Midnight by Odie Hawkins

Author:Odie Hawkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504035750
Publisher: Open Road Distribution
Published: 2016-02-24T05:00:00+00:00

6

Fred and Helene were back from the north, full of piss, vinegar, and good vibes. “Too bad you don’t have more time, Bop; you’d love the north. You know how it is when you go inland; shit is different.”

Helene made one of her uniquely creative dishes, a lasagna-styled casserole with tamales and pasta. Fred set up the party atmosphere with three beers. They enjoyed each other’s company. Fred exchanged winks with his wife. “What did you do while we were gone?”

Bop tried to tell them but nothing would come out. “Oooh, I hung out, you know, just sorta hung out.”

Fred had drunk just enough beer to challenge his description of what he had done. “Just hung out? What the hell does that mean?”

Wowwww …, shades of Aunt Lu and Uncle David. “Uhhh, well, you know what I mean.”

Later on that evening, after the mango pie, they spooled it out more carefully. “So, now, you got a woman, huh?”

Elena Boateng, my woman? Hmmmmm. “Uhhh, Fred, I wouldn’t go so far as to call her that.”

“What would you call her? Y’all been fuckin’, right?”

Fred’s words scalded him. It would’ve been all right to talk about the scene together, man to man, but not in front of Helene.

“Uhh, I think you could say we’ve become tight.”

Helene Vernon saved him from further explanation with a letter. “I checked the PO box and this is for you.”

Subconsciously, while waiting for the envelope to be placed in his hand, he asked the silent question: Did they send any money?

The letter was from Chester L. Simmons, written in a dim cell in a Romanian prison.

“It’s from Chester.”

“I saw the return address.”

Bop stripped the brown envelope off of the three-page letter. “It’s from Chester L. Simmons.”

The Vernons exchanged knowing looks; it was obvious from Bop’s tone of voice that he was talking about a hero. He started reading the letter aloud without thinking. “Ohhh, sorry; you guys wanna hear this?”

“Read it, Bop; let’s see what ol’ Chester boy is talking about.”

“Bop, I hope this letter finds you at the Vernons’ place and that you and they are doing as well as possible. As you can see from the info on the envelope ’n shit, I’m doing time in another kind of joint. A Romanian jail, youngblood, is not to be laughed at. But I’ll deal with that in due time. What happened? Well, let me make it quick ’n dirty. After you got out I got a li’l bit antsy. You know how it is. I didn’t even have anybody to rap with.… I don’t have to try to begin to tell you what a conversation with the average funky chump is like in the joint. So, I decided to ‘absent’ myself.

“How do you ‘absent’ yourself from prison? Well, you just don’t be there anymore. It ain’t no real big thang. As a matter of fact, I used to ‘absent’ myself as often as I wanted to. I ran into the fuckin’ warden one night, in a Mexican restaurant in Chino, and he asked me whether I was going to be back in for the morning roll call.

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