Unconditional (15 page)

“Why? What happened?”

“I thought that I—that maybe I'd seen something in the Commons that might be a clue to his murder. But Detective Miller told me I was mistaken.”

“What did you see?”

“It doesn't matter.”

Joe chewed on the inside of his lip, and then he smiled, changing the subject. “All right, then. Tell me something else about Billy.”

I pulled my legs up so that I was sitting with them crossed. “He gave away two-dollar bills,” I said.

“Oh yeah? Why's that?”

“It was his symbol of love. Millions in print, more than enough to go around. But people hoard them, he said. So he came up with the idea to give them away to total strangers. A simple act of kindness.” I blinked back tears, too tired to shed any more that night. “When I got his wallet back from the detectives, there were only two things missing. He carried with him a picture of the little oriole, like the one hanging up in the loft. It was gone. And there were no two-dollar bills. Either he'd given them all away, or someone had taken them.”

Taken away all the love Billy had to give, in more ways than one.

“He sounds like a wonderful man,” Joe said.

“He was.”

Joe grinned. “So then why'd he pick you?”

I swatted at him, and he chuckled.

But then I grew serious. “Joe, you asked me up there what had happened to the little girl you knew. Now you know. But what about you? You've changed a lot too.”

“Yeah.” He shifted his weight, winced. “Yeah, I have.”

“Joe? What's going on?”

Joe's hand hovered over his left side as I'd seen it do several times before. “Well,” he finally said, “I guess I owe you that.”

Chapter Fourteen

“Both my kidneys
shut down a few years back,” he said. “Permanent disability. Basically what that means is, I went from prison to the projects.”

“Did you have—develop—diabetes or something?”

He shook his head. “Luck of the draw. I've got what they call FSGS, which is an easy way to say Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis.” He winked. “Say
that
three times fast.”

I smiled back. “Say it? I've never even heard of it.”

“Few have. It's rare and it's . . . well, it's just one of those things that happens.”

Just one of those things.

I wasn't sure if I was ready or willing to fall into that conversation, so I opted for more information on his other shocking revelation. “How long were you in there? In prison?”

“Got eight years.”

“For?”

“Stealing two hundred bucks.”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Joe? Stealing? In spite of his family's poverty, he'd excelled at everything he'd done. Music. Academics. And of course, martial arts. It wasn't like the boy I knew to stoop to stealing, much less such a little amount of money. “What happened? Exactly?”

“Well, let me back up a little. I graduated top of my class in high school, did you know that?”

I shook my head. Joe and I had ended up in different schools after elementary school. So our friendship had lasted only a handful of years.

“I went to college on a full scholarship in engineering and computer science.”

I playfully punched him in the arm. “Look at you . . .”

“Yeah, well. Don't be too impressed. It wasn't always about wanting to do my best. It was more about me wanting to prove I was
worth
something. Always did, I guess. It was important that I show my dad he was wrong for walking out on my mother and me. That I
was
somebody. So I worked hard. Studied hard. And I was at the top of my class in college, just like in high school. I even had a great job lined up with IBM.”

He paused long enough, I suppose, for me to take all this in. “And then?”

He sighed. “And then me and some friends got into hacking. Right before graduation, this guy bet me two hundred dollars I couldn't hack into a bank. And you know me and a challenge . . .”

I sure did. One time during May Day Sports Events back at Hazelwood Elementary School, Joe was dared that he couldn't win the sit-up contest. He won, but he could hardly walk for a week. Another time, at lunch, Jimmy said Joe couldn't eat ten hotdogs. Joe took the challenge, ate the hotdogs, and then spent the afternoon in the nurse's office.

“Eight years,” I said again, completely dumbfounded by how such a small amount of money could cost a man so much.

As if reading my mind, Joe said, “Sometimes it's the bet you win that ends up costing you the most.”

For a fleeting moment I thought about the phone call from Detective Miller. If I were right about Anthony Jones, might it cost me something? Could I be in over my head, trying to do an investigator's job? “You're telling me—”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Joe stood, reached out a hand, and helped me to my feet. He placed his hand on the small of my back, turning me back toward the house and barn. But there was no hurry, and our footsteps showed it. We had all night, if need be.

“You never were one to back down from a dare,” I said.

“Truth is, that was just an excuse. It was my pride that took me down. Always comes before the fall. Isn't that what the Good Book says?”

“Does it?”

“Something like that.” Joe reached over to a shrub and pulled a leaf from it. He rolled it around in between his fingers, then brought it up to his nose, inhaling its fresh scent. “Proverbs 16:18: ‘Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.'”

I grinned at him. “You're just like your grandmother, quoting the Bible.”

Joe tossed the leaf into the shrub next to him. “One thing you should know about my story, Sam, is that in the end, it was prison that brought me to God and the greatest revelation of my life.”

“How so?”

“Remember me telling the kids back at the barn about the rules of prison?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, those rules applied from the cafeteria to the cells and all the way out to the yard.”

We'd emerged from the canopy of trees and were standing at the edge of the field where giant bales of hay had been rolled onto their sides. Joe stopped there, the moonlight illuminating his handsome face. “See, I had been sent to Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary, which is maximum security—a place for hardened criminals, which I wasn't. I was only supposed to be there six days. Just enough time to get my work release papers.” Joe squinted. “I guess God had other plans.

“During one of those few days, we were all out in the yard. ‘Free time' they call it, but that's a misnomer. They got razor wire everywhere. Armed guards in the towers. More guards walking around the grounds with dogs and shotguns.” He nodded. “But we were all out there. Segregated, like always. Whites over here, blacks over there. Some of the men were smoking, some playing basketball.” He grinned at me. “I was at the exercise equipment, doing pull-ups.”

I snickered playfully.

“I'm minding my own business when I hear this ruckus. It's Big Mac and his friends ganging up on old Pauly. See, everyone had gotten past the little fracas over the record player and the singing. Everyone 'cept Big Mac. Now he's yelling at Pauly, gonna make him pay for singing with me. For bringing a few minutes of peace to Brushy.

“I dropped from the bar and started walking toward where they were.” Joe licked his upper lip. “Before I could get there, Big Mac had jabbed his fist under Pauly's ribs. I got close enough, I could see blood coming out of the old man's nose.”

I sighed. “Oh, Joe . . .”

“Then I heard Pauly say, ‘I'm just looking for Joe' to which Big Mac says, ‘Yeah, baby? Well, I got somethin' for
you
.'

“I can't get there fast enough, Sam. Big Mac takes out that shank, grabs Pauly by the hand, and slices him.” Joe drew an imaginary line across the lifeline of his palm. “Right there.”

I balled my hands into fists.

“Pauly cries out. I'm trying to get to him, fast as I can. I hear Big Mac say, ‘You've crossed the line. See your white friends over there? They ain't coming 'round here to help you. They know the rules. And you
don't
. So it's just you and me this time.'

“By now I'm close enough to say something and be heard. No shouting necessary. I kept my voice calm but made sure it carried authority, you know what I'm saying?”

I nodded.

“I said, ‘You let him go.' Next thing I know, Big Mac's done wrapped his beefy arm around Pauly's neck and got the shank laid up against his throat. Pauly's breath came ragged, he was so scared.”

I could barely breathe myself.

“Big Mac said, ‘
When
I let him go and
how
I let him go is up to you now, sheep.' I could hear the white prisoners backing off and the brothers gatherin' around. ‘It's easy,' Big Mac told me. ‘Just walk up here and
spit
in this cracka's face.'

“There was so much hate in Big Mac's eyes. Bitterness. Resentment. And nothing but fear in Pauly's. All of a sudden, Big Mac's face changed somehow. Like he was going to say something that made
sense
for a change.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Ain't that what they been doing to us for
four hundred years
, my brotha?'

“I said, ‘No.' I'm not sure what I was saying ‘no' to, but I said it just the same. One thing I did know, though: I was
not
going to spit in Pauly's face. The man was old. He was feeble. And he was my friend.”

“What
did
you do?”

Joe smiled. “Ole Samurai Joe started flexing his muscles, trying to gain some momentum out of the situation. But Big Mac says, ‘Boy, you better step up here and spit in this cracka's face.' Pauly looked at me, his eyes all full of sorrow, and he said, ‘It's all right, Joe. Just do it.'” Tears shimmered in Joe's eyes.

He shook his head. “But I said, ‘No, sir. Not gonna happen.'

“Big Mac started to draw the blade across Pauly's throat. I've never seen so much fear on one man's face in my life.

“‘No, please!' Pauly shouted, begging Big Mac not to kill him. All the while, his eyes were pleading with me,
Just do it
.

“‘Boy, you spit in this cracka's face, or I'm gonna take a lot more outta him.' Then Big Mac pointed the shank at me. ‘Then I take something out of
you
.'

“I've never been so angry in all my life. He wanted to talk about four hundred years? He was sending us
back
four hundred years. And he was using a defenseless old man to do it?

“I said it one more time: ‘You best be letting him go.'

“‘Or what, sheep?'

“I could tell by the way Pauly's eyes moved that someone was stepping up behind me. Then Big Mac said to whoever it was, ‘Get him over here!'”

Joe's face had gone steely. “I took down the one behind me. Then another came at me. I took him down too. Then I heard someone yell, ‘Guards comin!'

“Big Mac let go of Pauly. Poor man dropped to his knees and crawled away like a scared dog. Then Big Mac came at me with that shank. It was really me he wanted, anyway. You could see it in his eyes.”

Even though logic told me Joe had not been killed in the confrontation, I wasn't sure I liked where this story was heading. “Joe . . .”

“My anger started to boil, Sam. Not just my anger at Big Mac. It was everyone. My father. Every kid who refused to accept me for who I was, not what I looked like. The friend who dared me to hack into that bank.” He paused. “Myself. And back to Big Mac again. I mean, here I'd been, put down by most of the white kids for being black, and now I was being put down by a black man for being black.”

I thought I understood. A wave of rage had swept over me in the last few minutes, and I didn't even know Pauly or Big Mac.

A thought crossed my mind. Was this how it had been for Billy? Was it because he had been a white man in a predominately black neighborhood? Not robbery, not random violence? But color?

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Big Mac . . . he swung the shank at me. I ducked, jabbed him in the ribs. Heard the breath get knocked out of him. He turned a little to the right, kind of giving in to the pain, so I jabbed him in the lower back. The move made him stumble, and I saw an opportunity. I kicked him behind his knee, buckling him. He went down, and I grabbed his wrist—the one with the shank—and twisted his arm. Hard. I heard him groan, heard the bones crack. I didn't care. Popped his hand so the shank would release.” Joe winced again. “Had to pop it twice,” he said, showing me the motion, which I was sure had some formal name. Not that it would have mattered if he'd used the actual terminology. I wouldn't have understood any more about the move than I could comprehend that kind of violent behavior.

But what I did recognize was that young “Samori Joe” had, indeed, become the warrior he'd swore he would be when we were children. And that he was now saving the world one child—or one old man—at a time.

Overhead a cloud must have swept across the moon, for we were no longer bathed in its light. A gray shadow had dropped over us, coaxing Joe to continue his story.

“The shank fell to the ground,” Joe continued, drawing me back to the prison yard. “Next thing I knew, I had Big Mac flat out, and I was straddled over him. The crowd—black men, white men, didn't make any difference—they was roarin'. I couldn't hear what they were sayin', but I was spurred on by the sound of their voices. I started pounding my fist into Big Mac's face. Pounding and pounding. One for Pauly. One for me. One for my
father
, who never cared enough to come see me . . .”