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

this guy was just plain wrong.
    General waited patiently for Blue to give him the signal. In this moment, patience was more than a virtue. It was a necessity. A male figure passed in front of the window, turned on the light in the kitchen, grabbed a beer, popped the top, and shuffled back to the television. He was clearly in the trailer alone.
    Glancing in the rearview mirror, General again met Blue’s eyes. In the gloom, they glittered, hard and cold like sapphires. General slid his hand into his overcoat pocket and felt the familiar weight of the gun in his hand.
    “All right.” Blue’s voice had the low rumble of thunder in the far distance. “It’s time.”

7
    I n the beginning, they had ridden in the front seat together, but General felt Blue should sit in the back. “How they gonna know you’re a star if you don’t act like one?” was how he explained it to Blue.
    After that, Blue sat in back and General drove. The arrangement suited them both. It gave Blue a chance to be alone with his thoughts and General an unobstructed view of what was going on around them at any given moment.
    “You need to stop anywhere?” General asked as he headed the big Lincoln back onto the interstate.
    “No,” Blue said quietly. “Let’s just go on to the house.”
    That was fine with General. He trusted Blue to make all the decisions on nights like this. He never questioned or second-guessed his friend’s judgment. He did what he was asked to do. General was a soldier and they were at war. What he and Blue had done tonight was just part of what it took to win.
    The two men had been friends since elementary school, back when everybody still called General by his given name, James. They had grown up on the same block; learned to ride the same bike; lost their virginity (with different girls on different nights) in the backseat of the same used Chevrolet. Blue had started calling him General in the ninth grade because whenever they got to the playground, James always took charge of whatever game they were playing. Everybody laughed at first, but the name stuck.
    Although General was two years older, they were as close as brothers, and when Blue had his first hit record at sixteen and needed to go on the road to promote it, of course General offered to drive him around to all the little clubs that were clamoring for him to perform. That trip turned into another and another and pretty soon it was a full-time job. General never looked back. The clubs were paying good money and General could always make the owners give up what they owed. As Blue’s road manager, by then he was legally armed. It was a cash business, and the law acknowledged the need for protection of assets. He spent a lot of time at the firing range until he got good at it, but he’d never had to shoot anybody about their money. The
killin’ shit
came later. But on the road?
Plenty pussy, plenty cash,
and a friend who was more like a brother to share the adventure. Even at the time, General knew this would be the period they’d look back on as “the good old days,” and he enjoyed every bit of it.
    So did Blue. He was singing better and better and the women in the audience were acting like he was all five of the Temptations in their prime. Women would rush the stage and toss their panties and fall out and Blue would just smile and keep on singing. He wore sunglasses during most of the show. Blue knew the women wanted to see his famous blue eyes, but he didn’t want people to be so busy staring they didn’t hear the music. He’d take the glasses off for the last number and the women would go crazy.
    General knew Blue’s eyes had been a real source of friction between Juanita and her husband. Old Man Hamilton wanted to know how his son showed up with what he always called “those damn cat eyes” when nobody on either side of their families had eyes that looked like that. Juanita, who had always been completely faithful to her husband, more out of fear