Read Online Fearless Jones by Walter Mosley - Free Book Online

have meant trouble, but it was nothing to me.
    “You got a wallet with no money in it,” I continued, “a borrowed car that’s low on gas even when the tank is full, you don’t
     have an apartment, and my place is burnt to the ground. You an’ me lucky to keep anybody from messin’ with us.”
    “Oh my,” Fanny declared.
    “It don’t matter about a house, Paris. I’ll find us some place to stay. And I don’t need no money to stand up to some coward
     wanna be messin’ wit’ old folks. If I have to, I’ll pitch a tent right here in the front yard and take a shovel for my bayonet.”
    “Grass salad and earthworm steak, is that what you gonna eat?” I taunted.
    “Excuse me,” Fanny Tannenbaum said in a small voice.
    Fearless and I both turned our heads toward her. It was an odd thing to realize that we had begun to ignore her the same way
     that her nephew-in-law had ignored us earlier, the same way that white people had been ignoring us our entire lives.
    “Yes, Fanny?” Fearless said.
    “You gentlemen can stay here for a few days if you wish.”
    I was stunned by that. I had done some traveling in my life. Fearless had been on three continents and then some, but neither
     one of us had ever experienced that kind of generosity. White people didn’t open their doors to questionable young black men.
     Hell, there weren’t many black folks I knew that would be so brave, or foolish.
    “It’s the least I can do,” Fanny said. “You saved Solly’s life and… and…” — she hesitated and then drew a deep breath — “…
     and I am afraid to stay here alone.”
    “You got your niece and nephew a couple’a blocks away,” I said. I was surprised that she offered us a place to stay, but that
     didn’t mean I wanted to take her up on the offer.
    “That putz couldn’t save himself from walking down a hill,” she said disdainfully.
    It wasn’t that funny, but Fearless laughed loud and long.
    “What’s that you say, Fanny?” he crooned. “He can’t walk wit’out fallin’ down?”
    The old lady started laughing too. She laughed so hard that she doubled over in the chair with her head on her knees. She
     forced herself to stand, still laughing, and went to a cupboard where she located a pint bottle of peach schnapps. She poured
     all three of us generous shots in squat glasses. The liquor was strong, and good. We finished off the first pint and put a
     serious dent in a second.
    I was smiling with them after a while, feeling pretty good. So when Fearless said, “Sure, Fanny, we’ll stay here with you,”
     I didn’t see anything wrong with it. After all, we were already there, and it was after nine; we didn’t have a home to go
     to, and I still had some questions to ask about Elana Love.
    I made a little nod and said, “Well, if we got to go, we might as well be eatin’ good and feelin’ high.”
    FEARLESS GOT IT into his head to wash the dishes. Fanny offered to help, but he said that he missed simple chores after his twelve weeks
     in jail. He’d already explained to her that he’d gotten into an altercation with three mechanics that tried to cheat him.
     I thought that that would turn the sweet old lady against us, but instead she said, “My Sol was in jail. It’s a bad place
     where many good men go.”
    SHE AND I RETIRED to the sitting room while Fearless hummed and played in the soapy water. Sol had a glass box filled with English Ovals, an
     imported cigarette. I smoked a few of these while we talked.
    “I take it you don’t like Gella’s old man,” I said.
    She made a quizzical face that suddenly became bright. “Oh,” she said, “you mean the putz.”
    “Yeah.”
    “He’s a coarse man,” Fanny said. “Not rude or foul-mouthed but unfinished, without manners, like a pig farmer or a policeman.”
    “You don’t like the cops either?”
    The schnapps made conversation easy.
    “When I was a child,” she said, “the police, the army, and the pig farmers were our