One Safe Place

by Alvin L. A. Horn

  Another Beatles song, “Eleanor Rigby,” played. Psalms nodded his head to the song beat and mouthed the words,

  “All the lonely people

  Where do they all come from?”

  He and Mintfurd finished with the man and then went to work on the mother. She was tougher than her son, but the fear made it clear to the immoral mother and son that their blackmailing game was over.

  A Rolling Stones song, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” came on.

  “But if you try sometimes you just might find

  You get what you need

  • • •

  When justice was finished, and the cleanup done, Mintfurd left first, and Psalms did a walk-through, not that he worried about leaving evidence of a crime. These two were so scared they wouldn’t shit for a week, maybe two. A couple of huge black men had come into their place, as smoothly as a whale rises out of the water and blows, and did things to them only heard of in Cold War times.

  Psalms knew the incest these two shared would never happen again, not that he cared. He didn’t think the man would ever put another diaper on and ask a woman to have sex with him. The two would never get meningitis, either. Psalms didn’t mind inserting diabolical thoughts, but fear was the actual sentence he had injected into them. The electronic devices inserted into both of them would send harsh periodic pain through their bodies as a reminder to be fearful.

  An eye for an eye! Psalms could not justify killing the man and the mother, when they had not physically caused pain to Darcelle and her daughter. Death was only for those who caused death or tried to cause loss of life. Psalms often reflected on his and his grandfather’s Bible study on the weekends they’d spent on Orcas Island in the little house.

  Psalms walked around, admiring the new condo he was about to own. He watched the two nasty humans lying on the floor, out cold. “They will wake up lying in their own piss and shit and wish it was a bad dream, but fear will have them stir-crazy.”

  Before he walked out the door, the band Heart was jamming “Magic Man,” then another song from the Northwest rock-funk band, “Barracuda.”

  He laughed. “Yep, a barracuda will leave your ass in pain, or dead.”

  He closed the door.

  CHAPTER 28

  Them Changes

  Mintfurd turned into the parking lot of Ms. Melfae’s BF. The neon sign on a tall pole read:

  Ms. Melfae’s BF

  Baked or Fried

  24 Hours Always Open

  • • •

  The four-story house converted into a restaurant stood as lonely as an outcast. Other similar turn-of-the-century homes, with small pillars and tall steps leading up to their doors, had gone by the wayside of inner-city progress. The old house quartered between the Central Area and Capitol Hill of Seattle, where many blacks once resided close to downtown. The modern-day city crept up like a military coup and ran the people away, defeating the culture of its old hood, and leaving the house in arrested development.

  Eddie Cotton, the famous 1960s Seattle boxer, had a great diner in the area that closed down, and then the church on the corner sold. Next, other black businesses—cleaners, pool halls, bookstores and houses, one and two at a time, sold off.

  First-floor retail buildings replaced homes, adding on high-end apartments that now soared above an inner-city strip mall. All the houses disappeared or deteriorated from neglect, except for the owner of one house.

  Ms. Melfae said, “No, I’m not going, and I’m not selling. I don’t owe anybody for my house, and I have taken care of it. It’s not falling down, and no one is going to knock it down!”

  Despite the new world around her, she refused to cave in by selling her house to developers. They built condos and other commercial-use structures next to and across from her. The city hall gangsters sent “progress” after her to eventually drive her out of her home. It came in the form of taxes due. The tax bill was no longer for residential housing, but rather set to an unbending commercial land ownership tax. The bill put Ms. Melfae in a flux making it hard to keep her home. She got too old for a city she had lived in most of her life and loved. Ms. Melfae was trying to live the American dream, but progress tried to tell her that her American dream was dead.

  Psalms became aware of her struggle when zoning laws became a problem for him as he wanted to build his condos. Ms. Melfae used to be one of Psalms’ grandfather’s lady friends. To what level that meant, he didn’t know. He assumed she was close enough, since she was there in the house when he woke up a few times as a child. The story of Ms. Melfae not wanting to sell her house hit the local airwaves. The progressive liberals got their signals crossed and acted like conservatives by not stepping up, and putting their convictions aside to do the right thing and support her. They were too busy thinking about all they had to do was think green.

  Their idea of doing the right thing was to put Obama stickers on their Priuses, and cruise their little electric cars at 50 mph on overly congested freeways. They acted numb to the old lady’s plea. But, Psalms laid out the real green and paid her taxes, then financed the conversion of three floors of her house into a unique restaurant.

  Ms. Melfae lived at the top on the fourth floor, so it worked perfectly for meeting retail and housing zoning codes just like the other brand-new buildings squeezed around her. Ms. Melfae was very well known for cooking for every person she met, and with Psalms’ help, she now had a twenty-four-hour restaurant, which stayed busy with many of the customers from liberal Yuppieville.

  • • •

  Mintfurd turned the ignition key hard and quick to turn the engine off. The stereo kept playing Jimi Hendrix’s “Machine Gun.”

  He and Psalms listened to Jimi burning hell up with his guitar spraying ice from his cold- ass soloing. After the song, Mintfurd’s voice had more bass than a teenager with a car trunk full of speakers. Psalms waited for Mintfurd to say what he had to say.

  “PB, we do business and business only; it’s never personal, and never should be. Our job is to remove danger, and help those who don’t have options.”

  Mintfurd looked at Psalms the same way he had when they were college wrestlers about to face off; they gained respect for each other. Enemy competitors back then, but loyal friends and business partners now, they were punishers of wrongdoers.

  They were Black Muslims—less the Muslim part—ridding the block of those who would bring harm to regular citizens. Their thuggish prosecutions brought justice to individuals who did thug deeds. They were a chastising force: the law itself, dovetailed into judge, jury and sentence givers. Men on fire.

  Sitting in the SUV, these two had enough testosterone, courage, and warrior skills for eleven football players to win in any game. The stereo changed to Jimi Hendrix and Buddy Miles jamming live, “Them Changes.”

  The song had ended many minutes later before Psalms responded. “I’m wrong! I’m all the way wrong. I slipped up by letting my attitude have a piece of this job. I deserve your wrath pinning me down on my actions. I displayed anger. I made it personal. I know how this works.”

  Psalms and Mintfurd, for all the right reasons, still were criminals in the sense of man’s legal laws. To keep their business of avenging, one’s ego could not overrun the other partner. Crime partners had to love each other’s freedom; if not, like most crime partnerships, they would fail.

  Psalms and Mintfurd never set out to be avengers, but as one case kept leading to others, more complicated justice had to be served. The two never looked back, always looking forward to righting wrongs.

  “Man, I apologize. A couple of things have me swaying in the wind and off my A game. Let’s talk inside; I’m hungry. I know your big ass is hungry.”

  Ms. Melfae’s spacious restaurant had almost no inner walls dividing the rooms. Each floor had a kitchen at the rear, with a stairwell connecting each kitchen and food elevators to deliver food to the right floor. At the front, large glass windows overlooked the busy street. On the third floor,
one could view downtown Seattle as if on a big-screen TV. With her living quarters above the restaurant, Ms. Melfae had a picture-perfect view. Psalms and Mintfurd walked up to the third floor. An elevator could take patrons up to each level. In the basement, a 1950s Harlem-style speakeasy had jazz on the weekends.

  The corner table was always reserved for Psalms and his friends. The restaurant light was almost shadowy, but each table had a lighted gold-toned table lamp that gave an ambiance of private dining. Ms. Melfae’s daughter, Akilah, approached the table with two bootleg dark beers. She managed the graveyard shift, and had a singing voice and sent her orders to the kitchen by song.

  “Uncle Psalms and Uncle Mintfurd, what would you like?”

  “Send us the last of and the most of what is in the kitchen. No need to make anything; just give us what’s in the pots that is already made.”

  Natalie Cole’s “Just Can’t Stay Away” was playing low, and Akilah sung over the top to the melody. “For table number one, two plates of the last of what’s in the kitchen; fill them up to the top, and bless them.” She walked away, and people clapped lightly.

  “Velvet tells me you’re almost a virgin again. Don’t trip, you know she was going to tell me, and you would have told me if I had asked,” Psalms said.

  “I thought you had an issue you wanted to tell me about, because me not paying for pussy is not an issue.”

  “Nah, man, that’s not an issue, but what I have to say is related.”

  “How is that?” Mintfurd’s lip moved toward the side of his face, a facial expression he made often when he asked a question.

  Psalms’ eyes ventured to the black art on the wall. Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jacob Lawrence, and more contemporary artists like Kehinde Wiley, Nina Chanel Abney, Xaviera Simmons, and Jayne Alexander adorned the walls. Small fused spotlights put the art in perfect light to view from many angles. He had admired the original prints many times, and had helped curate the striking display.

  Psalms’ mind traveled a road he thought he had already mapped out on what he wanted to say to Mintfurd. His eyes diverted while searching for the right words. Finally, he just let it flow. “Tonight that revolting man and his vile mama threatened the well-being of a woman I met. That brought us to this job. What has my skin crawling, and my mind squeezing hate, is that this woman wants to do beneficial actions for others. She’s been naïve in her choice of men, and it has cost her time in life, disrupting her journey. The woman is extremely beautiful, although not my type because she is small. But she is old-school foxy.

  “The lady doesn’t seem to know how to protect herself. She’s been in the mode of letting love go away and just dealing, before moving into the mode of hating, gunning, knifing, boiling and throwing hot grits. So many people say they love, but do the bare minimum to preserve it, instead of pouring their complete soul in to it. When that happens, folks just start dealing before hating.”

  Mintfurd’s lips moved to the other side and adjusted his body in his chair. In most places, when he sat down, the chair almost disappeared. His shoulders were nearly the width of the table, but because that was their revered table, one of the chairs had his name on it, and was super-sized. An average person sitting in his seat looked like a baby in a high-chair.

  “What’s all that have to do with me?” Mintfurd’s lips pushed back to the other side for a moment, and his handsome face relaxed.

  “Man, shit, I…damn, man, I’m trying to make sense, and it’s not making sense, but I’ll get there. Some women love harder than any man can conceive. Men often receive love they can’t feel, or don’t know what to do with it when they feel it. A woman’s heart is unlike a man’s heart when it comes to the depth of compassion. A woman’s love can go deep. Certain things don’t compute, or convert into a language men will ever understand. A man often loves through the fantasy of what he wants his woman to be, and pretends that she is his fantasy for a length of time, but you know sadly that relationship will have problems. A woman loves what’s in front of her. She tends to adapt, and love the ground her man walks on, and the air he breathes. She can’t help it.

  “Women are born to love and nurture, and nest. We men benefit from that nurturing, because a woman leads us to understand it’s in a man’s best interest. Men may rule this earth, but women hold it together when we tear it apart.

  “Men want their sons to be soldiers, race car drivers, and professional athletes and so on. A woman only wants to be proud of her son and wants him to find a suitable woman to be one with, honoring God, and blessing the world with children. Some of those things she may not have herself.”

  Mintfurd nodded his head. “Yeah, that is something I know about, but never really give it much thought. My mom, after all these years, still expects me to come home with a wife, and make babies. She still wants me to have a wife so they can go to Women’s Day programs at church.”

  There was a strange look on Psalms’ face as he was contemplating. What would his mother think, or say, about him bringing home a bride?

  He passed through those thoughts as fast as he could. He had already let emotions get in the way tonight. “You and me, and most men, want our daughters to be pretty, successful, and to find husbands so they can run off and have pretty kids. All so we can say, ‘Look at my daughter.’ A woman never wants her daughter going through the hardships she had to, and may still be going through.

  “A woman wants her daughter to believe in herself and never base her worth on what a man thinks. Ask a man does he believe in that and he’ll say yes, but only when brought to his attention.

  “In a man, a woman may want more, but she bends and fits in to a man’s way of thinking more than we as men rethink and bend. As men, we don’t flow as easy in to reshaping or changing for the love of a woman. Many women, all they know is how to love, and not how to defend their souls. And they shouldn’t have to. But as the world turns, men want to control everything even when it makes no sense.”

  Mintfurd honed in. “Man wants to control even the mongoose, even though the mongoose kills the snake that would kill a man.”

  “Yeah, that’s about right, and women are always in a fight to be what God intended them to be—lovers of men’s souls, despite a man’s shortcomings.

  “You’ve heard women say, ‘I wish a man would love me as I’d love him.’ Even when a woman doesn’t give as much as she thinks she has, it’s still that’s all that matters.”

  Psalms got up from the table and went over to a 1960s Magnavox stereo floor cabinet. He lifted the top and inside was a mix of old and new electronics. He pushed a button, and “Days Like This” by Kenny Lattimore played.

  A woman across the room popped her finger and bopped her head and pointed toward Psalms. Seeing his old high school classmate, he walked over to the table and had a short conversation with her. Officer CC is what most called her. Her perfect black skin, tall statuesque figure, and sensual, sauntering walk snapped many heads out of place. She was a black policewoman who rolled in her own squad car before many policewomen did. She could handle most men with just a stare that said, “Try me.” She had the Pam Grier tough and fine appearance cloned to perfection.

  She and Psalms shared street information. Although she did not fully know what Psalms did, she had an idea. He had dropped off or led her to a few hand-delivered busts, and she in return, had provided information when he’d asked, with no questions. They shared some intel before he went back to his table.

  Mintfurd had a question he wanted to ask before Psalms left the table and asked when he returned. “You said even when a woman doesn’t or hasn’t given as much as she thinks she has, nevertheless it doesn’t matter. How is that okay?” His lips went to one side.

  Psalms almost finished his beer, and swirled the bottom around before he responded. “No matter what, we men don’t understand what their heads and hearts believe. We have to support them without tearing apart their hearts just to prove we are right. The same God made us; He just made us differe
nt from, not less than, each other. Yeah, for sure, there are some damaged women. No matter what any man will do, there is no man who can satisfy their soul.

  “This is where often the dishonest side of relationships crop up and destroy hope of having a good relationship. Now think about this before you respond. Most often, women lie for survival, and men lie for gain. So, depending on how bad one wants to survive or how bad one wants to gain, you’ll find out who’s the best liar. When women lie for gain, I have to say they can be rather obvious, almost like they want us to know, but men try to act as if they don’t. When men lie for survival, they often get caught up in their lies, because women expect men to lie and already know the truth before a man opens his mouth.” Psalms took the last swig of his beer, and laughed.

  Mintfurd took in a deep breath that several others could have used. “Man, this is a lot to take in concerning getting into and being a relationship. I’m kinda scared for many reasons, and I’ve heard a lot of people have mental issues, and the ugly side of their mental problems show up after you like or love the person.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Some folks have mental bruising, and it affects their perception and nothing is normal for them or level in their lives.”

  Psalms thought about Evita and her struggles in life, brought on by a father who abused her. She was missing now, giving him pause to think what it could be again. His friend, Ayman, the basketball coach at East Seattle City College, and University of New Mexico college alum, had a relationship with a woman with mental issues. Suzy Q had to step in because it caused him troubles.

  “Let any person who has psychological injuries, twisted sensitivities, and medicated or unmedicated issues, and put into the mix a broken heart, and castles made of sand will wash their heart out to sea. Sometimes people don’t realize they are not giving as much as they think they are. Shit, even so-called normal folks come up short, and refuse to let anyone help them understand the harm they cause others.