Cry Revenge (12 page)

IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL DAY. The morning music of the singing birds came through the open window, and one could smell the warmth and brightness of the day in the air.

Curtis rolled over and tried to cover his head with a sheet, but the sunshine still came through. It wasn't really the hot sunshine that he was trying to hide from, he just didn't want to face the day. The past night's work was too much for him. It was all too stark raving clear in his mind. He could still feel the blood of the dead man on his hands, even though he had almost rubbed his skin off trying to wash the blood when he had come home that morning.

"Honey," Shirley's voice drifted to him from the kitchen, "would you like a large breakfast this morning, or just some black coffee?"

"Coffee, dear," Curtis called back, then kicked the sheets off and climbed out of his bed. Curtis raised his arms and stretched. He could smell the morning's fresh air, yet he took no enjoyment in it. What he had tried not to think about came rushing back to him.

After slipping on a robe, Curtis went into the kitchen. "Honey," he began, "what you want to do today? I'm going over to Mom's pad in a little while, so if you want to, you can gather up the kids when they come home for lunch and take them along."

Before answering, Shirley set a cup of coffee in front of him. "Curt, I got all that washin' to do, baby, so I better stay home and get it finished. Maybe later on this afternoon when you get back I'll be finished and we can ride out to a park or something."

Neither one wanted to bring up the killings. They talked around the subject. Finally, Shirley sat down at the kitchen table beside Curtis. "It ain't no use blaming yourself for what happened, Curt. Dan is just a no-good bastard, that's all."

"Yeah, I know. It's easy to tell yourself that, but people think me and Dan are closer than what we really are," Curtis said softly as he slowly sipped his steaming coffee.

"Shit!" she exclaimed. "You're not responsible for what another nigger does, daddy, so don't worry yourself over it!"

They were suddenly interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell. Shirley got up quickly and went to the door. She didn't bother opening it, but just glanced through the peephole.

"Ain't nothing happenin', dear," Curt heard her say. Then she added, "I don't know how long it's goin' be, maybe a day or sometime tomorrow. But it ain't goin' be no time soon, so don't come back in the next couple of hours."

She returned to the kitchen shaking her head. "At times I feel sorry for them addicts. Then another time I don't give a shit what happens to them. I know one thing, Curt, they will worry the fuckin' shit out of a person about that goddamn dope!"

Curtis nodded his head in agreement. "Yeah, honey, I know they get on your nerves, but try not to be too mean to them when you speak. I mean, we do live quite good off them, so we have to put up with them. At least, until we get where we don't have to deal in such small packages; then the money will be bigger and everything."

"I ain't worried about the money, Curt. We're gettin' more money now than I've ever believed possible. It's just that dopefiends are so goddamn dangerous! Look at that shit Dan pulled off. You never know what's going to happen when you deal with them kind of people, that's all."

Curtis looked at her. "Honey, if you feel thataway about it, maybe I can set up something different than what we are going through right now."

"Like what, Curt?" she asked curiously.

"I don't really know offhand, Shirley, but if I could find some guy I could trust, I'd put a bag in his hands, or better yet, I'd rent a place for him to live and sell the jive out of."

"It sounds good, Curt, but can you find somebody you can put that much faith in?"

He tossed his hands in the air. "Ain't no sense of worrying about all that mess right now, Shirley, 'cause I don't even know when I'll be able to cop again. After that shit last night, fat-ass George is frightened to death of niggers."

"Well, maybe it's all for the best. We got a small start, Curt. If you got a job for a few weeks, with the check I get, it would be enough for us to get along on," Shirley stated.

Curtis got up from the table. "Let's not start on that shit, girl. A job is for a lame, and I don't want no part of it."

Shirley whirled around and slammed some dishes down in the sink. She didn't bother to answer him again, but she showed her disapproval by her actions. Curtis ignored her and went back into the bedroom. As he dressed, he thought about what she had said and laughed. He was used to making two, maybe three hundred dollars a day now, and to go back to a job would be like giving up. He liked the recognition that went along with getting big money, as well as the money itself.

The telephone rang sharply in the front room. Curtis listened with one ear as his woman answered it. "Curt, it's for you," Shirley called out.

He picked up the phone in the bedroom. "Hey, what is it?" he inquired as he reached for a smoke.

"What!" he yelled suddenly, forgetting about the cigarette he was reaching for. He held the phone close and listened quietly, then he asked one question. "Which hospital is he in?"

Shirley came into the bedroom and watched Curtis as he held the telephone close to his ear. He hung up slowly, a vacant look in his eyes.

"What's the matter?" she asked, sensing something was wrong, even though she didn't know what it could be.

"It's my brother," he began. "Some Mexicans caught him coming home from the gym and jumped on him. I ain't got the full truth about it, but it seems as if they thought he knew where Dan was hiding out. How fuckin' stupid can a goddamn person be?" Curtis cursed angrily. "How the fuck would Billy know any fuckin' thing about Dan?"

"You want me to go to the hospital with you?" she asked, after a moment of silence.

"Naw, baby, that won't be necessary. You stay here and take care of the kids. As soon as I hear something, I'll call and let you know"

Shirley followed him to the door and held it open as he went out. "Okay, honey," she said as she stood in the doorway. "Don't forget to call either way. I want to know what's wrong with Billy as bad as you do"

Curtis ran down the stairway, and when he reached the front door of the modern apartment house, he almost collided with an elderly man who lived in one of the downstairs apartments.

Curtis continued to run after sidestepping the old man until he reached his car. He started it up and drove swiftly away. When Curtis reached the hospital, he didn't waste any time searching for a place to park. He just pulled up beside a red line painted on the curb and parked.

The Martin Luther King hospital was used mostly by the poor blacks and Mexicans in the nearby communities. As soon as Curtis reached the in-patient waiting room, he began to look for his mother and sister. The hospital waiting room was full of Negroes waiting for friends and relatives. As Curtis made his way up to the desk, he could smell the odor that only a hospital carried.

The round-faced black nurse behind the desk glanced up at Curtis with a bored expression on her face. "Yes?" she inquired in a high, thin voice that he would have never guessed came from a woman with so much bulk.

"I'm here to see about my brother who was brought in earlier. His name is Billy Carson. I think he was...." Before he could finish, she interrupted him.

"Oh, yes, you're asking about the young man who was attacked near the high school." Her face became serious and there was compassion in the look she gave him.

"He's not hurt seriously, is he?" Curtis asked sharply, shaken by the woman's open concern.

"I'm afraid he's still in intensive care, but you can go to room 104 and find out more. I think your moth er is already back there, young man," she said as he turned to leave.

Curtis walked down a long hallway until he saw a sign with the room numbers. He turned right and began passing patients lying on stretchers. A group of people were sitting next to a doorway and as he passed he saw that it was the X-ray room.

The people sitting on the benches outside the Xray room watched the tall, well-dressed black man as he went past. There was something about his bearing that made people look at him a second time. It was not because he was slim and supple, all bone and muscle and sinew; what caught their attention was the brutal leanness about his face. He looked like a hawk hunting its prey.

As soon as he made another right turn, closely following the directions, he saw his mother staring wildly up and down the hallway. Tears were streaming down her dark cheeks. His sister stood helplessly by.

"Momma," he heard his sister say as he walked up, "it's goin' be all right. It could be worse."

Rita looked over her mother's shoulder and saw her brother coming toward them. A look of relief flashed across her features when she saw him.

"Momma, here's Curtis now," she said, hoping to give her mother some relief, but the words had the opposite effect.

Mrs. Carson whirled around on her older son with fury blazing from her eyes. "There you are! I don't know why you bothered to come down here! Maybe it's just to see what kind of handiwork your gangster friends did to your brother. You ought to be ashamed to even show your face down here!" Her voice was loud and hysterical, her emotions getting the best of her.

Curtis was taken by surprise at the anger of his mother. He felt it was uncalled for. He hadn't done a thing to deserve it.

Her words continued to beat at him, even though Rita tried desperately to shut her up. "It's all your fault, it wasn't Billy they wanted, it was you! But since they couldn't find you, they took their anger out on him. Now he's layin' in there, unable to move, because of you!"

The words "unable to move" shook him more than her senseless anger. "He ain't paralyzed?" Curtis asked, bewilderment and shock in his voice.

Rita shook her head. "I didn't tell you on the telephone because the doctors hadn't finished checkin' him out yet. But the men who jumped on him also shot him while he was layin' on the ground. One of the dirty bastards shot Billy in the back!" Tears began to flow down her cheeks.

Oh, my God, Curtis thought angrily, it was all becoming like a nightmare. Why? Why? Why? The words kept flashing through his mind. It couldn't be because of him. Curtis thought back and knew he hadn't done anything to any Mexicans to make them want to take their anger out on him. So why was Billy attacked?

"Why?" He didn't ask the question to anybody in particular. The word just came out.

"Why, why?" his mother screamed in his face. "Because of that no-good sonofabitch that you had over to the house a few weeks ago. The bastard ate at my table! Now this has happened to my boy!"

Dan! The name came and went in Curtis' frantic thoughts. "You mean because of that nigger Dan?" He looked at Rita.

Rita nodded her head. "Billy said they thought he knew where Dan was hiding out. When he couldn't tell them where Dan was, they jumped on him."

Curtis heard what she said, but he didn't want to believe her. Could it be possible for somebody to be that foolish? To make him responsible for what somebody else had done? It was possible. The more he thought about it, the more he was sure that Pedro and his wild bunch of hoodlums were responsible for this. It would be like the foolish young Mexican to do something stupid, make somebody else pay for something that they didn't have anything to do with.

"Momma...," he began.

"Just shut your mouth, boy! I don't want to hear no excuses now. Your brother is layin' in there, ruined for life because of you. So why don't you just go on back to wherever you came from. We don't need you here, Curtis; just go on. She never considered the pain she was causing her older boy. Her words beat at him like falling bricks. As he listened to her, a feeling of terrible shame overcame him.

"Momma, why don't you stop that," Rita said, her anger growing. She didn't hold Curtis responsible and hated to hear her mother talk to him like that.

Curtis' eyes were filled with pain. As he stared at his mother, a feeling of great depression overcame him. He couldn't do anything about what had happened; it was over and done with, but he could make the people responsible for it pay. And he meant to make them pay dearly. At first, he had felt pity for the Fernandez family, but now there was no pity in his heart. His mother's words beat out any pity that he might have had for anyone. Now, there was only the thought of revenge. Not only on the Mexicans but on Dan, who had caused all of it to happen in the first place.

"Rita," Curtis began, "I'm goin' take off. It ain't nothing I can do around here. With Momma feelin' the way she does, it ain't no reason for me to hang out here, but I'm going to take care of the matter. The people who caused this are going to pay, and don't think for a damn minute that they ain't! I just want you to know that I ain't' done nothing to nobody to make them do this thing to Billy."

"I know," she answered quickly, "but you take care of yourself, Curt. Momma is just upset right now. After she gets used to it, she will realize that it wasn't because of you that it happened. I'm just sorry that she carried on the way she did, that's all." Rita spoke truthfully, trying to remove some of the pain she saw in his face. Her mother had been very unjust as far as she was concerned. But when it came to mothers, you couldn't tell them anything. You just had to go along with them, even though a lot of times they were wrong.

"Call me at my house when you leave, okay, Rita?" Curtis asked as he started to go.

She nodded okay, then watched him as he turned on his heels and left. There would be hell to pay somewhere in the city, she knew, because Curtis wasn't the kind of man who took abuse lightly.