Charcoal Joe Read Online Free PDF Page A

artists. I tried to recall just when it was that black singers had begun to be played on white stations.
    “Bonnie’s coming back from France today,” I said.
    “Uh-huh.”
    “I’m going to ask her to marry me.”
    Feather turned to me with a stricken look on her sweet, light brown face. I thought that she was probably worried about having another female in the house. After all, Feather oversaw the greater portion of our domestic lives. She worked with our housekeeper, Alberta Hurst, on Saturdays and prepared meals at least half of the time. Whenever there was a decision to be made about furniture, parties, or even landscaping, I almost always deferred to her taste.
    Bonnie getting in the middle of that might be a problem that I had not anticipated.
    “When you gonna ask her?” Feather asked in a dialect she rarely used.
    “Today.”
    “You want me to go over with you?”
    “I don’t think I’d have much use for help in a proposal,” I said.
    Feather grimaced and looked away.
    —
    At home she started making dinner.
    I went to the living room and picked up the phone.
    Bonnie answered after quite some time. “Hello?”
    “You back, huh?”
    “I came in yesterday,” she said. “They put me on an early flight because one of the girls got sick.”
    “Oh. You should have called. I would have taken you out to dinner.”
    “I thought you were busy and I had all these things I had to do. The refrigerator broke down and I had to throw everything out.”
    “You need me to pick you up a new one?”
    “How’s Feather?” Bonnie asked.
    “I’m not sure.”
    “Why not?”
    “She’s just acting funny. But you know kids change every day.”
    “I’m pretty busy, baby,” Bonnie said. “A lot to clean up still.”
    “Can I come over a little later? I could help if you’re still cleaning.”
    “Let me finish here,” she said. “Then I’ll take a shower and drop by you.”
    “Should I have Feather add a plate?”
    “No. No, I’ll just eat something here and drop by after dinner.”

5
    I could hear Feather walking around the kitchen. The little yellow dog, Frenchie, was standing in the doorway to the kitchen staring at me as he always did when I was away for more than half a day. When we first met I’d had vigorous and unexpected sex with his schoolteacher mistress; a few days later she was killed. His canine mind associated the two events and he hated me until I’d almost died and Feather cried by my side every night.
    Frenchie loved Feather and so found forgiveness, but upon seeing me anew there was a memory of hate in those button eyes.
    I leaned down to scratch behind his ears and then went to a wood chair at the octangular table that dominated the dinette.
    The morning had been cool and brisk and filled with joy. I was an independent businessman on the verge of getting engaged. I had partners and friends and loved ones—a future to look forward to. But after smoking out the insurance cheat, Bruno Medina, from his home, after being hired by Mouse to work for a man who might be even more dangerous than him, and then being accosted by a waitress and armed cop for my skin color, after having my daughter hug me for no reason and her dog having to forgive me my sins for the thousandth time—after all that, the only thing I could think of doing was to pick up the keys to my Dodge and drive over to Bonnie’s.
    —
    On the ride, I relived the time I was driving barefoot and ran headlong off a seaside cliff. I was drunk for the first time in many years and heartbroken over losing Bonnie to another man. Mouse found me and dragged me out of the bushes. My children sat by me for many weeks while I drifted in and out of consciousness. Bonnie came back to me, though until quite recently I had been unable to forgive her infidelity.
    Fully shod and sober, it felt as if I was following the same disastrous path, though I couldn’t have said why.
    —
    He was sitting on her front porch in a wheelchair, all hunched