Read Online Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (Socrates Fortlow 1) by Walter Mosley - Free Book Online Page A

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    “I came for an application,” Socrates said. It was a line that he had spent a whole day thinking about; a week practicing. I came for an application . For a couple days he had practiced saying job application , but after a while he dropped the word job to make his request sound more sure. But when he went to Stony Wile and told him that he planned to say “I came for a application,” Stony said that you had to say an application .
    “If you got a word that starts with a, e, i, o, or u then you got to say an instead of a ,” Stony had said.
    Anton Crier’s brow knitted and he stalled a moment before asking, “An application for what?”
    “A job.” There, he’d said it. It was less than a minute and this short white man, just a boy really, had already made him beg.
    “Oh,” said Anton Crier, nodding like a wise elder. “Uh. How old are you, sir?”
    “Ain’t that against the law?” Like many other convicts Socrates was a student of the law.
    “Huh?”
    “Askin’ me my age. That’s against the law. You cain’t discriminate against color or sex or religion or infirmity or against age. That’s the law.”
    “Uh, well, yes, of course it is. I know that. I’m not discriminating against you. It’s just that we don’t have any openings right now. Why don’t you come in the fall when the kids are back at school?”
    Anton leaned to the side, intending to leave Socrates standing there.
    “Hold on,” Socrates said. He held up his hands, loosely as fists, in a nonchalant sort of boxing stance.
    Anton looked, and waited.
    “I came for an application,” Socrates repeated.
    “But I told you …”
    “I know what you said. But first you looked at my clothes and at my bald head. First yo’ eyes said that this is some kinda old hobo and what do he want here when it ain’t bottle redemption time.”
    “I did not …”
    “It don’t matter,” Socrates said quickly. He knew better than to let a white man in uniform finish a sentence. “You got to give me a application. That’s the law too.”
    “Wait here,” young Mr. Crier said. He turned and strode away toward an elevated office that looked down along the line of cash registers.
    Socrates watched him go. So did the checkers and bag boys. He was their boss and they knew when he was unhappy. They stole worried glances at Socrates.
    Socrates stared back. He wondered if any of those young black women would stand up for him. Would they understand how far he’d come to get there?
    He’d traveled more than fourteen miles from his little apartment down in Watts. They didn’t have any supermarkets or jobs in his neighborhood. And all the stores along Crenshaw and Washington knew him as a bum who collected bottles and cans for a living.
    They wouldn’t hire him.
    Socrates hadn’t held a real job in over thirty-seven years. He’d been unemployed for twenty-five months before the party with Shep, Fogel, and Muriel.
    They’d been out carousing. Three young people, blind drunk.
    Back at Shep’s, Muriel gave Socrates the eye. He danced with her until Shep broke it up. But then Shep fell asleep. When he awoke to find them rolling on the floor the fight broke out in earnest.
    Socrates knocked Shep back to the floor and then he finished his business with Muriel even though she was worried about her man. But when she started to scream and she hit Socrates with that chair he hit her back.
    It wasn’t until the next morning, when he woke up, that he realized that his friends were dead.
    Then he’d spent twenty-seven years in prison. Now, eight years free, fifty-eight years old, he was starting life over again.
    Not one of those girls, nor Anton Crier, was alive when he started his journey. If they were lucky they wouldn’t understand him.
    {2.}
    There was a large electric clock above the office. The sweep hand reared back and then battered up against each second, counting every one like a drummer beating out time on a slave