A Red Death (16 page)

He looked out over the blue air and blue water for a long time before saying, “They won’t let me work.”

“Who?”

“America. They come and they tell the weak boss that I’m a bad man and he fires me. They wouldn’t let me wash shit from the floor. So my friends help me, and my family.”

“Who you talkin’ ’bout?”

“The Cossack,” he spat. “The Nazi, the FBI.”

“You mean they come out to yo’ job an’ tell the boss that you did sumpin’?”

“They say I am not American. They say I am communist.”

I found myself shaking my head. “Don’t you know that’s some shit.”

“That is why I work for charity, for First African. The white people don’t understand being treated like this. They think that they are free because nobody comes to their job. They see that I am bad because the police follow me. They have no idea.” Chaim pointed at his head. “In here they are stupid with what they are told.”

“You could say that again. You all the time hearin’ ’bout how free America is, but it ain’t.”

“No. But they are free. They have a job and they keep it. When things get bad, my friend, it is you and I that are out of work.”

I nodded. There had been many a time I’d seen the Negro staff of a company laid off when money was tight. It didn’t always happen like that, but it did often enough.

Chaim grabbed my hand in viselike grip. There were tears in his eyes. We sat there holding hands and looking at each other until I got a little uncomfortable. Then he said, “I saw them hang my brother when I was a child. He was accused of spitting in a soldier’s path. They hung him and burned down my mother’s house.”

I won’t say that those few words alone made us friends, but I understood Chaim Wenzler then.

I
TALKED TO AGENT CRAXTON later that same night. He asked all sorts of questions about where we picked up clothes and who handled the money. He was looking for spies everywhere. If I hadn’t talked to Andre Lavender I would have thought the FBI man was crazy.

But even though I had the proof I needed to set myself free I balked at bringing down Chaim Wenzler.

“What is it that you want on the man?” I asked Craxton.

“I’ll know it when you tell me, Easy. Has he invited you to any meetings?”

“What kinda meetin’s?”

“That’s what I’m asking you.”

“Uh-uh, no. All we do is collect clothes and then give ’em away.”

“Don’t you worry, Mr. Rawlins, he’ll slip up. And then we’ll have him.”

There wasn’t much consolation for me in that.

“I talked to your friend the other day, Easy,” Agent Craxton said.

“Who’s that?”

“Lawrence. He’s singing a new tune now that Washington called his boss. He says that everything’s okay and that he would be happy to process a schedule of payments when this thing is over.”

“You not gonna let him do that, are you?”

“No, I don’t think so. I told him that Washington should have your paperwork by the end of next week.”

I sighed, “Thanks.”

“You see, Easy, we’re helping each other.”

I could still feel that powerful grip on my hand.

— 20 —

I
KNEW THAT I
WAS BOUND
to suffer a fall. In a perfect world I would have had Etta for my bride and Chaim for my best man. But after that last talk with Craxton my hopes for a happy life just sank. Everything I was doing seemed wrong. The police were suspicious. The IRS wanted me in jail. Even Craxton was lying to me, and I didn’t know why. There was no room for escape, so I turned to alcohol. I had a drink or two and went through the motions of cleaning up. But the bath didn’t cleanse and the whiskey didn’t work.

I wasn’t only worried about Mouse and what he might do to exact vengeance on me. I’m not a meek man and I will fight for what I believe is right, regardless of the odds. If I’d felt it was right for me to love Etta, then I wouldn’t have cared about what Mouse might do; at least I would have been at peace with myself. But Mouse was my friend and he was in pain; I knew that when I looked into his eyes at Targets. But I hadn’t worried about him at all. All I cared about was how I felt. The fact that I was so selfish sickened me.

It was same with Chaim Wenzler. He might have been a communist but he was a friend to me. We’d drink out of the same glass sometimes, and we talked from our hearts. Craxton and Lawrence had me so worried about my money and my freedom that I had become their slave. At least Mouse and Chaim acted from their natures. They were the innocent ones while I was the villain.

Finally, when I succumbed to the whiskey, I began to think about Poinsettia Jackson.

All I could think about was that young woman and how my coldheartedness had caused her to take her own life. I liked what the detective Quinten Naylor was doing, but I didn’t agree with him. Why would someone want to kill a woman whose every moment was torture and pain? If it was someone who wanted to put her out of her misery they wouldn’t have hung her. A bullet in the head would have been more humane. No. Poinsettia took her own life because she lost her beauty and her job, and when she begged me to let her at least have a roof over her head, I took that too.

I
WAS IN A FOUL MOOD when I went down to First African that evening. I was more than a little drunk and willing to blame anybody else for the wrong that was in me.

I’d promised Odell that I’d come down to the elementary school that the church ran and do something about their ants. They had a problem with red ants.

Los Angeles had a special breed of red ant. They were about three times the size of the regular black ant and they were fire-engine red. But the real problem with them was their bite. The red ant’s bite was painful, and on many people it made a great welt. That would have been bad enough, but children seemed to be especially bothered by the ants. And little kids loved to play in the dirt where red ants made their nests.

I had a poison that killed them in the hive. And I was so upset about everything, and so drunk, that I didn’t have the sense to stay home.

I used the key Odell had given me and went down to the basement of the church, looking for a funnel. When I got to the cafeteria I saw that the lights were on. That didn’t bother me, though. There were often people working in the church.

I got the funnel from a hopper room, then headed for the exit at the back of the basement. When I walked through the main room I saw them. Chaim Wenzler and a young woman who had black hair and pale skin.

“Easy,” Chaim said with a smile. He rose and crossed the room to shake my hand.

“Hi, Chaim,” I said.

He pulled me across the room by my hand, saying, “This is my daughter, Shirley.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I said. “But listen, Chaim, I got some work I gotta do an’ there’s a problem back home.”

I must have sounded sincere, because Chaim and Shirley both frowned. They had identical dimples at the center of their chins.

I wanted to get away from there. The room seemed to be too dark and too hot. Just the idea that I was there to fool those people, the same way I fooled Poinsettia with my lies about being a helpless janitor, made my stomach turn. Before they could say their words of concern I threw myself toward the exit.

The schoolyard was a vast sandy lot that had three bungalows placed end to end at the northern side. The ants dug their nests against the salmon brick walls at the back. I set up my electric torch and took out the amber bottle of poison. I also had a flask of Teachers. I took a sip of my poison and then poured the ants a dram of theirs through the funnel.

What followed was a weird scene.

I’d never watched to see what happened after the poison hit a hive. Under electric light the sand looked like a real desert around the mound. At first there was just a wisp of smoke rising from the hole, but then about twenty of the ants came rushing out. They were frantic, running in widening arcs and stamping on the sand like parading horses held under a tight rein. These ants ran off into the night but were followed by weaker, more confused ants.

I saw no more than four of them actually die, but I knew that the hives were full of the dead. I knew that they had fallen where they stood, because the poison is very deadly in close quarters. Like in Dachau when we got there, the dead strewn like chips of wood at a lumberyard.

There were six holes in all. Six separate hives to slaughter. I went through the ritual, drinking whiskey and staring hard at the few corpses.

They were all the same except for the last one. For some reason, when I gave that one the dose of poison the ants flooded out of there in the hundreds. There were so many that I had to back away to avoid them swarming over me. I was so scared that I ran, stumbling twice.

I ran all the way back to the church. Before I went in, I drained the scotch and threw the bottle in the street.

I made it down into the basement, tripping on my own feet and the stairs. Chaim and his daughter were still there. The way they looked at me I wondered if I had been talking to myself.

Chaim gazed into my face with almost colorless eyes. I imagined he knew everything. About the FBI and Craxton, about the ants, about Poinsettia and Daddy Reese. He probably knew about the time I fell asleep and when I woke up my mother was dead.

“What’s wrong, Mr. Rawlins?” he asked.

“Nuthin’,” I said. I took a step forward. The impact of my foot on the floor sounded in my head like a giant kettle drum. “It’s just that …”

“What?” Chaim grunted as he caught me by my arms. I realized that I was falling and tried to regain a foothold.

I kept talking too. “Ain’t nuthin’,” I said. I tried to back away but the wall stopped me.

Shirley, his daughter, moved in close behind Chaim. There was concern in her porcelain face.

“Stand still, Easy,” Chaim was saying. Then he laughed, “I don’t think you’ll be sorting clothes tomorrow morning.”

I laughed with him. “You be better off wit’ somebody else helpin’ you anyways, man.”

He shook me the way people do when they’re trying to awaken someone. “
You
are my friend, Easy.” His somber look saddened me even more. I thought of the victims I had seen. Men wasted to the size of boys, mass graves full of innocence.

“I ain’t no friend’a yours, man. Uh-uh. Th’ew her outta her own place. Th’ew her out an’ now she’s dead. You cain’t trust no niggah like me, Chaim. You do better jus’ t’ shine me on.”

With that I leaned against the wall and slid down to the floor.

“We can’t just leave him here, Poppa,” Shirley said. He said something back, but it sounded like music to me, a song that I forgot the words to. I thought for a moment that he understood my confession, that he intended to kill me in the church basement.

But instead they got me to my feet, and pushed me toward the door. I walked under my own steam for the most part but every now and then I tripped.

There was a loud drumming in my head and lamplights hanging against a completely black sky. I could hear the moths banging against the glass covers in between the thunder of my footsteps.

The light snapped on in the car and I fell into the backseat; Chaim pushed my legs in behind me.

I remember motion and soothing words. But I don’t remember going into the house. Then I fell again, this time into a soft bed. I had been crying for a long time.

— 21 —

I
HEARD A DOOR SLAM somewhere below me. Sometime after that I opened my eyes.

The window had a lace curtain over its lower half. There were big white clouds moving fast across a perfectly blue sky in the upper panes. Watching that sky helped my breathing. I remember how deeply I inhaled, not even wanting to let it out.

“Good morning, Mr. Rawlins.” It was a woman’s voice. “How are you feeling?”

“What time is it?” I asked, sitting up. I wasn’t wearing a shirt and the blankets came down to my stomach. Shirley Wenzler’s eyes were fast to my chest.

“Ten, I guess.”

She wore a no-sleeve one-piece cotton dress that had slanting stripes of blue, green, and gold, all very bright. Squinting at those bright colors let me know that I had a hangover.

“This your house?” I asked.

“Kind of. I rent. Poppa lives all the way in Santa Monica so we thought we’d take you here for the night.”

“How’d I get in bed?”

“You walked.”

“I don’t remember.” It was partially true.

“You were kind of drunk, Mr. Rawlins.” She giggled and covered her mouth. She was a very pretty young woman with extremely pale skin against jet-black hair. Her face was heart-shaped, everything seemed to point at her smile.

“Poppa just shouted at you, and told you where to go, and he kept on shouting until you did it. You …” She hesitated.

“Yeah?”

“You were kind of like crying.”

“Did I say anything?”

“About a dead woman. You said she killed herself because you made her leave. Is that true?”