Six Easy Pieces (2 page)

I went up to Principal Newgate’s office after that. I detested the man but he was still my boss.

“I’ll buzz him, Mr. Rawlins,” Kathy Langer said.

Everything about her was brown except for her skin: eyes, hair, dress, and shoes. She was a young white woman, a new transfer to Truth. Hiram’s secretaries were always new, because they never lasted very long. He was always complaining about how they filed or typed. The last one left because he yelled at her for forgetting to put three sugar cubes into his coffee.

“It’s Mr. Rawlins,” she said into the phone. Then she looked up at me and said, “Just a minute. He’s finishing a call.” She smiled when she saw me looking at her drab clothes. It was the kind of smile that had gotten many young black men hung down South.

“Police?”

“No,” she said as she inclined her head, showing me her throat. “Some guy who’s been calling. I think it’s personal business.”

A moment later the buzzer sounded and she said, “You can go in now.”

I hadn’t been in Newgate’s office for a few weeks and was surprised at the change in decor. I suppose the shock showed on my face.

“What?” Newgate said. He was sitting behind a beat-up ash-blond desk.

“What happened to all your fancy furniture?”

When Newgate became principal, he had brought expensive ebony wood and teak furniture with him. Along with the carpeting, his office had looked like a rich man’s den. Now the floors were bare, the desk looked to be due for disposal, and his books and papers were in stacks along the walls.

“I bought a new house,” he said. “I took the furniture for the living room.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I coulda come up with a decent desk and some shelves.” I knew the answer to my question before I finished asking it. He didn’t want to ask me for anything. I was too uppity and confident for him to request my help. It’s not that he had a problem with my color; Newgate wanted everybody to treat him like the master.

“What do you have on the fire?” he asked.

“Arson.”

The principal paled visibly. “While the students were in class? They could have been killed.” He was talking to himself more than to me. “That’s, that’s horrible.”

“I don’t think anybody coulda been killed,” I said. “Fire captain told me that even though they used a gasoline can it was pretty much just a smoke bomb.”

“A kid’s prank?”

“Naw. He said the bomb was very professional-looking.”

Newgate and I stared at each other for a moment. “What do you think, Mr. Rawlins?”

What I thought was that Hiram Newgate had never asked me what I thought about anything. But what I said was, “I hope that it’s just a one-time thing. Not some kind of craziness.”

“What do you mean?”

“I wish I knew.”

“Well,” he said, still shaken. “I’m sure that it’s just some kid with a problem. If he does something like this again we’ll find him.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I have a doctor’s appointment at noon so I’ll be out midday. If the police come you give them what they need.”

THE REST OF THE DAY was pretty noneventful. No more fires or fire alarms. No plumbing or electrical disasters. It was actually a good day because Newgate wasn’t around looking into everybody’s business. He bothered the teachers as much as he did the custodial staff. He often walked into classrooms unannounced to make surprise evaluations. That might have been a good idea, but Newgate was rude and rough. He loved Truth more than anyone, but not a soul there cared for him.

THAT AFTERNOON I was out inspecting the lower yard when First Wentworth called me. First was a small boy, thirteen at the time. Like many of the young children, he spent his summers hanging around the schoolyard, taking advantage of the facilities we offered for daycare. He played caroms and tetherball from ten, when the playground opened, until two, when it closed. After that I let him work with me, moving desks out of the classrooms so that my custodians could strip the floors and seal them for the new school year.

“Mr. Rawlins,” he called from halfway down the eighty-seven stairs leading to the upper, older, campus. At least I think he said my name. I just heard his voice and saw him running down the granite steps.

While he ran I continued my inspection, looking into the trash cans on the yard. In one can I found a beaded white sweater that some child had discarded. It was a nice sweater, one hundred percent cotton. It represented a few days’ labor out of a poor woman’s pay, I knew. But clothes for children are like skin on snakes: to be shed now and then, allowing the new child to emerge.

“Mr. Rawlins,” First said when he reached me.

I put the sweater under my arm. “Hey, Number One.”

“I don’t know what he was doin’ over there.” First was talking as if we were already in the middle of a conversation. “But I saw him.”

“Who?”

“That white man.”

“What white man?”

“The one who put that thing under Mr. Sutton’s classroom.”

“What thing?”

“A big red can,” the boy said. “I don’t know why.”

“Why didn’t you say anything before this?” I asked.

“I forgot that I saw’im. But then later Mr. Weston said that the school might burn down.”

I could have asked him why he came to me, but I knew the answer. I was the only black person on the campus who had any authority. Most of the children came to me with their problems because bill collectors, policemen, and angry store owners were the only white people in their daily lives.

“And it was a white man?” I asked First.

He nodded, looking at my feet.

“Was he wearin’ a suit?”

“Uh-uh. Just some pants and a green windbreaker.”

“Have you seen him around here before?” I asked. “Does he work here sometimes?”

First shook his head. “No. I mean I seen’im but he don’t work here.”

“Where’d you see him?”

“Wit’ Cousin.”

“Who’s that?”

“It’s a boy, a man. You know.”

“A young man?”

“Uh-huh, he used to go here. But he graduated an’ dropped out.” First looked up at me. “Am I in trouble?”

“No, Number One. You did all right. You might have to tell somebody else about it. But don’t worry right now. Don’t you have a class to go to?”

“Yeah. History-geography.”

“You better go then.”

I watched the child, who was so willing to rely on my strength, run up all those eighty-odd stairs without a falter.

I CALLED THE POLICE STATION and asked for Sergeant Andre Brown. When he wasn’t there, I talked to another policeman; I forget his name. I forget because he was of no help. He told me to come in the next afternoon and file a report. When I said that I thought it might be more important than that, he hung up.

Then I called the fire department. Gregson was out on a call. When I told the operator why I was calling, he told me to call the police.

“ALL I KNOW IS that his nickname was Cousin,” I said to Laini Trellmore, Sojourner Truth’s registrar.

“Cousin. Hm,” the elderly woman said to herself. She looked closer to seventy-five than the age she gave, which was sixty-one. I wasn’t the only one to suspect that under her duties as record keeper, Miss Trellmore had altered her date of birth to keep her job past the age of forced retirement.

She frowned.

“Oh yes. I remember now. Douglas Hardy. Oh yes. Trouble from the first day to the last. He was sixteen years old and still in the ninth grade. Oooo. The kind of boy who’s always grinning and nodding and you know he just did something bad.”

“You got an address for his family in the files?”

THE HARDY FAMILY lived on Whithers Court off of Avalon. It was a dead-end street that had once been nice. Neat little single-family homes built for working people in a cul-de-sac. But the houses had all been bought up by a real estate syndicate called Investors Group West. They raised the rent as much as the market would bear. The turnover in tenants had a harmful influence on the upkeep of the dwellings and the street. Barren lawns and walls with the paint peeling off were the norm.

The Hardys’ home was secured by a screen door frame that had no screen. There was loud cowboy music blaring from inside. I looked for a doorbell but there was none. I knocked on the door, but my knuckles were no match for the yodeling cowboy.

I pulled the door open and took a tentative step inside. It was that step, uninvited into the house of people who were strangers to me, that was the first step outside the bounds of the straight and narrow life that I pretended to. The room had a gritty look to it. Dust on the blanket-covered sofa and dust on the painted wood floor. The only decoration was a paper calendar hung by a nail on the far wall. It had a large picture of Jesus, his bleeding Valentine’s heart protruding from his chest, over a small booklet of months. There was no sign of life.

I considered calling out, but I would have had to shout to be heard over the warbling cowboy, and anything that loud might alarm any occupants of that tinderbox home.

I turned off the radio.

“What the hell is goin’ on?” someone said from beyond a doorway that led to the kitchen.

A short brown woman hustled in. She was wearing a shapeless blue shift that had white butterflies all over it. The neck of the dress had been stretched out, one side sagging open over her left shoulder.

“Who the hell are you?” she asked, squinting and scowling so that I could see the red gums of her almost toothless maw.

“Ezekiel,” I said, remembering the morning caller.

“What the hell do you want?”

“I’m lookin’ for Cousin.”

Her nose twitched as if she were tied to a post and a mosquito were trying to bite her nose.

“Rinaldo!”

I heard a man grunt somewhere in the house. The heavy pounding of footsteps followed and soon a man, not as short as the woman but not as tall as I, came through the doorway. He was wearing only boxer shorts and a yellow T-shirt. His nose, chin, and forehead jutted out from the face as if his head were meant to be used as an axe. His eyes seemed insane, but I put that down to him getting rousted by the woman’s scream.

“What, Momma?”

“This man lookin’ for Cousin.”

“The hell are you?” Rinaldo asked me.

“Cousin’s in trouble,” I said.

“The fuck he is,” Rinaldo said.

“Watch your language, boy,” Toothless Mama said.

“The hell are you?” Rinaldo asked again. He balled his fists and levered his shoulders to show off a ripple of strength.

“He knows a man who tried to burn down the junior high school,” I said. “Somebody saw them together—”

“Who?” the woman asked.

Ignoring her, I kept on talking to Hatchet Face. “…if I don’t see me some Cousin I’m just gonna give the police this address and let you shake your shoulders at them.”

Rinaldo’s eyes got crazier as he woke up. He seemed torn between attack and flight. He was fifteen years my junior, but I felt that I could take him. It was Mama who scared me. She was the kind of woman who kept a straight razor close at hand.

“Cousin didn’t start that fire,” Mama said.

“How would you know?”

“He was here with us.”

“Where is he now?”

Mama and Rinaldo exchanged glances. They were afraid of the police. They had good reason to be. All black people had good reason to be. But I didn’t care.

“Tell me or I’ll go right down to the precinct,” I said.

“He live on Hooper,” Rinaldo said. He blurted out an address.

“Okay,” I said, and I took a step backward. “I’ma go over there. If somebody calls him and warns him off I’m sendin’ the cops here to you.”

Rinaldo gave his mother a sharp look. Maybe he wondered if he should try to kill me. I took another step back. Before they could decide on an action, I was out of the door and on the way to my car. Rinaldo came out to watch me drive off.

“WHO IS IT?” a voice asked after I knocked.

“Are you Cousin?” I asked.

There was a pause, and then, “Yeah?”

“I’m John Lowry. Rinaldo sent me.”

When he opened the door, I punched him in the face. It was a good solid punch. It felt good but it was a stupid thing to do. I didn’t know who else was in the room. That crouching, slack-jawed man might have been a middleweight contender. He could have had an iron jaw and a pistol in his pocket. But I hit him because I knew that he had something to do with the fire at my school, because Mama and Rinaldo set my teeth on edge, because the police didn’t seem to care what I did, and because my best friend was dead.

Cousin fell flat on his back.

The room was painted a garish pink and there was no furniture except for a single mattress no thicker than a country quilt.

“Get up,” I said.

“What I do to you, mister?” he whined.

“Why you try’n burn down the school?”

“I didn’t burn nuthin’.” Cousin got to his feet.

He was an old twenty. Not smart or mature, just old. Like he had lived forty years in half the time but hadn’t learned a thing.

I knocked him down again.

“Hey, man!” he yelled.

“Who’s the white man you were with?”

“What white man?”

“You want me to kick you?” I moved my right foot backward in a threatening motion.

“What you want from me?”

“The man put that bomb under the metal shop at Truth.”

Cousin’s skin was a deep, lusterless brown. His jaw was swelling up. He passed his hand over his head from fear that I’d mussed his hair.

“You the law?”

“I work for the school.”

“Man named Lund.”

“Lund?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How you spell it?”

“I’on’t know, man.”

“What do you know?” I asked in disgust.

“Roke Williams. Roke run a crap game down Alameda. Lund work for the man sell him p’otection.”

I DROVE TO A SMALL BUILDING on Pico and Rimpau. All the way I was wondering why a man in organized crime would be setting a bomb at a Negro junior high school. I wondered but I wasn’t afraid—and that was a problem. If you go up against men in organized crime, you should at least have the sense to be afraid.