Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (Socrates Fortlow 1) (17 page)

“Well stop lookin’ over there. He gonna know how scared you are he see you lookin’. Here, look at me.”

Darryl turned his head and squinted at Socrates. He was trembling.

“So what you think?” Socrates asked the boy.

“What I think about what?” Darryl whined.

“About my dream, that’s what.”

“’Bout yo’ momma?”

“Yeah.”

“Was she nice to you?” The boy’s adolescent voice cracked from approaching manhood and fear.

“Oh yeah,” Socrates said. “My mother was the only one stuck by me. The only one.”

“ ’Cause you know,” Darryl said, “I be dreamin’ ’bout Yvette Frank sometimes.”

“Yeah?”

“Uh-huh.” Darryl nodded like a much younger boy. “She be naked an’ tell me how much she like me.”

“An’ then you wake up wit’ yo’ dick all hard?”

Darryl leaned down quickly, plucking a long blade of tattered grass from underneath the bench. He twirled the shoot, squashing it until the light-colored pads of his forefinger and thumb took on a greenish tint.

“That’s okay,” Socrates said. “That’s how you dream when you a boy. You dreamin’ ’bout manhood.”

Socrates stared out across the littered lawn of the park. At a picnic bench not far from them four men had begun a lively game of dominoes.

“Twenty-fi’e!” Trevor Brown shouted as he slapped down his bone.

Socrates recognized Trevor from the South Central Flea Market and Fair down at the Avalon Shopping Center. The mall had gone bust in 1988. Now the supermarket and stores were broken up into stalls that people rented by the day, the week, or the month. You could get anything from music discs to power tools at the Flea Market Fair.

Trevor Brown sold T-shirts that his daughter hand-painted with images of African warriors and statuesque women.

Socrates had rented a stall now and then to sell junk that he’d collected and repaired in his spare time. That was before he’d become a food packager and delivery man for Bounty Supermarket.

When Trevor raised his head in a victorious grin he caught sight of Socrates.

Socrates waved and Trevor gave him a happy nod.

Beyond the men came a group of three boys—twelve to fourteen years old. Tough-looking children with tennis shoes that had no laces and jeans that hung low on their hips. They seemed heavy in their big coats, ambling forward like a mob of unruly bear cubs.

The men stopped their game a moment to gauge the threat of the children.

Darryl looked up from his mangled blade of grass. He put his hand on Socrates’ thigh.

“That him?” Socrates asked in a voice that held absolutely no emotion.

“Uh-huh.”

“Then let’s get wit’ it.”

“I ca … I ca … I cain’t.”

“You got to, Darryl. They ain’t no other choice.”

Darryl’s eyes pleaded with Socrates but the ex-con showed no sympathy. He stood up and walked away. He went in a wide arc so as to avoid the attention of the rolling gang of boys.

He went over to the group of men playing dominoes.

“Hey, Trevor,” Socrates hailed.

At that same moment the head bear cub, Philip, yelled, “Hey, punk. I told you to stay outta here.”

{2.}

“Your boy’s in trouble over there, Mr. Fortlow,” Trevor said when Socrates made it to their table.

He hadn’t looked back until then. He didn’t want to witness Darryl running scared. But Darryl wasn’t running. He faced the shorter, heavier Philip. The other two boys stayed a couple of yards back. Darryl was holding out his hands in a reasoning posture.

Good, Socrates thought, with those long arms he got the advantage.

“You hear me, Socco?” Trevor Brown asked.

“Say what?” Socrates was watching the boys closely.

The men around him were talking, asking questions, but Socrates just stared. Nothing was real except those boys.

Philip took a wild overhand swing at Darryl, who leaned back, wobbled a little bit, and then bounced forward with a textbook right cross. The fist found its target on Philip’s chin.

The hard little gangbanger didn’t even flinch.

Darryl had good training, and more courage than most, but he didn’t have enough muscle to back it up.

Socrates took a deep breath and held it. Someone put a hand on his shoulder. Socrates stiff-armed whoever it was that touched him. He heard the man’s
Wholp!
and the sound of the dominoes skittering around.

Darryl produced a steak knife from somewhere in his pants but Philip slapped it right out of the boy’s bony hands.

Somebody shouted, “Hey, what the …” but Socrates didn’t hear the rest of what was said because he was moving. Philip’s fist made a meaty connection with Darryl’s jaw, and even though the lanky boy was tying up his attacker the way Socrates had taught him to, it wouldn’t be long before Darryl was hurt bad.

Socrates kicked off his shoes to get better traction in the grass. Close to sixty, he didn’t feel old because hot blood was moving in him. He went quickly and quietly behind Philip’s two friends.

Darryl doubled over from a fist in his gut.

The first boy went down from a slap behind his head.

Darryl screamed and twisted on the ground as a heavy foot barely missed his face.

“Hey …” was all the second boy could get out before he was slapped senseless by Socrates.

But Philip hadn’t seen his friends go down. He hit Darryl with a flying body slam that ended in a laugh and a hippy sexual grind.

Darryl was screeching while Socrates disarmed the prone boys. He pulled a Glock, a rusty .22, and a switchblade from their clothes.

“Turn over!” Philip shouted.

Darryl was lying on his stomach with his hands and arms up over his ears.

“Turn over, pussy boy!” Philip’s words were loud and slurred with passion. With his left hand he was trying to force Darryl to turn over. In his right hand he held up a .45 automatic.

“Help!” Darryl shouted, and then, “Pleasepleaseplease.”

Socrates slapped the gun from the upheld hand. When Philip turned around to see who it was, he got slapped so hard that he tumbled over twice, coming to rest in a heap.

“All right!” shouted a domino player. The others were cheering.

The other two boys were trying to rise but they didn’t know where they were.

Socrates yanked Philip up by his arm. The boy was out. Socrates pinched his cheek hard and twisted. The pain woke him up.

“You see me, boy? You hear me?”

Philip’s head moved, maybe it was a nod.

“Who you?” he asked.

Socrates released him so that Philip stood under his own power, on uncertain feet. Socrates was going to hit him one more time; once more and he’d think twice before he messed around with Darryl again. Socrates grinned, thinking,
Three times, an’ he’d be dead
.

But before even one more blow Trevor Brown shouted out, “Watch it! Watch out, Socco!”

The big man swung around, ready for his death—or someone else’s. But what he saw almost made him laugh.

Darryl stalked toward them on stiff legs, Philip’s .45 automatic held out before him in both hands. The boy lurched from side to side as he approached, the pistol pointing anywhere and everywhere.

When he came up beside Socrates, Darryl stopped and brought the wavering muzzle up to about two feet from Philip’s chest. Philip’s widely spaced small eyes came awake while he was staring at that gun.

Darryl looked to Socrates and then back at Philip. Darryl’s mouth opened in a wide, silent yowl. His eyes darted back and forth between friend and foe.

“Don’t look at me,” Socrates said.

Darryl’s aim got straighter and Philip took off. He ran straight past Darryl, then crouched low to avoid Socrates’ wide grab. He ran screaming toward the domino table as Darryl swung around to fire.

“Shit!” a domino man shouted.

They all went down to the ground but it wasn’t necessary. When Socrates touched Darryl’s arm the boy released the gun, letting it fall unfired to the grass.

{3.}

“I was scared,” Darryl sulked, staring down at Socrates’ pitted linoleum floor.

“That was a damn good punch you give that boy,” Socrates answered. “Right on the chin.”

Darryl sat up a little straighter.

They’d come home carrying the knife and three pistols in a brown paper bag.

“You stood up for yourself, Darryl,” Socrates said. “That’s all a black man could do. You always outnumbered, you always outgunned.”

“But they gonna still be after me,” Darryl said. “They still gonna wanna get me.”

“That’s right,” Socrates agreed, nodding. “But now you done stood up. Now you done your best, so you don’t have nuthin’ t’be sorry for—not ever again in your life.”

“How that gonna help me?”

“You done your job, Darryl. Now leave it up to me.”

T
hey had smoked ham hocks, served with mustard, and rice for dinner.

“What’s wrong, boy?” Socrates asked.

“I’ont know. Nuthin’ I guess. I mean if I was like you I wouldn’t have no problems.”

“Hm. If you was like me you woulda spent ten years on a dirt farm hopin’ your daddy got drunk enough to pass out ’cause if he didn’t you’d get your ass whipped with thick cord.”

“He did that to you?” Darryl asked. “For nuthin’?”

“When he fin’ly died my momma cried, not ’cause he was dead but because we lost the farm. But I was happy until I realized without him I didn’t eat ev’ry night. No, Darryl, you don’t wanna be like me.

“You don’t wanna run wild in the street treatin’ women like they was dogs. Fightin’ an’ stealin’ an’ actin’ up till they put you in jail. Naw, man, you wanna get out from under all that shit. You got to.”

“But I’ont know how,” Darryl said.

After the dinner Socrates said, “You take my bed tonight. I’ll sleep out here on the couch. You worked hard today, you need a good sleep.”

A
s he fell off to sleep, Socrates knew that Darryl couldn’t stay with him any longer. One day that gang of boys would find him. They’d either kill him or make him one of their own.

Maybe not. It didn’t always happen like that. But he didn’t want to take the chance.

“You sa’ed that boy’s life,” Trevor Brown had said in the park.

Not yet
, thought Socrates.
Not yet
.

H
is mother entered in a dream. She was older but still standing straight and tall. They were in the small front room in the house in Cartersville. The picture window looked out over a field of jagged stumps of cornstalks.

Socrates sat at a small table that had a fancy linen cloth across it. He was looking at his big hands while she stood next to the window that was filled with blue sky and the field of corn. The sun was so bright through the window that Mrs. Fortlow seemed to be in a shadow.

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.

S
ocrates 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?”