“That's why I'm here.”
“The job we have has already been taken,” the flabby-faced man said.
“Ain't this a nursery?” Socrates asked.
The man squinted behind his thick rectangular lenses as if he was being addressed in a foreign language that he could not even identify.
“You sell these here plants, right?” Socrates asked, gesturing at the potted plants around the outside lot.
“Yes?”
“Well I come here to buy one, or order one.”
“Ooooooh.” The word made the white man's lips pucker. That combined with his eyes, magnified by the lenses, made him look like some sort of albino bottom fish. “Something for your yard?”
“Ebony tree,” Socrates said. He decided to keep the talk to a minimum, do his business and get out of there before something made him mad.
“Very rare, tropical.” The nursery man became excited. He took off his glasses and wiped them on the dirty green apron. “Not indigenous. From India and Africa and Ceylon. Can't grow here at all. It's the heartwood you know. The heartwood's what they want.” He shook his head. “No we don't have that. Can't grow it.”
“Ain't there some kinda American ebony trees?” Socrates splayed out his fingers to inhibit his fist-forming reflex.
Again the lumpy faced fish stare. “Why yes. Not true ebony but almost the same thing. Comes from somewhere in the Caribbean I believe. Trinidad …”
“Jamaica,” Socrates said. “I called you yesterday evening an' you said that there's ebony in Jamaica that might could grow here in L.A.”
The fish smiled at Socrates.
“I want a Jamaican ebony tree,” the ex-con said.
The smile remained but no words or gestures accompanied it.
“I want to buy a Jamaican ebony tree.”
“We don't have any.”
“I thought that you could get any plant from anywhere in the world. Ain't that what your ad say?”
“It's very difficult to find a plant like that and it can be very expensive. Maybe a shrub palm or a rosebush …”
“I got a rosebush already. I want what I said.”
The fish slowly became a man. Lips relaxed, eyes narrowing down to some kind of reasonable size. As the gardener became human so, it seemed, did Socrates in the gardener's eyes.
“My name is Antoine,” he said.
“Socrates. Socrates Fortlow. I don't wanna cause no problem, Antoine. I just want what I want. You know I live on the other side of town but this was the only place seem to know how to get it.”
“You probably talked to Joseph,” Antoine said. “He knows about exotic plants. I can have him look up this Jamaican ebony of yours and call you.”
“Um. Well you know my phone line is out. Phone company said that the lines is all busted up and they'd have to give me a new number. But I could come back in a couple'a days. When's this Joseph gonna be in?”
“On Friday.” The nursery man's face had changed again. This time he was trying to read the story behind Socrates' eyes.
“I'll see ya then,” Socrates said. “Tell'im I'll come on Friday.
It was Tuesday, meat loaf day at Iula's diner on Slauson.
Socrates got there late, about nine. He climbed the rickety aluminum stairs to the restaurant, which was constructed from two old-time yellow school buses welded together side by side and hoisted above Tony's Mechanical Repair Yard.
Socrates liked to eat his meat loaf alone, but after seven Iula's was always full of people. She cooked soul food like in the old days. Collard greens and fried fish, corn bread and hog maws. She made black-eyed peas and blue crab gumbo every Friday. And there were always three kinds of homemade pie: lemon, apple and mince; sweet potato, pecan and pineapple. She had pumpkin pie and strawberry-rhubarb, even green tomato pie sometimes in the summer.
Iula could cook.
She had broad hips and smiling lips, freckles and orange-brown skin. Gold on her teeth and no rings on her fingers. She was Socrates' girlfriend—sometimes. And sometimes just his friend.
“Hey, Socco,” Bernard Williams hailed.
Bernie, a liquor store salesman, sat next to Stony Wile and Stony's woman-on-the side, Charlene. Bernie was older than Socrates, tall and dark. Stony was much lighter, brawny and closer to the ground. Charlene was all that beauty could be in a black woman, at least that's what Socrates thought. She was long like Bernie but not tall or awkward. She had dark skin and sculptured lips, a high forehead and eyes that looked right down into your heart.
Charlene was born to be a high-society woman but her parents were down-home Baptists who believed in hell and God with only human beings to separate them. So she paid dearly for every stick of lipstick and glimpse in the mirror. Beauty was wanton in her mother's eyes and the love of beauty was a sin. Charlene learned to hate her natural elegance and to find men who treated her like trash.
Now in her forties, when Charlene's wild oats should have been cultivated by some minister or well-to-do businessman, she was still in the streets trading a slapper for a shouter, turning in good men for tramps.
“Hey, Bernie, Stony,” Socrates said. He looked at Charlene and she made the slightest kiss with her lips. The ex-con looked away, momentarily shy. When he looked back, she was smiling at the discomfort she had caused.
“Mr. Fortlow,” she said sweetly.
“How you tonight, Charlene?”
“Stony wanna stop me from drinkin'. You think I need to change, Mr. Fortlow?”
Socrates didn't want to insult Stony by flirting with Charlene so he just shook his head to say that she was fine the way she was. But there was something too strong, even in that little head movement, and Stony stared down angrily at his meat loaf and greens.
“Come on an' sit down with us here,” Bernie offered. They were at a booth by the window.
Socrates sat next to the liquor salesman and took in the bus.
Iula sat behind the long counter that ran the space where the buses were joined. All seven stools were occupied. He recognized Veronica Ashanti and Topper, one of the last black undertakers on Central Avenue. There were a few others whose names he knew, the rest were familiar but no more. Many people were standing around waiting for takeout or seats. But Iula was taking her time talking to Tony LaPort, her landlord and ex-husband, at the end of the counter. She could afford to take it easy because she had hired Charles Rinnet to work in the back bus, which served as the kitchen, during the heavy hours between seven and eleven.
She had once offered Socrates that job but he was still afraid of his hands back then. The hands of a killer had to be careful of what they did.
“What you doin', Socrates?” Bernie asked. “You still workin' at that supermarket?”
“Yeah, yeah. Still packin' them bags. How's Harold?”
“Cheap as a motherfucker,” Bernie complained. “You know I asked him for a two-dollar raise after nuthin' for three years an' he told me I could leave.”
“Yeah?” Socrates was interested.
“Uh-huh.”
“So what you do?”
“I worked out my week and quit. You know they said that when black men owned businesses it was gonna be better but I went over to Zimmerman on Sixtieth and he hired me like that.” Bernie snapped his long fingers.
“But I thought you was still with Harold?” Socrates asked.
“I am,” Bernie replied. “Harold came to me, to me. Because you know nobody like him. The only reason they come to that store is 'cause I know how to respect peoples. An' here he is worse than a white man.”
“You got your two dollars?”
Bernie nodded his head like a bass man on a groove. “Motherfucker gimme three.”
Socrates laughed deeply. Charlene leaned toward him over the table, drawn to his powerful pleasure. She was wearing a blue sweater that was tight and V-necked.
Socrates turned to Stony and asked, “So, Stony, what's happenin' with you?”
“Nuthin',” the ex
-ship welder said petulantly.
Socrates shook his head and stood up.
“I got to go talk to I,” he said.
“You gonna come back, Socrates?” Charlene wanted to know.
“Maybe in a little while. But first I got to see what I can see.”
Iula noticed Socrates' approach. Tony turned around following her gaze. The look in his eye reminded Socrates of Stony's.
Stony and Tony he thought. The rhyme didn't make him smile.
“Hey, Tony,” Socrates said. “I.”
Tony was of medium height and had dusky skin. His features were half the way between Negro and white. His most noticeable features were his eyes, which were both small and flat. Instead of responding he rose, kissing Iula on the cheek before walking off.
Socrates had never known Tony to be rude. He'd never seen him kiss Iula either. But he took the empty stool and slapped his hands together a couple of times to indicate that he had something to say.
“Meat loaf plate?” Iula asked.
This was also new. Iula always asked how he was doing before plying her trade.
“I wanted to ask you sumpin',” the big man grumbled.
“Well you know I'm pretty busy. This here is rush hour for the restaurant business.”
“Okay.” Socrates moved to leave but Iula put out her hand. She touched his hard forearm with three fingers. His muscles bunched together and bulged under the gentle pressure.
“Tony want me to get back together wit' him,” she said in a flat, accusing tone.
“He wanna get married again?”
“That's what he said.”
The noise in the room became an irritating buzz in Socrates' ears. He flicked his powerful fingers at the side of his head and grimaced.
“You want that?” he asked.
“Ain't nobody else askin' me nuthin',” Iula said.
“That what you want? You want somebody t'ask you sumpin'?”
“What I want don't matter.”
Looking at those hard lips Socrates knew he wasn't going to get kissed. He knew that she wasn't going to come over and help him plant Levering's tree.
“Well?” Iula's question was a concession to the passion she felt for the ex-con. He knew that. He knew what she wanted. He knew what he should say.
“You know how they say some folks ain't got a pot to piss in?” Socrates asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Well I got me a pot okay,” he said. “But it's old an' it's rusty an' it done sprung more'n one leak.”
“What you talkin' 'bout, Socrates Fortlow?”
The diner didn't seem noisy any more. Now it felt as if they had all gone quiet to hear his sad excuse.
“You got a business here, I,” Socrates whispered. He glanced over his shoulder but no one was looking his way. They were all still talking and eating, minding their own affairs.
“Yeah,” Iula said. “An' it's a good business too.”
“I know it is,” Socrates responded. “Tony's always workin' too. You got that sour boy doin' dishes in the back. Tony got a four-legged German shepherd an' here my own dog only got two front legs to drag around wit'.”
“You have a job, Socrates.”
“I put groceries in bags, I. I live in a house that nobody knows is there. You know I been workin' for a year an' I'm still savin' up for the deposit on a phone.”
Socrates was looking at the three big freckles on Iula's face. There were seven more on her back. He remembered kissing all ten of those dark beauty marks. The last one was in the middle of her left buttock. When he got there Iula let out such a sigh of pleasure that he could have gone home right then sure of her satisfaction. He could see that Iula was thinking about those kisses. But this time there was ice instead of fire in her eyes.
“Maybe you can wait forever, Mr. Fortlow,” she said. “But you know this black woman got to get on with her life.”
She stood up and walked toward the kitchen. He didn't reach out to stop her. He didn't even have his Tuesday meat loaf plate.
Antoine and Joseph stood so close to one another that Socrates thought they might have been frightened of him. Slender Joseph was a few inches taller than his nursery friend.
“Antoine says that you were here for the ebony tree already,” Joseph said. He extended his skinny neck and gave Socrates a gawking grin. “That's sweet.”
“You said that you might could get it,” Socrates answered.
“I was wrong,” Joseph said with his head nodding forward and back as if he were following some complex melody. “The ebony, real or not, cannot thrive in this climate. Maybe if you had a hot house environment…”
“Naw, man. All I got is a yard. And it don't get sun but half the day.”
The men were both beaming with pride. Antoine was barely suppressing a grin.
“I was sorry to be so rude the other day, Mr. Fortlow,” Antoine began. “Joseph and I talked about it at home last night and we came up with an idea you might like. Come on.”
The men turned in unison beckoning the big man to follow. They walked through the entrance of the shelter they used as their office. It was just an arched tunnel of heavy plastic fabric supported by thick bamboo poles. On the left were bird of paradise, dwarf avocado trees, rosebushes, and other potted plants for the yard. On the right were cut flowers in rubber vases of various heights waiting for young men to buy in the early evening before going out with their girlfriends. It flashed through Socrates' mind that he could get a big sunflower for Iula. But the idea receded when he remembered how hard she had looked on Tuesday night.
They went out through the back end of the shelter into a large yard of potted trees. They came to a small green rubber tub with a small white tree in it.
“Isn't it beautiful?” Joseph asked.
“It sure is,” Antoine said. For the first time Socrates noticed a slight southern drawl in Antoine's words.
“What is it?” asked Socrates.
“Coral tree,” Joseph informed him. “Very exotic, from Japan. And expensive if it's full grown. But this sapling's only forty dollars.”
Socrates wondered if these men were trying to fool him out of his money; if they were trying to sell him some apple seed that fell in a barrel full of dirt. How did he know what this twig was?
“Have you seen those beautiful white trees with the crimson flowers down the middle of Olympic Boulevard out in Santa Monica?” Antoine asked.
“The ones that's mostly bare?” Socrates could see the tall trees with the orange-red flowers in his mind, their brawny white limbs circled with black seams. He remembered how they spread out over the street and found himself smiling, no longer worried about being cheated.
“They grow pretty fast,” Joseph said.
“How do I plant it?” Socrates asked.
Socrates carried the tub from the bus stop to a phone booth on Central. He took a slip of paper from his pocket. On it he had written a phone number given to him by Bernie at Harold's Liquors the night before.
The phone only rang once.
“Hello,” she said.
“Charlene?”
“Is that Socrates Fortlow?”
“You recognized me, that's pretty good.”
“Stony's at home with his wife and kids,” she said.
“I really wanted to talk to you, Charry.”
“Oh?”
Socrates could feel his heart beating. He took in a deep breath through his nostrils and exhaled through his mouth.
“Yeah, Charlene. I bought me a tree and I plan to plant it in my li'l yard here. An' … well, it's kinda special.”
“Special how?”
“It's for a friend. A friend that died. He died a long time ago but still I should, I mean I want to do this for him.”
“Uh-huh, I see,” Charlene said. “But what you want from me? You wanna borrah a shovel or somethin'?”
“Levering, that was my friend's name, he was a ladies' man but they had him in prison and he died there.
Anyway he asked me to invite a beautiful woman over when I plant the tree and say some words. He wanted to know that a pretty girl was there for his last request.”
The phone was silent for a moment and then a moment more.
“Charlene, you there?”
“Uh-huh,” she whispered.
“I don't mean to disrespect you now, sister. It's just that's what Levering …”
“You couldn't be disrespectful if you tried, Mr. Fortlow. No I don't believe that you could.”
Socrates' chest filled with air. The growing erection made him shift his position at the pay phone.
“I just meant that it would be a favor to me if you could come watch and then maybe drink a toast.”
“What time you want me?”
“Tomorrah afternoon 'bout five'd be good. I mean if you ain't busy.”
“I'll be there at five.”
“I live at…”
“I know where you live at. In that alley offa Central where them old boarded-up stores is, right?”
“Yeah. How'd you know?”
“Stony showed me once. He said how you was so poor that you just lived in a crack between two buildin's. He was makin' fun but I remembered just in case I had to come by one day.”
Socrates shifted his stance once more.
“So I'll see ya tomorrah?” he asked.
“At five. Bye now, baby.”
On the way home Socrates was glad that he had the tub to hold in front of his pants. He was relieved to get home but he wasn't relaxed.
Socrates' dick stayed hard, off and on, all night. He had to take off his pants to ease the discomfort. But he was just as miserable naked. There he was walking around the place like a teenage boy after his first kiss. He was almost sixty. It was a shame and indicated weakness, that's what Socrates felt.
He didn't want to lose control because of a woman. He cursed himself for inviting her. What did Levering care or know about who came to his tree planting and who didn't?
The erection was persistent. Sometimes it would deflate a little but as soon as he remembered Charlene's words, and the huskiness that accompanied them, he was back to full mast and angry.
His dreams didn't help. All the prison dreams about women came on him in a rush. It wasn't one dream or one woman but all of the women he had known or dreamed about. Even Muriel, the woman he'd murdered, was there stroking his brow and begging for more.
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