White Butterfly

by Mosley, Walter

“What you wanna do when we find’im?” Mouse asked.

  “We don’t know nuthin’ ’bout him, Raymond. He may be just a bad-luck dude in the wrong place at the wrong time. All we do is watch’im an’ give the police his address.”

  “S’pose he runs?”

  “He ain’t gonna run.”

  “What make you say that?”

  “He ain’t gonna see us so he ain’t gonna run.”

  Mouse nodded and hunched his shoulders. “We’ll see,” he said.

  By twelve we had gone past San Jose and were entering the Santa Cruz mountain range.

  “You ever know anybody who went in for the sulfa-drug syphilis cure?” I asked.

  “Me.”

  “What?”

  “Me. I went down to that damned place for six months. They had me down for five years.”

  “And you stopped going?”

  “Sure did. Damn! I hated that shit. You know, you go in there an’ they give you that shot and the next thing you know you get this foul-assed nasty taste in your mouf. Shit! I hate even thinkin’ about it.”

  “Raymond, you gotta go see a doctor.”

  “Why?”

  “ ’Cause syphilis gets all in your body and comes out later on.”

  “I ain’t got syphilis.”

  “But you just said… ”

  “…I said that I went in for the treatment. I was a kid and I had this here pimple on my dick. I had this girl, Clovis, who said she wouldn’t fuck me so I went to the doctor. He looked at my dick and said, ‘Syphilis.’ Then they made me go every week for that shot.”

  “Maybe he could tell just from looking.” But I didn’t believe that.

  “Uh-uh. I know ’cause I got drunk one night and tried t’sign up for the army with Joe Dexter the next mornin’. When it came time to go I went down all smug and told’em that they couldn’t take me ’cause I had the syph. But this big ole cracker told me that my tests turned up clear. I ain’t never had it.”

  White doctors at one time thought that almost all Negroes were rife with venereal disease. I could believe that they wouldn’t bother with a test.

  “So,” I asked. “Why didn’t you go into the army?”

  “They got my jail record the same day. They said t’come back when the fightin’ was worse. It never did get bad enough for them to wanna take me.”

  THE PAST FEW YEARS I had been staying at the Galaxy Motel on Lombard. It was only ten dollars a night and the old couple there knew me. Mr. and Mrs. Riley. They were an old Irish couple whose parents had immigrated. They had soft brogues and gentle smiles.

  “Well hello, Easy,” Mr. Riley greeted me as I came into his glass-walled office. “Haven’t seen you in quite a while.”

  Wine racks on the wall held maps, ferry schedules, and tourist guides to parts of the city.

  “Workin’ too hard down there. Too hard.”

  “How’s the wife?”

  “Fine. How’s Mrs. Riley?”

  “At home with the grandchildren. Cecily had twins last June.”

  I checked us into a room with two double beds and a television.

  I HAD MR. RILEY dial Axminister 3-854 from the switchboard. Karl Bender answered. He didn’t know a J. T. Saunders and he didn’t know me. I tried to find out how long he’d had that phone number and his address but that didn’t get me anywhere.

  “What now?” Mouse asked.

  “I don’t know. I got a twenty-year-old address for him.”

  “Twenty years! Man, I lived in over a hundred places in twenty years.”

  “And every one of them remembers you.”

  Mouse’s boyish grin was disarming. Not that he needed it; I’d seen him cut down more than one armed man in his day.

  It had gotten dark outside. The headlights lined up on the Lombard. Two prostitutes took the room next to ours and started doing business. Mouse and I had to laugh, because they could get a john in and out of that room in five minutes flat. The walls were like paper so we could hear it all.

  “Uh-uh, money first,” one of the girls would say. You could hear the man breathing and then the rustle of clothes.

  “Oh!” she’d cry before he had time to get in her, and then, “Do it!” And the guy would all of a sudden scream or grunt or groan. His tone would always be a little sorry like a rube at a carnival who’d hit the pyramid of milk bottles dead center but couldn’t knock them over.

  “What you wanna do, Easy?” Mouse said at about eight o’clock. “ ’Cause you know I gotta do sumpin’ or I’ma go give my money to them girls next door.”

  “Let’s go over to Oakland and see where this J. T. Saunders used to live,” I said.

  “Do it!” one of the girls next door replied.

  — 25 —

  WE WENT ACROSS on the lower level of the Bay Bridge. It was Friday night and ten thousand cars followed our example. In the rearview mirror I saw the shimmering lights of San Francisco above the herd of shifting, speeding cars.

  Oakland was a full fifteen degrees warmer than San Francisco. We went from comfortable weather to where I had to open the collar of my shirt.

  2489 Stockard Street was a three-decker apartment building. The paint had peeled off so long ago that the wood siding had weathered to gray.

  A fat woman sat on the porch fanning herself with a church fan. Two small boys ran around her with slats of wood in their hands.

  “Bangbangbangbangbangbangbangbang,” said one of the boys.

  “Kachoom, kachoom,” the other one volleyed in deep tones, reminiscent of cannon fire.

  The woman was oblivious to the war going on around her. She was very dark with gray hair and a young face.

  “Ma’am?” I said. I took two steps up. The boys stopped dead, the slat-guns forgotten in their hands.

  The woman kept fanning. She was concentrating on something across the street.

  I took another step and said again, “Ma’am?”

  The boys’ mouths were what my mother used to call flytraps.

  “Yes?” She still had her eyes glued out across the street.

  I looked in that direction. The only thing I could make out was the shifting light of a TV through a window. I couldn’t make out the picture. I doubted that she could either.

  “What you want?” the woman asked.

  “Does a family named Saunders live around here?”

  “No.” She leaned forward to show me that she was busy watching.

  “Bangbangbang.”

  “Did a family by that name ever live here?”

  “Maybe they did, mister. How you expect me to know?”

  The artillery boy was using me for cover. He lobbed charges from his cannon-slat as his nemesis sought cover behind the young-old woman.

  I could see Mouse down by the car smoking a cigarette and sitting on the hood.

  And I stood there, watching her watch television.

  After a minute the woman craned her neck back and cried, “Nate!”

  A window opened on a floor above and a raspy voice called out, “Yeah?”

  “Man down here wanna know if somebody called… ” She turned to me and asked, “Whashisname?”

  I told her.

  “Saunders!” she shouted. “Ever lived here?”

  “Come on up,” the sandpaper voice said. “Number twenty-seven.”

  “SIR?” I called from the latched screen of his front door.

  Nate, whoever he was, lived in his living room. He had a bed in there and a table with a hot plate and toaster on it. There was a two-tiered bookshelf that was stacked high with pamphlets.

  The old man, with the help of two canes, got up slowly from his chair at the window and slowly made it to the door. It was a whole minute watching him move the cane in his right hand to his left. I wondered if he had the strength to pop the latch on the door.

  “Evenin’, young man,” he greeted.

  We took the long journey back to his chair at the window.

  “Hot out, ain’t it?” he a
sked.

  I nodded. “How come you got a screen on the front door? You got flies in the building?”

  “I like the door open but sometimes them damn kids come in here and steal my cake if I take a nap.”

  “Oh.”

  “You interested in the Saunderses, is you?”

  “Did you know them?”

  “Nathaniel Bly,” he said.

  I was confused for a moment and then I realized that he was telling me his name.

  “Vincent Charles,” I replied.

  “Why you want them after all these years, Mr. Charles?”

  “I knew their son, J.T.”

  He nodded and my heart jumped a little. “We did some time in the merchant marines. This is the only address I got for him.”

  Nate sat there nodding at me. He had a wistful smile on his face almost as if he were remembering something I’d mentioned.

  “I don’t even know if any’a them is still alive,” he said. “His daddy died even before they moved. You know Viola couldn’t pay the rent here on such a big apartment. I don’t know why somebody want a place so big anyways. I like to have everything right with me. But my chirren pays the rent so I stay here. They live right down here, you know. Willie’s on Morton and Betty live on Seventeenth. Willie’s a car mechanic in San Francisco an’ Betty caterin’. Lotta folks say that caterin’ is domestic work and they turn up their nose but Betty could buy and sell mosta them. Last year she made more than ten thousand dollars… ”

  “Did she play with J.T. when they were small?”

  The question caught Nate up short. He’d forgotten that I’d come there looking for somebody.

  “No,” he said. “Willie an’ Betty was a couple years younger than J.T. and Squire.”

  “Squire?”

  “I thought you said you was J.T.’s buddy? How come you don’t know about his brother?”

  I laughed agreeably. “We was on a boat, man. J.T. didn’t talk about his family, except this address, and I didn’t ask.”

  “He was somethin’ else.” Nate shook his head. “Always torturin’ li’l animals and beatin’ up my kids.”

  “J.T.?”

  “Squire. J.T. was a timid little boy. He had some kinda fright when he was a baby and he was scared’a all kindsa things—especially bugs. I mean, he couldn’t take seein’ a ant on the sidewalk. An’ Squire’d go out and catch a ole dead dragonfly and run after J.T. with it. And when Viola would come out Squire’d jes’ say, ‘I try’n give him a pretty.’ Sweet and evil, just like a angel from hell.

  “One time I come up on them in the basement. Squire was beatin’ on J.T. with a piece’a rubber hose. He kept tellin’ J.T., ‘Do it! Do it!’ And finally J.T. whimper and cries and picks up this big half-dead water bug and puts it down the front of his own pants. You know that poor boy falled down on the ground, cried for all he had. Squire danced around him like a witch. Like a witch.”

  “Why didn’t you stop him, Nate?”

  Nate gave me an inquiring look. “Where you from, son?”

  “Texas. Texas an’ Louisiana.”

  “Was that hard back then while you was comin’ up?” he asked.

  I had to grin when I nodded.

  “I used to think that Negroes was niggers. And them niggers had to be hard to make it in this here hard world. I always worried that if a child seen me doin’ for him he might grow up thinkin’ that the world would do for him. I raised my kids hard. And now they pay my rent and drop off the groceries but they ain’t never got no time to talk with me. I know they think I was mean.”

  “But they’re doin’ all right,” I said.

  “When I seen Squire torturin’ J.T. I told myself that the boy had to learn how to fight. But you know my heart was dancin’ along with Squire while that poor boy suffered. It was dancin’ up a storm.”

  He looked out the window after that speech.

  After a while I asked, “Do you know where Viola Saunders lives today?”

  “Cain’t say that I do.”

  When I got downstairs the boys were eating out of a quart container of ice milk and the woman was still gazing across the street.

  None of them looked up to watch me go.

  — 26 —

  VIOLA SAUNDERS was in the phone book: 386 ¾ Queen Anne’s Lane.

  Queen Anne’s Lane was a short street, only one block in length, that was crowded with apartment buildings. There was a big vacant lot on one side and eight large apartment buildings, built into a hill, on the other.

  We went up and down the block but 386 ¾ wasn’t to be found. Finally we went into 386 and knocked on a screen door on the first floor. A television was playing somewhere in the apartment and we could see its shadowy light play down the long dark hallway.

  A small boy, almost a baby, came running down the hall. He stopped at the screen and looked up at us.

  “Wah!” he exclaimed.

  All he wore was a striped T-shirt that barely came down to his distended belly button.

  “Arnold!” a woman screamed from inside the house. She came down the hall with a baby in each arm and two more trailing at her skirts.

  She was of medium height and attractively built. She wore a muumuu with a neckline cut lower than most, that clung to her figure because of the perspiration. She had slack lips, that accented the carelessness of her eyes, and light skin. Her children were all different colors. The baby we first met was light like his mother but the infants she held were both black— twins. One little girl, who was about five and stood peering at us from behind her mother’s right leg, was a solid brown color. Her little sister, on the other side, was almost white with dirty-blond hair and greenish eyes. You could see that they were all siblings by their eyes. They all had their mother’s vacant, slightly wondering stare.

  The young mother gave me a brief once-over and then she looked at Mouse. He wore a deep blue square-cut shirt that hung out over loose gray trousers. His shoes were gray suede. His smile sparkled from behind the diamond in his front tooth.

  “Yeah?” she asked Mouse in a slow, meaningful way.

  He smiled, bowed almost imperceptibly, and said, “We lookin’ fo’a man named J. T. Saunders. You know ’im?”

  “Uh-uh,” she said. She didn’t care either.

  One of the babies started crying and the mother said, “Vanessa, Tiffany, here,” and she leaned over to hand the crying baby and his docile brother to the two little girls. “Take Henry an’ them back in the big room.”

  The little girls, both of them almost toppling under the weight of their brothers, staggered back toward the shadowy TV light.

  Little Arnold stayed until they were almost around the corner and then he turned to run after.

  “You wanna come in?” she asked Mouse. She took the latch off the screen and we followed her into the hall. We walked down to where the TV was and turned in the opposite direction.

  It was a small kitchen lit by a bare sixty-watt bulb. The walls were a greasy yellow. The floor was covered by pitted yellow linoleum. The yellow tile sink was piled high with dishes. There was a big pan of dirty rice, open and crusty, sitting on the two-burner stove. The ceiling, which was once white, was blackened by smoke and grease.

  I was the only one who noticed the dirt, though. Our hostess had taken a bottle of beer from her little refrigerator and handed it to Mouse. They weren’t talking but their eyes were exchanging promises.

  “You know where three eighty-six and three-quarters is?” I asked before they could fall into an embrace.

  “Huh?” she asked.

  “What’s your name?” Mouse asked her.

  “Marlene.”

  “We lookin’ fo’ three eighty-six and three-quarters, Marlene,” Mouse said. He might have been talking about her eyes, or maybe her breasts.

  Marlene pointed through a small window above the sink.

  “Up there,” she said. “It’s one’a them.”

  Through the window I saw a small concrete path that led p
ast 386 to a small bank of houses nestled behind the larger apartment buildings.

  Arnold was at the door looking at us. Greenish mucus welled at his left nostril.

  Mouse was looking hard at Marlene.

  I moved toward the door. I was halfway down the hall when Mouse came after me.

  “Wait up, Easy, you cain’t go up against him by yo’self,” he said.

  “I thought you was busy.”

  Marlene followed us until we were out of the door. Mouse stopped at the door and looked at her meaningfully. “What you doin’ later on, Marlene?”

  “Nuthin’.”

  “You mind if I come back?”

  “Uh-uh, I be here.”

  THE CONCRETE PATHWAY was dark but there was a half-moon. On the left side of the path an unpainted picket fence protected any strollers from a sixty-foot drop down into the backyard of Marlene’s apartment building.

  It was a steep climb and Mouse and I were both puffing by the time we made the summit.

  There were seven little houses with all kinds of numbers on them.

  There was a light on inside 386 ¾.

  Mouse and I looked at each other before going up the short dirt path to the front door. He unbuttoned the two lower buttons of his shirt and shrugged so that he could reach his pistol if he needed it. I went on ahead of him to the door.

  A woman answered this door too. She was tall and imposing. She seemed all the more noble because her salt-and-pepper hair was wrapped high on her head with a bright red-and-purple scarf. Her nightdress was a long coral gown. It set off her dark skin in a way that spoke of the islands.

  “Yes?” Her voice was musical and deep.

  “J.T. here?” I could feel Mouse tense up behind me.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Martin,” I said. “Martin Greer. This is my cousin Sammy.” I moved aside to point at Mouse. He smiled.

  “Hm! What you want here?”

  “We came up from L.A. Abernathy told us we should look up J.T. when we got here.”

  “Randall Abernathy?”

  “Yeah, Randy.”

  “He don’t even like us.”