One Safe Place (19 page)

There was one thing Psalms never understood until much later in life—his grandfather seemed to have a love-and-hate relationship with the castle. After school on Fridays, Psalms and his grandfather would joyously drive an hour north of Seattle and ride across on a ferry to Orcas Island. Once there, they'd settle into the small house adjacent to the castle. They'd build a fire in the cobblestone fireplace and cook dinner over the warming blaze. In the morning, they'd go shooting, hunting, or fishing, and in the afternoon, Grandfather went to work on the property. On Sunday morning, Grandfather and Psalms would have a two-man church service, playing old-time gospel music, listening to Sam Cooke and The Soul Stirrers and Psalms' favorite, “Touch The Hem of His Garment.” Even now, along with his old school soul music playlists, he listened to a playlist of Sam Cooke's gospel music.

The two would have a prayer service and Bible readings. After the two-man church, Grandfather worked until an hour before sunset, when they would catch the ferry back to the mainland and head home.

The people who lived in the house kept their distance, but there was the teenage girl who sometimes stared in the window. She tried to hide herself, but Psalms often looked out of the corner of his eye and she was there. Grandfather said she wanted to see what a black child looked like.

The classic station wagon had a 45-record player, the kind they installed in cars in 1962. Psalms did not want to remove it. He'd had Mintfurd use his computer-tech skills to redesign it in to a modern car sound system. Psalms switched the music to Marvin Gaye's
What's Going On
CD.

Psalms drove the station wagon now as if he was going to run every other vehicle off the road. The normally calming ride of the classic with good memories had little effect today. His dog was sick from eating things out of its normal diet in order to survive. The old man who slept on the hill had given the dog a sandwich to help her. A good deed, but the Miracle Whip on the bread was not good for the animal's stomach.

Psalms was in warrior mode. He could be mean. As a former Navy SEAL, he had to do things on foreign grounds that the government would never declassify. But he never did them out of anger. As a private security company, Psalms and Suzie Q had done things to a few people while representing clients. Again, never out of anger, but necessity.

Psalms had a steely control of his emotions when working. Today, the fact that Evita had left his dog unfed, and with no water for three or four days, had him burning rubber on wet roads. He understood he had to harness these emotions when they showed their ugly heads. He was right to be angry as he was now. Evita had neglected a responsibility she had chosen. Her actions had hurt his feelings and his dog.

Born in an angry situation…

Grandfather was a gentle, quiet man who had chosen to tell Psalms only few things about his birth father, and why he had never been in his life. As a young child, Psalms understood the subject was taboo. Grandfather had decided he wanted Psalms to only know so much.

He'd heard more than a few times that Psalms' dad was an angry man, who used his anger to hurt, seek revenge, and to cause destruction.

He knew his young, teenaged father had impregnated a girl, and that Grandfather and Grandmother had ended up with custody as his father was too young. Grandmother died while Psalms was still in diapers, so he had no memory of her, but Grandfather would tell Psalms he looked like her and he still had a part of her. Pictures showed that she had the same wine stain birthmark under her eye as Psalms. When Grandmother died, Psalms' young father, DaDa Q Black, had run away angry because he could not be with the girl, and his mother had died. DaDa Q became a rebel with a cause, using criminality as a tool that later got him killed.

Years later, Gabrielle used her connections in the government to find out the whole truth after Psalms' grandfather took the complete story to his grave. The information led Psalms to his birth mother and family and they paid Psalms to keep the truth hidden. They paid millions.

The music changed somewhat oddly in nature. An old Muddy Waters song, played by Jimi Hendrix, began to haunt the speakers.

“I got a black cat bone

I got a mojo too.”

Psalms wanted to hear the song, but another car broke his concentration. The car next to him slightly veered into his lane. The driver's head was down—most likely texting. The asshole driver
also had a Starbucks coffee cup in hand on the top of the steering wheel—with a cigarette hanging out his mouth.

Psalms honked his horn. He had a setting that sounded like a police siren. The asshole driver was in the curb exit lane and drove his car onto the gravel at seventy miles per hour. Psalms was sure a tow-truck was the next call or text for the asshole driver. He did feel bad that maybe the man had spilled his hot coffee.

Psalms focused back on the song.

“On the seventh hour

On the seventh day

On the seventh month…”

Psalms looked to his left. He gazed at the location where the old Kingdome, the multipurpose domed stadium, used to be. All Seattle pro sports teams had played there at one time, but now the Kingdome was gone. They had blown it up in a Northwest Mardi Gras-type celebration. That was the day his grandfather died: March 26, 2003. A rainbow shone over the Puget Sound today where the Kingdome used to house sports battles.

The separate stadiums sat near the old site now. The Mariners baseball stadium and the Seahawks football stadium now sat in a place that stayed in Psalms' heart.

Some landmarks and some events in history mark a person's memorable moments, whether they're happy or sad, and they visualize or relive those moments.

It wasn't so much that it was the day of his grandfather's death that made him recall the date of the Kingdome explosion. It was other deaths that marked Psalms' soul. Grandfather had taken the life of a bad man, Evita's molesting daddy, on March 26, 1983.

When Psalms learned the complete story of his criminal father, whose real name was Cinque Black, he learned the man was killed along with several other people in a bank robbery on March 26, 1973.

When Psalms killed the man that had mutilated Evita's body, it was on March 26, 1993.

“I got a Black cat bone

I got a mojo too.”

Psalms hit “replay” as he made it back and parked his station wagon. He went across the street to the beach and worked out an extra twenty minutes. He kicked sand in the sea and punched the air until it seemed the air asked for a break, and started pouring rain. He sweated more than the rain that touched him. His workout clothes appeared to have just come out of the washing machine, thoroughly wet. When he walked in to the office, Velvet raised her voice, “Hell no, get your stinky, wet ass out of here.”

“Why is it a woman wants a man to work up a sweat all over her if he's putting in work, but if a man comes around already sweaty you have a problem?”

“You of all people don't like people to ask questions when you know they already have the answer. So, don't be asking a stupid question. But if you don't know, Mr. Know-It-All-Any-Other-Time, a woman wants sexual sweat from alluring pheromones, but not that pure, salty smell you have in here reeking up my office.

“Now get out of here and take a shower so we can talk.”

Psalms stared hard at Velvet, and she called his bluff.

“I'm not your problem. Your other woman is out of pocket, and hurt your dog. I hate that she left your dog unattended, but I don't care that you're mad at her, so don't be looking at me all crazy. Did
you ever think it might be time to downgrade her to a business partner?”

Velvet was the only woman ever that spoke to Psalms as she did, and he loved that she did—but she could get away with it.

“Psalms, I know you care about her. You have explained from A to Z the history and all that has happened between you two. But as a woman in a man's world, I have seen the danger. I have been assaulted in many different ways, and I have acted out to get my fair share of attention for deflection or emotional support in all the wrong ways. I have grown through it all. She has not!”

“I'm going to take a shower.”

“Hurry up, you stink.”

P
salms showered and made his way back to the office. The glass front office on the first floor had an enclosed glass office to the left of Velvet's work area. She could look over to her son, Squire, who was doing school work. Often Psalms took her son out for a jog along Alki Beach for exercise in the middle of the day. Sometimes Mintfurd Big Boy brought her son to the weight room in the building and it showed. The eight-year-old looked ready to play high school football.

When her son looked up from his book, he waved to Psalms who spoke in American Sign Language, “I'll be over in a while.”

Squire signed back, “I want to box today.”

Squire was not hearing-impaired, but it was an early tool of learning that Psalms shared with the young man. Psalms' grandmother was hearing-impaired and so his grandfather taught Psalms to sign, although he never really knew his grandmother.

Velvet broke up the conversation with her own sign language by pointing her finger and staring at her son who understood he had school work to do first. He signed, “Yes, Mother.”

“Don't get my son hurt with all that macho stuff. I admire the warrior that you are, but I don't want my son thinking with his hands first and brains last.”

“Is that what you think I do? I think you forget I have enough brains to sign your paycheck, and as Q would say, eh?”

“I sign my own paycheck and run this office; you just were simply smart enough to hire me.” Velvet laughed.

“I was smart enough to hire Big Boy back there who teaches your son math and science. I was smart enough to have him design that soundproof glass office to do his school work, so he don't have to listen to his mother's smart ass talk all that mess…and I still sign your paycheck, you're just not smart enough to know, yet.”

“PB, speaking of Mintfurd, we were going to—”

Psalms cut her off, hoping to escape the conversation. “I think your friend is nowhere near being able to handle another man right now, much less Big Boy.”

Velvet had a power over Psalms; she could draw him in to a conversation beyond his control. She had been the only woman who could do that. He added her manipulating potency to one of the lines in a Prince song about some women were for certain things, and not all for sex.

“And you're a relationship expert how? Look who's calling the fish smelly, when you're a shark. You were over there on the beach less than an hour ago beating the hell out of the anger Evita made you feel. I love Gabrielle, as she is a good person. I see she makes you happy, but the girl can drink…she can put the booze away, and you know it, but you ignore it. You got issues too. Your choice in women is a tattle-tale on your choices in life.” Velvet spoke while she multitasked—sending and returning emails and sending out billings.

From time to time, she scanned the Internet for news and hit up her Facebook page. Her eyes avoided Psalms as he sat across the room, staring at the back of her head. She only looked up to see the water and Seattle skyline and when a ferry crossed. Her voice, a cross of Marilyn Monroe and Alicia Keys, melted men, but with Psalms, it allowed her to be sarcastically forthright about how she thought and felt.

Psalms avoided the conversation about the women in his life. Evita, although better with age, still ran over him occasionally with her lifestyle, and although Gabrielle would walk on water for Psalms, he never asked her to slow down or quit her drinking. The woman had damn near ruled the world, and did it good. She was a woman with emotion and in need of love from a man. She made love to him as if she was paid millions to do so, with every possible sexual act, and loved it intensely. Maybe Psalms was oblivious, but the woman never embarrassed him, and her behavior toward him was loving, so what was he to do? He loved the woman.

“No one is ever ready for a relationship—they may say that shit—but the truth is in my humble opinion—”

“You, with a humble opinion?” Psalms laughed and almost spit up his coffee.

“Yeah, in my humble opinion, a relationship develops between two people if it's meant to be. There is no ‘I'm ready' or someone having to get ready. If love walks in, and you play the stupid card and say you're not ready, you're just dumb ass. And all that has nothing to do with forcing a relationship to work, but if the right person comes around, you're ready. It's about the right people crossing in front of you.” Velvet kept on multitasking, scanning the Internet.

“I'm sorry, Velvet. I don't think your friend is ready for a man. Besides, Big Boy ain't no joke, and really, can you see them together? One of his arms is bigger than her whole body. If he went to go down on her, his big head would stretch her legs so far apart she'd think she was giving birth.”

“Yeah, I do admit he might hurt me, and I'm not a small woman, but if that's what she wants, who are we to stand in the way?”

Psalms laughed for the first time since he'd dropped off his dog at the vet.

The visual of Mintfurd and Darcelle had both Psalms and Velvet tripping in imagery.

“We both know Mintfurd Big Boy has his own freakish behavior. He spends a lot of money on escorts because finding a woman on his own just has not happened. He has more women loving him as a friend than there are jellyfish out there in that water.”

“PB, I'm someone that Mintfurd has trusted as he comes to me to get a woman's perspective…just like you.” Velvet mockingly cleared her throat. “Big Boy has told me his life story. I'll have you know it's been over eight months now, I talked him in to not getting his rocks off with prostitutes. Yes, the man has his wants in the freak zone, but who don't? Your ass should be outlawed with you and Gabrielle out the in the water at two a.m., snorkeling in diving suits. I mean damn, PB, you made a flap in the crotch of your suit so you can pull your dick out, and you put a flap in the back of hers . . .I wonder which opening you slipped into? Was it deep?” Velvet's eyebrows rounded and meshed with her smirking round face. “Now that's some shit I want to watch with an underwater camera. Didn't you get scared out there in that dark water? Oh, what if something had touched you while you was humping, and you couldn't see what it was?…Ooh-wee. Tell me, just how good could sex be in dark, cold water, with fish swimming around. Don't they have sharks out there?”