Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned Read online

  Socrates couldn’t even see her eyes.

  “What?” he asked, almost angry. He realized that he was in a conversation that had been going on for years. “What?”

  There was no answer.

  Socrates was going to rise. He was going to get up and make her understand how bad he felt. But he couldn’t get up; he couldn’t even lift his hands off the table.

  He felt so weak that he started crying. And while he cried his waking mind wondered how many times had he sat before that blue window, and his mother—crying?

  Then she moved.

  He was sure that this had never happened before.

  Another step, and he remembered all the times that he just wanted to say that he was sorry for the happiness he had taken from her.

  Another step and he could see her eyes. They were pleading, crying without tears. No words came from her wet lips.

  “What?” Socrates asked again.

  He lifted his hands. Somehow this changed things and she was gone. All that was left was his chair and the window full of sky and corn. Socrates had gotten smaller and smaller. Now he was no more than an ant peeking over the sill into a world larger than he could imagine.

  “No.”

  “Momma.”

  “Uh-uh, no. Stop it.”

  Socrates opened his eyes.

  “No,” said Darryl from his sleep in the other room.

  Socrates sat next to the foldout sofa bed. He didn’t touch Darryl or try to wake him up. He’d been taught when he was a child that a man’s dreams were private—like sex or going to the bathroom—and should never be interrupted.

  So Socrates sat for an hour or so, until the shifting, moaning boy’s eyes snapped open.

  “Hey,” he said to the big man.

  “Hey.”

  “I’ont know if I could take this,” Darryl said.

  “You don’t know if you could take what?”

  “I dreamed that instead’a you gettin’ there in time Philip shot me in the head. An’ an’ an’ an ’Yvette Frank was right there but I’as too afraid to get my dick hard because I was dead.”

  Socrates laughed knowingly. Then he said, “Don’t you worry, boy. I’m always gonna be there on time.”

  Darryl blinked once and turned over on his side. He was asleep in an instant and Socrates wondered if the boy had ever been awake.

  {4.}

  “But he cain’t stay down here no more,” Socrates said to Luvia Prine. Right Burke, Luvia’s handicapped roomer and Socrates’ best friend, was sitting between them. Darryl was out in the kitchen making M&M cookies with Luvia’s niece, Willomena.

  “Why not?” Luvia didn’t like Socrates but she liked his friends. She cared about Darryl and didn’t even chastise Right for going over, now and then, to see how the man and boy were doing.

  “You know how these gangster kids is,” Socrates said. “They gonna get him on a drive-by or make him join up. You know how it is.”

  “Let him go home to his momma then,” Luvia said. She stood up to show that the problem was settled and over.

  “He ain’t got no daddy at home an’ that neighborhood his momma in is right in the middle’a all that shit,” little Right said. He knew that the only way to get Luvia back in her seat was if he showed that he was worried too. “Darryl’s momma let him stay wit’ Socco because she knew he needed someone with a strong hand to help out. But even Socco cain’t be there every minute.”

  “What can I do about that, Mr. Burke?” the skinny, tall, hard-boned woman asked. “You know my house is for retired people like you an’ Mrs. Halloway an’ them. We cain’t have no boys runnin’ wild in the halls.”

  “They’s the MacDanielses,” Right whispered.

  Socrates was so nervous that he blinked.

  Luvia froze in mid-gesture. Her hand had been reaching—maybe for an itch on her cheek—but it stayed there suspended a few inches from her face.

  “You know you should be ashamed to let them words out your mouth, Right Burke,” Luvia said at last. “You know it’s a sin what you said.”

  “It’s hard,” the WWII veteran agreed. He lifted his mangled left hand in a gesture that was indecipherable. “But it ain’t no sin. Hallie an’ Costas lost a boy to the street; they lost Bernard. Now here comes a chance for them to do somethin’ about it.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Socrates said, feeling that they were the truest words that he had ever spoken.

  “I might have to listen to Mr. Burke, Socrates Fortlow,” Luvia said. “But that don’t mean I have to hear you.”

  “I know, Luvia,” Socrates said, smiling. “You don’t like the way I smell an’ I ain’t even took off my shoe …”

  Right chuckled.

  Socrates went on, “… an’ you ain’t wrong neither. Naw, you ain’t wrong. But this ain’t between you’n me. This here is about a boy that’s gonna die….”

  Luvia put both of her hands up, like stop signs. “I don’t know if you’re right or wrong but that don’t matter. I cain’t be askin’ Hallie an’ Costas to be takin’ in nobody. They just buried Bernard, they grievin’. An’ they cain’t be takin’ care’a nobody new after all them doctor bills an’ the funeral ….”

  Bernard had been shot down at a house in View Park. He’d been cruising with some friends. They had words with another group of children. Shots were fired later on that night, at a party. Bernard didn’t die at first; for about a week the doctors thought that he might survive. But then he just lost the will to live. A fever, like fire, had burned out his life on the eighth day after the shooting.

  “I take home one fifty-nine thirty-five in a week,” Socrates said. “An’ I get maybe seventy-five in tips from home deliveries on top’a that. All my tips could go to Darryl. And he got him a job down at Bounty, so he don’t need no allowance. Between him an’ me we could pay for him t’stay with them.”

  Luvia sagged in her chair. Her stiff backbone couldn’t take Socrates’ weight. Her eyes hated him more and more.

  “What good it gonna do to have Darryl over there?” she pleaded with Right.

  “It’s another school for him, Miss Prine. And they way over there near Hauser an’Venice. Darryl’d have a chance over there. You know a boy tryin’ deserves a chance.”

  “But how could I ask Hallie to do that?” Luvia asked either man.

  “Just ask’em. Just ask. Maybe they need another chance,” Right said.

  Socrates had been biting the inside of his cheek. Suddenly he felt his mouth fill with blood. He swallowed hard, swallowed again, and then nodded. Hallie and Costas MacDaniels were staunch churchgoers. They believed in the Lord and the Lord’s righteous representatives; these didn’t include the whiskey-breathed Right and certainly not a convicted murderer like Socrates Fortlow.

  “Okay,” Luvia said, standing again. “I guess I could ask’em.”

  Right yipped and hollered. He jumped up out of his chair and hugged Luvia. Because he was so much shorter his head was up hard against her breast. While trying to push him back she eyed Socrates.

  He had a big, lippy grin on his face. He didn’t laugh because he didn’t want to change Luvia’s mind with a show of bloody teeth.

  “What you laughin’ at, Socrates Fortlow?”

  He shook his head and kept smiling—swallowing blood all the while.

  {5.}

  “But what if I don’t wanna go?” Darryl asked a week later. The MacDanielses had said yes to taking him in even before they met him. Luvia had told them everything she could to dissuade them but all they could think of was helping that boy.

  “Luvia tells us that you had some troubles with the police in the past,” Costas MacDaniels said when they met in Socrates’ small rooms.

  “I was in prison, sir,” Socrates said, on his best behavior.

  “Oh,” said Mrs. MacDaniels.

  She was plum-shaped and plum-colored. They were both tiny. But his voice was like a tuba where hers was no more than the tinkle of a triangle.
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  “Such a Christian man,” Hallie said. “You must be very close to God to work so hard to help young Darryl.”

  Socrates smiled and nodded a lot. The MacDanielses said that he could come by to see Darryl anytime he wanted. They preferred that Darryl stay away from Watts.

  Socrates smiled and nodded. He didn’t like Hallie and Costas. They were cowed and cowardly, he thought. But he also loved them because they had the power to do what he could not.

  “You makin’ me go because’a what happened in the park,” Darryl said. “’Cause you’re mad.”

  “You did fine in the park. Like I said, you did your best.”

  “I mean ’cause I was gonna shoot Philip—that’s why, huh? You mad ’cause you think it’s wrong for black people t’kill each other but I almost did.”

  “No,” Socrates said, nonchalant. “That boy humiliated you, beat you, tried to kill you. I’ont even think a white man’s court could find you guilty over all that.”

  “But then why you make me drop the gun?”

  “ ’Cause you don’t know how to shoot. You prob’ly woulda shot some innocent bystander. That wouldn’t be good, now would it?”

  “I wanna stay here wit’ you,” Darryl answered.

  “You gonna see me ev’ry day, almost, at the supermarket. I’ll come an’ visit you at the MacDanielses’ an’ you could come on down here whenever you want. Don’t worry, Darryl, this here’s gonna be good for you. It’s gonna be good. I want you there, your momma wants you there, the MacDanielses want you there. Only ones that want you down here is Philip an’ his wolf pack. That’s all that want you here.”

  Darryl nodded and hugged his big friend. When the MacDaniels came to take him away he cried.

  “I never seen’im cry before,” Socrates was telling Right later that night. They were chipping away at a cheap fifth of PM whiskey. “I know it gotta be good if he could cry.”

  “Yep,” Right said. He was so drunk that he wavered in his chair. “Boy cried.”

  “An’ it’s good for me too,” Socrates added. “You know it could get cramped wit’ two people up in here.”

  “Yep.” Right nodded. “Yep, yep.”

  “Can you make it home, Right?” Socrates asked.

  Right looked up from his Dixie cup and blinked once, then once again. “Nope,” he said.

  “That’s okay, old man,” Socrates said, laughing. “You take my bed. Go on now, ’fore you fall on the floor.”

  Mrs. Irene Fortlow walked all the way to Socrates, as he sat at the small table in the little front room, in Cartersville. The sky was blue in the picture window and the corn was green. He put his big arms around her waist and laid his head against her breast. When she caressed his head he fell into a deep sleep—not waking until morning.

  The streets were as noisy as ever, filled with booming radios from passing cars, police sirens, and loud talk, but still it was the best sleep that he could remember.

  LETTER TO THERESA

  {1.}

  Socrates had been sick for three days. It was the intestinal flu and it was bad. His stomach rejected everything, even water. He lay back in his foldout sofa bed dehydrated and feverish, worried that they’d fire him from his job at Bounty Supermarket just because he didn’t have a phone and couldn’t call in sick. There was a pay phone three blocks away but he hardly had the strength to make it from one room to the other.

  The first two days he forced himself from the bed to drink water and urinate. But by day three he had cracked lips and a dry tongue; he couldn’t even think about moving without getting dizzy. He would have wet his bed except for the fact that there was nothing left in him to wet with.

  Nobody dropped by to visit and Socrates rued anew that he had no phone. He knew that he was dying for lack of a friend to hear his call.

  Mostly he slept, dreaming about prison and childhood friends. He dreamed about his mother too. Her strong voice echoing down the empty gray cellblock, calling to him from the grave.

  On the afternoon of the third day Socrates opened his eyes but was still dreaming.

  Theresa stood there at the foot of the bed. He wouldn’t have come awake then even if Warden Johns came down and demanded it; even if God called Judgment Day with his great golden hammer.

  “Theresa?”

  “Yeah, baby?”

  At the sound of her voice he was a young man again come home from a beating. He couldn’t remember why he caught such hell. He didn’t even remember who he’d been fighting. But Theresa didn’t ask. She cradled him in her lap and put a wet towel on his forehead. She put a hand against his chest while the cold tendrils of water trickled down his neck and shoulders.

  “Shh,” she whispered.

  “Baby.”

  “Shh.”

  When he woke up he was still dreaming. Theresa was waiting for him and his cuts were bandaged.

  “Hi, baby,” she said.

  He remembered her in tan slacks and one of his torn T-shirts. Her face was like a mirror, every cut and bruise reflected in her concerned eye.

  “I’m sorry, T,” he said.

  “When you gonna stop doin’ like this, Socrates?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Something snapped or cracked or fell down in the other room but Socrates held Theresa’s eye.

  “Because,” she said. “Because I cain’t always be fixin’ you up. I cain’t spend my whole life worryin’ about you.”

  The pain in his head came from words he couldn’t get out. They pounded against the inside of his skull. He tried to wet his tongue to say something but there was no saliva.

  “Don’t go” died in his throat.

  {2.}

  “What’s that you said, Socco?” Darryl asked. “Huh?”

  The skinny boy was at the foot of the bed where Theresa had been standing.

  “Pour some water on my head, Darryl.”

  “What?”

  “Pour some water on my head.”

  After some coaxing Darryl poured water from a gallon pail over Socrates’ shoulders, neck, and head. The ex-con leaned over the side of the bed so as not to wet his mattress. He moaned loudly as the cold water rushed over his fevered skin and onto the concrete floor.

  Darryl went out for aspirin and broth. He fed Socrates by hand for two days.

  “Where you learn how to take care’a a sick man?” Socrates asked when he was on the mend.

  “My momma took care’a me, ain’t she?” the boy responded.

  Sol Epstein was happy to see Socrates back on the job.

  “When you’re around everybody seems to work harder,” the assistant manager at Bounty Supermarket said.

  He believed that Socrates had been sick. He even authorized sick pay for the time that Socrates was out.

  For days Socrates worked, wondering when was the last time he felt so healthy and well. He slept soundly each night but still he felt as if he had been aware so that if somebody came into the room he would have known it just as if he were awake, with his eyes open.

  On his first day off he woke up early and went to the table in the kitchen. He began writing a letter in pencil on a pad of Holiday Inn notepaper that he’d bought secondhand at the army surplus store.

  {3.}

  “Dear Theresa,” the letter began. “I saw you in a dream the other night and so I wanted to say hay.”

  For the next hour he sat there reading and rereading his sentence. It was all true but it didn’t go anywhere. He couldn’t talk about the flu and the pain in his head, about Darryl and the water. He didn’t want to sound sickly and asking for help. If he saw her it would be okay, she’d see that he was independent now.

  “I guess I want to see you,” he wrote. “I do want to see you. And then I could tell you about prison and how you were right. I know you probably married and got a lotta kids by now …”

  Socrates stopped again. Reread again. He wondered if he knew her husband. He wondered how old her kids were. He counted up the years. Thirty-five. O
ne when she was still writing him in jail and then another a year later. Maybe as many as twelve. Her oldest child would be in his thirties. The youngest no younger than twenty-three.

  “… grandchildren too probably. I miss you, T. I almost died from flu and I thought about you. You was always asking when was I going to stop being so crazy. I never said nothing to that because I didn’t want to be lying. You know I wanted to stop. But what if I said I would and then I didn’t?

  “I stopped now. I been out of prison eight years and more. I been solid. I got a job and an apartment. I got friends and there is this teenage boy I been helping. I know you married, T. I know that because you wanted it and you always did what you wanted to do.

  “I remember when you took me up to your father’s grave at Haven Home. I remember you said he was laying in the ground but he was still more man than most of these niggers walking around on two legs. I remember that. I know you did not mean me but even still it was about me anyway.

  “But I am not like that anymore. I can take care of myself now. I don’t get into trouble even when it’s not my fault.

  “I would like to hear from you, T. Just two friends talking. I will put my address down bottom. If you get this letter and you want to write then you can.”

  Socrates signed the notepaper and wrote down his address. He sent it from the main post office at Florence and Central. He remembered Theresa’s mother’s address because her mother’s name was Rose and Rose lived on 32 Rose Street.

  {4.}

  Sylvia Marquette had a little store that dealt mainly in candy bars and soda pop, potato chips and beer. But at the back, behind the stand-alone cooler, she kept a block of copper mailboxes.

  Sylvia’s market was Socrates’ mailing address.

  “No, Mr. Fortlow,” Sylvia said. “Ain’t no mail for you. No.”