The Right Mistake (10 page)

When Socrates finally got up the house was empty. As usual the rooms were clean and the dishes washed. The chairs around the Big Table were in disarray but he liked that, the tangle of chairs reminded him of the life that had been there.

“He didn’t even say he won,” Socrates said out loud. “And that was the best talk we evah had in here.”
Socrates remembered Ron Zeal saying, “Billy’s right. You cain’t get no honey you ain’t reat to git stung.”

Socrates usually stayed at the Big Nickel if the meeting went past midnight. He had a mattress upstairs on a floor in what would have been the master bedroom of the house.

At the top of the stairs he noticed the light under the door of the office he slept in.
He chided himself for having left the light on but then he thought,
I won’t have to take up a collection to pay the electric bill this month
. Then the door came open. Unconsciously Socrates shifted his shoulders, getting ready to fight or to drop and roll in case his intruder had a gun.
Luna, dressed only in one of his old white T-shirts, came out and smiled.
“You think I was gonna take out my gun?” she said.
The T-shirt was longer by far than the dresses she wore but the flimsy material showed off the young woman’s breasts and form in a way he had not seen before.
“Luna.”
She smiled again.
“Luna.”
“Wha?”
“I thought you left with, with Peter.”
“I saw you, daddy,” she replied. “You din’t think I was lookin’ but I saw you gettin’ all hot ’cause of I had a man wit’ me. You don’t want me to have no man. If you did it wouldn’ta been so hard for you to shake his hand.”
“Where’d he go?”
“I told him I was gonna stay and that he should go wit’ Marianne an’ look for some other girl.”
“Wasn’t he mad?”
“I don’t give a shit. I don’t care about him.”
“But Luna.”
“Daddy, come in here an’ sit down on this chair.”
Luna led Socrates to a chair in the center of the bedchamber/ office.
“Take off your shirt,” she said.
“Say what?”
“I said, take off your shirt.”
“Luna…”
“Socrates,” she said. He didn’t remember her ever using his full first name before. “How long have we known each other?”
“I don’t know . . . six months I guess, more.”
“And we talk almost every day since then haven’t we?” “Yeah.”
“So take off your shirt.”
“Why?” he asked, almost whining.
“Because I’ma give you a shoulder massage.”
“Massage?” Socrates tried to get up but Luna restrained him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Take off your shirt,” she said again.
“Girl, you don’t have the hands to get through my muscle.”
“We’ll see.”

With her first touch Socrates groaned and leaned forward, away from the pain that went down his arm and back. “What you doin’?” he grunted.
“Usin’ my elbows like I used to on my big brother before he died.”
Sometimes she dug deep under the mat of muscle and then she struck out like a piston against his back.
Socrates was seeing colors, feeling sensations that he’d not known. This was his first massage. He shuddered through his neck and cried out when Luna pressed down with her elbows into the thick bands on either side of his spine. He forgot about Peter and Billy Psalms and the meeting that had been so important downstairs. He even forgot about prison and his crimes. The pain was exquisite and the release was something that he didn’t know was possible.
Sitting there under the constant attack of Luna’s elbows, forearms, and fists Socrates lost consciousness while sitting upright. He remembered Luna helping him up and dumping him on the mattress. He tried to say something but she shushed him and before the sound was over he was asleep.
In a dark place he could see quite clearly. There were hard men, desperate men chained to the walls and naked women enticing them, calling them forth.
He was chained by his wrists and ankles and a woman he had only known in dreams was holding her arms out to him singing like Etta James while she got sultry and rough.
He yanked at his chains and made sounds that were not words. He moaned and grew hard but could not touch himself and she would not reach out far enough to him. A cry tore through his chest and he woke up with Luna on top of him.
“It’s okay, daddy,” she was saying over and over. “It’s okay. You all right.”
Socrates could feel the shuddering aftermath of his orgasm. Sweat covered him and her too. Luna was completely naked and Socrates was uncovered from his diaphragm to his knees. He had gripped Luna by the biceps of both arms and she kept saying, “It’s okay, daddy. You all right.”
He shoved her to the side and tried to stand up but his pants were around his knees and he couldn’t seem to get them up or down.
His helplessness made him laugh. Luna laughed too.
“You want me to help you with your pants, little boy?”
This made them both laugh harder.
The grin still on his lips, Socrates said, “What you think you doin’, girl?”
“Me?” she said. “You the one grab me in the bed. You the one kiss me first.”
“I did?”
“Uh-huh. An’ you know that’s all I needed.”
“But we didn’t use protection. I been in prison, child. No tellin’ what I got up in there.”
“Me too,” she said pressing her naked body up against his side. “I been in the streets. I done fucked a whole lotta men. But I wanted that right there. I wanted you.”
And before he could reply she said, “‘But Luna’ . . . that’s what you always say. But, Luna, I’m too old, I’m too mean, I’m too fat, I didn’t bresh my teefs. Shit. You are my man, Socrates Fortlow. Mine. I could see that when Pete put his arm on my waist. I was hopin’ that you wouldn’t kill the boy.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Socrates said. “I don’t know.”
“What about takin’ off your pants and T-shirt an’ lyin’ up here next to me? Or are you just gonna get some an’ then th’ow a girl out in the street?”

They didn’t sleep. They didn’t make love again but Socrates placed a hand on her thigh and one on her shoulder. “It was the massage,” he said.
“What was?”
“It got to me. I never felt like that before.”
“Me neither.”

Later on Socrates pulled the blanket up to his waist. “I could see it through the blanket you know,” Luna said. “I
know you want me. But I could wait.”

When the sun was rising through the window Socrates took Luna in his arms and kissed her lips.
“I guess I got to accept my luck,” he said.
“Bad luck to be with a poor black girl like me?”
“Bad luck? No, baby, it’s like Billy said.”
“Wha?”
“I done hit the trifecta.”
“How you see that?”
“Jealousy came in first, generosity placed, and then you
showed me a feelin’ I din’t even know people had.”

“What’s in here?” the policeman asked.
“Papers,” Socrates replied. He was thinking about Luna Bar
net and how she had gotten around every attempt he made to
keep her out of his heart.
“The worst man you evah meet got love in his heart somewhere,” his Aunt Bellandra once said, many years before. “But what if he’s a bad man like mama said my daddy was?”
Socrates asked when he was only five.
“Your father made you,” Bellandra replied in her flat, deep, almost emotionless voice. “That’s some good anyway.” “Open it up,” Detective Brand ordered.
“The warrant doesn’t specify this closet,” Cassie Wheaton, the
Big Nickel’s lawyer, said. She had her right hand over her abdomen, maybe shielding the unborn child from the ugliness of
her profession.
“The warrant is for a pistol somewhere on the first floor of
this domicile.”
“Meetin’ house,” Socrates said, correcting the tall white cop
with the gray hair.
“Okay.” Brand said. “This is a meeting house not a domicile
and behind that door is an office not a closet. Open up.” Socrates put a hand in his pocket. The two uniformed police
men, who had done all the actual searching so far, stiffened. Years of experience with the police before he was arrested
and convicted for double homicide and rape and then more
years under the guards in prison had made Socrates a kind of
dancer. He stopped moving when the cops did, anticipating
their violent response to his natural movements.
“It’s locked,” he explained. “I got to get my key to open the
door.”
The policemen gave him their full attention as he retrieved
the keychain.
While sliding the key into the lock he felt a twinge of fear.

“Socrates Fortlow,” the voice had said on the phone that afternoon. The man on the other end was trying to disguise his voice so Socrates pretended not to recognize it.

“Yes.”
“My name isn’t important but believe me when I tell you that there’s a weapon hidden in your first floor office, a pistol used in a murder in Vermont last year.”
“How?”
“I just know.”
“Who are you?” Socrates asked even though he knew, would have known even if he had not recognized the timbre and the way the man spoke.
“That don’t matter,” the man said and then he hung up.

It was a small office with three metal file cabinets and a wooden desk. Socrates had bought the cabinets from a used office supply store. They were red, white and blue but he didn’t care. Mustafa Ali and Cassie Wheaton handled most of his paperwork before the monthly board meeting held on Saturdays. He only started locking the office after Billy Psalms had donated two hundred thousand dollars to the general fund. The officers agreed that the Big Nickel’s windfall should be kept a secret.

Socrates watched as the men went through the few folders in the filing cabinets and looked under and behind the desk.
“Don’t read those files,” Wheaton told one of the cops, “not unless you’re looking for a paper gun.”
The search went on for forty-five minutes. The uniforms, both of whom were black men, pulled out the desk drawers and checked all the contents. One of them crawled underneath to make sure the pistol hadn’t been taped down there somewhere.
Finally they gave up the search and gestured wordlessly to the white detective: there was no gun to be found.

Socrates had traveled out to Zeal’s aunt’s house in Compton to drop off the pistol.
“Been used in a murder.”
The young killer nodded.
“I gotta friend with a blowtorch,” he said. “Aftah that I’ll hit the junkyard.”

Detective Brand was grim but Socrates had no desire to gloat. He felt like a journeyman heavyweight who, after a last minute cancellation, found himself in the opposite corner from Sonny Liston. All he’d done so far was to avoid the first jab that the monster had thrown; there were ten rounds left to survive. “This is harassment,” Cassie Wheaton was telling the cop. “We had a valid tip, counselor,” the thin lipped detective uttered. “We’re trying to uphold the law down here.”

“Socrates,” Cassie Wheaton warned, hearing the threat in his voice.
“Yeah . . . down,” Brand said.
“If you think this down . . .” Socrates began. He stopped, realizing that there were no more words but only violence in his breast.
“Are you finished, detective?” Cassie Wheaton asked.

After the policemen were gone Cassie sat with Socrates at the foot of the Big Table. While he ran his hand over the uneven side of the battered plank Cassie stared and waited.

After a long while they both spoke up at once.
“It’s because . . .” she started.
“I expected somethin’,” he managed to say. And then, “You go

on.”
“No, no you,” she said.
“You the counselor,” Socrates said. “You talk.”
“It’s because of the gang meetings,” she said.
“Peace talks.”
“That’s not how the cops see it.”
“Blind men don’t see nuthin’ noway,” Socrates said. “If I could show the police that you’ve stopped the peace talks

this won’t happen again.”
“If I closed the doors and moved back into the alley where I
used to live then I wouldn’t have to worry ’bout nuthin’ either.” “You could still have daycare for the ladies,” Cassie argued.
“You could still have the Thinkers’ meetings.”
“You sure they wouldn’t call me a whorehouse if some of them ladies used to be prostitutes? You sure they wouldn’t call
our meetin’s subversive?”
“They wouldn’t plant a pistol in your office.”
“It’s the drug dealers, killers and whores we got to turn
around, Cassie.”
“If they can’t bring you down they’ll shoot you down,
Socrates.”

Three days later, at the Thinkers’ Meeting, nineteen people showed up. Billy Psalms had made his ever popular chili served with basmati rice and fresh wheat flour tortillas made at a Mexican bakery just down the block.

Chaim Zetel arrived with Ron Zeal. Cassie Wheaton was accompanied by her fiancé, Antonio Peron.
Leanne Northford spoke First Words.
“I’m a Christian woman,” she said and then took a deep breath. “I’ve been to church almost ev’ry Sunday of my life. When I was an infant at my mother’s breast she took me to church and I brought her there to set her to rest.
“I’m seventy-two years old and I’ve heard more sermons than most of these kids out here today done heard rap songs.” A few people, including Ron Zeal, chuckled at her innocent competition with the young. “But with all that I never learned forgiveness until I come under this roof.” Socrates saw a few nods among the Thinkers. “I never had to face my hatreds and my pain in the Lord’s house. I was safe in there. In church everybody is so nice and well dressed and smiling and singing. Even death is a party in the church. But out here in life it’s not so easy. Out here is where the Lord’s work needs to be done.
“I want to give thanks for Socrates Fortlow and his big heart for the redemption of a poor Christian like me.”

“I believe that we should form a committee,” Mark Sail said at the top of the meeting. He was a broad faced dark-skinned man whose grandparents had come from Jamaica. “. . . a committee with the idea of gettin’ people together all up and down these streets. Get people talkin’. Get people to feel like we do up in here.”

The proposal was met by a burgeoning bank of silence. People looked around at each other as if the words spoken were in a distant dialect and could have held many meanings.

Socrates was thinking about what Leanne had said. He wondered how she had come so far in such a short time. He was thinking that the Big Nickel and the Big Table had to grow; had to. It didn’t matter if he got shot down or locked up.

Maybe, he thought, different members of the original meeting could sponsor smaller meetings held on different nights of the week. But who could keep the people talking in the right way?