Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned Page 9

  “That’s like in a gang,” Darryl said.

  “Yeah.” Socrates nodded. “In a way it is. But in a way it ain’t neither. The Young Africans like a gang. They got their code an’ their colors. They ready to go to war. An’ that’s fine. Sometimes you got to go to war. But most the times you should be helpin’. You should be laughin’ an’ eatin’ good an’ you should go to bed knowin’ that they ain’t nobody hungry on yo’ street.”

  Darryl was looking deeply into Socrates’ eyes. He heard the word hungry. Socrates knew that he would.

  “So it’s only that lady hate you doin’ right on Marvane,” Darryl said.

  “Uh-huh. The only one gonna make black people feel good. The only one got a right to go to war.”

  Darryl and Socrates started walking again. Neither one said anything until they reached Socrates’ back door. They went inside and took turns going to the bathroom.

  When they were sitting again Socrates asked, “So what you gonna do now?”

  “I gotta get home.”

  “I mean what you gonna do, boy?”

  Darryl stared at his mentor but there were no words in his mouth, no thoughts behind his eyes. Socrates was reminded of hours and years spent behind bars with nothing in his head. He remembered thinking that the only thing to life was feeling pain—or not feeling it.

  “What should I do?” Darryl asked.

  “I don’t know, Darryl. Maybe, maybe you should dream.”

  “Huh?”

  “You still have bad dreams at night?”

  “Not too much. If I do, an’ I wake up, then I think that I’m gonna do sumpin’ an’ I go back to sleep.”

  “That’s good,” Socrates said. “’Cause a boy needs sleep, you know. How he gonna go to school and answer hard questions like the ones you got if he don’t get his rest?”

  “What questions?”

  “Marvane Street.”

  Darryl cocked his round head to the side and nodded. He blinked and then nodded again.

  Socrates put his hand on Darryl’s shoulder. “You know there’s only two things that a poor boy like you gotta do, Darryl.”

  “What’s that?” Darryl put his hands up and touched Socrates’ arm. It was a light touch, and brief.

  It didn’t hurt at all.

  “First you got to survive,” Socrates said. “Then you got to think; think and dream.”

  Darryl nodded. He said, “But I prob’ly get killed.”

  “No you won’t, boy. I won’t allow that.”

  “But how could you stop it?”

  “I don’t know,” Socrates said. “But I ain’t alone. If they start shootin’ on your block, then you come here to me. If I cain’t help ya we go to Right and Luvia. She got a whole church wit’ her.

  “You see, Darryl, a boy like you might have to go underground.”

  “Like in a hole?”

  “Not a real hole. But you might have to hide from people. You be there but they won’t know it.”

  “But what if they wanna get me at school?”

  “Then you get outta school an’ learn someplace else.”

  “I could do that?”

  “You can do anything, boy. Just as long as you alive—you could do anything.”

  {4.}

  That night Socrates had a dream:

  He dreamt that he was sleeping in a tiny room, no larger than a closet. He was dreaming about the rain when there came a violent knock on the door. He jumped up and crouched down at the end of his canvas cot, scared of the powerful blows that had awakened him.

  “Socrates!” a bass voice boomed. “Socrates!”

  And then Socrates woke up.

  But when he went back to sleep that big voice called out his name again. This time it was even louder and Socrates lurched awake.

  Five times the voice called to him and five times he woke up panting. He decided on that last awakening that he wouldn’t run from the voice again.

  He fell asleep and the voice called.

  “What you want?” Socrates yelled, ashamed of himself for shivering.

  “Come on out here!” the voice commanded.

  Socrates opened the door. He found himself standing before a towering, jet-black man. A man with a broad broad nose and sensual big lips. The man’s eyes were stern and his shoulders were wide as a sail.

  “Come on!” the big man said. And they were walking outside in the driving rain.

  The weather was strange to Socrates because even though it was night and cloudy and raining, in the far-off distance he could see the moon illuminating a small hill. The light from the moon lit the field through which he and his big companion traveled.

  They walked for a long time, until Socrates’ legs began to ache. They came at last to a giant stone arch that had the words SOULS END chiseled into its crown. Beyond the arch, bathed in rain and lit by a golden moon, stretched a graveyard that went on for hundreds of miles. The graveyard went so far that at its farthest limit it reached into daylight.

  It was the graveyard for all the black people that had died from grief. Each grave was marked by a small granite stone, hardly larger than a silver dollar.

  “Here!” the big man said. He handed Socrates a spade. “We got to dig all’a them up now. It’s time.”

  “All that!” Socrates yelled over the squall.

  “Every one,” the big man said.

  “I cain’t do it!”

  “But you could try!”

  “It’d kill me!”

  The giant gestured toward the graves with a hand even larger than Socrates’. “We all die!”

  Socrates came awake again. He sat up and laughed so hard that he had to get up out of the bed. He laughed so hard that his side hurt and he sank to his knees. After laughing he ran to the toilet and threw up the beef and mushroom gravy he’d had for dinner the night before.

  “It was like …” he said to Right Burke a few weeks later. “It was like I was a child seein’ lightnin’ for the first time. The light show made me all giddy but the thunder scared me down to my boots.”

  MAN GONE

  {1.}

  It was five thirty-six p.m. by Socrates’ new digital watch when Corina Shakur came calling. He knew it was her knocking but he went to the door anyway. She stood a few feet back, showing no intention of coming any closer.

  “Have you seen’im?” the tall young woman asked, her lips and nose curling into disgust.

  “Hi, Corina,” Socrates answered, smiling. “What you doin’ here? You lookin’ for Howard?”

  Corina was too angry to answer his polite question. She moved her head from one side to the other and clutched her shoulders, clenching them tightly as if trying to make her body into a fist.

  “Come in,” he said. “Come on in.”

  Before she could decline, Socrates turned around and went back into his small apartment. He took the two and a half steps across his kitchen and went through the doorless doorway into his sleeping room.

  “I’ll get you a chair from in here, Corrie,” he called over his shoulder. “I fount me some old kitchen chairs an’ patched’em up.”

  Socrates picked up the yellow vinyl-and-chrome chairs and carried them back to the kitchen. Corina was standing in the doorway, the sun silhouetting her long curving figure.

  “Come on in, Corrie,” Socrates said. He was squinting and smiling and feeling spry.

  “I ain’t got time to be wastin’ ’round here, Socrates Fortlow.” Corina held back, speaking to him as if she were calling across a river.

  “Okay,” Socrates said. He positioned a chair to face her, then sat himself down. “But you don’t mind if I take a load off, now do ya?”

  “Do what you want.”

  “You lookin’ for Howard?” Socrates asked.

  “You seen’im?”

  “Why’ont you come on in, Corina?” he asked in mild frustration. “Don’t you want some coffee? You know I don’t get that many young lady guests. It be nice for me just t’see you sit
tin’ in my chair.”

  Corina sighed and then said, “I cain’t stay long. The kids is wit’ my sister.”

  Socrates jumped up and turned sideways to hide the glee he felt when Corina came in. He moved the chairs to his folding card table and then struck a match to light the butane stove that sat on the sink.

  “Where’s Howard?” Socrates asked as he ran tap water into a saucepan.

  “You ain’t seen’im? Really?” Corina asked. There were no tears but her voice was small, making her sound like a sad girl.

  “No.” Socrates put the pan on the stove. He sat down in a plastic chair that had once been his only seat. “What happened?”

  Socrates had always liked Corina. She had the kind of face that showed her feelings no matter how hard she tried to look mad. She carried her shoulders high and her body was long and straight except for a small belly that looked comfortable and down-home.

  Corina never trusted Socrates but he didn’t hold that against her; he knew any woman who didn’t trust him probably had good sense.

  “We had a fight last night an’ he left.” Corina sat back in the chair and turned her head to avoid crying. “He ain’t never stayed out all night.”

  “Hm!” Socrates got up to check his water even though he knew it wasn’t boiling yet. “What you fight about?”

  “It wasn’t nuthin’. I just said that maybe he could get a job down wit’ McDonald’s or sumpin’ like that while he was waitin’ t’see if he could do computer operations. You know he ain’t had a job for nine months an’ they cut back my hours at Penney’s. All I said was that he could do it in the meantime, while we was waitin’.”

  “An’ he didn’t like that? What’s wrong? Don’t he wanna work?” Socrates took a yard of cheesecloth and folded it over on itself twice, then he took a can of MJB coffee and scooped three tablespoons of the grounds into the center of the cloth square.

  “No,” Corina protested. “He ain’t lazy. He just proud. He say he too smart to be burnin’ burgers fo’kids.”

  “He ain’t too proud t’let his wife go out an’ make all the money, now is he?” Socrates brought together the corners of the cheesecloth to form a little sack that he fastened by tying a string midway at the neck.

  “Howard ain’t afraid to work,” Corina said. “He had a good job wit’ the city parks, but you know they had all those layoffs.”

  Socrates stood there, coffee ball in one hand and tin funnel in the other. “But that was almost a year ago. You know Winnie an’ li’l Howard ain’t gonna stop growin’ just ’cause their daddy cain’t buy’em clothes.”

  “That’s right,” Corina declared. “I tried t’tell’im that it don’t matter what somebody might think. All that matter is what his kids feel.”

  Socrates put the coffee cloth in the top of the funnel and wedged the tin spout in the mouth of an hourglass-shaped Pyrex jug.

  “He ain’t called or nuthin’?” Socrates sat back down.

  “No.”

  “Then he’s a fool,” Socrates said. “Man got a woman like you to get out on these dangerous streets an’ go to work ev’ry day. Woman have his kids an’ feed’em too. Uh. You know I be workin’ at McDonald’s in the afternoon and Burger King at night.”

  Socrates showed Corina his best grin. A trace of a smile skimmed her pouting lips.

  “I ain’t askin’ fo’too much,” she complained. “You know I go to work at JCPenney’s, do all the housework, and then I got to be wit’ them kids ev’ry second they ain’t in the house. I let’em out just once by theyselves an’ the bullets’ll start flyin’.”

  “I know it,” Socrates said. It was the truth but he was saying something else to the wife of his friend. “You got to have eyes in the back’a your head to live in this world, girl. Eyes in the back’a your head, ears cocked, an’ two fingers to the wind.”

  Corina had a large space between her two front teeth. That smile was like a diamond to the miner Socrates.

  “You want me to go out an’ help you look for Howard?” the ex-con asked. He was staring hard at Corina.

  “I’ont know, Mr. Fortlow. Maybe Howard get mad if he knew I was tellin’ his business around.”

  “So what if he get mad? Shoot! He lucky he don’t come home an’ find some other man up in his bed.”

  “No.” Corina shook her head vigorously and stared right into the older man’s eyes. “It ain’t nuthin’ like that goin’ on.”

  “I know, Corrie. You a good woman. Lovin’ yo’ kids an’ yo’ man, you ain’t got no time to be actin’ a fool. But I was just sayin’ that Howard cain’t leave no beautiful woman all alone an’ expect the dogs t’stay down. Woman like you need somebody wit’ all the hard work an’ love you put out. That’s why I just cain’t understand it.”

  “Understand what?” Corina asked. The look on her face opened a vein in Socrates’ heart that he thought had died along with Muriel—the woman he’d murdered decades before.

  For a moment Socrates couldn’t speak. The blood flowing made him afraid that his heart was going bad. The chair underneath him seemed to shift.

  “Uh, well,” he mumbled. “I cain’t see leavin’ a woman you love for even one night. You wouldn’t never want that woman to think that you could leave her. ’Cause she’s your life. Your life.”

  Corina Shakur wore simple jeans and a buff chamois shirt. Her hair was tied back with a polka-dotted blue-and-white handkerchief. Her sockless feet were in red sneakers. She clasped her hands and leaned forward. Not one bit of fear showed in her gentle face.

  “You lose somebody, Mr. Fortlow?” she asked.

  The question hung there between them for five seconds, ten.

  “Water’s boilin’,” he answered softly.

  Socrates poured the steaming water from the saucepan into the funnel. Slowly dollops of the dark brown liquid dripped into the Pyrex jug. Socrates watched the jug closely as if that was part of the job of making coffee.

  “Did you?” she asked.

  Socrates swallowed hard. He poured a little more water and the flow increased. He took two thick mugs from the shelf and placed one down on the table near Corina.

  “Sorry we cain’t go in the other room,” he said. “But I sleep in there too. It’s a mess.”

  “I don’t mind sitting here,” she said.

  Her eyes followed him as he brought the coffee over and poured.

  “You take anything?” he asked.

  “Sugar,” she said.

  He had cubes in a bowl on the shelf. He held it as Corina fished out three lumps. He spent longer than necessary finding her a spoon.

  She stirred while looking at him.

  “You lose somebody, Socrates?” she asked again.

  Socrates sat down and cleared his throat. He sipped his black coffee and coughed once more. “I had a girl love me like the mornin’—once.”

  “Back east? Howard said that you come from back east.”

  “Indiana,” Socrates said.

  “She leave you?”

  Socrates turned his head to regard Corina Shakur. She was twenty-three years old; thirty-five years younger than him. But she knew things that he could only guess at. She had birthed children. She probably believed in God. She woke up in the morning thinking about how things could get better, or stay good.

  “What was her name?” Corina asked.

  “You want Howard back, Corrie?”

  “I guess.” She looked down at her long fingers. “I get kinda fed up is all. You know I try an’ make things good for him, but he’s so mad all the time. I try’n tell’im that he got to get over that. An’ he know it but it’s like it’s too much for him.” Corina shook her head and sipped the sweet coffee. When she ran the tips of her fingers around the rim of the mug Socrates felt his heart clatter again. “He wanna go dancin’ an’ to clubs like when we was goin’ out, but we got kids now. What can I do about that? My sister cain’t be takin’ them all the time. I mean, I cain’t help it if he too proud. I cain’t w
ork two jobs ’cause he won’t work one. But if I say it then he get mad. I just don’t know if it’s worth it.”

  Corina gazed at the floor but her eyes held the knowledge that Socrates was watching her. He watched until Corina was almost finished with her coffee.

  “Could I say sumpin’ to you, girl?” If Socrates had had a hat he would have held it over his heart.

  “What?”

  “I mean, I don’t want you to get mad or to think that I’m tryin’ to do sumpin’ behind Howard’s back. I couldn’t do that.”

  “Okay, Mr. Fortlow. What you have to say?”

  “You want some cake? I got some day-old devil’s food from Bounty up in the closet.”

  “No. I don’t want no cake. I wanna hear what you got to say an’ then I have to go.”

  Socrates put his strong hands on his knees and leaned forward. “You’re a beautiful woman, Corina. Smart and sure and the kinda woman a man could count on. What they used to call a good woman back home. An’ when I look at you I find a part’a me hopin’ that that fool don’t come back. ’Cause you know I wanna be in your door wit’ flowers an’ baby toys. You know I just sit here an’ look at you an’ I can see all the things in my life that I missed.”

  Corina glanced over her shoulder at the door.

  “Don’t worry, honey,” Socrates said. “I don’t know what you heard about me but I’m not tryin’ t’do nuthin’. And this ain’t no secret sidetrack kinda thing neither. I would tell Howard what I’m tellin’ you. I’d tell’im this very minute. ’Cause I don’t have nuthin’ t’lose an’ I know it.

  “Black men always be talkin’ ’bout how hard life is on’em, but most of ’em don’t e’en know the half of it. They too proud, huh. Ain’t no pride like chirren; ain’t no pride like a woman lovin’ her man.” Socrates felt the sheen of sweat across his face; he heard the sexual fever in his own voice.

  Tears sprouted in Corina s eyes and she didn’t try to hide them.

  “Right after you leave I’m gonna go find Howard and I’ma tell him what I just said to you. An’ if he don’t listen I’ma come up to your door wit’ a job and candy for the kids.” Socrates stood up and Corina followed suit, like a small sail caught in a larger boat’s wake.