A Red Death

A Red Death Read Free Page B

Book: A Red Death Read Free
Author: Walter Mosley
Tags: Easy Rawlins
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across the yard. There wasn’t a red strawberry in the patch.
    “We just come.” He gave me a large grin and reached out to me. I picked him up without thinking about it. “Momma losted her key so I had to go in da windah an’ open up the door.”
    “What?”
    Before I could put him down I heard a woman humming. The timbre of her voice sent a thrill through me even though I didn’t recognize it yet. Then she came around from the side of the house. A sepia-colored woman—large, but shapely, wearing a plain blue cotton dress and a white apron. She carried a flat-bottomed basket that I recognized from my closet, its braided handle looped into the crook of her right arm. There were kumquats and pomegranates from my fruit trees and strawberries from the yard on a white handkerchief that covered the bottom of the basket. She was a beautiful, full-faced woman with serious eyes and a mouth, I knew, that was always ready to laugh. The biceps of her right arm bulged, because EttaMae Harris was a powerful woman who, in her younger years, had done hand laundry nine hours a day, six days a week. She could knock a man into next Tuesday, or she could hold you so tight that you felt like a child again, in your mother’s loving embrace.
    “Etta,” I said, almost to myself.
    The boy tittered like a little maniac. He squirmed around in my arms and worked his way down to the ground.
    “Easy Rawlins.” Her smile came into me, and I smiled back.
    “What … I mean,” I stammered. The boy was running around his mother as fast as he could. “I mean, why are you here?”
    “We come t’ see you, Easy. Ain’t that right, LaMarque?”
    “Uh-huh,” the boy said. He didn’t even look up from his run.
    “Stop that racin’ now.” Etta reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder. She spun him around, and he looked up at me and smiled.
    “Hi,” he said.
    “We met already.” I motioned my head toward the lawn.
    When Etta saw the damage LaMarque had done her eyes got big and my heart beat a litter faster.
    “LaMarque!”
    The boy lowered his head and shrugged.
    “Huh?” he asked.
    “What you do to this yard?”
    “Nuthin’.”
    “Nuthin’?” You call this mess nuthin’?”
    She reached out to grab him, but LaMarque let himself fall to the ground, hugging his knees.
    “I’s just gard’nin’ in the yard,” he whimpered. “Thas all.”
    “Gard’nin’?” Etta’s dark face darkened even more, and the flesh around her eyes creased into a devil’s gaze. I don’t know how LaMarque reacted to that stare, but I was so worried that I couldn’t find my breath.
    She balled her fists so that her upper arms got even larger; a tremor went through her neck and shoulders.
    But then, suddenly, her eyes softened, she even laughed.
    Etta has the kind of laugh that makes other people happy.
    “Gard’nin’?” she said again. “Looks like you a reg’lar gard’nin’ tornado.”
    I laughed along with her. LaMarque didn’t exactly know why we were so cheery but he grinned too and rolled around on the ground.
    “Get up from there now, boy, and go get washed.”
    “Yes, Momma.” LaMarque knew how to be a good boy after he had been bad. He ran toward the house, but before he got past Etta she grabbed him by one arm, hefted him into the air, and gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek. He was grinning and wiping the kiss from his face as he turned to run for the door.
    Then Etta held her arms out and I walked into her embrace as if I had never heard of her husband, my best friend, Mouse.
    I buried my face in her neck and breathed in her natural, flat scent; like the smell of fresh-ground flour. I put my arms around EttaMae Harris and relaxed for the first time since I had last held her—fifteen years before.
    “Easy,” she whispered, and I didn’t know if I was holding her too tight or if she was calling my name.
    I knew that embrace was the same thing as holding a loaded gun to my head, because Raymond Alexander, known to his

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