Charcoal Joe Read Online Free PDF Page B

child, found me in my blood and got her husband to help take me to a white doctor and then to Air France.
    “Bonnie came and found me. She took care of me the way I helped when your daughter was sick. She married me and she brought me to America because they are looking for me. As long as I am alive I pose a danger to them.”
    I was trying, in my mind, to make the word “married” into a simile; this instead of thinking about finding my gun and finishing the metaphor that Malik had started.
    I noted then a livid scar on the left temple of the African. He’d been shot in the head, was confined to a wheelchair, and gnarled in a way that could never be straightened out. I hated him. He had taken more from me than his father had from Malik’s mother but there was no recourse.
    I stood up from the trellis and lifted the blanket so that it once again covered the ailing man’s shoulders, then I walked off the porch and down to the sidewalk. The last time I was in that situation I tried to kill myself—but not again.
    Feather must have known about Joguye; that’s why she was so upset and loving toward me. She wanted to protect me, but she also loved Bonnie and respected the African prince who had brought her to the only doctors in the world that could cure her blood disease.
    I owed Feather everything, and no pain would ever get in the way of that debt again.
    “Easy.”

6
    My first instinct was to keep walking, pretending that I had not heard my name called in Bonnie’s sweet, powerful voice; failing that, I stopped but didn’t turn.
    “Easy.”
    She touched my shoulder and I pushed down the desire to slap her.
    “What?” I said, still with my back turned.
    “Let’s go somewhere and talk.”
    “What about your cripple up there?” I said, finally turning.
    There was shock and pain in her face but that’s not what caught my eye. She was wearing the snug-fitting yellow dress that always got me excited. The hem only made it to the middle of her dark brown thighs. Her figure was right out there in the bright afternoon, but that wasn’t what affected me either.
    There was a whole story behind that dress. Bonnie always wore it as a prelude to our lovemaking…and she was coming to meet me. She was coming to make love to me one last time before creating a life with the has-been prince. Her loyalties and her heart were split.
    “My cousin Gerard is coming over,” she said.
    “Where do you wanna go?”
    “There’s a new teahouse up on Melrose.”
    —
    Henrietta’s Tea House was a quasi-hippie joint that was decked out like a large living room. Bonnie and I sat side by side on a stunted green sofa. She ordered white tea and I coffee—black.
    We’d spoken to the russet-haired waitress but not to each other—not yet. Our drinks came with scones and clotted cream, blueberry jam, and sweet butter.
    “You married him,” I said at last.
    “To get him out of the country—yes.”
    “That’s all?”
    “At first.” The second word stuck a little in her throat.
    “And now?” The coffee was very hot, it burned my tongue.
    “His swagger is all gone,” she said. “All that’s left is a revolutionary and a king who is willing to fight for his people. He’s become the man he was supposed to be.”
    “And what about me?” I asked, regretting the words even before I spoke them.
    “You were a grown man at eight years old,” she said, “fully grown and living on your own.”
    “Do you like the scones?” the coarse-haired waitress asked. She was no more than seventeen; beautiful with a goofy grin.
    “I always have them,” Bonnie said kindly.
    “Tamara makes them,” she said. “She’s my sister. I’m Barbara.”
    Barbara wanted to engage us in conversation but we had no room. I turned to Bonnie, and Barbara walked away.
    “I know things haven’t been right since the first time you got together with Joguye,” I said.
    “You don’t need me, Easy.”
    “I was going to ask you to marry me