Black Betty by Walter Mosley Read Free Book Online

sit’own an’ wait till I’m gone.”
    We were both happy that I didn’t have to kill him.
     
     
     

— 6 —
     
     
    AS SOON AS THE LITTLE STORE was out of the range of the rearview mirror I thought, “Suppose one of his friends or a customer drives by when he’s trying to get down to the turnoff?” And “What if he had a pistol hidden in there and he lays at the road for me?”
    But then I put my fears away. Sure, something like that might happen, but there was nothing I could do about it. I had a shotgun and thirteen cartridges. I was ready to die if that was the way it had to be.
    Poor men are always ready to die. We always expect that there’s somebody out there who wants to kill us. That’s why I never questioned that a white man would pull out his gun when he saw a Negro coming. That’s just the way it is in America.
     
     
    THE THIRD TURNOFF went on for miles. On either side of the road were great stands of cactus that seemed to quiver with the desire to stab. Every once in a while a pile of stones loomed off the road. These piles were up to twenty-five feet high and didn’t seem to follow any logic in the plan of the desert. Just a stack of stones that might have made a halfway decent shelter against the hard sun. But nobody put them there.
    Nobody put me there either.
    The shack was tar paper and chicken wire tightly wrapped around a box frame that stood away from the ground on stumpy cement blocks. There was one big step up and the door didn’t even have a knob. Instead it sported a brass handle like you’d put on a kitchen cabinet.
    First I tried knocking on the plasterboard door, but that didn’t make much more noise than rapping on sponge. The window was too high, so finally I banged on the wall and called out, “Marlon! Marlon Eady!”
    No answer. As a matter of fact there wasn’t any sound at all. The afternoon desert was so quiet that I could hear the blood pumping in my ears. Sweat trickled down my chest and legs. My head hurt and I felt light-headed from the heat. Somewhere out behind me was a crazy white man maybe on my trail.
    I walked into Marlon’s house cursing myself for a fool.
    It was a neat little place. Nothing fancy. The uncured wood floor was clean and well-swept, which is saying something in the desert, where sand and grit find a way in everywhere.
    The chairs were wooden crates, the bed was just a mattress on the floor. On a cardboard box next to the bed was a bell-topped alarm clock that had run down at ten-thirteen—no telling whether it was morning or night. There was also a picture of Betty. A more recent portrait in a smart flowery dress sitting in a photographer’s modeling chair. It was in a gilded stand-up oval frame. I put that in my pocket and looked around a little more.
    He used a big copper bowl for a sink. No running water at all. I figured that the water had been standing in that bowl for more than two days because of the dozen or so crickets and desert beetles who’d drowned themselves in it.
    Across the room from the bed was the only real furniture. A maple-stained cedar chest of drawers that sported a four-foot mirror of real glass on top. Next to that was a metal rack from which hung Marlon’s clothes. He might have fallen on hard times but he still had nice clothes. A dozen suits of every hue. Gabardine, straight wool, sharkskin, and silk. There were only two cotton suits designed for the desert heat. He had seven hats suspended from hooks that were jabbed into the tar-paper wall.
    In the chest I found silk handkerchiefs, silk undershirts, and even silk underpants. There was one small drawer with only jewelry in it: ruby cuff links, a gold ring decorated with five diamond chips, a silver money clip with a roll of two-dollar bills (each one with a corner torn off to avoid bad luck) in its clasp, and various overlarge belt buckles as a Texan is liable to have.
    There were sweaters and socks and a stack of magazines that exhibited scantily clad black