Blood on the Moon (3 page)

Lloyd knew that the cops didn't buy it and that he
had
to pursue the violent wonder of Watts without his low-life partner. He sent a sharp look Beller's way and said, “I think we're lost. We were only supposed to go out three blocks ahead, but we took a wrong turn somewhere. All the houses on these numbered streets look alike.” He hesitated, trying to look bewildered.

Beller caught the drift and said, “Yeah. All these houses look alike. All these niggers on their steps sloppin' up juice look alike, too.”

The older of the two cops nodded, then pointed south and said, “You guys with that artillery down near 102nd? The heavy-duty coon hunting?”

Lloyd and Beller looked at each other. Beller licked his lips to try to keep from laughing. “Yes,” they said in unison.

“Then get in the car. You ain't lost no more.”

As they highballed it southbound without lights or siren, Lloyd told the cops he was flagged for the October class at the academy and that he wanted the riot to be his
solo
training ground. The younger cop whooped and said, “Then this riot
is
a preordained training ground for you. How tall are you, six-four? Six-five? With your size, you're gonna get sent straight to 77th Street Division, Watts, these self-same fucking streets we're cruising right now. After the smoke clears and the fucking liberals run off at the mouth about the niggers being victims of poverty, there's gonna be the job of maintaining order over some very agitated bad-ass niggers who've had a distinct taste of blood. What's your name, kid?”

“Hopkins.”

“You ever kill anyone, Hopkins?”

“No, sir.”

“Don't call me ‘sir.' You ain't a cop yet, and I'm a plain old patrolman. Well, I killed lots of guys in Korea. Lots and
lots,
and it changed me. Things look different now. Real different. I've talked about it to other guys who've lost their cherry, and we all agree: You appreciate different things. You see innocent people, like little kids, and you want them to stay that way because you got no innocence yourself. Little things like little kids and their toys and pets get to you, 'cause you know they're heading straight into this big fucking shitstorm and you don't want them to. Then you see people who got no regard for gentle things, for decent things, and you gotta come down hard on them. You gotta protect what two cents worth of innocence there is in the world. That's why I'm a cop. You look cherry to me, Hopkins. You look eager, too. You understand what I'm saying?”

Lloyd nodded, tingling with a pins and needles sensation. He smelled smoke through the open patrol car window, and the feeling began to numb as he realized the cop was talking instinctively about Lloyd's Irish Protestant ethos. “I understand exactly what you're saying,” he said.

“Good, kid. Then it starts tonight. Pull over, partner.”

The older cop braked and drew up to the curb.

“It's all yours, kid,” the younger cop said, reaching over and banging Lloyd's helmet. “We'll take your buddy back to your outfit. You see if you can stir up anything on your own.”

Lloyd tumbled out of the patrol car so fast that he never got to thank his mentor. They hit the siren by way of farewell.

102nd and Central was a chaos of smoldering ruins, the hiss of fire hoses, the squeal of tires on the now wet pavement, all modulated by police helicopters that hovered overhead, casting broad searchlights into storefronts to give the firemen light to work by.

Lloyd walked into the maelstrom, grinning broadly, still suffused with the eloquent recapitulation of his philosophy. He watched an armored half-track move slowly down the street, a fifty caliber machine gun mounted in its bed. A guardsman in the cab barked into a powerful bullhorn: “Curfew in five minutes! This area is under martial law! Anyone found on the streets after nine o'clock will be arrested. Anyone attempting to cross official police barriers will be shot. Repeat, curfew in five minutes!”

The words, clearly enunciated with force and malice, echoed loudly down the street, resulting in a flurry of activity. Within seconds Lloyd saw dozens of young men dart from burnt-out buildings, running full speed in any direction not caught by the searchlights. He rubbed his eyes and squinted to see if the men were carrying pilfered merchandise, only to discover they had disappeared before he could yell out or train his M-14 on them.

Lloyd shook his head and walked past a group of firemen milling around in front of a ravaged liquor store. They all noticed him, but no one seemed puzzled by the anomaly of a lone guardsman on foot patrol. Emboldened, Lloyd decided to check out life indoors.

He liked it. The darkness inside the burned-out store was soothing and Lloyd sensed that the shadow-shrouded silence was there to inform him with essential knowledge. He stopped and took a roll of friction tape from his fatigue jacket pocket and fixed his flashlight to the bottom edge of his bayonet. He swung his rifle in a figure eight arc and admired the results: wherever the M-14 pointed, there would be light.

Mounds of charred wood; piles of insulation stuffing; crushed booze bottles. Used condoms everywhere. Lloyd chuckled at the thought of subterranean liquor store coupling, then felt himself go dead cold as his chuckle was returned, followed by a hideous low moan.

He moved his M-14 around in a three hundred sixty degree arc, the muzzle at waist level. Once, then twice. On the third time around he was rewarded: an old man lay crumpled atop a mound of wadded up insulation fiber. Lloyd's heart melted. The old bastard was withered to prune dimensions and was obviously a threat to no one. He walked to the old man and handed him his canteen. The old man grasped it with shaking hands, raised it to his lips, then threw it to the ground, screeching:

“That not be what I need! I needs my Lucy! I gots to have my Lucy!”

Lloyd was befuddled. Was the old geezer crying out for his wife or some long lost love?

He removed the flashlight from his bayonet housing and shined it in the old man's face, then winced; the mouth and chin of that face were covered with congealed blood, from which glass shards stuck out like crystalline porcupine quills. Lloyd recoiled, then pointed his light into the old man's lap and recoiled further: the withered hands were cut to the bone, and three fingers of the right hand had been ground down to bloody stubs. The gnarled left hand held the shattered remnants of a bottle of Thunderbird wine.

“My Lucy! Gimme my Lucy!” the old man wailed, spitting globules of blood out with each word.

Lloyd took his flashlight and went crashing through the glass strewn ruins, brushing tears from his eyes, searching for an intact bottle of liquid salvation. Finally he found one, partially hidden by an overturned ceiling beam–a pint of six-year-old Seagram's 7.

Lloyd carried the bottle over and fed the old man, holding his head by the short nap of his grey hair, keeping the bottle a few inches from his bloody lips lest he try to ingest the entire thing. Thoughts of going for medical attention crossed his mind, but he pushed them away. He knew that the old man wanted to die, that he deserved to die drunk and that this service he was performing was the wartime equivalent of the many hours he had spent talking to his mute, brain-damaged mother.

The old man made slurping sounds, sucking convulsively at the bottle each time it touched his lips. After a few minutes had passed and half the pint was consumed, his tremors subsided and he pushed Lloyd's hand away.

“Dis be de start of World War Three,” he said.

Lloyd ignored the comment and said, “I'm P.F.C. Hopkins, California National Guard. Do you want medical attention?”

The old man laughed, coughing up huge wads of blood-streaked sputum.

“I think you're bleeding internally,” Lloyd said. “I can get you to an ambulance. Do you think you can walk?”

“I can do anything I wants to,” the old man shrieked, “but I wants to die! Ain't no place for me in this war–I gots to make the scene on de other side!”

The bloodshot, filmy old brown eyes importuned Lloyd as if he were an idiot child. He fed the old man again, watching some kind of liquid acceptance course through the ancient body. When the bottle was finished the old man said, “You gots to do me a favor, white boy.”

“Name it,” Lloyd said.

“I'm gonna die. You gots to go over to my room and get my books and maps and things out and sell dem so I can have a decent burial. Christian like, you dig?”

“Where's your room?”

“It in Long Beach.”

“I can go there when the riot is over. Not until then.”

The old man shook his head furiously, until his body shook with it, rag-doll like, all the way down to his toes. “You gots to! They gonna lock me out tomorrow 'cause I behind on the rent! Then de po-lice gonna throw me in de sewer with the rats! You gots to!”

“Hush,” Lloyd said. “I can't go that far. Not now. Don't you have any friends here I can talk to? Someone who can go to Long Beach for you?”

The old man considered the offer. Lloyd watched his wheels turn slowly. “You goes to de mission on Avalon an' one hundred and sixth. De African church. You talk to Sister Sylvia. You tell her she got to go to Famous Johnson's crib and get his shit and sell it. She gots my birthday in de church records. I wants a nice headstone. You tells her I loves Jesus, but I loves sweet Lucy more.”

Lloyd stood up. “How bad do you want to die?” he asked.

“Bad, man, bad.”

“Why?”

“Ain't no place for me in dis war, man.”

“What war?”

“World War Three, you dumb motherfucker!”

Lloyd thought of his mother and reached for his rifle, but couldn't do it.

Lloyd ran all the way to 106th and Avalon, composing epitaphs for Famous Johnson en route. His chest was heaving and his arms and shoulders ached from holding his rifle at high port, and when he saw the neon sign proclaiming the “United African Episcopal Methodist Church” he took in last gulps of air to bring his raging heartbeat down to a low ebb; he wanted to be the very picture of armed dignity on a mission of mercy.

The church was storefront, two stories high, with lights shining in violation of the curfew. Lloyd walked in, to be confronted by a pandemonium that was part prayer meeting, part coffee klatch. Large tables had been set up lengthwise between rows of wooden pews, and middle aged and elderly Negroes were kneeling in prayer and helping themselves to coffee and donuts.

Lloyd moved slowly along with walls, which were festooned with paintings of a black Christ, weeping, blood dripping from his crown of thorns. He started looking to the faces of the kneelers for signs of holiness or compassion. All he saw was fear.

Until he noticed a fat black woman in a white robe who seemed to be smiling inwardly as she dispensed shoulder taps to the people who knelt by the pews nearest the aisle. When the woman noticed Lloyd she shouted, “Welcome, soldier,” above the other hubbub and walked up to him, hand extended.

Startled, Lloyd shook the hand and said, “I'm P.F.C. Hopkins. I'm here on a mission of mercy for one of your parishioners.”

The woman dropped Lloyd's hand and said, “I'm Sister Sylvia. This church is strictly for the Afro-American folk, but tonight is sort of special. Did you come to pray for the victims of this Armageddon? Do that be your mission?”

Lloyd shook his head. “No, I came to ask a favor. Famous Johnson is dead. Before he died, he asked me to come here and tell you to sell his belongings so he can have a proper burial. He told me you know the address of his place in Long Beach and his birthdate. He wants a nice headstone. He told me to tell you he loves Jesus.” Lloyd was startled to see Sister Sylvia shaking her head ironically, a grin starting to form at the corners of her mouth. “I don't think it's funny,” he said.

“You don't!” Sister Sylvia bellowed. “Well, I does! Famous Johnson was trash, young white man! He deserved to be called what he was–a nigger! And that room in Long Beach? That nothing but fantasy! Famous Johnson lived out of his car, with his sin things in the back seat! He used to come by this church for the donuts and coffee, but that all! Famous Johnson didn't have nothin' to sell!”

“But I…”

“You comes with me, young man. I shows you, so you forget all about In-famous Johnson with a clean conscience.”

Lloyd decided not to protest; he wanted to see the fat woman's definition of sin.

It was a high-finned, chopped and lowered 1947 Cadillac, what Crazy Tom would have called a “Coon-Mobile.”

Lloyd flashed his light into the back seat as Sister Sylvia stood triumphantly next to him, legs spread stolidly, her arms wrapped around her midsection in an “I told you so” attitude. He swung the door open. The tuck and roll upholstered seats were covered with empty soda pop bottles and pornographic photographs, most of them depicting Negro couples engaged in fellatio. Lloyd felt a sudden wave of pity; the sucker and suckee were overweight and middle-aged, and the tawdriness of the photos was a far cry from the
Playboy
magazines he had collected since high school. He didn't want it to be; it was too rotten a legacy for any human being.

“I told you so!” Sister Sylvia barked. “This is In-famous Johnson's house! You gonna sell them pictures and return them empties, and get you a fast dollar ninety-eight, which ain't gonna get you nothin' but two bottles o' T-Bird to pour over In-famous's pauper grave!”

Lloyd shook his head. Radio noise from a block away pounded him, causing the whole ugly moment to sway in his vision. “But you don't understand, ma'am,” he said. “Famous entrusted this job to
me.
It's my
job.
It's my
duty.
It's my…”

“I don't wanna hear nothin' ‘bout that sinner! You hears me? I wouldn't bury that trash in our cemetery for all the tea in China. You hears me?” Sister Sylvia didn't wait for an answer; she strode angrily back in the direction of her church, leaving Lloyd alone on the sidewalk, wishing the gunshots in the distance would escalate to the point where they drowned out the radio noise.