Nothing to Lose

Chapter 4

39 for forty years. As I started out, I heard Greg call after me, “Hey.” I turned around. “Integration, huh? I was in the first group of black kids to ever really get integrated in this town. Been integrating all my life. And now look at me, look where I’m at.” He chuckled and shook his head, “You saw all those black faces in this school.Tell me what good it’s all done.” “Probably none,”I said.“But it seemed to have helped you and Harry.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah. Go Bobcats.” On the way out,I congratulated myself for possibly having two people pay me for what the cops were making me do.But I had this feeling that I had stumbled into doing just what they wanted me to do. l By three, the gray day had grown darker, storm clouds had bunched up, and I could see the rain coming from the north. It was still oppressively humid, but the norther was pushing cool rain toward Beaumont, so instead of shorts I pulled on a pair of stiff jeans,the first time since April. I drove to the address that Lee Tomlinson had given to me and found myself in Old Town in front of an iron gate with a run-down exmansion behind it. I looked for some way to get through the gate, and finally found a buzzer. When I buzzed, the gate opened.The house had once been green but the dried, peeling paint had turned the color of a crumpled, used pastel tissue. I heard toenails click on cement, then a low growl. I froze in time to see an enormous mutt walk toward me. I didn’t know mutts could get that big. I thought only a purposefully bred dog could get that size. He walked toward me drooling and growling. He had gray around his face, and he would have run toward me, he was trying to run, but his muscles just wouldn’t work.Then I heard,“Balanchine,shush.”Lee Tomlinson in a pair of very tight shorts showing off her shapely legs stepped out from the back of the house with a tall, cloudy tonic glass in her one hand and a cigarette in the other. Her feet still pointed out like a ballet dancer’s. “This way, Mr. Jackson.This way. Don’t mind Balanchine.” In fact Balanchine stopped his growling, looked up at me, drooled, and wagged his tail. When I rubbed the top of his head, he drooled some more and vigorously wagged his tail. He then followed me to Lee. Lee sniffed the air.Then Balanchine stopped sniffing me to sniff the air. 40 “The rain. You can smell it coming,” Lee said. I looked over my left shoulder to the north. “You can see it coming, too.” “The rain and the feel of it coming and going is one of the things that makes this area delightful.” “Yeah, I guess,” I said. “Oh, Mr. Jackson, I know most people don’t like the humidity, but it makes the air seem soft. It surrounds you and massages you. Keeps your skin moist, too,” she said and opened her back door. She stepped into a screened porch.She had a small wicker table set up with gin,tonic water, a bucket of ice, and freshly cut mint. She sat in one wicker chair and motioned for me to sit in the other one. “I thought that we could chat outside and enjoy the coming rain.” I wished that I had worn shorts. “Besides, my house is mostly a wreck. My house remains a wreck. I’ve been fixing it and redecorating for years, but my salary doesn’t match my plans.” Balanchine pressed his nose against the screen door, and Lee jumped up and let him in. He immediately hobbled over to me, put his head in my lap, and drooled. “Push him out of the way when you get tired of him.” I wanted to get more of her confidence before I pushed her dog’s head out of my lap.Lee slumped into her chair,crossed one bare leg over the other,and dangled her sandal from her toes.“Make yourself a drink,” she said.She took a long drag on her cigarette,then crushed it out in the ashtray on the table. “I don’t really smoke. Just one a day. That’s all. A reward.” She returned to her cross...