Read Online A Red Death: Featuring an Original Easy Rawlins Short Story "Si (Easy Rawlins Mysteries) by Walter Mosley - Free Book Online Page A

out in the middle’a the street yellin’ ’bout how he bought my house and how he burn it down before he let us treat him like we did.”
    “Like what?”
    “I don’t know, Easy. Mouse is crazy.”
    That had always been true. When we were younger men Mouse carried a gun and a knife. He killed men who crossed him and others who stood in the way of him making some coin. Mouse murdered his own stepfather, Daddy Reese, but he rarely turned on friends, and I never expected him to go against EttaMae.
    “So you sayin’ he run you outta Texas?”
    “Run?” Etta was surprised. “I ain’t runnin’ from that little rat-faced man, or no other one’a God’s creatures.”
    “Then why come here?”
    “How it gonna look to LaMarque when he grow up if I done killed his father? ’Cause you know I had him in my sight every night he was out there in the street.”
    I remembered that Etta had a .22-caliber rifle and a .38 for her purse.
    “After he done that for ovah a month I made up my mind to kill ’im. But the night I was gonna do it LaMarque woke up an’ come in the room. I was waitin’ for Raymond to come out. LaMarque asked me what I was doin’ with that rifle, and you know I ain’t never lied to that boy, Easy. He asked me what I was fixin’ t’ do with that rifle and I told him that I was gonna pack it and we was goin’ to California.”
    Etta reached out and took both of my hands in hers. She said, “And that was the first thing I said, Easy. I didn’t think about goin’ to my mother or my sister down in Galveston. Ithought’a you. I thought about how sweet you was before Raymond and me got married. So I come to you.”
    “I just popped into your head after all these years?”
    “Well.” Etta smiled and looked down at our tangled fingers. “Corinth Lye helped some.”
    “Corinth?” She was a friend from Houston. If I happened to run into her at Targets Bar I’d buy a bottle of gin and we’d put it away; sit there all night and drink like men. I’d told her many deep feelings and secrets in the early hours. It wasn’t the first time that I was betrayed by alcohol.
    “Yeah,” Etta said. “I wrote her about Mouse when it all started. She wrote me about how much you still cared for me. She said I should come up here, away from all that.”
    “Then why ain’t you wit’ her?”
    “I wus s’posed t’, honey. But you know I got t’ thinkin’ ’bout you on that ride, an’ I tole LaMarque all about you till we decided that we was gonna come straight here.”
    “You did?”
    “Mmm-hm,” Etta hummed, nodding her head. “An’ you know I was glad we did.” Etta’s grin was shameless.
    She smiled at me and the years fell away.
    The one night I had spent with Etta, the best night of my life, she woke up the next morning talking about Mouse. She told me how wonderful he was and how lucky I was to have him for a friend.
    L A M ARQUE HAD NEVER SEEN a television. He watched everything that came on, even the news. Some poor soul was in the spotlight that night. His name was Charles Winters. He was discovered stealing classified documents at his government job. The reporter said that Winters could get four ninety-nine-year sentences if he was found guilty.
    “What’s a comanisk, Unca Easy?”
    “What, you think that just ’cause this is my TV that I should know everything it says?”
    “Uh-huh,” he nodded. LaMarque was a treasure.
    “There’s all kindsa communists, LaMarque.”
    “That one there,” he said, pointing at the television. But the picture of Mr. Winters was gone. Instead there was a picture of Ike in the middle of a golf swing.
    “That kind is a man who thinks he can make things better by tearin’ down what we got here in America and buildin’ up like what they got in Russia.”
    LaMarque opened his eyes and his mouth as far as he could. “You mean they wanna tear down Momma house and Momma TV up here in America?”
    “The kinda world he wants, nobody owns anything.