The Further Tales of Tempest Landry (12 page)

Tempest Landry and I lost touch there for a while. It fell to me to audit the books of a shell corporation that controlled more than a dozen businesses. Added to my work was dealing with the birthdays and illnesses of my children. Branwyn had gone back to school to learn to be a bookkeeper and so I had to assume more responsibilities in the home.

Also I had somehow made a new friend, a young woman named Erzuli, from Haiti. Erzuli was the secretary of Theodore Buffington, who owned a paper mill in New Jersey. She was a young woman with dark brown eyes, and darker yet skin who was both intelligent and instinctively sophisticated. We talked, sometimes for half an hour or more, on the phone almost every day. She asked my advice about what choices she might make. She wanted to leave her job and get her boyfriend to think more seriously about his future; to go to graduate school and make the most out of the opportunities America had to offer.

I didn't tell Branwyn about these talks, knowing that she would resent my new friend. I had begun to look forward to Erzuli's midday calls; there was relief in our passionate discussions about her commonplace dilemmas.

And so one Thursday when my phone rang I picked up the receiver with eager expectation.

“Hello,” I said with knowing intimacy.

“And who do you think this is?” Tempest said.

“Um, Branwyn, of course,” I said, noting the lie and not wondering at its origins.

“Yeah, right,” he said dubiously.

“Did you lose your job?” I asked him.

I was beginning to learn that the way humans get the upper hand in conversation was by changing the subject quickly, with no seeming reason. I wanted to get the advantage over Tempest. At that time I wasn't really sure why.

“No,” he said in answer to my question.

“Then why does another man have your fruit-vending corner?”

“Because Mr. Bernini promoted me to stock manager,” Tempest said. “I go in at four in the mornin' and put the fruits and whatnot on twenty-seven carts.”

“A promotion?”

“Yeah. You sound surprised.”

“Well…you never before took a job so seriously, either in this life or your previous one.”

“And a man can't change?”

This question, I realized, was why I needed the advantage over Tempest. He seemed to erode the certainty of ages with his simple, nonchalant interrogatives. For some reason this threatened my sense of self. I had to admit, if silently, that I wanted dominance over him.

“Why are you calling?” I asked.

“What's wrong with you, Angel?”

“Nothing. Why do you ask?” Answer a question with a question; parry and lunge.

“Here you answerin' the phone like you got Beyoncé on the other end'a the line and now you talkin' to me like I was some kinda enemy.”

“Excuse me,” I said. “I've been working hard.”

“Things okay wit' you an' Brownie?”

“Tempest, I'm at work. Please, what is it that you need?”

“Can we get together tonight?”

“Branwyn has class. I have to look after the children.”

“You got that babysitter down the hall.”

Just the fact of him knowing about the life in my home brought out an anger from some unknown, undefined place. Was this being human? Passions that had no rhyme or reason?

“Fine, Tempest. Let's meet at Quatorze on Fourteenth at five thirty.”

He was at a booth near the front window when I arrived, wearing black pants and a dark red sweater, as the weather had turned cool at the beginning of the fall.

He stood and shook my hand, smiled in my face and gestured at the table. There was a bottle of wine and two glasses set out for us. Even his innocent awareness of my loves and vices perturbed me.

“This is a switch,” he said.

“What?” I asked, taking the seat across from him.

“You…late to anything.”

“Nina, that's the babysitter, had to bring some class notes to a friend and Tempo was cranky when I tried to leave.”

“Not easy like up in heaven is it?”

He poured me a dram of red wine and I took a deep breath, then a drink.

The waiter came and we ordered salads and cassoulet. He went away and Tempest shrugged.

“I fount out why Ren Luckfield is so mad at me.”

“Ezzard's stepfather?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why?”

“Him and his brother Martin and a man named Joe Bean runnin' a fence out of South Brooklyn. If you can steal it they can sell it. From cars and watches to antibiotics and AB negative blood. I ain't nevah seen anything like it. They got a warehouse down there look like a department store put Bi-Mart to shame.”

“And why are they upset with you?”

“Ezzard,” he corrected.

“Excuse me—at Ezzard.”

“Well,” Tempest said, “Ezzard was always a rebellious child. He wanted to do things his own way and got mad when they went wrong. He drove the company van for Ren, makin' pickups and drop-offs. The way they had it he even wore a little uniform so that the cops wouldn't get suspicious. He was makin' good money and was well protected too but Ezzard wanted more.”

Our salads came. The combination of the garlicky dressing and the red wine soothed the inexplicable anger boiling in my chest.

“So?” I said after a while.

“Ezzard went out one night and waylaid a drug dealer up in Harlem. Killed him and stoled a week's earnings.”

“The money that I used to buy your freedom.”

“The very same.”

The ocean of anger turned, instantaneously, into a wide plain of desolation.

“And your stepfather is angry because you didn't cut him into the profits?” I asked.

“That's what I thought at first, but no. Ren's mad 'cause Ezzard might'a called attention to his game. He kicked him outta the house and told him nevah to come back but my mother—I mean Ezzard's mom, Dorothy—kept worryin' at him so bad that he let me come to the picnic. I guess he was impressed with the way I handled myself and now he done offered me Ezzard's old job back. Wants me to drive that van for two thousand a week.”

“You told him no of course.”

“You don't just say no to a man like Ren, Angel. He's just about as serious as an oil company in Africa. They both in the business of makin' grease spots outta insolent men.”

“So now you are going to be a thief?” I asked. But my heart was not in the condemnation. I had used blood money to attain Tempest's freedom. In some ways I was as guilty as the murderer.

My first impulse after this onslaught of guilt was the desire to confess. Then I thought of Erzuli. I wanted to call her and admit my crime.

“I told him that I had to think about it,” Tempest said. “He told me that was not an acceptable answer. That's a quote.”

“What will he do?”

“Anything he wants,” Tempest opined, “anything that will ease his mind.”

“He'll kill you?”

“Or tell the drug dealers that it was Ezzard killed their man and ripped off their money.”

Our main courses came then. Tempest asked for hot sauce and I poured the wine.

“What can I do?” I asked the Errant Soul.

“Use that Barry White voice and tell Ren that Ezzard is okay.”

“I can't do that.”

“Why not? Why won't you help a brother out? I ain't nevah asked you for nuthin' like this. You know when it comes to my own problems I take care of 'em myself but this your people's fault.”

“What?”

“I didn't choose this body. I didn't have nuthin' to with it.”

“You could have declined the invitation to the family picnic.”

“I could cut off my dick too but that wouldn't make the girls any less beautiful.”

“I can't help you, Tempest.”

“Why not?”

“Because my angelic voice has been gone since the stroke.”

That sat Tempest back in his chair. He stared at a place somewhere behind me and his bones seemed to sag down under his skin.

“Really?” he said after a long while.

“I'd help you if I could. I'll give you money now to move and hide.”

“I'm on parole, man. If I hide, the law be after me.”

We ate in silence after that. I was aware of my guilt for a crime I had committed and Tempest's fear about retribution for doing what was right. The irony of our situation stabbed at me and again I wanted to call Erzuli.

For condemned men we had good appetites. We ordered apple tarts with French vanilla ice cream for dessert.

“What will you do?” I asked over coffees and cognac.

“What can I do, Angel?”

“Go to the authorities?”

“Ain't that you? Ain't you the last word on sin and justice?”

“I am nothing.”

“Hm,” he grunted. “Well…I guess I'll just go to bed and see if I wake up in the mornin'. If I do, then I'll walk out my front door and hope I make it to work without somebody puttin' a bullet in Ezzard Walcott's brain.”

On the walk home I kept wondering if Erzuli's boyfriend would mind if I called her at night.

I had not spoken to Erzuli, the young Haitian woman from New Jersey, for three weeks. I told her that my family and I were going on vacation to Europe and that I'd call her when I got back; this because she had begun to invade my thinking.

For weeks before the break we had talked every day on the phone. I had come to depend on that call for my equilibrium with the rest of my life. Even when I became aware of a monumental sin that I had committed my first thought was to call her and ask for forgiveness. Me—an angel from the Beyond—asking a mere mortal for absolution.

These weeks of abstinence passed by but still, every day, when the hour of our appointed talk came I was unable to work or think. I persevered all the same. I took to going out for lunch and drinking a few glasses of wine to cut the keen desire I felt. I started smoking a pipe as I had in heaven.

“Joshua, you been drinkin' an awful lot lately, honey,” my life's partner, Branwyn, said to me somewhere in that time.

“Not really,” I said in a tone that was as much a lie as many false words are. “I used to drink like this before I met you.”

“It makes you kinda glum,” she observed.

I was thinking about the sin I'd committed, Erzuli's rambling conversation, and Branwyn's simple and yet deep understanding of my heart when the intercom interrupted my brooding.

“Mr. Angel, Mr. Walcott is out here to see you.”

Since his death and resurrection, Tempest Landry has been connected to me, the onetime Accounting Angel of Heaven. It has been my duty and my avocation to convince this Errant Soul that he belongs in hell because heaven has decreed it so. Even if I don't agree, finally, with that diktat, I am committed to its execution because it must be enforced to preserve the order of the status quo.

“Send him in,” I said to the microphone box.

Having allowed this disruption I turned to look out of my window. I have a nice office on the sixty-fourth floor. The view is over Central Park and the skies are often my refuge.

“Hey, Angel,” Tempest said from the doorway.

“Come in,” I said coolly. “Close the door behind.”

When he had time to get seated I turned around to look at him.

“To what do I owe this visitation?” I asked.

Tempest grinned at me.

“Sumpin's wrong, huh, Angel?”

“No. Why do you say that?”

“ 'Cause whenever you got a bug up your butt you put on a attitude an' come out with them big words.”

“Why are you here, Tempest?”

“I want you to come with me somewhere.”

“Where?”

“To someplace holy.”

“A church.”

“If you say so.”

“What does that mean?” I was becoming irritated by his evasions.

“It means I want you to go somewhere wit' me, man. How come I can't just let you see for yourself?”

As I had lied with my tone of voice to Branwyn, Tempest was telling the truth with his. I stood up and said, “Let's go.”

We walked over to the 1 train and got off at 14th Street. On the way Tempest told stories of how hard he was working and the subtle, and often unconscious, ways his fellow workers, most of whom were white, insulted him.

“I used to just be a black man in America,” he said at one point, “but now I'm a ex-con too. The women wanna strip off my clothes an' run for their lives and the men wonder what happened in those deep dark cells. I try an' say that I'm a man just like them but that's like an honest Arab tryin' to tell airport security that he ain't no risk.”

“What happened with Ezzard's stepfather?” I asked in reply. It struck me then that my obsession with Erzuli and my drinking, smoking, and morose attitude all came from this worry over Tempest's well-being.

When Tempest refused the judgment he was returned to earth in the body of a convicted felon—Ezzard Walcott. Ezzard's stepfather either wanted him back in the family business or dead.

My feelings toward Tempest were complex. He was a threat to everything I believed in but he was more a brother to me than all the angels above. His impending doom at the hands of injustice tore at me.

Tempest did not answer the question about Ezzard's stepfather and we came to a large housing project on 9th Avenue. Opening the front door, he gestured for me to enter.

“Elevator's broke,” he told me. “We got to take the stairs.”

We ascended at a good clip taking two steps at a stride, going higher and higher, breathing harder and harder. After a time it seemed to me that I was performing some kind of fabled labor like the mythological hero—Hercules.

After eleven flights Tempest stopped and took three deep breaths. I was also winded and appreciative of the rest.

“This the floor,” he said to me.

We went out into the hallway and my senses sprang to life. The walls and ceiling of the corridor were colored drab green and dirty yellow. There were four kinds of music coming from behind various closed doors. There was the smell of cooking pork, vegetables, and bread in the hot and oppressive air.

We walked halfway down the hall and came to a blue door that had the number 1242 stenciled in red on it. Tempest knocked on this door.

“Who lives here?” I asked as we waited.

“You need to know everything all at once, Angel, or could you wait and see?”

At that moment the door came open. An elderly, small woman with nearly jet skin stood there on sturdy legs in a long violet dress whose hem danced around her calves. She was neither fat nor thin and her eyes were dark and striking like twin wells of knowledge.

“Ezzard,” she said, looking up with a friendly smile that did not in any way cut the power of those eyes.

“Hey, Auntie Aileen, this here's the man I told you about.”

“You boys come on in,” she said. “Come on now.”

The apartment was lovely and decadent, pristine and somehow transcendent. The walls were painted a faded burgundy and the ceiling was white, which gave the feeling of soaring even though I was standing still. The carpet was royal blue and the furniture was all red or painted red, which gave a surreal aura to the space.

“Sit on the sofa, boys,” she said. “It's the most comfortable seat in the house.”

We both sat on the scarlet settee and Aileen left the room only to come back with a large silvery platter that had little white-bread sandwiches on one side and a pitcher of iced tea on the other. When we were served and eating she sat on a painted wooden chair across the squat brick-colored coffee table from us.

“This is my aunt Aileen,” Tempest said then.

“Pleased to meet you,” I said.

“Ezzard tells me that you helped him to get outta prison,” Aileen said, a serious note to her friendly voice.

“I suppose I did.”

“It's a wonder,” Aileen said.

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“If you had come to me and told me that you was gonna help my stepnephew be free I would'a asked you to forget about it. I liked Ezzard evah since my nephew Ren married his mother but I always knew that he was a bad seed. I was sure that nuthin' good would evah come from him. I used to call his girlfriends and warn 'em about how he treats women and men, children and dogs. Ezzard was a hot mess.”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Tempest smiling at me. For some reason this caused a feeling of relief.

“You've changed your mind?” I asked Aileen.

“Your act of kindness have opened up Ezzard's heart and he's a whole new man in the skin of the old one. He gives of himself and listens to what people says. At the family picnic I mentioned that I needed a hook to hang my wrap on at the door. Three days later he brought me one. A red one just like I pined for. The old Ezzard would nevah have heard my need, and he certainly wouldn't'a gone out to get it.”

“Aileen had a dinner for me the other night, Angel,” Tempest said. “She invited Ren and sat us down at the kitchen dining table. At the end of the meal she told Ren that she heard he wanted me in his business but…What did you say to him, Aunt Aileen?”

“I said that I didn't know what Ren did exactly but I knew that Ezzard had moved on and didn't need that kinda occupation anymore. I told him that I would be responsible for Ezzard and that he would nevah have to worry about him again.”

Aileen leaned over proffering a hand, which Tempest took and held.

This simple gesture left me thunderstruck. We finished the meal and talked about the meaningless details of mortal life. After a while Aileen got tired and we made our leave.

“Why did you bring me here, Tempest?” I asked when we were on the street again.

“Because, Angel.”

“Because what?”

“Because you part'a sumpin' and you don't even know it. Here you go thinkin' you know just the right way an' there's a whole other world goin' on in spite of what you think you know.”