Our salads came. The combination of the garlicky dressing and the red wine soothed the inexplicable anger boiling in my chest.
“So?” I said after a while.
“Ezzard went out one night and waylaid a drug dealer up in Harlem. Killed him and stoled a week’s earnings.”
“The money that I used to buy your freedom.”
“The very same.”
The ocean of anger turned, instantaneously, into a wide plain of desolation.
“And your stepfather is angry because you didn’t cut him into the profits?” I asked.
“That’s what I thought at first, but no. Ren’s mad ’cause Ezzard might’a called attention to his game. He kicked him outta the house and told him nevah to come back but my mother—I mean Ezzard’s mom, Dorothy—kept worryin’ at him so bad that he let me come to the picnic. I guess he was impressed with the way I handled myself and now he done offered me Ezzard’s old job back. Wants me to drive that van for two thousand a week.”
“You told him no of course.”
“You don’t just say no to a man like Ren, Angel. He’s just about as serious as an oil company in Africa. They both in the business of makin’ grease spots outta insolent men.”
“So now you are going to be a thief?” I asked. But my heart was not in the condemnation. I had used blood money to attain Tempest’s freedom. In some ways I was as guilty as the murderer.
My first impulse after this onslaught of guilt was the desire to confess. Then I thought of Erzuli. I wanted to call her and admit my crime.
“I told him that I had to think about it,” Tempest said. “He told me that was not an acceptable answer. That’s a quote.”
“What will he do?”
“Anything he wants,” Tempest opined, “anything that will ease his mind.”
“He’ll kill you?”
“Or tell the drug dealers that it was Ezzard killed their man and ripped off their money.”
Our main courses came then. Tempest asked for hot sauce and I poured the wine.
“What can I do?” I asked the Errant Soul.
“Use that Barry White voice and tell Ren that Ezzard is okay.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not? Why won’t you help a brother out? I ain’t nevah asked you for nuthin’ like this. You know when it comes to my own problems I take care of ’em myself but this your people’s fault.”
“What?”
“I didn’t choose this body. I didn’t have nuthin’ to with it.”
“You could have declined the invitation to the family picnic.”
“I could cut off my dick too but that wouldn’t make the girls any less beautiful.”
“I can’t help you, Tempest.”
“Why not?”
“Because my angelic voice has been gone since the stroke.”
That sat Tempest back in his chair. He stared at a place somewhere behind me and his bones seemed to sag down under his skin.
“Really?” he said after a long while.
“I’d help you if I could. I’ll give you money now to move and hide.”
“I’m on parole, man. If I hide, the law be after me.”
We ate in silence after that. I was aware of my guilt for a crime I had committed and Tempest’s fear about retribution for doing what was right. The irony of our situation stabbed at me and again I wanted to call Erzuli.
—
For condemned men we had good appetites. We ordered apple tarts with French vanilla ice cream for dessert.
“What will you do?” I asked over coffees and cognac.
“What can I do, Angel?”
“Go to the authorities?”
“Ain’t that you? Ain’t you the last word on sin and justice?”
“I am nothing.”
“Hm,” he grunted. “Well…I guess I’ll just go to bed and see if I wake up in the mornin’. If I do, then I’ll walk out my front door and hope I make it to work without somebody puttin’ a bullet in Ezzard Walcott’s brain.”
—
On the walk home I kept wondering if Erzuli’s boyfriend would mind if I called her at night.
Saint Aileen
I had not spoken to Erzuli, the young Haitian woman from New Jersey, for three weeks. I told her that my family and I were going on vacation to Europe and that I’d call her when I got back; this because she had begun to invade my thinking.
For weeks before the break we had talked every day on the phone. I had come to depend on that call for my equilibrium with the rest of my life. Even when I became aware of a monumental sin that I had committed my first thought was to call her and ask for forgiveness. Me—an angel from the Beyond—asking a mere mortal for absolution.
These weeks of abstinence passed by but still, every day, when the hour of our appointed talk came I was unable to work or think. I persevered all the same. I took to going out for lunch and drinking a few glasses of wine to cut the keen desire I felt. I started smoking a pipe as I had in heaven.
“Joshua, you been drinkin’ an awful lot lately, honey,” my life’s partner, Branwyn, said to me somewhere in that time.
“Not really,” I said in a tone that was as much a lie as many false words are. “I used to drink like this before I met you.”
“It makes you kinda glum,” she observed.
I was thinking about the sin I’d committed, Erzuli’s rambling conversation, and Branwyn’s simple and yet deep understanding of my heart when the intercom interrupted my brooding.
“Mr. Angel, Mr. Walcott is out here to see you.”
Since his death and resurrection, Tempest Landry has been connected to me, the onetime Accounting Angel of Heaven. It has been my duty and my avocation to convince this Errant Soul that he belongs in hell because heaven has decreed it so. Even if I don’t agree, finally, with that diktat, I am committed to its execution because it must be enforced to preserve the order of the status quo.
“Send him in,” I said to the microphone box.
Having allowed this disruption I turned to look out of my window. I have a nice office on the sixty-fourth floor. The view is over Central Park and the skies are often my refuge.
“Hey, Angel,” Tempest said from the doorway.
“Come in,” I said coolly. “Close the door behind.”
When he had time to get seated I turned around to look at him.
“To what do I owe this visitation?” I asked.
Tempest grinned at me.
“Sumpin’s wrong, huh, Angel?”
“No. Why do you say that?”
“ ’Cause whenever you got a bug up your butt you put on a attitude an’ come out with them big words.”
“Why are you here, Tempest?”
“I want you to come with me somewhere.”
“Where?”
“To someplace holy.”
“A church.”
“If you say so.”
“What does that mean?” I was becoming irritated by his evasions.
“It means I want you to go somewhere wit’ me, man. How come I can’t just let you see for yourself?”
As I had lied with my tone of voice to Branwyn, Tempest was telling the truth with his. I stood up and said, “Let’s go.”
—
We walked over to the 1 train and got off at 14th Street. On the way Tempest told stories of how hard he was working and the subtle, and often unconscious, ways his fellow workers, most of whom were white, insulted him.
“I used to just be a black man in America,” he said at one point, “but now I’m a ex-con too. The women wanna strip off my clothes an’ run for their lives and the men wonder what happened in those deep dark cells. I try an’ say that I’m a man just like them but that’s like an honest Arab tryin’ to tell airport security that he ain’t no risk.”
“What happened with Ezzard’s stepfather?” I asked in reply. It struck me then that my obsession with Erzuli and my drinking, smoking, and morose attitude all came from this worry over
Tempest’s well-being.
When Tempest refused the judgment he was returned to earth in the body of a convicted felon—Ezzard Walcott. Ezzard’s stepfather either wanted him back in the family business or dead.
My feelings toward Tempest were complex. He was a threat to everything I believed in but he was more a brother to me than all the angels above. His impending doom at the hands of injustice tore at me.
Tempest did not answer the question about Ezzard’s stepfather and we came to a large housing project on 9th Avenue. Opening the front door, he gestured for me to enter.
“Elevator’s broke,” he told me. “We got to take the stairs.”
We ascended at a good clip taking two steps at a stride, going higher and higher, breathing harder and harder. After a time it seemed to me that I was performing some kind of fabled labor like the mythological hero—Hercules.
After eleven flights Tempest stopped and took three deep breaths. I was also winded and appreciative of the rest.
“This the floor,” he said to me.
We went out into the hallway and my senses sprang to life. The walls and ceiling of the corridor were colored drab green and dirty yellow. There were four kinds of music coming from behind various closed doors. There was the smell of cooking pork, vegetables, and bread in the hot and oppressive air.
We walked halfway down the hall and came to a blue door that had the number 1242 stenciled in red on it. Tempest knocked on this door.
“Who lives here?” I asked as we waited.
“You need to know everything all at once, Angel, or could you wait and see?”
At that moment the door came open. An elderly, small woman with nearly jet skin stood there on sturdy legs in a long violet dress whose hem danced around her calves. She was neither fat nor thin and her eyes were dark and striking like twin wells of knowledge.
“Ezzard,” she said, looking up with a friendly smile that did not in any way cut the power of those eyes.
“Hey, Auntie Aileen, this here’s the man I told you about.”
“You boys come on in,” she said. “Come on now.”
The apartment was lovely and decadent, pristine and somehow transcendent. The walls were painted a faded burgundy and the ceiling was white, which gave the feeling of soaring even though I was standing still. The carpet was royal blue and the furniture was all red or painted red, which gave a surreal aura to the space.
“Sit on the sofa, boys,” she said. “It’s the most comfortable seat in the house.”
We both sat on the scarlet settee and Aileen left the room only to come back with a large silvery platter that had little white-bread sandwiches on one side and a pitcher of iced tea on the other. When we were served and eating she sat on a painted wooden chair across the squat brick-colored coffee table from us.
“This is my aunt Aileen,” Tempest said then.
“Pleased to meet you,” I said.
“Ezzard tells me that you helped him to get outta prison,” Aileen said, a serious note to her friendly voice.
“I suppose I did.”
“It’s a wonder,” Aileen said.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“If you had come to me and told me that you was gonna help my stepnephew be free I would’a asked you to forget about it. I liked Ezzard evah since my nephew Ren married his mother but I always knew that he was a bad seed. I was sure that nuthin’ good would evah come from him. I used to call his girlfriends and warn ’em about how he treats women and men, children and dogs. Ezzard was a hot mess.”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Tempest smiling at me. For some reason this caused a feeling of relief.
“You’ve changed your mind?” I asked Aileen.
“Your act of kindness have opened up Ezzard’s heart and he’s a whole new man in the skin of the old one. He gives of himself and listens to what people says. At the family picnic I mentioned that I needed a hook to hang my wrap on at the door. Three days later he brought me one. A red one just like I pined for. The old Ezzard would nevah have heard my need, and he certainly wouldn’t’a gone out to get it.”
“Aileen had a dinner for me the other night, Angel,” Tempest said. “She invited Ren and sat us down at the kitchen dining table. At the end of the meal she told Ren that she heard he wanted me in his business but…What did you say to him, Aunt Aileen?”
“I said that I didn’t know what Ren did exactly but I knew that Ezzard had moved on and didn’t need that kinda occupation anymore. I told him that I would be responsible for Ezzard and that he would nevah have to worry about him again.”
Aileen leaned over proffering a hand, which Tempest took and held.
This simple gesture left me thunderstruck. We finished the meal and talked about the meaningless details of mortal life. After a while Aileen got tired and we made our leave.
“Why did you bring me here, Tempest?” I asked when we were on the street again.
“Because, Angel.”
“Because what?”
“Because you part’a sumpin’ and you don’t even know it. Here you go thinkin’ you know just the right way an’ there’s a whole other world goin’ on in spite of what you think you know.”
The Resurrection
I remember Branwyn kissing my left ear and saying that she was going off to class.
“I’ll take Tempo to the sitter,” she said, “and drop Titi at preschool.”
“I love you,” I muttered without so much as turning over.
For a while I could hear the sounds of the morning coming down the hall from the kitchen. There was laughter and crying, Branwyn’s chastisements and praise. And then there was a profound silence; the kind of quiet that brought fear to hearts of primordial men—just the sort of stillness that might portend a predator or enemy.
I couldn’t sleep any longer and so I stumbled from the bed to the bathroom, splashed water on my face, and peered into the mirror….
I was not so much shocked as chagrined. I knew instantly that the stranger in the mirror was my punishment for not succeeding at getting Tempest Landry to submit to the will of heaven. I was not reinstated to my former rank nor was I thrown down into the pit for the blasphemy of spawning children. Instead the powers that be turned me into a stranger to myself; a man that neither Branwyn nor my children would recognize.
I went to the kitchen and sat down at the little breakfast table there. It was late fall and chilly outside the window. I was not hungry or thirsty but I made coffee and poured my cereal out of habit. After five minutes of not eating or drinking I understood that this part of my life was over. I dressed, donned a thin woolen coat, and left the temporary home that meant more to me than an eternity in the bosom of the Infinite.
—
Bernini Carts and Catering was behind a nondescript green door about half a mile south of Houston on Broadway. It was ten in the morning when I got there. I stopped on the sidewalk and reached into the right pocket of my long coat, feeling for the pipe and tobacco I’d put there the day before. Instead my fingers wrapped around something hard and cold. I pulled the metal object from the pocket, obscuring it from sight with my new big black hands.
It was a small silver revolver that had an unearthly feel to it. I did not wonder as to the weapon’s purpose. It was designed to kill something supernatural. Michael and Gabriel had provided me with the means of my deliverance or demolition.
I put the gun back into its pocket and opened the door. A long open-roofed corridor led to the clearing where Bernini’s fruit carts were stocked and sent out for the day.
“Can I help you, buddy?” a huge and bald white man said to me as I entered the large roofless space that smelled strongly of apples.
The man had bulging muscles and cerulean blue eyes. He wore a rough canvas apron and a dark red long-sleeved shirt.
“Ezzard Walcott,” I said, marveling at the new voice I contained.
“You lookin’ for a job?” the man asked.
“No.”
He was expecting more but I was not giving. I was on a suicide mission but the target had not been identified yet.
“Ezzard!” the bald man cried while still gazing at me with his jewel-like eyes.
“Yo!” a familiar voice called from a jerry-rigged aluminum shed set against the wall of the southwest corner of the space.
Tempest came out from behind thick plastic curtains and looked toward the bald man and beyond him to me. He obviously did not recognize me. A cunning wariness entered his smiling face.
“Can I help you?” he said as I approached him, hand on the pistol in my right pocket.
“I came here to speak to Tempest Landry about the refusal of judgment,” I proclaimed.
“What’s your name, man?”
“Joshua.”
—
At a chain coffee shop two blocks down from Bernini’s, Tempest and I sat over espressos and coffee cakes. We hadn’t spoken any words of import since our reintroduction. This was new ground for both of us and we held back our true feelings.
“Is that really you, Angel?” he asked at last.
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know you could change form like the devil, man. I thought the body you were in was the way you’d always be—down here.”
“I woke up in this form. I had nothing to do with it.”
“In your own bed?”
I nodded.
“What’d Brownie say when she saw you?”
“My face was buried in the pillow. After that she left for school.”
“They left you a black man.”
“They took everything from me because I wouldn’t work to trick you or force you into damnation.”
“Damn, man. That’s messed up. Did they say anything?”
“They put a pistol in my pocket.”
Tempest’s face froze and he regarded me with undecipherable shrewdness.
“A pistol for what?”
The Further Tales of Tempest Landry Page 12