The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley Read Free Book Online

six foot two. My father was six one.
    I moved all the furniture out of the living room and brought in the loot, piling it in each of the corners according to type. When the job was done, I sat in the wide seat of the bay window to appreciate my labor.
    I liked hard work. A big pile of stones that need to be moved, a field to plow. What I love is a big job that takes muscle and stick-to-itiveness. I’m not into a lot of details or measuring or comparing. I don’t want to build a steam engine; just give me a sledgehammer or a shovel and I can work all day long, all month if I have to.
     
     
    “Hello?” The voice came from the front door, which was open. “Mr. Blakey?”
    I had been asleep. The room around me was dim because there was no light on and the sun was setting outside.
    “Mr. Blakey?” She was tall and thin, brittle looking on first glance. That was probably because she was so tentative coming into a stranger’s home.
    “Over here,” I said. My voice was heavy from sleep, but there was a quality to it that was different. I don’t know if you want to call it musical or assured or maybe mature, like a man.
    “Charles Blakey?” the tall woman asked.
    “Yeah. And I guess you’re Narciss Gully.”
    Hearing her name calmed the skittish woman a bit.
    “Oh,” she said. “It was dark and I didn’t know…”
    I went to the wall near where she’d entered the room and turned on the light.
    “…didn’t know if something was wrong.” She was brown, mostly dark brown, but here and there it lightened a little, lending a subtle texture to her skin. I imagined the broad sweep of clouds across the earth from an astronaut’s view. Or maybe it was a parchment, incredibly old and almost erased by age and rain, the slight gradation of color coming from sepia glyphs whose secrets were now gone.
    “…I mean it was so dark,” she continued, obviously still nervous about coming into a strange man’s house without the proper reception.
    I didn’t help to relieve her fears, looking her over, thinking strange thoughts about her skin.
    “…and you were just sitting there…”
    “I’ve been working all day pulling stuff out of the cellar because Ricky said you’d come by at eight. I guess I worked so hard that I fell asleep here in the window.” And there it was—the truth. There was no lie in my words, body language, or voice. And again I wondered what had happened. It was almost as if I were in one of my beloved Philip José Farmer fantasies. Like I had gone to sleep in a mundane world and awakened in a fantastical place where the colors were brighter and youth was eternal. It was partially like that, like some fantasy, but this new world of mine was only subtly different; only my point of view and clarity of vision had altered.
    “Oh,” Narciss said, looking around the large living room. “There’s a lot, isn’t there?”
    She wasn’t a beautiful woman, except for that skin. Probably my age, give or take. Her face was squarish and the white-rimmed glasses were too big for her features. Her eyes were a muddy color and her fingers were too long it seemed. But when she splayed out those digits to indicate the immensity of the trove I had uncovered, I appreciated their reach.
    “You think it’s worth anything?”
    “I can’t tell until I’ve studied it, but it certainly looks interesting.”
    “Hey, Charles?” came another voice.
    “In here, Ricky,” I said.
    When he came in I was disappointed because he wasn’t carrying a bottle in a bag. Whenever I heard Ricky’s voice, I got the urge to drink. I wondered then how often since we were children that we had been sober together.
    “Hey, Narciss. How are you?”
    “Fine, Richard,” she said.
    “You guys met, huh?”
    “Yeah, Cat.” Ricky winced when I called him by his nickname. I didn’t use it again that night.
    Narciss was already down on her knees, looking through the toys. She had on close-fitting khaki trousers with a matching