The Right Mistake

by Mosley, Walter

  “He must’a been high,” she continued. “He come at me fast but sloppy. You know I almost always got me a knife, my mama taught me that. She told me that a girl always need a edge. And so I stuck him in his th’oat an’ he went down. Marianne put her clothes together an’ pulled me ovah to her car. We went to her place up on Westwood Boulevard. She had a man keepin’ her up there back then.”

  “What happened to the man?” Socrates asked. “The one you stuck?”

  “His name was Reginald. I cut his voice box and hit a nerve in his neck. He cain’t walk at all and he cain’t talk. They asked him who did it but he don’t know my name and he cain’t read or write neither so it ain’t nuthin’.”

  “How old are you, Luna?”

  Luna got up from the cane chair and sat down next to Socrates on the piano bench before saying, “Twenty-three.” They were looking into each others’ eyes.

  “Why you wanna tell me about that?” he asked.

  “’Cause you axed me how we got to be friends. Marianne says that she woulda been killed or at least lost her voice if I hadn’t come and stopped him. She done took care’a me since then.”

  “But you could be arrested if I told somebody.”

  “You ain’t gonna tell nobody,” she said with a sneer, “and I never told nobody else.”

  “So what is it you wanted to ask me, Luna?”

  “You the first full man I evah met,” she said.

  “Say what?”

  “You heard me. You the first full man I evah met. I mean they’s other men out here but they ain’t for me. Fancy niggahs and fools, dumb mothahfuckahs think that a woman just waitin’ to lie down and spread her legs open. And then there’s men like Reginald.”

  “And so what’s the question?” Socrates asked.

  “You know.”

  “No, baby. What?”

  Just the fact that Luna hesitated ignited a fire in Socrates.

  “I want you to be my, my man,” she said with barely a stammer. “I want your baby inside me.”

  When she put her left hand on her abdomen Socrates felt muscles in his cheeks that were unfamiliar.

  “Luna . . . you’re twenty-three. I’m so close to sixty I could kiss it.”

  “You that close to me too.”

  Looking into Luna’s eyes Socrates saw what love could be for a man like him. It wasn’t red silk and chocolates, or grins and soft kisses. The passion he now saw ignited in Luna’s eyes was like that knife in Reginald’s throat; that moment where survival is everything.

  “Listen, girl,” he said with a tone of confidence that belied his heart, “I’m old and fat.”

  “You look good to me. I wanna man, not some weight liftin’ fool like Ron Zeal. You know I hear he take so much body buildin’ drug that he cain’t hardly get it up no more.”

  Socrates tried to think of a way to explain himself. She was young and wild but she didn’t understand the darkness he came from.

  “I know,” she said as if responding to his thoughts. “I know what you did. Marianne told me. She said that you killed a man an’ raped an’ then killed his girlfriend.”

  The words were like every fist that landed on him while the convict Wendell tried to beat him to his knees. But Socrates could fight back against Wendell; he could fight back and win. He put that big ugly killer on his knees. He taught him a lesson that everyone in the Indiana State penitentiary learned.

  But Luna was different. He couldn’t stand up against her. The violence in his heart ebbed out of him like bad blood after the final fighter in a long-standing feud had passed on.

  “I know what you did,” Luna said again. “But here I am. I don’t got my knife in my bag. I don’t got no underwears on neither.”

  Socrates couldn’t help but look at those bare legs again.

  “You wanna see?” she asked him.

  He put out his hands, laying them lightly upon hers.

  “Slow down, baby,” he said. “You like to give me a heart attack here.”

  This brought a true grin to the hard girl’s lips.

  “I bet you nevah said that to nobody before,” she said.

  “Luna, you mighta heard what I did but you can’t know no shit like that. I choked the life outta that woman. I had her blood all ovah my hands. I took her and I killed her like I was some kinda wild animal. Animal.”

  Luna moved her wrists so that her hands were now on top of his.

  “But you ain’t no animal,” she said.

  “You cain’t forgive me, girl. Nobody can.”

  “I don’t forgive you,” she said behind a steady stare. “I don’t care what you did. I ain’t here to give you nuthin’. I’m here to get sumpin’ from you.”

  “What could I possibly have that you need?”

  “I might be young, Mr. Fortlow, but I been around. I seen my brothah, my fathah, an’ uncle all die from alcohol an’ drugs. My mama turned to a old woman before I was sixteen. I seen it all. Killin’s, beatin’s . . . I got raped when I was twelve. My daddy killed the mothahfuckah did it.”

  Socrates closed his hands around Luna’s.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You’ont have to be sorry. I’m okay.”

  “You bettah than that. You a young woman. Smart and fine . . .”

  “I ain’t pretty,” she said, “an’ I ain’t fancy. I can read but I don’t know nuthin’. The only thing I know is that I want you. I knew it the minute I walked in that door an’ saw you. I knew it even before when Marianne told me about how you got this place and what you wanted to do with it.”

  “I could be your grandfather.”

  “You could be my baby’s daddy.”

  “Luna,” Socrates said, feeling that he was pleading. “The things I’ve done . . .”

  “The worst thing a man can do is not be there,” the young woman said. Now she was squeezing his fingers with surprising strength. “But all somebody got to do is look at you to know that the only way you gonna leave is if you died.”

  Socrates wanted to pull his hand away, to stroke her hair and send her off, but Luna would not relinquish her grip. “I’m not lettin’ go’a you, Socco. I’m not playin’ here.” “Baby, please,” he said.

  “We both done things,” she said. “I stabbed that man an’ he wasn’t the first one. I done things wit’ men. I done stole and sold drugs. We both been bad. An’ you ain’t that old anyway.”

  “Let me go now, Luna.”

  She withdrew her hands, clasping them upon her bare knees. Socrates enveloped the tight ball of fingers between his rock breakers.

  “I’m not like one’a yo’ teenagers,” he said. “You got to give me a little time on this.”

  “You not just sayin’ that so I go away?”

  “I feel for you, girl,” Socrates said. “From that first minute you walked in this house I wanted somethin’. But I never saw you comin’. It’s like a dream I used to have in my cell sometimes.”

  Their restless hands kept moving. Now Luna took Socrates’ big right hand in both of hers.

  “What kinda dream?”

  “I’d be in my eight by ten cell,” he said. “There was mold growin’ on the walls and bugs skitterin’ all ovah in the dark, men cried out when they’d get hit and hurt. Killers be laugin’ out loud and when and where it was quiet the convicts was mostly scared.”

  Luna was staring straight into his eyes. He could see that she could discern the truth as well as the pain in what he was saying.

  “I’d go to sleep,” he continued, “listening to all that sufferin’, smellin’ it too. And then I’d wake up because someone called my name . . .”

  “Who?”

  “I’d open my eyes and there’d be this li’l girl, no older than you, standing there.”

  “A black girl like me?”

  “Oh yeah. She’d be naked an’ ask me for my blanket. An’ I’d get up and take that thin army surplus wool they had for us an’ put it on her shoulders . . .” as he spoke Socrat
es was remembering this recurring reverie from another life. “. . . an’ then she’d say, ‘let’s go outside,’ and the cell do’ would come open . . .”

  When the tear fell from Fortlow’s cheek onto Luna’s hand she started slightly. Socrates wondered at his tear. He hadn’t cried in as long as he could remember. That was his first lesson on his first day in the joint: no one would care about his pain or suffering or despair. He would kill himself before he cried because at least in taking his own life he’d be doing something about the pain. Crying was worse than suicide; it was worse than being murdered or raped or put down in the Dungeon for sixty days or a hundred and sixty.

  This is what Socrates believed. There was no use in crying, had never been—until now. But now when Luna saw that he was a baby, and not the man she wanted, she would leave, no longer wanting him.

  Another tear fell and a knock thumped in his chest like an engine choking on gasoline gone bad.

  “Did you go wit’ her?” Luna asked in a sweet voice that had a little music in it.

  “She led me through the do’,” he said. “And it was a park outside. A big park wit’ trees and birds. Damn. I was even happy to see the flies buzzin’ around dog shit.”

  Luna showed her teeth and let her right shoulder rise in an unconsciously coy fashion.

  “If you won’t gimme a baby right now will you at least gimme a kiss?” she asked.

  “I ain’t brushed my teeth all day, girl.”

  “You think I care about that?”

  “I care.”

  Luna stood up, releasing his hand. She leaned over and kissed his bald head. The moment her lips touched his skin he shuddered. His hands twitched and his neck pulled back. His left foot picked up off the oak floor and stamped back down.

  “I bet I could knock you off your feet if I kissed you on the mouf,” she said with a sensual sneer upon her lips.

  Outside Socrates waved at the unmarked police car across the street. The two black men inside the vehicle did not return his salutation.

  He walked Luna to her car, a late model Lexus loaned to her by Marianne Lodz and protected by the police that were watching the Big Nickel.

  She opened the door and looked up at Socrates, the dark hair and yellow ribbons again reminding him of flames.

  “How much you gotta think before you know?” she asked.

  They could both see the erection bulging from behind his trousers.

  “You know what you just gave me in there was more than most lovers ever even heard about” he said. “It’s like you hit me in the head with a three quarter inch steel pipe.”

  “That ain’t no answer,” she said.

  Socrates looked at the poor child standing next to the luxury car. A hundred answers and questions, demands and declarations came into his mind. He had a whole night worth of words to say but nothing passed his lips.

  They stood there like lovers whose kisses had pushed back the minutes and hours. Socrates’ heart was a fist against the bars of his rib cage; his erection that steel pipe battering his good sense.

  “It’s like you was still up in jail, huh?” Luna asked.

  “What?” Socrates said. The thoughts swirling around his mind made her words almost incomprehensible.

  “It’s like I when I had this boyfriend up in jail an’ I’d go an’ see’im in the visitor’s room. He’d always be all mad an’ I axed him if he didn’t want me to come. An’ he’d say that it just got him so excited when he see me that he get mad ’cause he couldn’t be wit’ me.”

  “What happened to that boyfriend?”

  “He got out an’ they shot him.”

  “Who?”

  Luna shook her head and Socrates wondered if they weren’t somehow equals on that street. He also wondered if the nameless boyfriend had gotten to be with her at least one more time before he was cut down; he hoped so.

  “Kiss me on my lips and you can have all the time you want,” Luna said as serious as a killer.

  Socrates bent over and brushed her lips awkwardly with his own.

  “Call me?” she asked.

  “In just a couple’a days,” Socrates said.

  3. “Hey, boy,” Socrates hailed as he opened his door to the familiar, tentative knock.

  It was three mornings after Luna staked her claim on him.

  “Hey,” Darryl said, holding his head to the side in his usual shy manner. “I went by the Nickel but you wasn’t there.”

  “Some people comin’ by tomorrow night.”

  “Can I come?”

  “You gonna bring Myrtle?”

  “I ain’t bringin’ her nowhere,” the young man said. “Why not? She your girlfriend ain’t she?”

  “Shit,” the boy said. He went past Socrates into the small backyard home. He went to the refrigerator and took out one of the six bottles of supermarket cola that Socrates kept for him.

  Darryl sat down at the dinette table. Socrates sat across from him and said, “When I saw you wit’ her last you was her boyfriend. An’ I haven’t even seen you since then.”

  “I left that bitch three days ago.”

  Socrates would not have struck the boy. He had decided long ago that violence could not rear respect. He would never strike Darryl—but he wanted to. Darryl could see the quick violence rise in his mentor’s eyes.

  “What?” he asked in a hurt tone.

  “She told me she loved you.”

  “That old woman nasty,” Darryl said with disgust. “She do anything I want.”

  Socrates stared steadily at Darryl’s left ear. He didn’t have to say anything for the conversation to continue its pace.

  “What?” Darryl asked again.

  “Where you been?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “You don’t sleep? You don’t eat?”

  “I was wit’ my boys. Nelson an’ them.”

  Nelson Fabricant, Chess Peres, and Bright Conrad—Socrates knew them all; awkward kids that didn’t belong to any gang or church, school or military organization. They got together and joked around threatening to join the army or to go out on a rampage robbing banks.

  “What?” Darryl asked for a third time.

  “Why you break it off wit’ Myrtle?”

  “I told you.”

  Darryl finished his soda, put the bottle in the sink and got another one. He loitered by the refrigerator, hunching his shoulders and frowning at the floor.

  “Tell me again.”

  “She always on me an’ shit,” the boy said. “Tellin’ me t’be cleanin’ up an’ then she want me t’get a job. She always askin’ me when I’ma get my GED.”

  Darryl scratched his nose and rubbed his neck, tapped on the ice box with his knuckles, and took a deep draught of the dark soda.

  “What else?”

  “She nasty. I cain’t even say nuthin’ like a joke ’cause whatever it is she ready t’do it.”

  Socrates Fortlow allowed himself a smile.

  He thought of Darryl as a tiny dinghy that had somehow gotten lost and drifted out onto a vast ocean that was Myrtle Brown.

  “What you laughin’ at?” Darryl asked. “I thought you’d be happy that I broke it off wit’ her. I mean you wouldn’t even sit down in her house.”

  “That Myrtle Brown is some woman, huh?” Socrates said.

  “I guess.”

  “I bet you sometime she get so fired up that it seem like you in a room wit’ some kinda hungry animal you never even heard of.”

  Darryl didn’t answer but his eyes were wide and passive.

  “Yeah,” Socrates said. “Woman get hungry it don’t mattah how old she is. She be tellin’ you she love ya an’ bitin’ you so hard that you wanna yell.”

  Darryl sat down.

  “Did she kick you out?” Socrates asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause I got mad an’ told her that I wasn’t gonna do what she said. ’Cause she said that I was eatin’ her food but I wasn’t helpin’ out.”


  “So where you go when she put you out?”

  “Ovah to Nelson’s mama an’ them. He let me stay there for a while.”

  “Then his mama kicked you out too,” Socrates said. There was a wolfish grin in his chest that he kept out of his voice.

  Darryl nodded.

  “You know you could always stay here with me,” Socrates told the son of his heart. “There’s always some food and a place to sleep here.”

  “I know but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “I thought you was mad at me.”

  “’Cause’a Myrtle?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know I think she’s old for a kid like you. But she like you an’ she nice. An’ you know you got to learn how to work an’ pick up aftah yourself. You got to finish school an’ do sumpin’. That’s what she tell ya right?”

  “Yeah. Uh-huh. But she too old for me. I need me a young woman like Shakira or Beyoncé or, or maybe Marianne Lodz.”

  “Here’s ten dollars, D-boy. Go on down to Tibor’s market an’ get us some chicken. I’ll make soup an’ biscuits.”

  After dinner Darryl fell asleep on the couch while Socrates sat in his chair reading the newspaper, preparing for the Thinkers’ Meeting the next night. There were some new members and he wanted to get away from talking about Ron Zeal.

  He was reading about the vice president of the United States having shot some friend of his on a hunting trip. It was an accident, the article said, and Socrates believed it. But he wondered if he could make a mistake like that and not get prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to seven years for criminal negligence; a judgment that would come with an extra five years for being gang related due to the fact that he allowed peace negotiations to be conducted at the Big Nickel.

  Socrates had begun to consider other community uses for his private university when the cell phone sounded.

  “Is he there?” a sweet, bruised voice said into his ear.

  “Hold on,” Socrates told her. “He’s right here.”

  “Hello?” Darryl said into the phone. He hadn’t sat up, hadn’t even opened his eyes. “Uh-huh. Yeah. Uh-huh. I’ont know. Okay. Okay. Yeah. All right.”