Donations were pouring into the Big Nickel, the nonprofit school and social center. The center was run by its president, Billy Psalms, and the board director, Socrates Fortlow. There were pottery classes taught by an old ceramicist from a production pottery down in Guadalajara named Angel Diaz, and instruction in the martial arts were presented by Wan Tai, a founding member of the Thursday night Thinkers’ Meeting.
Cassie Wheaton, though she had a full time law practice and was eight months pregnant, ran three weekly meetings of the Dispute Resolution Workshop where gang members and others came to solve their problems hopefully, without resorting to violence.
The Big Nickel was affiliated with another community center called the Safe House, a place where children could come to study in peace and safety. The Safe House also held classes at the Nickel to teach adults how to read.
Billy Psalms’ kitchen, except for Thursday afternoon and night, was transformed into a sandwich shop food line. They had put in a window and all day long volunteers from around Los Angeles came to make sandwiches and pass them out to people that lined up down the block. James Tippton, a social worker from the Bay Area, had quit his job and moved down to L.A. to manage the food line. He had turned in his threadbare suit for a canvas apron and worked day and night organizing volunteers and greeting his thousands of clients.
“I love this job, Socco,” the ex-Oaklander said just about every time they met.
“An’ the job love you,” Socrates would reply.
The Big Nickel was being sued for various zoning and health violations, and for brainwashing and unlawful restraint. One man, whose wife had left him and used the Nickel childcare center to keep her child while she went to work, had charged Socrates himself for kidnapping.
A man named Ben Wiggam, who lived five blocks away, had filed a complaint that the cult called the Big Nickel had sent its agents to spy on him when he was sleeping.
In turn the Big Nickel board was suing the city for police harassment on a conspiratorial level and the celebrity lawyer, Mason Tinheart from San Francisco, had agreed to take the case pro-bono.
For a spate of time early on the police busted the center every chance they could. If a fight broke out on the sandwich line the police would come into the house itself
looking for evidence
. If a neighbor called and complained about noise a SWAT team would descend on the tin plated house in full riot gear. But a federal judge, a professional acquaintance of Cassie Wheaton, put an injunction on the LAPD and the invasions stopped, almost completely.
Socrates had hired and appointed mostly founding members of the Thinkers’ table to run different aspects of the fastgrowing institution. Leanne Northford was in charge of counseling and social services while her one-time nemesis, Ron Zeal, supervised security when security was needed. Antonio Peron oversaw any structural changes that were necessary for the building. Marianne Lodz, the rising pop star, made most of their public announcements and hosted fund-raising parties.
Most Mondays Socrates boarded a bus bound for the Westside of the city. He made three transfers and got off at the Santa Monica Pier. There he met Darryl, the boy that he had saved and who, in turn, had saved him, and together they would fish in anonymity from the farthest end of the quay.
When they got together Darryl would talk and talk, which would have surprised any of his friends or schoolmates because with most people he was a sullen young black man who had little to say and rarely expressed an opinion.
“School is hard,” he said to Socrates before their bait hit the water.
“Hard how?”
“I’ont know. It’s just all these questions and answers, you know? I study ’em an’ a lotta times I’m right but it still don’t make no sense.”
“You ask Chaim to help you?”
“Yeah. Mr. Zetel’s real nice too. He sit down wit’ me but a lotta times he don’t think like the textbooks and the teachers. And he so smart that he know the answer wit’out figurin’ the way they do. My best help come from Luna.”
“Luna?”
“Uh-huh. She still come up twice a week an’ we sit an’ go ovah my work. What she do is get out a pencil an’ some paper an’ tell me to show her how to do it. That way I teach myself kinda. An’ you know Luna talk like I talk. She real nice.”
It was a Monday like any other. They caught fish that Fanny Zetel would later make some delicacy out of, ate at a fried fish stand, and walked along the beach barefoot.
“How come you so quiet?” Darryl asked in the late afternoon.
“Am I?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I guess so,” Socrates said. “It’s just funny is all.”
“What is?”
“Me an’ you standin’ here on this beach barefoot and at peace as far as it go. We both done been to the bottom of the barrel an’ here we are up near the top. I try but I cain’t explain it. I mean you know the board done approved my salary at ninety thousand dollars a year.”
“Ninety thousand!”
“Uh-huh. But you know that don’t even mean a damn thing to me. I mean, I’m happy to make money for Luna an’ the baby when it get here but I don’t care ’bout no money. Shit. I know drug dealers pullin’ down ten times what I’m makin’ but that don’t mean nuthin’. You could have a million dollahs but this beach here an’ you an’ me walkin’ down it, now that’s sumpin’.”
“You gon’ marry Luna?” Darryl asked.
“I axed her.”
“What she say?”
“Nuthin’.”
“Nuthin’?”
“Not a word. She just sat there quiet for a while an’ then axed me what I wanted for dinner.”
“Damn. What that mean?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea,” the big man said. “It’d drive me crazy if I wasn’t already used to it.”
“You think she mad acause’a that lady?”
Brigitta Brownlevy had come down to Los Angeles with Mason Tinheart three times and even though she was with the lawyer she showed Socrates a deference that was unmistakable.
“Luna told you about her?”
“Yeah. I think she’s jealous.”
“She never said it,” Socrates answered. “An’ you know L will tell you how she feel if that’s the only thing she say all day.”
Darryl laughed happily and said, “You know that’s right.”
Socrates put a hand on the boy’s skinny shoulder.
“How’s Myrtle?”
“Mad.”
“Mad about what?”
“If I don’t call her or if I do. If I say, ‘okay we broke up,’ or if I ask her if she want to get some coffee. But mostly she mad ’cause I’m livin’ in Mr. and Mrs. Zetel’s guest house an’ I’m not goin’ back down to the hood.”
“You nevah comin’ back?”
“I’ont know, Socco. You know when I got shot like that it made me scared.”
“But it was a mistake an’ the boy that shot you is dead himself.”
“But that’s just it,” Darryl said. He stopped walking and gazed at his mentor.
“What’s it?”
“I mean if somebody shot me ’cause I did sumpin’ to him then that would make sense. I could protect myself or at least I’d know why. But he shot me for no reason an’ then he got shot for no real reason. I even think about walkin’ around down there and I get scared.”
Socrates lowered himself down onto the sand into a half-lotus position. Darryl fell to his knees, head bowed like a penitent glowering at gravity.
“You mad?” he asked.
“Naw.”
“Then why you stop?”
“’Cause you knocked me on my butt, that’s why?” “Huh?”
“You, Darryl. It’s like Tim Hollow killed the boy and the man rose up out the dead body. Before Hollah took aim you was like a plastic bag in the wind, just floatin’ any which way the breeze blow. But now you like some kinda goddamn hero.”
“Hero? For runnin’?”
“That’s right. You know they ain’t one young man in thousand got the courage to leave all he know an’ go out on his own like you. Ain’t one in ten thousand really do it. You right, Darryl. What happened to you is crazy. Only thing crazier is if you see it happen an’ you don’t do nuthin’ ’bout it.
“Big man, almost twice your size, come up outta nowhere an’ shoot you with goddamn elephant gun and then when somebody come to you and say, ‘oh, I made a mistake.’ That is crazy.”
“That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout,” Darryl responded.
“I accept everything you say, son, but I want you to do me a favor.”
Darryl smiled at the appellation
son
.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“I want you to come down wit’ Chaim on Thursday nights. You be safe at the Big Nickel and you can either stay the night or go back with him. We don’t need you to risk your life, brother, but we need you to be there and help us understand.”
“Okay,” Darryl said quickly, decisively.
The sun was beating down on them but a small breeze cooled their dark skins. The boy’s nostrils opened wide to breathe in the salt air and the man scowled.
“What’s wrong?” Darryl asked.
“What I said is true but it ain’t the whole truth.”
“What is?”
“I want you there for me, Darryl.”
“Like how?”
“I wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for you, boy. I’d still be in the streets collectin’ bottles or more likely I’d be in jail for killin’ some fool think he could mess wit’ a man in the street.
“I got things to do, Darryl, an’ if I see you at the table that’s gonna make it a lot easier.”
Chaim and Darryl showed up early that Thursday night. The elderly Jew preceded the boy into the room. He smiled at Socrates and shook his hand.
“Chaim,” Socrates said. “Darryl.”
“Hey,” the boy said. He smiled.
“Hello, men,” Billy Psalms called from the kitchen door. “What’s for dinner, Mr. Psalms?” Chaim asked.
“Pasta and meatballs with stuffed eggplant and baked milk
for desert,” the gambler said loudly.
“Baked milk?” Darryl said in disgust.
“Taste so good you be beggin’ for seconds ’fore the night is
Everyone greeted Darryl gladly. It was the first time he’d come to a meeting since he’d been shot down in the street. And though every one of the Big Table thinkers had been to his bedside it was different to see him at the meeting itself.
“We need youngbloods like you here,” Mustafa Ali told him. “Without young men there won’t be a future.”
“And young women,” Cassie Wheaton interjected. “Ain’t no young men wit’out young women.”
Mustafa didn’t reply. He just took a deep bow and came up with his right hand flat against his chest.
There were twenty-one members at the table by 8:00, all but two of the original Thinkers plus two young gay men, partners they called themselves, one white and the other black, both named Robert. There was also a young political activist named Kelly Beardsley. He had formed a lunch program that involved a cart taking sandwiches from the Big Nickel window and distributing them among the homeless that could not or would not come out for food.
The two members that had not come were Marianne Lodz, the singer, and her sometime companion, Socrates’ lover and soon to be the mother of his child—Luna Barnet.
For the past ten days, ever since Socrates had asked Luna to marry him, she had been staying with Marianne. She said this was because the singer was going through a rough breakup with a movie star boyfriend and needed the company.
It was Luna’s absence from that night’s meeting that caused Socrates to let go of her in his mind. With Darryl in West Los Angeles and Luna away for more than a week Socrates felt lonely for the first time since he was a very small boy. That time his mother left him at an illegal daycare center for nine days while she went to Detroit to stay with her auntie. He’d cried for three days and then his Aunt Bellandra came to take him in.
“Cryin’ won’t bring her back, child,” Bellandra said on his second day with her. “An’ cryin’ won’t keep her out of your heart neither.”
That was when he stopped crying and stopped being a child. He wasn’t a man, not nearly, but he would never cry for his mother again. After she returned they lived in the same house until he drifted away. They saw each other from time to time until he was convicted of double homicide and rape. They didn’t communicate after he was sentenced.
He’d dropped Luna the same way he’d dropped his mother, or maybe in the way his mother had never held on to him. Ten days gone and they hadn’t even talked on the phone. That, in Socrates’ mind, was forever. He stopped taking her calls.
“I have only missed one meeting since the first day Mr. Fortlow asked me here. That was because my brother was killed in Compton and I had to make the arrangements. But you all came to the funeral and . . .” he stopped for a moment. “I met the woman I love here. And my words for you this evening are that Cassie and I would like to be married on a Thursday, in this room with you. We want Socrates to be our justice of the peace.”
Everyone rose to applaud and endorse Antonio.
While he clapped and smiled Socrates saw Marianne and Luna walk past his right to seats at the far end. Luna tried to catch her lover’s eye but he looked away.
“Let me propose a toast to Tony, one of the best men I evah met,” Billy Psalms said, raising his Dixie Cup of Blue Angel red wine, “and to Cassie Wheaton who never once let me get away with a thing.”
The people all raised their cups and glasses and mugs in toast.
Congratulations were heaped upon the couple and there was a general hubbub that was unusual for the blessing-like First Words.
Socrates was looking at Cassie and she was smiling at him and neither of them, nor any others at first, noticed that Luna Barnet had gotten to her feet.
Slowly a silence settled on the slight, dark, lovely and six months pregnant woman. She stood erect but her head was hanging down. There was an entire story in the way she was standing so in a few minutes the celebratory mood had shrunk down to profound silence.
When everyone was quiet and looking at Luna she lifted her head in pain and looked at the host.
“I know that it’s common for just one person to say first words, Mr. Fortlow,” she said. “But I have something important to say and I hope you will let me speak.”
Socrates was thinking that it was improper to make such a request. He wanted to say that anything important could wait for the general meeting, but looking into her eyes he knew that he was being petty and cold and so he nodded.
“You all know who I am,” she said, “but you probably don’t know me too well. I haven’t said much to many of you and I’ve never talked out at your conversations. I listened and learned too but I nevah spoke because that’s not how I learned to be.”
Luna looked around at the various faces, receiving nods and smiles.
“The only reason I come here the first night,” she continued, “was because Marianne wanted me to. And from then on,” she said, looking down at the battered Big Table, “I kept comin’ back because I couldn’t keep my eyes off Socrates.”
The lovers looked at each other, flanked by two lines of faces that were trying to figure out where this talk was headed.
“I nevah felt like I had anything to say to you people. I ain’t no thinker, I don’t have no deep thoughts. I know how to survive in these streets but that kinda knowledge ain’t made for public conversation.”
Leanne Northford hummed and said, “Amen, child.”
Luna took a deep breath.
“But I have fount somethin’ that I need to say to y’all,” Luna said. She seemed to be struggling with her words as if they were too large for her mouth. “I got mad at Socrates awhile ago. It wasn’t nuthin’. I was just mad like I get sometime. Just mad. And he didn’t pay no attention, he just went right on doin’ what he was doin’ like he should’a done.”
A few laughs rose from the throats of those that had come to know the hard-minded felon.
“But later on that day he called me and I got all spiteful and didn’t answer and didn’t call back. And then, must be two weeks later, Billy told me in passin’ that they had been arrested and dragged off to jail and that he called me wit’ his one call from jail. And there I was . . . a black woman lettin’ down her man.”
Socrates experienced a pain in his body that he couldn’t quite isolate. It might have been in his chest or his jaw or his head. He winced and wished that he could get away from that room with its bright lights and bright eyes.
“. . . a man who would die for me,” Luna said, “a man like all these other men be dyin’ a little each day an’ I couldn’t pick up the fuckin’ phone.” Luna looked out among the assembly and they all stared back at her.
Socrates rubbed four powerful fingers against his chest and wondered if he was dying.
“Here’s a man willin’ to cross a mountain of pain to be wit’ me,” Luna said, “an’ here I cain’t answer the fuckin’ phone.”
She didn’t cry or shake but there was a tremble in her voice. No one spoke.
Two minutes had gone by when finally Wan Tai rose to his feet and said, “I think we’ve done our work tonight, brothers and sisters of the Big Table. Why don’t we take this home with us and think about it.”