Bad Boy Brawly Brown (39 page)

they were planning, but the surroundings they were planning it in.

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There was no indication on the rental receipt that the house was fur-15 R

nished. So they must be in a big empty room, sitting on the floor, sur-2 8 2

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rounded by food containers and bottles. Maybe the guns were 1

stacked in a corner. Their plan was probably tacked up on the wall 2

so they could all see it while they drilled the operation, whatever that 3

was, over and over.

4

Because the rooms were empty, their voices would make a slight 5

echo, lending to the fervor of their convictions. There was no phone 6

or television but there was probably a radio. Would they be listening 7

to music? I doubted it. The dial was probably turned to a news-8

oriented station. They were worried about being found out and also 9

wondering where Tina was. Did they know that she was going to 10

bring me to them the same way that Strong brought me to the con-11

struction site in Compton? Was she involved with the killing of 12

Strong? No. There was love for him in her voice. She loved both the 13

older and younger leaders.

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“What you doin’ here, man?” a voice said from behind.

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I wasn’t worried. If it was one of the revolutionaries, I would have 16

already been either dead or unconscious.

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The man who spoke was short and wore matching ochre pants 18

and shirt. He had a protruding belly and small hands with stubby fin-19

gers. Only his voice held any kind of threat.

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“Hey,” I said, sticking out my hand. “I’m Troy. This your house?”

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“Yes, it is,” the little man replied. He took my hand out of reflex 22

but let it go before I could complete the perfunctory shake.

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“You must be wonderin’ what I’m doin’ out here,” I said.

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“Yes,” the little man said.

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“It’s ’cause’a my girl — Royetta.”

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“I don’t know any Royetta.”

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“She’s my girl,” I said again. “At least that’s what she tells me. But 28

I heard from Lucas that she been seein’ a man on this block. Yeah, 29

every day, Lucas said, she drive down to this block to see some man.

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He didn’t have the address, so I decided to come down and use these R 31

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here nice trees of yours so that she didn’t see me or my car when she 2

come down to meet her sidetrack.”

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It felt good to be lying again. It was as if I disappeared behind a 4

cloud of black ink like the squid or cuttlefish.

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The man I spoke to was muddy brown with many folds in his 6

face. His head widened as it went toward his neck; with the folds, 7

his head and face resembled a brown candle slowly melting down 8

toward his shoulders.

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“I don’t want no trouble,” the man told me. “This here is my 10

property.”

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The alley was a public throughway and not his property, but I 12

didn’t say that.

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“I don’t want no trouble, either,” I said. “But you see, Royetta got 14

a sister named Cindy, and me and Cindy been messin’ around our-15

selves. Now if I can prove to Royetta that I know about her man, then 16

when I leave her and take up with Cindy she cain’t get all that mad.”

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“Can’t you just get your friend that . . . that —”

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“Lucas,” I said. “Lucas.”

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Out of the corner of my eye I saw a gold-colored Ford Galaxy 20

drive past. I turned to my right to see where the car was headed.

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“Can’t Lucas just say that he saw her with this man and that’ll be 22

it?” the little man was saying.

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But I was watching as Mercury Hall climbed out of his car and 24

walked up to the revolutionaries’ house.

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“No,” I said, returning to my fiction. “Lucas don’t wanna get in 26

between us where he’s got to be there in the skin. No. I got to see for 27

myself.”

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“Well,” the little man said. “I don’t want you here.”

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“I tell you what,” I said. “What’s your name?”

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“Foreman.”

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“I’ll tell you what, Foreman” — I reached into my pocket and
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came out with a twenty-dollar bill — “I’ll give this here double saw-1

buck for the right to stand around in this public alley and look for my 2

girlfriend to pass.”

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If he had turned me down, I would have driven down to the 4

other end of the block, but Henry Strong’s money was good. Fore-5

man grabbed the twenty-dollar bill and shoved it in his pocket.

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“How much longer you gonna be out here?” he asked.

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“Two hours, tops,” I said.

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We talked a moment or two more and he retreated with his 9

reward.

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I
WAS THERE
for more than three hours when the tribe finally 13

showed their faces again. Mercury took BobbiAnne in his Ford 14

while Conrad climbed in the Cadillac with Brawly and the man I 15

did not recognize. They drove right past me and off toward Central.

16

With them gone, I should have called John. I should have called 17

the cops. I should have gone home and started Jesus’s lessons and 18

made it to bed early so the next morning I could get to work on time.

19

Instead, I walked straight to the hideout. I walked down the 20

driveway and into the backyard. The back side of the home had a 21

large porch that was walled in and had its own door. This door was 22

unlocked. The porch contained a washing machine and dryer, mod-23

ern luxuries down in the ghetto. There was a radio playing loud, too 24

loud, so the sound of me forcing the lock might not have been heard 25

if there had been anybody home to hear it.

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The back entrance of the home was a slender hallway that was 27

also the kitchen, small stove on one side, sink on the other.

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I’d been right about the circumstances of the revolutionaries.

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The big living room was empty, except for white food cartons and pa-S 30

per plates used for ashtrays. There was a piece of blue-lined noteR 31

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book paper tacked to the wall. Drawn in pencil was a square that 2

stood for a building with a truck approaching and a car parked across 3

the street from the door. Here and there X’s were in position to over-4

power the guards.

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It was a frightening document mainly because it looked like the 6

notations of a grade-schooler playing cops and robbers on paper.

7

There were army duffel bags in the entranceway closet. There 8

were toothbrushes and towels in the bathroom. And a stack of smut 9

magazines hidden under the sink.

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One of the canvas bags belonged to Brawly. He had a pair of 11

black and white tennis shoes and a pocketknife along with two shirts, 12

a copy of Hesse’s
Steppenwolf,
and a small spiral-bound notebook.

13

Just flipping through those pages told me more about Brawly than 14

anyone else seemed to know.

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It wasn’t, strictly speaking, a diary, but every once in a while 16

there was a journal-like entry with a date at the top of the page. The 17

first such entry, which appeared on the third page of the two-18

hundred-sheet notebook, was dated January 19, 1958 — more than 19

six years earlier.

20

He wrote about BobbiAnne and how he could see her only at 21

school because he had to return to Sunrise House, the halfway home, 22

by four p.m. He also wrote,
I miss Aunt Isolda but I know it’s better if
23

I don’t see her. She only gets mad when I tell her how I feel. . . .

24

The first thirty pages were in very dark blue ink from the same 25

thick ballpoint pen. The next forty pages or so were in black. After 26

that, he went back to blue pen. I was amazed that the young man 27

could hold on to that one small notebook, each page covered with 28

his tiny scrawl.

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Along with his sporadic journal entries he had made small draw-30 S

ings of buildings, notes on school assignments, lists of resolutions on 31 R

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how to be a better man (a few of those were on how to be
friends
with 1

Isolda), and sometimes there were simple reminders of where to go, 2

what to buy, and what to say.

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Less than six months earlier he had penned an entry separated 4

halfway down the page. The top half was a list of requirements for 5

service in the paratroopers. He had an ideal weight, number of 6

pushups he should be able to do, and the reading level expected of 7

new recruits. The bottom half seemed to be a comparison between 8

superheroes. On the left side he’d listed Superman, Plastic Man, and 9

Batman. On the right he had Thor, Mister Fantastic, and Spider-10

Man.

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Three months later he was writing about the black revolution in 12

America. Henry Strong had been giving him private instruction, 13

telling him that his strength and intelligence had put a heavy weight 14

of responsibility on his shoulders.

15

“It’s up to us young men,” Brawly wrote. “To lead the rest to free-16

dom. We must be strong and willing to die for what’s right.”

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A little later on he had received orders to “make contact with 18

friends who could aid in the procurement of revolutionary funds and 19

the maintenance of emergency refuge.”

20

Brawly came from a very different generation than mine. He was 21

intelligent and ambitious, where I had been crafty and happy if I 22

made it through the day. I never questioned the white man’s author-23

ity — that was a given.

24

But what really separated us was a need for love and his trust in 25

people. He believed that there was a place for him and his in the 26

world. I knew, from reading his words, that the only way to truly save 27

him was to shatter this belief.

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In one of the bedrooms there was a canvas cot with sheets and a 29

pillow strewn across it. I imagined Conrad and BobbiAnne slipping S 30

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away now and then to have sex on that cot. For some reason it re-2

minded me of Isolda and her bedroom pictures. It was in that mo-3

ment that I realized where those photographs had been taken.

4

I slipped out of the back door and walked across the street to 5

my car.

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43
/ JESUS WAS SITTING
on the front porch waiting 1

for me when I got home. He’d already set up a

2

place in the living room for me to sit while he stood and read.

3

“You could sit down, Juice,” I said. “Forty-five minutes is a long 4

time and I want you concentrating on the words, not your feet.”

5

Jesus grinned. I had missed that grin. It was a brief thing, like 6

sighting a rare scarlet bird in the deep woods. A flit of the wing and 7

it was gone again.

8

I had gotten a large hardcover copy of
Moby-Dick
from the 9

Robertson library for our first reading. While Feather and Bonnie 10

puttered and played in the kitchen, Jesus read to me about Ishmael 11

and his ill-fated voyage.

12

The reading was difficult. For many of the words he had to stop 13

and use the
Webster’s Dictionary
we kept under the coffee table. But S 14

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when it was over I was surprised at Jesus’s understanding of the story 2

and its implications. We were twelve pages into his education and al-3

ready we were a success.

4

Jackson called a few minutes after dinner. Jesus and Feather 5

were working on the dishes while Bonnie hovered over them, mak-6