mama’s in the kitchen. All I got to do is bring home the mortgage payments and my life is perfect.”
—
I liked the community of black barbershops. I liked Angelo and the tough love of his establishment. But I was there for another reason altogether.
Barbers were like telephone poles carrying the intelligence of a whole community at their stations. Los Angeles was once small enough that most black people knew one another, but the population was too large for that by the late sixties. The major players, however, were known in pool halls, barrooms, and barbershops.
And Angelo Broadman knew just about all the names.
When he was almost finished with my face I asked, “What you been hearin’ ’bout Charcoal Joe?”
Angelo stood up straight and looked at me with his glassy green eyes. He pondered a moment, wiped the blade with a towel, and then pursed his lips. He leaned closer than he had to to shave my right jawline.
“They sayin’ that he wants to move out the country,” he whispered.
“Where?”
“Canada,” Angelo speculated, “maybe Paris. You know he once played a trumpet and cello duet with Louis Armstrong over there.”
“He’s that good?”
“He’s that good.”
“His people know he’s leavin’?”
“If I do then they do.”
The barber wiped my face with a hot towel and then raised the back of my chair while lowering the seat. He pulled the apron off and snapped it to discard whatever hair might be there.
“How much I owe you?”
“That story about the gray,” he said. “That’ll keep Lena happy for weeks.”
“Thanks, man.”
“And, Easy?”
“Yeah.”
“Walk softly wherever it is you goin’. You know Charcoal Joe is a tombstone just waitin’ for a name.”
16
It was late afternoon when I was driving in my car again.
I had already called Jewelle to pick up Feather at her school.
On surface streets I made my way from the west side down to Florence Avenue and San Pedro, there to park in front of a three-story, brown-shingled building that housed a Laundromat on the first floor.
In order to get where I was going I had to walk down the aisle that separated the coin-operated washers from the dryers to a red door that had a sign above that read STAIRS .
The second-floor door opened into a short hallway that had two apartment doors on either side. At the far end of that corridor was a bright blue door with a red glass knob.
I always liked that door. Every time I saw it I was reminded of a fairy tale that my father once read to me before he disappeared. It was a story about a curious young man who investigated every corner of every house he was in. The only details I retained from that story were the blue door and a little witch-girl he found imprisoned on the other side.
With my hand on the faceted knob, I wondered if I had grown up to become that curious young man, opening doors and looking for my father.
On my way up the last tier of stairs I decided, not for the first time, never to take another potion from Jo.
The final door in my private fairy tale was black with an iron knob painted white. I didn’t try to open this door because it was always locked.
“Who is it?” a sweet woman’s voice asked in answer to my knock.
“Easy Rawlins.”
The door came open immediately, revealing a man that was an inch or so taller than I, a shade or two darker, and maybe twenty pounds lighter. He was wearing a cheap, steel-gray suit cut from cotton cloth, designed for some Alabama sodbuster to wear when he went to the bank to ask for yet another extension on his loan payments. The man’s shirt was white dress with no tie and had long sleeves that came out of the cuffs of his jacket. His face was angular and well formed. Nobody would have called him handsome, but then again, I knew that there weren’t many women who could resist his charm. And Fearless Jones was not a conscious womanizer. He met women and bedded them but he would have paid for the dinner or done the favor
—
I liked the community of black barbershops. I liked Angelo and the tough love of his establishment. But I was there for another reason altogether.
Barbers were like telephone poles carrying the intelligence of a whole community at their stations. Los Angeles was once small enough that most black people knew one another, but the population was too large for that by the late sixties. The major players, however, were known in pool halls, barrooms, and barbershops.
And Angelo Broadman knew just about all the names.
When he was almost finished with my face I asked, “What you been hearin’ ’bout Charcoal Joe?”
Angelo stood up straight and looked at me with his glassy green eyes. He pondered a moment, wiped the blade with a towel, and then pursed his lips. He leaned closer than he had to to shave my right jawline.
“They sayin’ that he wants to move out the country,” he whispered.
“Where?”
“Canada,” Angelo speculated, “maybe Paris. You know he once played a trumpet and cello duet with Louis Armstrong over there.”
“He’s that good?”
“He’s that good.”
“His people know he’s leavin’?”
“If I do then they do.”
The barber wiped my face with a hot towel and then raised the back of my chair while lowering the seat. He pulled the apron off and snapped it to discard whatever hair might be there.
“How much I owe you?”
“That story about the gray,” he said. “That’ll keep Lena happy for weeks.”
“Thanks, man.”
“And, Easy?”
“Yeah.”
“Walk softly wherever it is you goin’. You know Charcoal Joe is a tombstone just waitin’ for a name.”
16
It was late afternoon when I was driving in my car again.
I had already called Jewelle to pick up Feather at her school.
On surface streets I made my way from the west side down to Florence Avenue and San Pedro, there to park in front of a three-story, brown-shingled building that housed a Laundromat on the first floor.
In order to get where I was going I had to walk down the aisle that separated the coin-operated washers from the dryers to a red door that had a sign above that read STAIRS .
The second-floor door opened into a short hallway that had two apartment doors on either side. At the far end of that corridor was a bright blue door with a red glass knob.
I always liked that door. Every time I saw it I was reminded of a fairy tale that my father once read to me before he disappeared. It was a story about a curious young man who investigated every corner of every house he was in. The only details I retained from that story were the blue door and a little witch-girl he found imprisoned on the other side.
With my hand on the faceted knob, I wondered if I had grown up to become that curious young man, opening doors and looking for my father.
On my way up the last tier of stairs I decided, not for the first time, never to take another potion from Jo.
The final door in my private fairy tale was black with an iron knob painted white. I didn’t try to open this door because it was always locked.
“Who is it?” a sweet woman’s voice asked in answer to my knock.
“Easy Rawlins.”
The door came open immediately, revealing a man that was an inch or so taller than I, a shade or two darker, and maybe twenty pounds lighter. He was wearing a cheap, steel-gray suit cut from cotton cloth, designed for some Alabama sodbuster to wear when he went to the bank to ask for yet another extension on his loan payments. The man’s shirt was white dress with no tie and had long sleeves that came out of the cuffs of his jacket. His face was angular and well formed. Nobody would have called him handsome, but then again, I knew that there weren’t many women who could resist his charm. And Fearless Jones was not a conscious womanizer. He met women and bedded them but he would have paid for the dinner or done the favor
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