“I got to take Feather to school, Dad,” Jesus said after washing the dishes, “and then I have to go to work.”
“Kinda late to hit the fishin’ boat, ain’t it, boy?” I said in the language we’d used in his early years down around Watts.
“I’m working for Miss MacDonald.”
“Jewelle?”
“They’re building that big international hotel downtown and she got me a job on the crew. Said that she wanted me to keep an eye on things to make sure that the contractors weren’t cheating or cutting corners.”
The room began to shake slightly—an almost negligible shiver that came from my tentative hold on consciousness.
“So she got you workin’ like a detective,” I said. “Like me.”
That got the boy smiling. He was pure Mexican, Indian at that. Two thousand years ago his direct ancestors were building pyramids and singing their praises of the sun.
“I get sixty-seven thirty-three a week from the job, and Miss MacDonald pays me another seventy-five to keep my eyes and ears open,” he said. “You know I speak mostly Spanish to the other Mexicans they got working there. That way the bosses might let things slip if they don’t think I understand English.”
“Be careful, son,” I told him. “People get a little irrational when they think they got a spy on ’em.”
“I got a special number for Uncle Raymond if things get bad.”
“The other thing you got to remember is that—”
“Mouse is only for if the house is burning down and the fire department is on strike,” Jesus said, finishing a phrase that I’d used a hundred times in the past.
“Bye, Daddy,” Feather said, rushing from somewhere and kissing me on the temple. She was wearing a shamrock green dress with yellow buttons down the front and gray sailor’s shoes made from some rough material.
I smiled at her, and her happy face, for some reason, became somber.
“Do you need me to stay?”
“No, honey,” I said. “But it’s summer, right? I was just wondering what school you had to go to.”
“I’m doing summer school French and algebra at Pasteur,” she said, “advanced placement. I want to graduate from Hamilton High at least by seventeen so I can get away from these children.”
Jesus and Feather left the house as they had for all the years they’d been together. He would walk her to elementary school before taking the bus to Hamilton High, and he brought her with him everywhere he went. His capacity for love, in spite of the hard knocks of his childhood before he came to me, was as great as any pyramid.
After my adopted family had gone I sat over a cup of coffee and stared out into the rich woman’s yard. A hummingbird flitted from one citrus blossom to the next while Frenchie ran around under it, leaping now and then for practice.
I was trying to remember Evander’s last name. Noon, that’s what it was—midday: the highest point of life and work. Looking for noon sounded like just the thing that a wreck like me needed.
“Mr. Rawlins?”
Benita was standing there with the freshly changed baby in her arms.
“Yeah, Bennie?”
“I have to go to work too. I got a practical nurse’s trainee position down at Lance Holtz Medical Center in Santa Monica.”
“What do you do with Essie?”
“I pay Antigone an extra six dollars to look after her while she’s here with you. You know, all she had to do was change your IV and look in on you now and then.”
“I guess that easy job is over,” I said.
“Uh-huh.”
“How are you, Benita?”
“I like livin’ here wit’ Juice and your family. Sometimes when Essie cries at night Feather gets up to walk with her. You know, it’s kinda like what my mama used to say Alabama was like when she was a kid—everybody livin’ together an’ helpin’ each other out. Only here we are in this big old house and everybody’s got a job or school.” Benita hesitated a few seconds, staring into my face. “You look tired, Mr. Rawlins, but at least you’re awake again. I used to come in your room at night with Essie and just sit there, because you know you saved my life and brought Juice into it too. I know you coulda told him that I wasn’t no good. I know you didn’t have to let me in like you did, and I really appreciate it, and I’m very happy that you woke up.”
We gazed at each other while Essie made soft cooing sounds.
When the doorbell rang I felt a sense of relief. The connection between Benita and me, at that moment, was beyond the limit of my emotional reserves.
The mother and child left the room and immediately I began thinking about a woman named Timbale and a son who had failed to come home. It was odd for Raymond to ask me for help, certainly for something as mundane as a young man going off into a dangerous world.
“People die,” Mouse had said to me on many occasions. “They die and get born every second of every day. You know I can’t be botherin’ myself with all the people fallin’ by the wayside. If I did that I wouldn’t have enough time to pee.”
I grinned at the memory and wondered again: What was Raymond’s interest in Evander Noon?
“Mr. Rawlins?” Benita said. “This is Antigone Fowler, RN.”
I looked up to see a strawberry brown woman, maybe five-five, with hair tied tightly back, and businesslike efficiency about her like a ring around the sun.
“Pleased to meet you at last, sir,” she said. She wasn’t from the South, but the accent was from somewhere in the U.S.
“Eyes open and everything,” I agreed.
“Well,” Benita said, “I’ma go put Essie in the crib in her room and then I’m gone.”
When Benita came over and kissed my cheek I had the feeling that she got into that habit when I was comatose. She walked out of the swinging pink door.
I watched her go, feeling something like loss.
“Now let’s get you upstairs to bed,” the nurse said, her competence expressing itself with mechanical precision.
She came right up to me and took me by the arm. She tried to lift but I let the deadweight of my body resist.
“You have to help me, Mr. Rawlins.”
“Have a seat, Nurse Fowler.”
“I have to go take care of the baby, make lunch for you, check all your vitals, and call the doctor to get instructions on what to do now that you’re awake,” she said. “I don’t have time to sit.”
“Then you go do all those things and, just before the vitals check, you come back and have a seat.”
“That’s not how it’s going to work,” she replied sharply.
Sometimes you take a liking or a dislike to a person you meet—immediately. Just a few words pass between you, but you know everything you’ll ever need to about how you are going to interact. Nurse Fowler and I were not going to get along; that much was sure. What I had to do was to figure out how to settle our differences then and there so that I could get along with my resurrection or final rites.
“How much have my doctor and family told you about me, Nurse Fowler?”
“I’m not here for conversation,” she said. It was clear that she was also trying to set the ground rules.
I took in a quick breath through my nostrils and rolled my shoulders forward.
“Fine,” I said. “Then you can either listen or walk away.”
I managed not to smile at her enraged stare.
“I almost died not too long ago, and for all I care I am dead. But in the life I lived before that, I have, for good and for bad, battled more men than I wish to remember. In the war I did it by rifle, pistol, bayonet, and hand-to-hand. With these hands,” I said, holding up my dark brown mitts, “I bettered men younger, larger, and stronger than me. I am no child, Nurse Fowler, no senile old man that you can fold into whatever position you want. I am a man sittin’ here, and I will not be disrespected by you or anyone else. So back the fuck up and do what I say or get your ass outta here. Comprende?”
Somewhere in the middle of that tirade Antigone Fowler saw something that she recognized. She was a tough woman—I could see that—and she was willing to tussle. But she could tell that there was no give in me either. She probably thought she would come out victorious if we struggled, but she heard my willingness to go down in the fight.
“What is it you want from me, Mr. Rawlins?”