Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (Socrates Fortlow 1) (19 page)

{3.}

“Dear Theresa,” the letter began. “I saw you in a dream the other night and so I wanted to say hay.”

For the next hour he sat there reading and rereading his sentence. It was all true but it didn’t go anywhere. He couldn’t talk about the flu and the pain in his head, about Darryl and the water. He didn’t want to sound sickly and asking for help. If he saw her it would be okay, she’d see that he was independent now.

“I guess I want to see you,” he wrote. “I do want to see you. And then I could tell you about prison and how you were right. I know you probably married and got a lotta kids by now …”

Socrates stopped again. Reread again. He wondered if he knew her husband. He wondered how old her kids were. He counted up the years. Thirty-five. One when she was still writing him in jail and then another a year later. Maybe as many as twelve. Her oldest child would be in his thirties. The youngest no younger than twenty-three.

“… grandchildren too probably. I miss you, T. I almost died from flu and I thought about you. You was always asking when was I going to stop being so crazy. I never said nothing to that because I didn’t want to be lying. You know I wanted to stop. But what if I said I would and then I didn’t?

“I stopped now. I been out of prison eight years and more. I been solid. I got a job and an apartment. I got friends and there is this teenage boy I been helping. I know you married, T. I know that because you wanted it and you always did what you wanted to do.

“I remember when you took me up to your father’s grave at Haven Home. I remember you said he was laying in the ground but he was still more man than most of these niggers walking around on two legs. I remember that. I know you did not mean me but even still it was about me anyway.

“But I am not like that anymore. I can take care of myself now. I don’t get into trouble even when it’s not my fault.

“I would like to hear from you, T. Just two friends talking. I will put my address down bottom. If you get this letter and you want to write then you can.”

Socrates signed the notepaper and wrote down his address. He sent it from the main post office at Florence and Central. He remembered Theresa’s mother’s address because her mother’s name was Rose and Rose lived on 32 Rose Street.

{4.}

Sylvia Marquette had a little store that dealt mainly in candy bars and soda pop, potato chips and beer. But at the back, behind the stand-alone cooler, she kept a block of copper mailboxes.

Sylvia’s market was Socrates’ mailing address.

“No, Mr. Fortlow,” Sylvia said. “Ain’t no mail for you. No.”

Her face was squashed in on itself. No forehead to speak of and little chin. She was quite dark except for her eyes. The whites of the ugly woman’s eyes were like hundred-watt bulbs.

“Why you comin’ in here every day, Mr. Fortlow? I used to only see you once a week.”

“Expectin’ a letter,” he said.

“A check?” Sylvia’s eyes increased their voltage.

“Old girlfriend,” he said.

“Oh,” the shopkeeper cooed. Her voice had become low, and very sexy. “That stuff is better’n money sometimes; ’cept if you hungry.”

“’Cept if she gone,” Socrates added.

They both laughed hard.

“All right then,” Socrates said, concluding their play. “I’ll see ya tomorrah.”

“Good seein’ you anytime, Mr. Fortlow.” Sylvia’s voice was sincere.

Socrates was feeling good as he left the little store even though he’d come to realize over the four weeks since he’d sent his letter that Theresa was gone from him forever—again.

I
n his sleep Sylvia was still laughing. But instead of a happy friend she sounded like a cartoon witch, cackling and savoring his pain. Her hot coughs battered against his eardrums and soured his stomach. In the middle of the night Socrates woke up feeling as if the flu had returned.

If he stayed awake he was okay. But if he dozed, or even lay down, the laughing returned and with it the sick stomach.

“You should take the day off, Mr. Fortlow. You look bad,” Sol Epstein said. There was concern in his wrinkled white face.

“Naw, man. No. Lemme do another shift.”

“Another shift? You look like you should be in the hospital.”

“I can’t sleep, Mr. Epstein. Maybe if I work two shifts I’ll be tired enough to go to bed.”

“What’s wrong?” the daytime manager asked.

“It’s these dreams, man. Not dreams really but like things I see and hear in my sleep.”

Sol Epstein was a short man, strong on top and fat underneath. His hair was the kind of gray that seemed to be blue. He had the cruel slate-gray eyes of a task-master but his smile, when he smiled, made him a kind uncle.

He smiled then.

“You might need some help, Socrates.”

“What kinda help?”

“Counselor. Psychologist. Somethin’ like that.”

“Shit. Only counselin’ I need is to work my butt off until I cain’t see straight no more. That’s what I need.” Socrates was thinking about the prison psychiatrist. All he’d done was to give tests with circles and squares on them, that and pass out drugs.

“Can I stay?” Socrates asked.

“Sure,” said the kind uncle.

{5.}

He worked seven shifts in four days and stopped picking up the mail from Sylvia Marquette. He drank a half pint of whiskey while listening to the cool jazz radio station every night.

Nothing helped.

He couldn’t sleep.

He was losing weight and his hearing had turned strange. Sounds had become louder, tinny. Sometimes he didn’t hear what people said at all. Whenever anyone spoke to him it seemed as if they were speaking Chinese or some other foreign language.

He looked older in the mirror, and for the first time in his life he felt weak in his arms and hands. He knew that he couldn’t win a fight with his hands and so he started carrying a knife again and listening closer to the foreign language that everyone around him was speaking.

He was listening for threatening tones.

One day he was watching Sol Epstein from the back of the store. Sol was giving his kind-uncle smile to Noah Hoag, a young boxboy. Socrates remembered Sol’s advice to him about a counselor. He knew that it was his only chance.

T
he next day Socrates took out his delivery push wagon. He dropped off groceries for Watson, Kirkaby, and Stein. Eight seventy-five in tips. Then he went down the long Beverly Hills alley that was better paved and maintained than most of the streets in Watts. He passed behind a house that was on Chaldy Lane and quickly pushed his cart through a redwood doorway parking it behind a stand of rose bushes.

He knocked on Mrs. Hampton’s back door but he knew that she was in Miami visiting her dying sister. He put on his work gloves, took the key from the light fixture over the door, and let himself into the small house.

White walls trimmed with green and dark wood furniture decorated every room. Small photographs of relatives stood on each windowsill. The smell in the cool air was faint and sweet.

Socrates delivered a brisket roast or two small chickens, bell peppers, potatoes, and frozen containers of diet lemonade to Mrs. Hampton every Tuesday. Sometimes she’d call in to add to that order. She’d told him about the key for days when she was out. And if she was out there was always a four-dollar tip waiting for him on the dinette table next to the phone.

There was no tip today. Socrates sat at the table and peered through lace curtains out onto Chaldy Lane. A horn tooted somewhere and Socrates realized how quiet it was in that house. No one talking, no loud banging.

You only had to remember the exchange to dial this number because the last four digits were the letters G-I-R-L.

“G
irls,” a pleasant woman’s voice said. “What kind of girl do you want, sir? Blond, brunette, Asian baby?”

“I wanna talk to Theresa,” Socrates said.

The pleasant voice hesitated a moment. Maybe she heard the deep violence and despair in him.

“Just a moment,” she said.

The phone clicked and there was dead silence. After a few seconds Socrates began to wonder if they had hung up.

“Hello?” It was a black woman’s voice.

“Theresa?”

Another hesitation and then, “Yeah. Who’s this?”

“It’s Socrates.”

“Oh hi, Socrates,” she said, loud and happy, it seemed, to hear an old friend. “What do you want me to do for you? You wanna hear what I got on?”

“How are you, Theresa?”

“I’m fine. Real fine.”

“Uh-huh. You know it’s been a while.”

“Yeah,” the woman answered, her voice more subdued. “What is it you want from me, Mr. Socrates?”

“I just want some talk is all.”

“Talk about what?” she asked, hardly pleasant at all.

“I wanna talk to Theresa.”

“And what is it you need to say to me?”

“Are you Theresa?”

“I am right now. Yeah. Now what did you have to say? Because you know I cain’t be listenin’ to no weird shit, baby.”

“It’s just been a long time an’ I wanna catch up. That’s all.”

“You been sick?” Telephone Theresa asked.

Socrates coughed out a harsh laugh. “Yeah. That was the last thing on a whole line’a things. I was sick an’ I dreamed about you.”

“What was I wearin’?” she asked.

“You had on them tan slacks and that ole T-shirt’a mine. I was all beat up and you put a cold towel on my head.” Tears were coming from Socrates’ eyes but he kept the crying out of his voice.

“Uh-huh,” the woman said. “What else?”

“I don’t get in trouble like that anymore. I don’t get into fights every night. I only drink in my house sometimes. You know I learned some things, Theresa. I’m outta jail and I ain’t goin’ back there no more.”

“Yeah, baby, that’s good,” the woman answered. “What you wanna do now that you outta jail? You missed bein’ with a woman when you was in there?”

“The first few years it was hard but not no more. I got it now. You know I figgered out that livin’ is kinda like music. You know what I mean? Like when you walk, you know. Ev’ry step is the same length and takes the same amount’a time. An’ your heart too. Even your eyes blinkin’ is pretty much the same beat unless somethin’ messes up. Maybe somethin’ gets in your eye or you gotta run …”

Telephone Theresa made the quick hollow breath of half-yawn but Socrates didn’t care.

He went on, “… an’ if you could keep up that beat they ain’t no reason t’be drunk or mad.”

“How long were you in jail?” Theresa asked.

“Twenty-seven years.”

“And did you miss your girl all that time?”

“I thought about you every night. I knew you were right. I knew that I did wrong. But it was like I couldn’t help it. I thought about all the children and good times and even the bad times we coulda had. Maybe I’da got fat and lazy drinkin’ beer on the front porch while you was on the phone to your girlfriends and yellin’ at the kids to stop all that horseplay. I thought about it so much that I prob’ly lived it more than if I was free.”

“Did you miss my body?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Yes I did.”

“Would you lay up in that cot at night holdin’ on to yo’self an’ thinkin’ how you wanted me to kiss it?”

Socrates nodded.

“Huh?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“’Cause that’s what I wanted, baby. I missed that hard dick you got for me. I was thinkin’ about that. I wanted you to fuck me with that.”

Another horn honked in the street. Weeks later when Socrates was telling Right Burke about what a crazy fool he had been, breaking into Mrs. Hampton’s house and trying to call
the woman of his dreams
, he remembered that horn.

“It was Telephone Theresa’s dirty talk and that horn,” Socrates said to Right at a checkers table in McKinley Park. “That made me wake up.”

“Wake up?” the maimed vet said. “You was sleepwalkin’?”

“Yup. Ever since I had that flu I been in a dream. She was so real, man. I believed that I saw her. I even tried to write. Here I ain’t spoke to her in thirty-fi’e years an’ I’m tryin’ t’write her a letter, tryin’ t’call her on the phone.”

“Damn,” Right said, rubbing his chin with his paralyzed claw. “You was way out there, huh? Did you really think that that was your old girlfriend on the phone?”

“I wanted it to be, Right. I wanted to pretend so much that maybe a little bit I thought it was real. But then when that girl started to get my dick hard I knew I couldn’t pretend no more. The woman I wanted was gone. Gone.”

{6.}

A month passed. Socrates had settled back down into his routine. He slept every night straight through, getting up only twice to go to the toilet.

Mrs. Hampton didn’t seem to suspect him of breaking in and using her phone. Maybe she was so rich that the ten or twelve dollars just slipped by her. Maybe she complained and the telephone company let it go.