority to let you in to see Mr. Tyler. You'll have to talk to the administrator—Mr. Bell.”

She stood again and said, “Let me show you.”

I shifted to the side, letting her go past. When she drew close I caught a whiff of the perfume
Tabac
. The tight scent fit her look.

Following her into the empty hallway, I felt an urge to ask a question.

“At the end of the hall,” she said. “The last door.”

I wanted to ask for her home phone number. I thought that she might want to give it to me. But I was on the job and any disruption could cause serious problems.

So instead I shook her hand and said, “It was really very nice meeting you, Ms. Stieglitz.”

“You too, Mr. Rawlins,” she said with emphasis.

“Who is it?” a masculine voice said to my knock on the glass and wood door of Administrator Desmond Bell.

Instead of answering the question I opened the door, entering the anteroom of the man in charge.

The uniformed male receptionist looked up at me and then stood.

“Yes?” he said.

He was wearing the gold and brown costume that all the guards had. He was white and tall and maybe in shape. He had a sidearm on his hip and a cap set on his desk. The anteroom was exactly the size of Ms. Stieglitz's office. A really big man might feel claustrophobic in such a space.

“I'm here to talk to Bell,” I said.

“I don't have any—”

Before the nameless guard could voice his doubts the door behind him opened.

“Mr. Rawlins?” an egg-shaped man in a natty, dark blue uniform said. He had his cap on his head.

“Yes,” I replied. “Mr. Bell?”

“Warden Bell,” he corrected. “Miss Stieglitz says that a lawyer has caused a snafu for your visitation.”

“So it seems.”

“Come in, young man,” he said, though he was probably younger than I. “Come in.”