Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned Page 5

  “No you not,” Socrates said. A sense of calm came over him. “No you not. You just dressin’ good, eatin’ like a pig. But when the bill come due I’m the one got t’pay it. Me an’ all the rest out here.”

  “All right, fine!” Wilfred shouted. “But the only one right now payin’ fo’ somethin’ is me. I’m the one got you that food you been eatin’. But if you don’t like it then pay for it yourself.”

  Iula came out again. Socrates noted the pot of steaming water she carried.

  “I do you better than that, boy,” Socrates said. “I’ll pay for yo’ four dinners too.”

  “What?” Wilfred and Iula both said.

  “All of it,” Socrates said. “I’ll pay for it all.”

  “You a new fool, man,” Wilfred said.

  Socrates stood up and then bent down to pick up Wilfred’s stickup clothes from the floor.

  “You always got to pay, Wilfred. But I’ll take this bill. I’ll leave the one out there for you.”

  Wilfred faked a laugh and took the clothes from Socrates.

  “Get outta here, man,” Socrates said.

  For a moment death hung between the two men. Wilfred was full of violence and pride and Socrates was sick of violent and prideful men.

  “I don’t want no trouble in here now!” Iula shouted when she couldn’t take the tension anymore.

  Wilfred smiled again and nodded. “You win, old man,” he said. “But you crazy though.”

  “Just get outta here,” Socrates said. “Go.”

  Wilfred considered for the final time doing something. He was probably faster than the older man. But it was a small space and strength canceled out speed in close quarters.

  Socrates read all of that in Wilfred’s eyes. Another young fool, he knew, who thought freedom was out the back door and in the dark.

  Wilfred turned away slowly, went down the stairwell, then down the aluminum staircase to the street.

  Socrates watched the tan car drive off.

  {5.}

  “You’re insane, Socrates Fortlow, you know that?” Iula said. She was standing on her side of the counter in front of seventeen stacks of four quarters each.

  “You got to pay for your dinner, I.”

  “But why you got to pay for him? He had money.”

  “That was just a loan, I. But the interest was too much for me.”

  “You ain’t responsible fo’ him.”

  “You wrong there, baby. I’m payin’ for niggahs like that ev’ry day Just like his daddy paid for me.”

  “You are a fool.”

  “But I’m my own fool, I.”

  “I don’t get it,” she said. “If you so upstandin’ an’ hardworkin’ an’ honest—then why don’t you wanna come here an’ work fo’ me? Is it ’cause I’m a woman? ’Cause you don’t wanna work fo’ no woman?”

  Socrates was feeling good. He had a full stomach. The muscles in his arms relaxed now that he didn’t have to fight. There was an ache in his forearm where he’d been cut, but, as the prison doctor used to say, pain was just a symptom of life.

  Socrates laughed.

  “You’re a woman all right, I. I know you had that boilin’ water out there t’save me from Wilfred. You a woman all right, and I’m gonna be comin’ back here every Tuesday from now on. I’m gonna come see you and we gonna talk too, Momma. Yeah. You gonna be seein’ much more’a me.”

  He got up and kissed her on the cheek before leaving. When his lips touched her skin a sound came from the back of her throat. Socrates heard that satisfied hum in his dreams every night for a month.

  {6.}

  Socrates only had four dimes, three nickels, and eight pennies left to his name. If he took a bus he’d be broke, but he was just as happy to walk. On the way home he thought about finding a job somewhere. Some kind of work, he thought, where you didn’t have to bleed and die for your meal.

  DOUBLE STANDARD

  {1.}

  It was an L.A. rain, straight down and hard. Socrates stood under the shelter of a glass bus stop. The walls had been smashed away but the roof was still intact. He stood in the gloomy twilight waiting for the RTD bus because there was a chill in his chest and three miles walking in the rain might have been his last walk.

  Across the street two lovers stood under a doorway. At least she stood in the shelter of the small adobe ledge that jutted out over the abandoned shop’s door. Socrates thought that the store was a baker’s shop at one time because there was a faded sign that had wan blue and white checker squares across it; the letters HEL were all that was left of the word spelled out over the blue design.

  A baker’s shop, Socrates thought. He could see in his mind’s eye the black men and women waking up at three a.m. and taking the same bus that he waited for to get there by four-thirty. He could almost feel the sleep in their eyes and the stiff yawns that came out when they tried to say good morning; the shiver in their bones as they uncovered the big blending machines and the bitter taste of coffee on the back humps of their tongues. A pattern as regular as those blue and white checks. Each one a perfect little square, each one exactly the same size as the one before it—and the one after.

  The paycheck had little blue and white squares on it, Socrates was sure. They made good money at the bakery, on the whole, because bakers worked long hours and long weeks.

  Socrates was happy thinking about those prosperous black people. Hard workers making money, taking the bus to their little houses down on Central, sending their kids off to school.

  He smiled and saw again the lovers wrestling in front of the boarded-up shop.

  The man was large, verging on fat. His unprotected backside was getting soaked by the rain cascading off the ledge. But he didn’t care at all. He hunched down over the small woman kissing and touching, pressing her hard against the door. She held on to his big neck with both hands, doing pull-ups to get to his lips in those few times that he reared back to look at her.

  The violent rhythmless rain accompanied their passion. They lunged with their mouths, moved their hands like blind beggars hustling after a dropped coin.

  “Ralphie,” she cried.

  Socrates barely heard her over the din of rain.

  Ralphie suddenly leaned back, taking her up with him until she could wrap her legs around his waist. She was wearing a short skirt. Her legs were bare. If she had on any underwear Socrates couldn’t make it out.

  The young woman rested her head on Ralphie’s shoulder and called out things into his ear.

  For some reason it all seemed to fit. The rain, the lost business, the lovers out in the empty street in the failing light.

  He turned away, giving them what privacy he could, and saw a bus coming down the avenue. He peered out intently, hoping that it was his bus—that he’d be home soon.

  {2.}

  “Ralphie! Ralphie!” the young woman screamed.

  Socrates stared harder at the bus.

  “Ralphie! The bus, baby!” she cried.

  The lovers came running across the street, splashing through puddles and squealing from the cold rain.

  In the shelter of the bus stop she smoothed down her short skirt and pushed back her gold-frosted, straightened hair. Even though their eyes met she didn’t really look at Socrates. Her smile was not for him. But he reveled in the glistening dark eyes and smug satisfaction that sang through her body.

  Ralphie was trying to press his erection down to the side so that it wouldn’t be seen pressing against his pants. When she put out her hand to help him he pushed it away and gave Socrates a shy sideways glance.

  “It’s the 86A,” she said, pointing at the bus.

  Not Socrates’ line.

  “Why’ont you wait for the next one?” Ralphie asked. His voice was gruff and petulant at once.

  The bus was only half a block away, barreling down fast.

  “Come on, Linda,” Ralphie demanded. “Stay.”

  Even the way they talked was like sex; Ralphie begging for it and Li
nda ... Linda wanted to give it to him but she couldn’t. She had to get on that bus and so decided to enjoy the sweet pain she was bringing her man.

  “I got to go, Ralphie,” she said, cold as that rain. “I’ll see you Tuesday though. Right?”

  The bus’s brakes squealed up to the stop.

  “Stay,” he said, taking her by the hand.

  The bus doors came open and Linda took a step backward into the door.

  “Come on. Hurry it up,” the bus driver said.

  Linda, both feet up in the bus and bent half over, tugged twice against Ralphie’s grip. She yelled, “Let me go, Ralphie!” like a child trying to get her best friend in trouble.

  She couldn’t have broken the big man’s grip, his hands were almost as large as Socrates’ rock-breaking mitts, but Ralphie let her go. She fell backwards into the bus. The doors levered shut immediately.

  “See you Tuesday!” Ralphie cried out but the bus was already moving on.

  The big man got on his tiptoes in a vain attempt to see her one last time. But the rain was too hard and the bus swerved at the wrong angle—even if the weather had been good he wouldn’t have been able to see her.

  Ralphie? Socrates thought.

  {3.}

  Close up Socrates could see Ralphie’s dark face. It protruded from his oval-shaped head. A perfect egg head with fish eyes and big sensual lips that, Socrates imagined, were even more swollen from Linda chewing on them. The big man didn’t want to have anything to do with Socrates. That was no surprise. Socrates’ khakis were stained and faded, there were thick veins at the knees from where he’d mended the secondhand pants. His bright, red-striped T-shirt, even under the army jacket, made him look like some kind of fool. Top all that off with a tan fishing cap that had Fisherman’s Wharf stitched across it, and you had a bum—what people called a street person in the 1990s.

  Socrates liked to talk to people, but he didn’t have to talk to Ralphie. He didn’t care about the young man. He would have let things lie if the bus had come; if the rain had let up and allowed him to wander away from the shelter; if Ralphie had just nodded or said something to make him feel like he was at least considered a part of the human race.

  There was a time that Socrates would have hurt a man for ignoring him the way Ralphie did.

  Socrates Fortlow was a violent man. He’d come up hard and gave as good as he got. The rage he carried brought him to prison but the Indiana Correctional Authority wasn’t able to stem his anger.

  He looked Ralphie in the eye, giving him one last chance to be civil. Ralphie registered no more recognition than if a stray dog had regarded him.

  “Your backside got pretty wet there, brother,” Socrates said, proving that he had the ability to speak.

  The young man looked. Then he sneered and shook his head.

  “Listen, man.” Ralphie pointed his finger. “I’m lettin’ you stay here ’cause nobody should be out in no rain like this. But I don’t want you talkin’ t’me. Hear?”

  Socrates smiled.

  “What you laughin’ at, niggah?” Ralphie wanted to know.

  “Oh,” Socrates sang. “I just think it’s funny.”

  “What’s funny?” Ralphie took a step forward. Another man might have been frightened of Ralphie’s bulk, but Socrates wasn’t scared.

  “I don’t know. I mean, here you are callin’ me a niggah an’ really it’s you the one playin’ the niggah on yo’ own wife an’ kids. Here you are, out here pushin’ up against some teenage girl, an’ you got a perfectly good woman up at home.”

  If a black man coulda turnt white you know Ralphie woulda been able to run for president right then. That’s what Socrates said to Right Burke two weeks later.

  Ralphie’s eyes bulged and he seemed to lose his balance for a moment. He put out a hand to steady himself against the shelter, but the glass wall had been busted out long ago and the big man stumbled sideways.

  Socrates grabbed him and helped him upright.

  “What you talkin’ ’bout, man?” Ralphie said, pushing the powerful hands away.

  Socrates smiled again. “You know what I’m sayin’. You Ralphie McPhee, right? Yes you are.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Ralphie demanded.

  “What difference that make? Just before you wouldn’t even say boo to me. Now you wanna be my friend?”

  “Don’t mess wit’ me, old man. I might have to fuck you up.”

  “Fuck wit’ me an’ you ain’t never gonna fuck that li’l girl again,” Socrates said. He tried not to use foul language too much after prison but he knew that he had to get the point across to Ralphie before Ralphie made the mistake of trying to fight.

  It worked.

  Ralphie took a closer look at Socrates and saw something. Something that poor men living on the edge of mayhem can recognize without naming.

  Socrates knew what he saw; the look of hard resolve. Socrates was ready for anything and he and Ralphie both knew it.

  “Fuck you, man.” Ralphie took a step back from danger. “Fuck you.”

  “Uh-huh. Yeah. Tell me sumpin’, Ralphie.” When no reply came, Socrates went on, “How come you out here actin’ like a niggah an’ you cain’t even see me?”

  Ralphie wasn’t listening. His eyes were roving over the possibilities of the problems he could have over being seen. “Huh?” he snorted.

  “I said, how come you out here actin’ like a niggah?”

  “What you talkin’ ’bout, fool?”

  “I’m sayin’ that here you are out in these streets dry-humpin’ some girl in front of a man live on’y two blocks from you. Shoot! I done talked to your wife an’ yo’ li’l boy, what’s his name? Yeah. Warren.”

  It was hearing his son’s name that put real fear into Ralphie.

  “Hey, man,” he said. “This ain’t none’a your fuckin’ business.”

  “It ain’t?”

  “Not one bit. So you just better shet yo’ trap an’ forget what you think you know. ’Cause you don’t know a damn thing about me.”

  “Oh yeah I do,” Socrates said. “I know you. I know you front and back.”

  “Hey!” Ralphie pushed his hands out and to the side in a mock breaststroke. “I’ll kick holy shit outta you you wanna fuck wit’ me!”

  “Touch me.” Socrates pointed down at the dark cement under their feet. “And I will leave you cold an’ dead on this here flo’.”

  Ralphie saw the hand slip into the khaki pocket, he saw the flat mud luster in the older man’s eyes. He drew back into silence except for a hiccough that he couldn’t stifle.

  Just then a police car cruised slowly by. The two white faces peered through the glass and rain at the two black men. A light flashed out and the patrol car slowed almost to a stop—but then it went on.

  The rain, Socrates thought. Boys don’t wanna get wet.

  {4.}

  “You gonna answer my question, boy?”

  “What you want, man? You want a couple’a dollars?”

  “I wanna know what you got against yo’ wife, um, uh … Angel.”

  Socrates saw the name sink into Ralphie’s shoulders. The young man slumped down and shook his head.

  “I’ont even know you, man,” Ralphie said.

  “That’s right. You cain’t even see me when I’m standin’ here right next to you. Cain’t even say, Hey, brother, what’s happenin’. You cain’t see me but I could see you.”

  “So what do you want?”

  It wasn’t so much the question but the pain in Ralphie’s voice that stopped Socrates cold. He thought about those imaginary workers in the bakery that might have stood there. He thought about thinking about what he’d do if they ever let him out of jail. He thought about the cold in his chest and the fact that the wiring in his apartment couldn’t take the strain of an extra electric space heater.

  A hundred needs went through Socrates’ mind but nowhere could he find Ralphie. Maybe Linda. Maybe her bare brown legs wrapped around his waist. Maybe her. />
  “Yeah?” Ralphie demanded. “You just gonna stand there an’ look at the rain?”

  Socrates considered the young man again. He wore black pants with a white shirt that had an off-white T-shirt showing at the open collar. His trench coat was drab green, darkened by the rain.

  The shirt meant that he had a job in some store or office.

  A workingman.

  “Well?” Ralphie asked.

  Socrates thought about a promise he’d made. A murky pledge. He swore to himself that he’d never hurt another person—except if he had to for self-preservation. He swore to try and do good if the chance came before him. That way he could ease the evil deeds that he had perpetrated in the long evil life that he’d lived.

  The sound of the rain filled the air and he got the urge to tear off his own ears.

  “I’m sorry,” Socrates said.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. He tried to remember the last time he’d apologized. He’d regretted the crimes of his youth; blubbered like a child over the couple he’d slaughtered. But they were dead. He had never, in his memory, apologized to a living soul.

  “What the fuck is that s’posed t’mean? You sorry?”

  “I was just mad, that’s all,” Socrates said. “Mad that you an’ yo’ girlfriend din’t even see me. Yeah, yeah. That’s it.”

  Ralphie was lost. He tried to stay angry but all that showed on his face was confusion. He didn’t know whether to speak or to stand back.

  Socrates saw a bus coming from many blocks away.

  “You see,” Socrates said, “I was talkin’ about Angel and Warren. About how you was hurtin’ them. But really it wasn’t that. At least not just that.”

  “How the fuck you know ’bout what I’m doin’ t’my wife and son?” Ralphie said.

  Socrates watched the bus coming over Ralphie’s shoulder. He could make out the bright lights of the big windows up front. It was like a chariot burning in the rain.