The Right Mistake

by Mosley, Walter

“What I need is for somebody to hold me down so that I don’t just drift off and disappear.”

  “Huh?”

  “Dorothy,” Socrates called to the bartender, “could you bring me a pencil and a piece of paper.”

  She came over with what he had asked for.

  He took the scrap and pencil and wrote something and then signed the bottom. This he handed to Lana. She took the paper and read it.

  “I don’t get it,” she said.

  “What’s it say?”

  “IOU two hunnert an’ fifty dollahs an’ it’s signed Soshsumpin’ Fortlow.”

  Socrates nodded. He felt his head bobble as if he had just awakened or maybe was about to fall asleep.

  “So if I give you this you gonna pay me?”

  “Yes.”

  She offered him the paper and he exchanged it for a roll of bills from his pocket.

  “You wanna come wit’ me now?”

  “No, baby. You go on without me. I’ma sit here and drink.”

  “You could come wit’ me,” she said, trying, and almost managing, to sound friendly. “You could spend the night if you ain’t got no place to go.”

  “I thank you for that, Lana. But I don’t need company.”

  “But you need somebody to hold you down.”

  “Yeah. Yeah I do.”

  3. There was a light rain awaiting him when Socrates left the Black Bear Bar. He had fond thoughts of Lana Marron. She had written her phone number down on his IOU and returned it.

  He walked for hours in the rain but the whiskey kept him stoked. It was a long while and late at night before he got to the abandoned furniture stores. The space between those two buildings, where he had lived for nearly four years, had been boarded over but he tore down the two-by-fours and shambled into his old makeshift home.

  The next door building’s electricity still flowed into his old place and there was even a lamp with a live bulb that he could turn on.

  The furniture and most of his other belongings were gone. Soot and dust were everywhere but Socrates sat on the damp floor in the dim light and felt like he was home for the first time in years. Not home like his garden house or Bellandra’s little place. This was the place that he’d discovered and built with his own hands.

  He leaned against the wall feeling heat rise in his body. He’d had fourteen drinks and felt every one of them as he huddled up next to the splintery wall and closed his eyes.

  “We all niggahs up in here,” Giant George Riley had said on the yard of the Indiana state penitentiary many years before. “Niggahs so stupid they spend ten years in jail ovah a ten dollar robbery. You know a man that dumb deserve what he get.”

  Nobody argued with Giant George. He was the only man that might have cut down Socrates if he wanted. But Socrates and George were friends in the joint. They watched each other’s back and over the young boys that got placed in their cellblock. George was also an organizer. He brought the men together so

  that they could watch over each other in case some predator wanted to bring one of them down. “Niggah got to understand what he is an’ where he come from,” George would say. “Look right in the glass and say what you see. If you can do that ain’t no man can contradict you.”

  In his stupor Socrates listened to the big man and his long lectures. Rain was seeping in and the chill made its way through Socrates’ damp clothes. He wasn’t awake or asleep, drunk or sober. He understood that much of what he had done and said was because of Giant George’s lectures on the yard.

  “Guilty or not we all servin’ time in this life, Socco,” the big man would say. “Ain’t no reason for you to punish yourself ’cause you know there’s plenty’a people waitin’ in line to get in their licks.”

  When he woke up the next morning Socrates felt dizzy, unable to rise to his feet. His breathing was labored. His chest hurt but there was no way he would make it back to the street.

  He wondered if maybe he should have taken Lana up on her offer. He wondered if he should have asked Luna for her hand.

  “You too quiet, Socrates,” George said. Socrates wasn’t sure if this was a memory. “Laugh a li’l bit, man, make some noise. You all serious an’ shit but you know that don’t make nuthin’ any different.”

  He slept again and when he woke up he exerted all of his strength to rise. He made it out to the alley and from there to the street. It was daytime but the sun was setting. He was walking, though the feeling in his legs told him that he wouldn’t make it far.

  At Central and 103rd Street he fell to the sidewalk and rolled into the street. An old woman leaned over him and peered into his face.

  “Do I know you, Mister?” she asked.

  He said something but neither he nor the woman understood a word.

  4. For a long time Socrates felt as if he was in motion. Like a trunk, he felt, being moved from train to train following some traveler. He woke up at intervals that revealed strange scenes: the top of a van, maybe an ambulance, and a man taking his pulse; a dark room with cool air and colored lights pulsing in the shadows; someone moaning and people talking happily as if no one had called out in pain; someone holding his hand . . .

  “You awake, Daddy?” she asked. Socrates could only open his eyes for a second. When he did he caught a glimpse of Luna in a loose yellow dress that she wore from time to time. The strain of looking exhausted him and he nodded off for what seemed like a moment or two but when he opened his eyes again Luna was wearing a different dress, it was white with large dark blue polka dots over her belly.

  “Socrates,” she said.

  “Hey, baby. How you doin’?”

  He took a deep breath and felt sharp pain deep in his chest. “You got pneumonia,” she said as if this was somehow an answer to his question.

  “I’m sick?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “An’ this is the hospital?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How long?”

  “Three days,” she said. “They fount you on the street an’

  brought you here. You had Cassie’s card in your wallet so they called her. She and Tony got me and I been here pretty much the whole time since then.”

  Socrates reached out with his fingertips to touch her stretched abdomen.

  There was a film over his eyes and so he kept blinking.

  “You okay, honey?” she asked him.

  “You look pretty, Luna.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I evah tell you about Giant George?”

  “Nuh-uh. Who’s he?”

  “I was in prison with him. He was the strongest man I evah met. Nobody fucked with Giant George.”

  Luna smiled and Socrates passed out.

  When he woke up again she was still there in her polka dots.

  “What about George?” she asked.

  “He used to tell me that if anything ever happened to anybody that that was a good thing unless that man was killed.”

  “What if somebody got his arm cut off?” Luna asked.

  “Then he could learn how to live even better with just one arm.”

  “But suppose he didn’t learn?”

  “It don’t mattah that he didn’t. It only mattah that he could.”

  Socrates closed his eyes. He felt Luna kissing his cheek.

  When he awoke again she was slumped sideways in the chair next to him napping. He was strong enough now to sit up. This time she awoke to find him watching over her.

  “Hi, Daddy,” she said.

  “Can we get married?” he asked.

  “You feelin’ like you gonna die or sumpin’?” she asked, suspicion laced through her words.

  “More like I lost a arm.”

  “Could we wait awhile and see?” she asked.

  “You scared?”

  “My mother and stepfather were married,” she said, “an’ she would shoot crack in his neck an’ watch him fuck my older sister on the couch.”

  “You got a sister?”

  “All I
got is you.”

  “Socco,” Billy Psalms said from someplace very far away. “Socco, wake up.” Antonio and Psalms were standing over his hospital bed. There was a wheelchair between them.

  “Come on, man, get up,” Billy said.

  Socrates took a deep breath, noticing that the pain in his chest was gone. He got to a sitting position with his friends’ help and then he made it to his feet.

  “Sit down, Mr. Fortlow,” the ever-courteous Antonio Peron said.

  “If I cain’t walk on my own, Tony, then you can lay me down in my grave.”

  Socrates put a hand on Billy’s shoulder and followed them out of the partitioned area of a room he shared with three other men.

  They walked along a hallway until they got to a huge elevator which they rode for a minute or two. Then they went down another hall to a blue-green door that was partly ajar.

  Socrates wasn’t surprised to see Luna in the bed with a little brown baby in her arms. Tony helped the big man into the chair at the side of her bed.

  “Say hi to your daddy, Bellandra,” Luna said.

  “What?”

  “Bellandra. I named her after your Auntie.”

  5. Leanne Northford had Socrates and his new family come stay with her while Luna learned how to care for her newborn and Socrates recovered from his illness.

  For three weeks the septuagenarian ex-social worker clucked and watched over the odd little family. Socrates learned how to change diapers and Luna got used to breastfeeding Bellandra. They both would get up in the middle of the night when the baby cried.

  “When she gets over twelve pounds she’ll be sleepin’ through the night,” Leanne told them. “Before that her stomach’s too small an’ get hungry ’bout ev’ry three four hours.”

  Socrates moved out of his garden home and rented a small house on Ogden from a friend of Deacon Saunders. They moved in and Socrates got Billy to give him driving lessons. He bought an old Pontiac that was lime green and on Sunday afternoons he and Luna would drive down to Santa Monica with Bellandra and sit on a blanket listening to the waves.

  He didn’t miss many Thinkers meetings but he was quiet there for a few months, letting others preside over the discussions and arguments. He listened to the frustrations, fears, and fantasies of the men and women who had taken up his cause.

  One day, after the meeting was over and everyone else had gone, he took Luna’s hand. In the crook of her other arm Bellandra slept with her mouth open and her arms flung wide.

  “Can we talk about it today?” he asked.

  “We togethah right?” she answered. “But what about if I get sick again? What if I die? How can I be sure that you taken care of?”

  “Then don’t die.”

  “You know what I mean, L.”

  “How come you was out on that street anyway?” she asked.

  “You axed me ’bout us when Tony and Cassie got married. I didn’t know what to think so I went to a bar. After that it was rainin’ and I went to the place I used to live at.”

  “That hole in the wall?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It must’a been full’a rats an’ shit.”

  “No. There wasn’t enough in there for a rat to eat. It was just the place I used to stay.”

  “How come you went there?”

  “Closest place to prison I could think of I guess.”

  “Is that what you thought about when I said about gettin’ married?”

  “I guess.”

  “Then why you still want it?” Luna asked. “How come you ain’t happy when I don’t answer you?”

  “When I was sick I had this idea in my head,” he said. “It wasn’t a dream or vision but I was asleep or unconscious.”

  “What idea, baby?”

  “It was that I was bein’ dragged along like a dead body off to the pyre.”

  “What’s a pyre?”

  “A big fire where they burn the dead,” he said. “And then it was like I pulled away and got to my feet and said I wasn’t gonna be dragged no mo’. An’ after that I was free but I was stumblin’, stumblin’ through life like all that mattered was that I wouldn’t be dragged.

  “But then I fount the Big Nickel and you set your eye on me . . . I got to marry you, Luna. You the mother of my child.”

  “Can we wait one year?”

  “Why so long?”

  “I just wanna wait and see if you still want me aftah a year in the same house with a cryin’ baby and the Big Nickel too. I want you to want me for a year and then ast me again.”

  “That’s what you want?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And if I wait a year from this day an’ ax you again you gonna say yes?”

  Luna smiled and then grinned.

  “That’s a goddamned miracle right there,” Socrates said.

  “Ain’t no miracle,” Luna replied, unable to keep the grin from her lips. “It’s just a plan, a plan and a promise.”

  “No, baby. That right there will make a fool like me walk the straight and narrow.”

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  THE TRIAL

  1. “So, Detective Brand,” the state prosecutor asked, “what, in your own words, did you find when you entered the building called the Big Nickel?”

  The gray haired, brown eyed, olive skinned white man in the witness chair pondered the question for a moment, pretending that he hadn’t studied his answer for days.

  “The two officers that had been watching the house . . .” Lucius Brand began.

  “There were detectives watching the house?” Marlene Quest, the prosecuting attorney, asked.

  “Objection, your honor,” Mason Tinheart, Socrates’ lawyer, complained. “What the police were doing outside the house is not relevant to the case at hand.”

  “I disagree, Mr. Tinheart,” Judge Irene Tanaka said. “It will give the court some understanding of why the police felt that a crime may have been committed. Continue, Detective.”

  “Thank you, your honor,” Brand said. “We have been watching the house called the Big Nickel for over a year.”

  “And why is that, Detective?” Marlene Quest prodded.

  “We monitor the coming and going of many gang-related individuals at this house. We have long suspected that illegal activities have been planned and condoned by Mr. Fortlow.” “Your honor,” Mason Tinheart whined.

  “The jury will ignore the comment about police suspicions,” Tanaka said to the twelve men and women to her left.

  This jury was comprised of young and old, black and brown and white, men and women. But as Socrates looked upon them he didn’t see his peers. They were from different places across a variety of borders that most of his people could never cross. It wasn’t a question of hierarchy, of quality or even comparison. It was simply that they weren’t colleagues at work or war. These people, Socrates thought, could judge him but they could never understand who he was.

  “And so,” Quest continued, “what did you find at the house?”

  “Mr. Fortlow was sitting on the stairs that led to the second floor. He told us that we would find the victim in the second floor hallway.”

  “And did you?” the prosecutor asked.

  Marlene Quest was a beautiful, Germanic woman, her short blonde hair set like seashells around her heart-shaped face. The red of her lips was a memory of some much brighter color and her figure, in the gray-green dress suit, was a promise made by fashion magazines and entertainment TV shows from San Diego to Krakow.

  “Yes,” Brand replied.

  Most people looking at the forty-something police detective would have thought him handsome and athletic. Socrates, however, saw only a petulant boy; a frowning white version of Kelly Beardsley.

  “I found Detective Beardsley bludgeoned to death in the upper hall. His jaw had been crushed and his neck broken. His service revolver was on the floor at the other end of the hallway.”

  “And what was your first reaction to this tableau?”
/>
  “Say what?” the cop asked.

  “What was your professional assessment of the situation you came upon?”

  “That a murder had been committed.”

  “Not self-defense as Mr. Tinheart claims?”

  “Definitely not. Beardsley was a trained police officer. There’s no way that Fortlow’s version of the altercation could have happened. The only way that Detective Beardsley could have been killed like that was if is he was taken unawares.”

  “Objection, your honor,” Mason Tinheart said again. “The witness, no matter his expertise, was not in the hall where this tragedy occurred. He cannot testify to events that he did not see with his own eyes.”

  “Detective Brand is a trained policeman, your honor,” the beautiful prosecutor claimed. “Who better to decipher the events as they occurred?”

  Irene Tanaka was in her late fifties. Her black hair was going gray but her eyes seemed to Socrates like those of a much older, either wise or deeply disillusioned, woman.

  “I must agree with the defense,” she said. “The jury is directed not to take Detective Brand’s rendition of the events necessarily as fact. His reading of the physical evidence is only one possibility.”

  “What did Mr. Fortlow do after you found the body of Detective Kelly Beardsley?” Marlene Quest asked.

  “He held out his hands.”

  “For what reason?”

  “To be cuffed. We made him put his hands behind his back though.”

  “So he admitted his guilt?” the prosecutor deduced.

  “Objection.”

  “Sustained.”

  “No more questions.”

  “So, Mr. Brand,” Mason Tinheart said, “tell us why you entered the Big Nickel.”

  “An anonymous tip,” the policeman said in a terse manner.

  “Somebody called you?”

  “911.”

  “What were the exact words in the message?” the lawyer asked, smiling as he did so.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ve never heard the message?”

  “No. It was deleted from the system.”

  “Deleted? I thought there was always a permanent record of all emergency calls. So that later, when and if there is a trial, the call can be brought in as evidence, maybe even testimony.”