Devil in a Blue Dress er-1 Read online

  Dupree and Coretta were as different as any two people could be. He was muscular and had an inch or two on me, maybe six-two, and he was loud and friendly as a big dog. Dupree was a smart man as far as books and numbers went but he was always broke because he'd squander his money on liquor and women, and if there was any left over you could talk him out of it with any old hard-luck story.

  But Coretta was something else altogether. She was short and round with cherry-brown skin and big freckles. She always wore dresses that accented her bosom. Coretta was sloe-eyed. Her gaze moved from one part of the room to another almost aimlessly, but you still had the feeling that she was watching you. She was a vain man's dream.

  "Miss ya down at the plant, Ease," Dupree said. "Yeah, it just ain't the same wit'out you down there t'keep me straight. Them other niggahs just cain't keep up."

  "I guess you have to do without me from now on, Dupree."

  "Uh-uh, no. I cain't live with that. Benny wants you back, Easy. He's sorry he let you go."

  "First I heard of it."

  "You know them I-talians, Ease, they cain't say they sorry 'cause it's a shame to'em. But he wants you back though, I know that."

  "Could we sit down with you and Odell, Easy?" Coretta said sweetly.

  "Sure, sure. Get her a chair, Dupree. Com'on pull up here between us, Coretta."

  I called the bartender to send over a quart of bourbon and a pail of chipped ice.

  "So he wants me back, huh?" I asked Dupree once we all had a glass.

  "Yeah! He told me this very day that if you walked in that door he'd take you back in a minute."

  "First he want me to kiss his be-hind," I said. I noticed that Coretta's glass was already empty. "You want me to freshen that, Coretta?"

  "Maybe I'll have another lil taste, if you wanna pour." I could feel her smile all the way down my spine.

  Dupree said, "Shoot, Easy, I told him that you was sorry 'bout what happened an' he's willin' t'let it pass."

  "I'm a sorry man alright. Any man without his paycheck is sorry."

  Dupree's laugh was so loud that he almost knocked poor Odell over with the volume. "Well see, there you go!" Dupree bellowed. "You come on down on Friday an' we got yo' job back for sure."

  I asked them about the girl too, but it was no use.

  At midnight, exactly, Odell stood up to leave. He said goodnight to Dupree and me, then he kissed Coretta's hand. She even kindled a fire under that quiet little man.

  Then Dupree and I settled in to tell lies about the war. Coretta laughed and put away whiskey. Lips and his trio played on. People came in and out of the bar all night but I had given up on Miss Daphne Monet for the evening. I figured that if I got my job back at the plant I could return Mr. Albright's money. Anyway, the whiskey made me lazy—all I wanted to do was laugh.

  Dupree passed out before we finished the second quart; that was about 3 a.m.

  Coretta twisted up her nose at the back of his head and said, "He use' to play till the cock crowed, but that ole cock don't crow nearly so much no mo'."

  6

  "They done throwed him outta his place cuz he missed the rent," Coretta said.

  We were dragging Dupree from the car to her door; his feet trailed two deep furrows in the landlord's lawn.

  She went on to say, "First-class machinist at almost five dollars a hour but he cain't even pay his bills."

  I couldn't help thinking that she wouldn't have been so put out if Dupree held his liquor a little better.

  "Throw'im in there on the bed, Easy," she said after we got him through the front door.

  Dupree was a big man and he was lucky that I could pile him in the bed at all. By the time I was through pulling and pushing his dead weight I was exhausted. I stumbled from Coretta's tiny bedroom to her even smaller living room.

  She poured me a little nightcap and we sat on her sofa. We sat close to each other because her room wasn't much larger than a broom closet. And if I said something halfway funny she'd laugh and rock until she bent down to clutch my knee for a moment and then she'd look up to shine her hazel eyes on me. We spoke softly and Dupree's deep snoring drowned out a good half of whatever we said. Every time Coretta had something to say she whispered it in a confidential way and shifted a little closer to me, to make sure I heard her.

  When we were so close that we were passing the same breath back and forth between us, I said, "I better be goin', Coretta. Sun catch me tiptoein' out your door and no tellin' what your neighbors say."

  "Hmm! Dupree fall asleep on me an' you jus' gonna turn your back, walk out the door like I was dog food."

  "You got another man right in the next room, baby. What if he hears sumpin'?"

  "Way he snorin'?" She slid her hand into her blouse, lifting the bodice to air her breasts.

  I staggered to my feet and took the two steps to the door.

  "You be sorry if you go, Ease."

  "I be more sorry if I stay," I said.

  She didn't say anything to that. She just laid back on the sofa, fanning her bosom.

  "I gotta go," I said. I even opened the door.

  "Daphne be 'sleep now," Coretta smiled, and popped open a button. "You cain't get none'a that right now."

  "What you call her?"

  "Daphne. Ain't that right? You said Delia but that ain't her real name. We got real tight last week when her date an' my date was at the Playroom."

  "Dupree?"

  "Naw, Easy, it was somebody else. You know I never got just one boyfriend."

  Coretta got up and walked right into my arms. I could smell the scent of cool jasmine coming in through the screen door and hot jasmine rising from her breast.

  I had been old enough to kill men in a war but I wasn't a man yet. At least I wasn't a man the way Coretta was a woman. She straddled me on the couch and whispered, "Oh yeah, daddy, you hittin' my spot! Oh yeah, yeah!" It was all I could do not to yell. Then she jumped off of me saying, in a shy voice, "Oooo, that's jus' too good, Easy." I tried to pull her back but Coretta never went where she didn't want to go. She just twisted down to the floor and said, "I cain't get up off'a that much love, daddy, not the way things is."

  "What things?" I cried.

  "You know." She gestured with a twist of her head. "Dupree's right there in the next room."

  "Fo'get about him! You got me goin', Coretta."

  "It just ain't right, Easy. Here I am doin' this right in the next room and all you doin' is nosin' after my friend Daphne."

  "I ain't after her, honey. It's just a job, that's all."

  "What job?"

  "Man wants me to find her."

  "What man?"

  "Who cares what man? I ain't nosin' after nobody but you."

  "But Daphne's my friend …"

  "Just some boyfriend, Coretta, that's all."

  When I started to lose my excitement she gave me her spot again and let me hit it some more. In that way she kept me talking until the sky turned light. She did tell me who Daphne's boyfriend was; I wasn't happy to hear it, but it was better that I knew.

  When Dupree started coughing like a man about to wake up I hustled on my pants and made to leave. Coretta hugged me around the chest and sighed, "Don't ole Coretta get a little ten dollars if you fines that girl, Easy? I was the one said about it."

  "Sure, baby," I said. "Soon as I get it." When she kissed me goodbye I could tell the night was over: Her kiss would have hardly roused a dead man.

  7

  When I finally made it back to my house, on 116th Street, it was another beautiful California day. Big white clouds sailed eastward toward the San Bernardino mountain range. There were still traces of snow on the peaks and there was the lingering scent of burning trash in the air.

  My studio couch was in the same position it had been in the morning before. The paper I'd been reading that morning was still folded neatly on my upholstered chair. The breakfast plates were in the sink.

  I opened the blinds and picked up the stack of mail t
he mailman had dropped through the door slot. Once I'd become a homeowner I got mail every day—and I loved it. I even loved junk mail.

  There was a letter promising me a free year of insurance and one where I stood a chance of winning a thousand dollars. There was a chain letter that prophesied my death if I didn't send six exact copies to other people I knew and two silver dimes to a post office box in Illinois. I supposed that it was a white gang preying on the superstition of southern Negros. I just threw that letter away.

  But, on the whole, it was pretty nice sitting there in the slatted morning light and reading my mail. The electric percolator was making sounds from the kitchen and birds were chirping outside.

  I turned over a big red packet full of coupons to show a tiny blue envelope underneath. It smelled of perfume and was written in a fancy woman's hand. It was postmarked from Houston and the name over the address read "Mr. Ezekiel Rawlins." That got me to move to the light of the kitchen window. It wasn't every day that I got a letter from home, by someone who knew my given name.

  I looked out of the window for a moment before I read the letter. There was a jay looking down from the fence at the evil dog in the yard behind mine. The mongrel was growling and jumping at the bird. Every time he slammed his body against the wire fence the jay started as if he were about to fly off, but he didn't. He just kept staring down into those deadly jaws, mesmerized by the spectacle there.

  Hey Easy!

  Been a dog's age brother. Sophie give me your address. She come back down to Houston cause she say it's too much up there in Hollywood. Man, you know I asked her what she mean by too much but she just say, "Too much!" And you know every time I hear that I get a kind of chill like maybe too much is just right for me.

  Everybody down here is the same. They tore down the Claxton Street Lodge. You should have seen the rats they had under that place!

  Etta's good but she throwed me out. I come back from Lucinda's one night so drunk that I didn't even wash up. I sure am sorry about that. You know you gotta respect your woman, and a shower ain't too much to ask. But I guess she'll take me back one day.

  You gotta see our boy, Easy. LaMarque is beautiful. You should see how big he is already! Etta says that he's lucky not to have my ratty look. But you know I think I see a little twinkle in his eye though. Anyway, he got big feet and a big mouth so I know he's doing okay.

  I been thinking that maybe we ain't seen each other in too long, Ease. I been thinking maybe now I'm a bachelor again that maybe I could come visit and we burn down the town.

  Why don't you write me and tell me when's a good time. You can send the letter to Etta, she see that I get it.

  See you soon,

  p.s.

  I got Lucinda writing this letter for me and I told her that if she don't write down every word like I say then I'm a beat her butt down Avenue B so hold onto it, alright?

  At the first words I went to my closet. I don't know what I wanted to do there, maybe pack my bags and leave town. Maybe I just wanted to hide in the closet, I don't know. When we were young men, in Texas, we were the best of friends. We fought in the streets side by side and we shared the same women without ever getting mad about it. What was a woman compared to the love of two friends? But when it came time for Mouse to marry EttaMae Harris things began to change.

  He came to my house late one night and got me to drive him, in a stolen car, down to a little farming town called Pariah. He said that he was going to ask his stepfather for an inheritance his mother had promised him before she died.

  Before we left that town Mouse's stepfather and a young man named Clifton had been shot dead. When I drove Mouse back to Houston he had more than a thousand dollars in his pocket.

  I had nothing to do with those shootings. But Mouse told me what he did on the drive back home. He told me that he and Clifton held up daddy Reese because the old man wouldn't relent to Mouse's claim. He told me that when Reese got to a gun Clifton was cut down, and then Mouse killed Reese. He said all that in complete innocence as he counted out three hundred dollars, blood money, for me.

  Mouse didn't ever feel bad about anything he'd done. He was just that kind of man. He wasn't confessing to me, he was telling his story. There was nothing he ever did in his life that he didn't tell at least one person. And once he told me he gave me three hundred dollars so he would know I thought he had done right.

  It was the worst thing I ever did to take that money. But my best friend would have put a bullet in my head if he ever thought that I was unsure of him. He would have seen me as an enemy, killed me for my lack of faith.

  I ran away from Mouse and Texas to go to the army and then later to L.A. I hated myself. I signed up to fight in the war to prove to myself that I was a man. Before we launched the attack on D-Day I was frightened but I fought. I fought despite the fear. The first time I fought a German hand-to-hand I screamed for help the whole time I was killing him. His dead eyes stared at me a full five minutes before I let go of his throat.

  The only time in my life that I had ever been completely free from fear was when I ran with Mouse. He was so confident that there was no room for fear. Mouse was barely five-foot-six but he'd go up against a man Dupree's size and you know I'd bet on the Mouse to walk away from it. He could put a knife in a man's stomach and ten minutes later sit down to a plate of spaghetti.

  I didn't want to write Mouse and I didn't want to let it lie. In my mind he had such power that I felt I had to do whatever he wanted. But I had dreams that didn't have me running in the streets anymore; I was a man of property and I wanted to leave my wild days behind.

  I drove down to the liquor store and bought a fifth of vodka and a gallon of grapefruit soda. I positioned myself in a chair at the front window and watched the day pass.

  Looking out of the window is different in Los Angeles than it is in Houston. No matter where you live in a southern city (even a wild and violent place like Fifth Ward, Houston) you see almost everybody you know by just looking out your window. Every day is a parade of relatives and old friends and lovers you once had, and maybe you'd be lovers again one day.

  That's why Sophie Anderson went back home I suppose. She liked the slower life of the South. When she looked out her window she wanted to see her friends and her family. And if she called out to one of them she wanted to know that they'd have the time to stop for a while and say hello.

  Sophie was a real Southerner, so much so that she could never last in the workaday world of Los Angeles.

  Because in L.A. people don't have time to stop; anywhere they have to go they go there in a car. The poorest man has a car in Los Angeles; he might not have a roof over his head but he has a car. And he knows where he's going too. In Houston and Galveston, and way down in Louisiana, life was a little more aimless. People worked a little job but they couldn't make any real money no matter what they did. But in Los Angeles you could make a hundred dollars in a week if you pushed. The promise of getting rich pushed people to work two jobs in the week and do a little plumbing on the weekend. There's no time to walk down the street or make a bar-b-q when somebody's going to pay you real money to haul refrigerators.

  So I watched empty streets that day. Every once in a while I'd see a couple of children on bicycles or a group of young girls going to the store for candy and soda pop. I sipped vodka and napped and reread Mouse's letter until I knew that there was nothing I could do. I decided to ignore it and if he ever asked I'd just look simple and act like it never got delivered.

  By the time the sun went down I was at peace with myself. I had a name, an address, a hundred dollars, and the next day I'd go ask for my old job back. I had a house and an empty bottle of vodka that had made me feel good.

  The letter was postmarked two weeks earlier. If I was very lucky Etta had already taken Mouse back in.

  When the telephone woke me it was black outside.

  "Hello?"

  "Mr. Rawlins, I've been expecting your call."

  That threw me.
I said, "What?"

  "I hope you have some good news for me."

  "Mr. Albright, is that you?"

  "Sure is, Easy. What's shaking?"

  It took me another moment to compose myself. I had planned to call him in a few days so it would seem like I had worked for his money.

  "I got what you want," I said, in spite of my plans. "She's with—"

  "Hold on to that, Easy. I like to look a man in the face when we do business. Telephone's no place for business. Anyway, I can't give you your bonus on the phone."

  "I can come down to your office in the morning."

  "Why don't we get together now? You know where the merry-go-round is down at Santa Monica pier?"

  "Well, yeah, but…"

  "That's about halfway between us. Why don't we meet there?"

  "But what time is it?"

  "About nine. They close the ride in an hour so we can be alone."

  "I don't know … I just got up …"

  "I am paying you."

  "Okay. I'll get down there soon as I can drive it."

  He hung up in my ear.

  8

  There was still a large stretch of farmland between Los Angeles and Santa Monica in those days. The Japanese farmers grew artichokes, lettuce, and strawberries along the sides of the road. That night the fields were dark under the slight moon and the air was chill but not cold.

  I was unhappy about going to meet Mr. Albright because I wasn't used to going into white communities, like Santa Monica, to conduct business. The plant I worked at, Champion Aircraft, was in Santa Monica but I'd drive out there in the daytime, do my work, and go home. I never loitered anywhere except among my own people, in my own neighborhood.

  But the idea that I'd give him the information he wanted, and that he'd give me enough money to pay the next month's mortgage, made me happy. I was dreaming about the day I'd be able to buy more houses, maybe even a duplex. I always wanted to own enough land that it would pay for itself out of the rent it generated.