Free Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (Socrates Fortlow 1) by Walter Mosley Page A

five days. An ev’ry day I go in there I ask’em if they got my okay from the head office yet.”
    “An’ what they say about that?”
    “Well, the first day that boy, that Anton Crier, just said no. So I left. Next day he told me that I had to leave. But I said that I wanted to talk to his boss. She come down an’ tell me that she done already said how I cain’t work there if I don’t have no phone.”
    “Yeah,” asked Stony Wile. “Then what’d you do?”
    “I told’em that they should call downtown and get some kinda answer on me because I was gonna come back ev’ryday till I get some kinda answer.” There was a finality in Socrates’ voice that opened Stony’s eyes wide.
    “You don’t wanna do sumpin’ dumb now, Socco,” he said.
    “An’ what would that be?”
    “They could get you into all kindsa trouble, arrest you for trespassin’ if you keep it up.”
    “Maybe they could. Shit. Cops could come in here an’ blow my head off too, but you think I should kiss they ass?”
    “But that’s different. You got to stand up for yo’ pride, yo’ manhood. But I don’t see it wit’ this supermarket thing.”
    “Well,” Socrates said. “On Thursday Ms. Grimes told me that the office had faxed her to say I wasn’t qualified for the position. She said that she had called the cops and said that I’d been down there harassin’ them. She said that they said that if I ever come over there again that they would come arrest me. Arrest me! Just for tryin’ t’get my rights.”
    “That was the fourth day?” Stony asked to make sure that he was counting right.
    “Uh-huh. That was day number four. I asked her could I see that fax paper but she said that she didn’t have it, that she threw it out. You ever hear’a anything like that? White woman workin’ for a white corporation throwin’ out paperwork?”
    Stony was once a shipbuilder but now worked on a fishing day boat out of San Pedro. He’d been in trouble before but never in jail. He’d never thought about the thousands of papers he’d signed over his life; never wondered where they went.
    “Why wouldn’t they throw them away?” Stony asked.
    “Because they keep ev’ry scrap’a paper they got just as long as it make they case in court.”
    Stony nodded. Maybe he understood.
    “So I called Bounty’s head office,” Socrates said. “Over in Torrence.”
    “You lyin’.”
    “An’ why not? I applied for that job, Stony. I should get my hearin’ wit’ them.”
    “What’d they say?”
    “That they ain’t never heard’a me.”
    “You lyin’,” Stony said again.
    “Grimes an’ Crier the liars. An’ you know I went down there today t’tell’em so. I was up in Anton’s face when he told me that Ms. Grimes was out. I told him that they lied and that I had the right to get me a job.”
    “An’ what he say?”
    “He was scared. He thought I mighta hit’im. And I mighta too except Ms. Grimes comes on down.”
    “She was there?”
    “Said that she was on a lunch break; said that she was gonna call the cops on me. Shit. I called her a liar right to her face. I said that she was a liar and that I had a right to be submitted to the main office.” Socrates jabbed his finger at Stony as if he were the one holding the job hostage. “I told’er that I’d be back on Monday and that I expected some kinda fair treatment.”
    “Well that sounds right,” Stony said. “It ain’t up to her who could apply an’ who couldn’t. She got to be fair.”
    “Yeah,” Socrates answered. “She said that the cops would be waitin’ for me on Monday. Maybe Monday night you could come see me in jail.”
    {5.}
    On Saturday Socrates took his canvas cart full of cans to the Boys Market on Adams. He waited three hours behind Calico, an older black woman who prowled the same streets he did, and two younger black men who worked as team.
    Calico and DJ and Bernard were having a good time waiting. DJ was from Oakland and had come down to L.A.