Fearless Jones (5 page)

MILO CAME IN
at ten-thirty, but he didn’t even sit down.

“Messages?” he asked Loretta.

“Nothing to look at,” she said without looking up.

“Come on, Paris,” Milo said.

I followed him out the door into the strong smell of chickens.

Milo drove a green Ford Fairlane with bright chrome details. It was a fine car to ride in, but I missed my red Nash Rambler.
I thought about going to the cops over the car theft, but then I worried about what they’d find and what Elana would say if
she were caught.

We arrived at the county jail downtown half an hour later. Milo had set up the release by phone, so all we had to do was go
to an oak-framed window that was the only opening in a huge wall facing an empty chamber on the basement floor of the county
courthouse and jail building. A small white woman with gold-rimmed glasses sat on a high stool on the other side of the window
ledge.

“Dorothy,” Milo said in greeting.

“What is your business?” the woman asked, as if she’d never laid eyes on the ex-lawyer.

“Fine for 63J-819-PL48C.” Milo handed over my money, and Dorothy counted it.

Without jotting down a note or looking up a file she said, “Have a seat. Someone will be with you in a while.”

At the far left end of the huge plaster wall there was a small bench, just large enough for one big man or two smaller ones.
Milo and I sat side by side. I could still see the window from where I sat. Dorothy sat there placidly staring out on the
empty floor.

It was a surreal experience: the bench made to fit Milo and me, the empty room, the robot bureaucrat, and a big clock the
size of
a cargo plane’s tire above us on the wall. Eighteen minutes after we sat down a man appeared from across the hall. He must
have come out of a door, but I didn’t see it open or close.

He was a white man in an all-purpose suit made from a rugged material. He wore a white shirt but no tie and carried a worn
leather satchel. There was a large bunch of keys hanging from his belt.

“Mr. Sweet,” the man hailed when he came within five feet of us.

“Warden Kavenaugh.”

“Follow me.” Mr. Kavenaugh turned and marched across the empty space.

There was a door there. I hadn’t seen it because it was painted the same light green color as the wall. Even the door knob
was painted. We went into a hallway with a low ceiling and walls that felt like they were closing in. The hall went for quite
a long way. There were no more doors or decorations. These walls were a darker green. The floor was green too.

Finally we came to a dead end. There was a door there. This door opened onto another hallway. This underground lane had many
twists and turns, but it too was doorless and without marking. At some point the hallway widened and we found ourselves in
a largish room with a door on the opposite side. Warden Kavenaugh, a ruddy and unpleasant-looking man, knocked on this door.
When no one answered the knock, Kavenaugh muttered something sour and then began trying the hundred keys on the lock. After
about twenty, finally one fit.

We came into a hall that was all metal, like a chamber in a battleship or a submarine. It too was painted green. I felt as
if we were far below ground even though we’d only gone one floor
below the surface of the court building. There was another door. Kavenaugh knocked on this one, and someone did answer.

“Captain?” the unseen sentry said.

“Kavenaugh,” Kavenaugh replied.

The door came open and we were in a large, sun-filled room, not in the bowels of the Earth. I was disoriented by the sunlight
and high ceilings. The man who opened the door wore a dark blue uniform complete with a pistol in a leather holster. He was
white, hatless, twenty, and pitifully acned. His only duty seemed to be waiting at that door. It was all very odd.

Kavenaugh pointed across the room and said, “There you are.” He took a sheaf of papers from his leather satchel and handed
it to Milo.

“Good luck,” Kavenaugh said. And with that he turned to go back the way we had come.

On the other side of this room was a long wooden table behind which sat two uniformed men. Behind the guards was a cage that
contained about a dozen men of all races and ages. Some smoked, a few hunkered down on their haunches, resting against the
flat and black iron bars. There wasn’t much fraternizing among these men. They were a footstep away from freedom and had no
time for small talk.

“Paris!” someone shouted. I saw him then, Fearless Jones, his hands reaching out to me, his smile cut in half by a metal slat.
The guard said something to him, but that didn’t stop him from reaching and smiling.

When we arrived at the table Milo produced a long sheet of paper from the sheaf Kavenaugh had given him. It was covered on
both sides in tiny print. There were red and black seals on the
document, making it look official. He placed the paper down between the guards and said, “Tristan Jones.”

One of the guards, a man with a red and chapped face, picked up the sheet and pretended to read. His partner, a handsome rake
with black hair and a pencil-thin mustache, stared hard at me.

“We had to chain him hand and foot just to get him down here,” the red-faced man said.

Milo did not reply.

“Waste’a money to pay his fine,” Red Face continued. “He’ll just be back in a week.”

Milo lifted his chin an inch but gave no more recognition to the man’s advice.

“Niggers always come back,” the guard said in one final attempt to get a rise out of us.

Milo was quiet and so was I. For some reason these men didn’t want to let Fearless go. He’d done something. Not something
bad enough to be held over for, but something. If they could get Milo to blow his cool or Fearless to start ranting in his
cage, then they could make a case to refuse release.

Seeing Fearless reminded me of a dozen times I’d seen him hard pressed and unbowed. In a Filmore District flophouse, bleeding
and in terrible pain from the cop-inflicted knife wound, he said, “It’s okay, man. Just gimme a few hours to sleep and I’ll
be fine.”

I saw him face down three men who had gotten it into their heads to disfigure a pretty boy who had taken away a girl they
all wanted. The men threatened to cut Fearless too. “Maybe you will,” he said to them, “and then again, maybe you won’t.”

Fearless was more free in that iron cage than I was, or would ever be, on the outside.

I met Fearless in San Francisco after the war. His dress uniform was covered with medals. Around him were three young ladies,
each one hoping to be his friend that night. I bought him a drink, saying that it was because I respected a soldier when really
I just wanted to sit down at the table with those girls. But Fearless didn’t care. He appreciated my generosity and gave me
a lifetime of friendship for a single shot of scotch.

“Fuckin’ four-F flat-footed fools,” a snaggletoothed white man was saying to me through the bars. “They get mad when a black
man’s a hero ’cause they ain’t shit.”

The rake gave the white prisoner a stare, which was answered by a clown’s grimace. When I nodded to the white con, he smiled
in answer,
Nuthin’ to it.

Fearless was released from the cage. His irons were taken off. From under the table the rake brought out a gray cardboard
box and handed it to Fearless.

When the guard pointed at a pen and a stack of forms, Milo spoke up.

“You should check your property before signing the release, Fearless.”

“Aw, that’s all right, Milo,” Fearless said in that careless friendly voice of his. “Why they wanna steal my paper wallet?
Wasn’t no money in it in the first place.”

“Check anyway, son.”

MILO LEFT US
in front of the municipal building. I was wearing the same black slacks and loose yellow shirt I had on when Elana Love dropped
in on me — the only clothes to my name since the fire. Fearless wore gray pants and a black silk shirt with two lines of blue
and yellow diamonds down either side of the chest. As I said before, I’m a small man, five eight and slim. Fearless is tall,
over six feet, and though he’s slender, his shoulders warn you about his strength. He’s also a good-looking man. A group of
passing black women attested to that with their eyes. Even a couple of white women glanced more than once.

But it wasn’t just a case of simple good looks. Fearless has a friendly face, a pleasant openness that makes you feel good.
If you look at him, he’ll nod and say good day no matter who you are.

“Fearless,” I said.

“Before you say anything, Paris, I have to have me a cheddar cheese omelet, pork patty sausages, and about a gallon’a fresh
orange juice. I got to have it after three months under that jail.”

“Momma Tippy?” I asked.

“They ain’t nobody else,” Fearless said, grinning.

Momma Tippy had a canvas enclosed food stand on Temple Street not twelve blocks from where we stood. In normal times we would
have driven there or at least taken the streetcar, but, finances the way they were, we walked.

Fearless limped slightly, but he could walk at a fast clip. On the way, he regaled me with tales from the county lockup. He
told about the man he had to beat to be left alone and about the guards who didn’t like him because he never got bothered
or upset.

“I tried to tell ’em that I was a soldier,” Fearless reasoned. “That I knew how to take a order if I was in the stockade.
But somehow they was mad just ’cause I wasn’t sour and moody. Can you believe that?”

Momma Tippy, a small nut-brown woman from Trinidad, served up seconds and thirds for Fearless at no cost because she felt
bad that he had been locked up in a cell.

“M’boy didn’t deserve it,” she said. “Dey always be takin’ ’em. N’you know it ain’t right.”

After commiserations and eggs, Fearless reached across the table and put his hand on my shoulder.

“I know you need me, Paris,” Fearless said in an unusually somber tone. “And whatever it is I’m’onna help ya. ’Cause you know
I got it.”

“Got what?”

“At first I was mad that you didn’t pay my fine. But then I was talkin’ to Cowboy —”

“Who?”

“That white dude said about me bein’ a war hero.”

“The one at the courthouse?”

“Yeah. He asked me if you owed me money, and I told him no. Then he asked was we related or if I had ever pulled you outta
jail. I didn’t tell ’im ’bout them cops — that’s between us an’ them dead officers. But I started to think that over the years
you done helped me again and again and I just kept on takin’ like some kinda dog can’t do for himself.” Fearless pointed a
long finger at a spot over my head. “And that’s wrong, man. You don’t owe me to pay my bail. Uh-uh. So from now on it’s even
Steven. I’m’a help you and pay you back, and the only time I’ll come to you is for a good meal or a good laugh.”

It wasn’t true. Fearless couldn’t stay out of trouble. But still, I was the one who was wrong. He proved that by forgiving
me.

I told him about Elana Love and Leon Douglas.

“Damn, that’s some costly lovin’,” he said when I was through. “So you worried that they still gonna be after you?”

“That, yeah, but I also need to build back my store. I mean, damn, I didn’t do nuthin’. Dude kick my ass then shoot at me
down the street. Burn down my store. He got to pay money for that.”

Fearless was looking down at his hands. He didn’t nod to agree with me or say anything at all.

“What you thinkin’ ’bout, Fearless?”

“Jail.”

OUR FIRST STOP WAS
the Bridgett Beauty Shop on LaRue. Layla Brothers, Fearless’s last girlfriend before he got arrested,
worked there fighting the kinks out of black women’s hair. She seemed happy to see Fearless, though she hadn’t even written
him a card while he was in jail.

“You know, honey,” she said unashamedly to my friend, “I been goin’ out with Dwight Turner, and he’d’a got jealous if I started
writin’ letters back and forth to you.”

Fearless didn’t seem to care. “We need some wheels, Layla,” he said. “Do you mind if we use your car?”

“ ’Course not. Here.” She took the keys from her purse. “What you doin’ after?”

“Well,” Fearless hesitated, “Paris and I might need the car for a couple’a days.”

“That’s okay. I can use my mama’s car. But you got to sleep at night, don’t you?” Now that Fearless was out of jail, Dwight
Turner wasn’t even a consideration.

“Yeah, but…”

“But what?”

“Paris’s place burnt down, and you know I don’t have no apartment. So until we get some business done, we bound at the hip.”

Layla was taller than I with skin the color of unburnished brass. Her long hair had been dyed gold. She was prettier than
she made herself, buxom and thin. She looked at me with a sneer that tried to be a smile and said, “I ain’t that greedy.”

Fearless laughed and touched her elbow.

He said, “I understand, babe,” then walked off with me and her keys.

LAYLA’S CAR WAS
a big Packard. The pink sedan had a straight eight engine that guzzled gas at the rate of ten miles a
gallon. We cranked down the windows and lit up Pall Mall cigarettes. Fearless had a perpetual grin on his face, and I was
pretty happy too. It had been an act of will for me to leave him in that jail cell, mind over matter. I knew when we were
driving that we were supposed to be together, rolling along like two carefree dogs with the wind in their faces.