White Butterfly (17 page)

“WHY DO YOU have to go up there?” Regina asked. I was packing a small bag for the two- or three-day trip.

“I told you. They offerin’ fifteen thousand dollars for the ones turn him in. That’s a lot of money.”

“But you already told them he was up there. Now if they catch him you’ll get the money anyway.”

What could I say? She was right. But this was a job I’d taken on and I felt that I had to see it through. Anyway, being at home before we got things straight was torture for me. I needed some time away.

“You just wouldn’t understand,” I said lamely.

“Oh, I understand, all right. You’re a crook just like that Mouse. You like criminals and bein’ in the street.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You think I don’t know about you? Is that what you think? Your life ain’t no secret, Easy. I heard about you and Junior Fornay and Joppy Shag and Reverend Towne. I can see with my own eyes how you’re in business with Mofass and not workin’ for him. Baby, you cain’t hide in your own house.”

“I gotta go an’ that’s all there is to it,” I said. “Anything else we can talk about after I get back.”

Regina put her hand on my chest and then brought her fingers together until they were all pointing at me.

We stood still for a moment, her nails poised above my heart.

I wanted to tell her that I loved her but I knew that wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

“You got to let a woman see the weak parts, Easy. She gotta see that you need her strength. Woman cain’t just be a thing that you th’ow money at. She just cain’t be yo’ baby’s momma.”

“I’ll let… ” was all I could say until the pressure of her nails stopped me.

“Shhh,” she hissed. “Let me talk now. A woman don’t care but that you need her love. You know I got a job an’ you ain’t ever even asked me fo’ a penny. So why do I work? You change the baby and water the lawn and even sew up yo’ own clothes. You know you ain’t never asked me for a thing, Easy. Not one damn thing.”

I always thought that if you did for people they’d like you; maybe even love you. Nobody cared for a man who cried. I cried after my mother died; I cried after my father left. Nobody loved me for that. I knew that a lot of tough-talking men would go home to their wives at night and cry about how hard their lives were. I never understood why a woman would stick it out with a man like that.

MOUSE WAS SLEEPING in the passenger’s seat next to me. The stone and sand cliffs of the California coast loomed on one side with the sun just coming over them. The ocean to our left rose out of its gray sleep into deep blue wonder.

I watched the terns and gulls wheel awkwardly between wisps of morning mist. Cactus pads grew at crazy angles as if they had rooted while tumbling down the mountainside. Bright and tiny purple flowers beamed from succulent vines at the side of the road.

My Chrysler was the only car in sight on the Pacific Coast Highway. I felt exhilarated and strong and ready to put everything in its proper place.

The hum of the engine was in my bones. I could have driven forever.

“Hey, Ease,” Mouse croaked.

“You up?”

“Why you grinnin’ like that, man?”

“Happy to be alive, Raymond. Just happy to be alive.”

He uncurled in his seat and yawned. “You gotta be crazy t’be grinnin’ like that this time’a mornin’. Damn. It’s too early for that shit.”

“I got some coffee in a thermos on the backseat. Some toast and jelly sandwiches too.”

Mouse attacked the sandwiches and poured a cup of coffee for me. The sun rose over the crest and sparkled on the water’s surface. For the first time in a week I was excited without the help of whiskey. But that thought made me want a drink.

We went through Oxnard, Ventura, and Santa Barbara. Highway 1 wended inland and by the coast in turns. It was a snaky pathway taken mostly by cars because Highway 101 was a more direct route between San Francisco and L.A.

We’d been going for some hours before starting to talk. I was happy looking at the scenery, and Mouse’s nature was more suited to the nighttime.

When we were two hundred miles up the coast he asked, “What happens up north?”

“J. T. Saunders in Oakland. That’s all I know.”

“What you wanna do when we find’im?” Mouse asked.

“We don’t know nuthin’ ’bout him, Raymond. He may be just a bad-luck dude in the wrong place at the wrong time. All we do is watch’im an’ give the police his address.”

“S’pose he runs?”

“He ain’t gonna run.”

“What make you say that?”

“He ain’t gonna see us so he ain’t gonna run.”

Mouse nodded and hunched his shoulders. “We’ll see,” he said.

By twelve we had gone past San Jose and were entering the Santa Cruz mountain range.

“You ever know anybody who went in for the sulfa-drug syphilis cure?” I asked.

“Me.”

“What?”

“Me. I went down to that damned place for six months. They had me down for five years.”

“And you stopped going?”

“Sure did. Damn! I hated that shit. You know, you go in there an’ they give you that shot and the next thing you know you get this foul-assed nasty taste in your mouf. Shit! I hate even thinkin’ about it.”

“Raymond, you gotta go see a doctor.”

“Why?”

“ ’Cause syphilis gets all in your body and comes out later on.”

“I ain’t got syphilis.”

“But you just said… ”

“…I said that I went in for the treatment. I was a kid and I had this here pimple on my dick. I had this girl, Clovis, who said she wouldn’t fuck me so I went to the doctor. He looked at my dick and said, ‘Syphilis.’ Then they made me go every week for that shot.”

“Maybe he could tell just from looking.” But I didn’t believe that.

“Uh-uh. I know ’cause I got drunk one night and tried t’sign up for the army with Joe Dexter the next mornin’. When it came time to go I went down all smug and told’em that they couldn’t take me ’cause I had the syph. But this big ole cracker told me that my tests turned up clear. I ain’t never had it.”

White doctors at one time thought that almost all Negroes were rife with venereal disease. I could believe that they wouldn’t bother with a test.

“So,” I asked. “Why didn’t you go into the army?”

“They got my jail record the same day. They said t’come back when the fightin’ was worse. It never did get bad enough for them to wanna take me.”

THE PAST FEW YEARS I had been staying at the Galaxy Motel on Lombard. It was only ten dollars a night and the old couple there knew me. Mr. and Mrs. Riley. They were an old Irish couple whose parents had immigrated. They had soft brogues and gentle smiles.

“Well hello, Easy,” Mr. Riley greeted me as I came into his glass-walled office. “Haven’t seen you in quite a while.”

Wine racks on the wall held maps, ferry schedules, and tourist guides to parts of the city.

“Workin’ too hard down there. Too hard.”

“How’s the wife?”

“Fine. How’s Mrs. Riley?”

“At home with the grandchildren. Cecily had twins last June.”

I checked us into a room with two double beds and a television.

I HAD MR. RILEY dial Axminister 3-854 from the switchboard. Karl Bender answered. He didn’t know a J. T. Saunders and he didn’t know me. I tried to find out how long he’d had that phone number and his address but that didn’t get me anywhere.

“What now?” Mouse asked.

“I don’t know. I got a twenty-year-old address for him.”

“Twenty years! Man, I lived in over a hundred places in twenty years.”

“And every one of them remembers you.”

Mouse’s boyish grin was disarming. Not that he needed it; I’d seen him cut down more than one armed man in his day.

It had gotten dark outside. The headlights lined up on the Lombard. Two prostitutes took the room next to ours and started doing business. Mouse and I had to laugh, because they could get a john in and out of that room in five minutes flat. The walls were like paper so we could hear it all.

“Uh-uh, money first,” one of the girls would say. You could hear the man breathing and then the rustle of clothes.

“Oh!” she’d cry before he had time to get in her, and then, “Do it!” And the guy would all of a sudden scream or grunt or groan. His tone would always be a little sorry like a rube at a carnival who’d hit the pyramid of milk bottles dead center but couldn’t knock them over.

“What you wanna do, Easy?” Mouse said at about eight o’clock. “ ’Cause you know I gotta do sumpin’ or I’ma go give my money to them girls next door.”

“Let’s go over to Oakland and see where this J. T. Saunders used to live,” I said.

“Do it!” one of the girls next door replied.

WE WENT ACROSS on the lower level of the Bay Bridge. It was Friday night and ten thousand cars followed our example. In the rearview mirror I saw the shimmering lights of San Francisco above the herd of shifting, speeding cars.

Oakland was a full fifteen degrees warmer than San Francisco. We went from comfortable weather to where I had to open the collar of my shirt.

2489 Stockard Street was a three-decker apartment building. The paint had peeled off so long ago that the wood siding had weathered to gray.

A fat woman sat on the porch fanning herself with a church fan. Two small boys ran around her with slats of wood in their hands.

“Bangbangbangbangbangbangbangbang,” said one of the boys.

“Kachoom, kachoom,” the other one volleyed in deep tones, reminiscent of cannon fire.

The woman was oblivious to the war going on around her. She was very dark with gray hair and a young face.

“Ma’am?” I said. I took two steps up. The boys stopped dead, the slat-guns forgotten in their hands.

The woman kept fanning. She was concentrating on something across the street.

I took another step and said again, “Ma’am?”

The boys’ mouths were what my mother used to call flytraps.

“Yes?” She still had her eyes glued out across the street.

I looked in that direction. The only thing I could make out was the shifting light of a TV through a window. I couldn’t make out the picture. I doubted that she could either.

“What you want?” the woman asked.

“Does a family named Saunders live around here?”

“No.” She leaned forward to show me that she was busy watching.

“Bangbangbang.”

“Did a family by that name ever live here?”

“Maybe they did, mister. How you expect me to know?”

The artillery boy was using me for cover. He lobbed charges from his cannon-slat as his nemesis sought cover behind the young-old woman.

I could see Mouse down by the car smoking a cigarette and sitting on the hood.

And I stood there, watching her watch television.

After a minute the woman craned her neck back and cried, “Nate!”

A window opened on a floor above and a raspy voice called out, “Yeah?”

“Man down here wanna know if somebody called… ” She turned to me and asked, “Whashisname?”

I told her.

“Saunders!” she shouted. “Ever lived here?”

“Come on up,” the sandpaper voice said. “Number twenty-seven.”

“SIR?” I called from the latched screen of his front door.

Nate, whoever he was, lived in his living room. He had a bed in there and a table with a hot plate and toaster on it. There was a two-tiered bookshelf that was stacked high with pamphlets.

The old man, with the help of two canes, got up slowly from his chair at the window and slowly made it to the door. It was a whole minute watching him move the cane in his right hand to his left. I wondered if he had the strength to pop the latch on the door.

“Evenin’, young man,” he greeted.

We took the long journey back to his chair at the window.

“Hot out, ain’t it?” he asked.

I nodded. “How come you got a screen on the front door? You got flies in the building?”

“I like the door open but sometimes them damn kids come in here and steal my cake if I take a nap.”

“Oh.”

“You interested in the Saunderses, is you?”

“Did you know them?”

“Nathaniel Bly,” he said.

I was confused for a moment and then I realized that he was telling me his name.

“Vincent Charles,” I replied.

“Why you want them after all these years, Mr. Charles?”

“I knew their son, J.T.”

He nodded and my heart jumped a little. “We did some time in the merchant marines. This is the only address I got for him.”

Nate sat there nodding at me. He had a wistful smile on his face almost as if he were remembering something I’d mentioned.

“I don’t even know if any’a them is still alive,” he said. “His daddy died even before they moved. You know Viola couldn’t pay the rent here on such a big apartment. I don’t know why somebody want a place so big anyways. I like to have everything right with me. But my chirren pays the rent so I stay here. They live right down here, you know. Willie’s on Morton and Betty live on Seventeenth. Willie’s a car mechanic in San Francisco an’ Betty caterin’. Lotta folks say that caterin’ is domestic work and they turn up their nose but Betty could buy and sell mosta them. Last year she made more than ten thousand dollars… ”

“Did she play with J.T. when they were small?”

The question caught Nate up short. He’d forgotten that I’d come there looking for somebody.

“No,” he said. “Willie an’ Betty was a couple years younger than J.T. and Squire.”

“Squire?”

“I thought you said you was J.T.’s buddy? How come you don’t know about his brother?”

I laughed agreeably. “We was on a boat, man. J.T. didn’t talk about his family, except this address, and I didn’t ask.”

“He was somethin’ else.” Nate shook his head. “Always torturin’ li’l animals and beatin’ up my kids.”

“J.T.?”

“Squire. J.T. was a timid little boy. He had some kinda fright when he was a baby and he was scared’a all kindsa things—especially bugs. I mean, he couldn’t take seein’ a ant on the sidewalk. An’ Squire’d go out and catch a ole dead dragonfly and run after J.T. with it. And when Viola would come out Squire’d jes’ say, ‘I try’n give him a pretty.’ Sweet and evil, just like a angel from hell.