The Right Mistake Read Free

right mistake,” Socrates said. “Just that he too stupid to get somethin’ out of it. But there still something there he could’a known.”
Even as Socrates spoke his mind was far beyond the conversation in that room. He was thinking about Darryl and all the things that the boy had yet to learn. All these years he’d sat at Socrates’ feet trying to feel better about himself.
Socrates had murdered a man, raped the man’s girlfriend, and then murdered her. He’d been drunk but that was no excuse. He’d spent twenty-seven years in prison but that was not justice. No, he lived by the good graces of his benefactor, who let him stay in this small garden cottage in the middle of SouthCentral L.A. But that wasn’t right either.
Socrates realized that he’d been acting a fool with his friends; even worse, he was wasting time.
“Ain’t nuthin’ Fred Bumpus could learn worth the house his granddaddy built,” Comrade said from someplace far away.
“What you say, CJ?” Socrates asked.
“That bitch done stole his family house,” Comrade spat. “The lesson is too late.”
“It ain’t nevah too late,” Socrates said slowly, softly—like a memory. “Not till the last man that knew your name is dead.”
Socrates looked down at the wood beneath his well-worn shoes.
Martin Orr said, “Well, I better be gettin’ outta here. I’ma be lookin’ for pickup work in the mornin’ down near Exposition. Sometimes they need a glass man.”
The other men left soon after that. Socrates nodded when they said good-bye to him but he wasn’t listening. Somehow he knew that this part of his life was over. There would be no more games of dominoes or bull sessions in his home.
“Socrates . . . Socrates . . .”
He looked up to see the boy.
“What?”
“You okay?”
“Where is everybody?” the big man asked.
“They all gone. I’m goin’ over Myrtle Brown’s house,” the boy said. “I’ll see ya later on this week all right?”
“Myrtle Brown?”
“Uh-huh.” Darryl ducked his head and turned his chin toward his shoulder.
“She’s at least forty.”
The boy had no response.
Socrates wanted to talk about it, to advise the boy, but he couldn’t find the words. Everything had been sucked out of him. He considered grabbing Darryl by the shoulder but his hands were like heavy weights on his knees.
“What?” Darryl asked after two minutes of this silence.
“I was wrong to bully CJ like I did,” Socrates confessed.
“He a fool,” Darryl said.
“And the next time you act a fool would I be right to shame you?”
“If I deserve it.”
“No, boy.” Socrates sat up and touched Darryl’s elbow. “It’s you and me out there in the world and in here too.”
“You want me to stay?”
“Naw. You go on if you want. Go on.”
2.
    From the time Darryl left, about four in the afternoon, until sunset Socrates sat in his chair looking at his shoes. He wore size fourteens that were extra wide. Those same black shoes had carried him for years. They walked him out of Indiana and into Watts. They strode with him down block after block when he collected bottles and they brought him home every night when he lived in a gap between the outer walls of two abandoned stores. They’d taken him to the supermarket where he’d worked as a box boy until they had to fire him.
    He’d worn them the day that he killed a powerful young thug in a lonely alley near his old makeshift home. They marched with him in the evil boy’s funeral procession where his mother cried from grief and his grandmother shed tears of joy.
    He’d shined those shoes every week and seven times he had the soles replaced. There were a thousand cracks in the shapeless black leather and fitted and sewn cowhide patches where his baby toes had burst through.
    Socrates stared at his shoes hoping that they would give up some secret. They’d been with him all the years since prison, had been silent accomplices to blood that he’d shed. His shoes were closer to him than any