Baby Brother's Blues by Pearl Cleage Read Free Book Online

brought them to this place was replacing his customary white shirt and dark tie with a black turtleneck sweater. His dark clothing and the Africa-dark skin of his high-cheekboned face made him almost invisible against the car’s ebony interior. Only his startlingly unexpected blue eyes were visible as he slowly pulled on a pair of tight black leather gloves.
    At the end of the road, the trailer came into view, a pitiful wreck of a hideout, perched precariously on a foundation of the same crumbling gray cinder blocks that supported the rusty shell of a pickup truck that had been parked there long enough to have kudzu creeping along its front and rear bumpers like a country lake lapping gently at the edges of an abandoned rowboat. There were lights on inside, and in the stillness, they could hear the television blaring
Monday Night football.
General eased the car to a stop and cut the motor. For a minute, neither man moved. From the trailer’s open windows came the sound of televised cheering as some NFL gladiator broke for daylight.
    Blue wondered if the man inside was alone. There were no cars around to indicate company, but Blue never made assumptions based on such a cursory review of the possibilities. Such hideouts were often visited by the loser friends of the loser fugitive who was squatting temporarily on his way to oblivion. Sometimes, these men on the run were also able to tap the sympathies of desperate women. Blue had no desire to interrupt a sexual encounter that had nothing to recommend it for a spectator or a participant.
    The sounds of the game were the only thing disturbing the deserted patch of pine trees. They had found the spot on a tip from somebody who had decided this guy’s crimes warranted breaking the street code that held a snitch to be only one small step above a child molester. The fugitive had abused his wife for years, sending her to the emergency room with a variety of broken bones, two concussions, and one near-fatal miscarriage brought about by being kicked in the stomach repeatedly during her seventh month of pregnancy.
    When he attacked their ten-year-old daughter in a drunken frenzy, his wife finally found the courage to move into a safe house in West End with her children. This placed her under Blue’s protection. At that point, General had gone to see the guy to make sure he understood that her safety was no longer simply her personal concern. He communicated Blue’s policy regarding violence against women and children and told the guy not to come anywhere near West End.
    Two weeks later, the guy called to beg his wife’s forgiveness, told her he had found God and was a changed man. He was sorry for the things he had done and only wanted a chance to apologize to her, face-to-face, and beg her forgiveness. Relieved, but worried, she told him to meet her at a busy restaurant around the corner from the West End News. Shamefaced, he told her he was not allowed in West End and suggested they meet at their old apartment, where he was still staying. When she hesitated, he began to cry and beg her to trust him. The sound of his racking sobs touched her heart and she agreed to meet him the next day at noon.
    When she arrived, he attacked her, gagged her, stripped her naked, tied her spread-eagled to the bed they had shared as husband and wife, then raped her with a broom handle and cut off her nipples with a kitchen knife. The cops who found the body the next day told Blue it was the worst thing they had ever seen. She left behind five children, all fathered by the murderer, who fled for his life. Three days later, when he showed up at his buddy’s trailer, with a long story about his
bitch wife
putting him out
over some bullshit,
he still had her blood on his clothes. Pretending not to see the stains, the buddy allowed the murderer to crash and the next day headed for West End to give Blue Hamilton the information he was looking for all over the neighborhood. Friendship was one thing, but