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

gone. Bethany wasn’t upset about losing her husband, but she was devastated when Clarance refused to leave his own wife for her.
    Ever since then Bethany was alone. She’d go out with this man or that for a few days or weeks, but something always got in the way. Right now it looked like Ricky was going to be her date. At any other time I would have sat back and waited for him to finish with his line, but right then I had my own troubles.
    “Ricky,” I said.
    He waved at me to go away.
    “Ricky,” I said a little louder.
    Again he waved.
    “Get off the phone, man. I have to talk to you.”
    “It’s Charles Blakey,” he said into the mouthpiece. And then after listening to something, he said to me, “Bethany says hey.”
    “Tell her that you have to talk to me for a minute.”
    “Let me call you back in five?” he said. Whatever she said must have been promising because Ricky smiled and whispered something so soft that I couldn’t make it out.
    “What you want, Charles? Damn. Here I am tryin’ to promote somethin’ an’ you all up in my face.”
    “I got to have forty bucks, man. Got to have it.”
    “Charles…”
    “No, Ricky. No games. No fuckin’ around. I don’t have a single dollar bill, but Narciss wants to eat.”
    “Who cares what that skinny bitch want?”
    “Sh!” I was worried that she might hear us even though we were whispering. “I care.”
    All of a sudden Ricky was sly. He let his eyes almost close and then he nodded. “I see,” he said.
    “I’ll pay you back the minute this stuff is sold. Fifty dollars for forty.”
    Ricky reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of twenty-dollar bills. He must have had six hundred dollars in his hand. He smiled and peeled off two bills. He handed them over and then grinned again.
    “You got what you want now, brother?” he asked me.
    “Thanks,” I said.
    “Well then can I get back on the phone and get what I need?”
    Ricky was crooning to Bethany before I had left the room.
    I found Narciss holding up a lopsided pink glass vase. She was scrutinizing every aspect of the vessel like a budget shopper studying a possible buy from an overcrowded reject table.
    I sat there with knots in my stomach. It made me sick to have to ask Ricky for charity. And watching Narciss sift through my family’s history now somehow made me sad. The cold from the window worked its way into my gut. I wondered if I was getting sick.
    “Oh my,” Narciss said.
    “What?”
    Instead of answering she came to me with a wooden box held delicately in both her hands. She sat down next to me, placing the old scarred box between us. Other than its obvious age, it was unremarkable. About a foot long and six inches in depth and width, it was plain and held together by smith-made iron hinges. There were three letters roughly carved on the lower right side of the lid— JLD .
    “Look.” She lifted the lid.
    Inside there were three hand-carved masks, rust to dark brown, ivory I was sure. Each one was about five inches from crown to chin and three inches from one cheekbone to the other. They were simple images with sloping foreheads and slitted eyes. One was smiling, one possibly feral, and one looked like he was whistling through an O-shaped mouth. They were laid out on an old crumpled newspaper. Two of the faces had been broken in places but were seamed back together with some kind of adhesive. There was a blue splotch on the delicate chin of the leftmost image. They were beautiful and commanding, fitting perfectly in the wood box that, I supposed, was built to hold them.
    “It’s the history of your history,” Narciss whispered.
    The words came to me as truth. I believed I was looking at the cargo, carried on some European ship, of an African who had sold himself into indentured servitude. Maybe they were his gods, carved by some uncle.
    “Touch them,” Narciss said like an impatient lover showing a virgin the ropes.
    Instead I closed the box and took a deep