Free Sketcher by Roland Watson-Grant Page B

and put it in his hair, and it was dripping all over his bicycle like he’d fallen into the bayou a coupla times. Plus, he had on these sunglasses two sizes bigger than his face, and he was wearing a leatherette jacket and some extra belts with big buckles. He also kept grabbing at his pants. I asked him if that’s what a ninja looks like, cos there was no way in hell I could tell at the time that he was tryin’ to look like Michael Jackson or whatever. My father only fixed TVs: we didn’t have one for ourselves. Well, that just started the ninja mission off on the wrong foot, cos he was mighty pissed at me – and when Pa Campbell dropped us off in Gentilly, he just kept pedalling the bike the rest of the way real fast with me ridin’ on the handlebars, till I got scared and told him he did look a li’le bit like Michael Jackson and he slowed down. The truth is, Harry Tobias couldn’t look like Michael Jackson even if he prayed for it. He kept tellin’ people he was half Cherokee, half black and half something else, so he couldn’t even get his fractions right... idiot.
    So, there we were in Gentilly, and after a while I hopped off the handlebars and walked up to a clean, white wroughtiron gate with “ Deux Cent Quarante-Deux ” written in gold cursive on a black iron plate. Behind the little gate was oneof those gardens I saw in the magazines that Moms used to buy. She knew all the flowers in French gardens by name. She wanted a garden based on that Marie Antoinette lady we studied in school. So she’d stay up nights readin’ and wishin’ she could grow boxwood bushes, pink petunias, white roses and peonies – but all that salty soil in the swamp don’t allow for that kind of daydreamin’: we had to settle for some aloe vera, peppermint or periwinkle in a couple of Sherwin-Williams paint cans out on the porch.
    I pushed the gate and went up the narrow walkway with the flowers nodding at me on both sides, while Harry T waited by the kerb, looking in a little mirror and fussing with his Jheri-that-didn’t-really-curl. The house was baby-blue with French windows and white mouldin’ that made it look like a birthday cake. Tiny peach-and-brown birds bounced around a fancy concrete bath in the courtyard, and through the trees little sequins of light came down and sprinkled a few wrought-iron chairs and a table in the garden shade. Ahhh yes . You could sit there all day in the shade and have tea and soup, if you wanted to – though with so many birds above your head I don’t think it would be a good idea.
    I stopped at the door and fished around in my jeans pockets for the note Moms gave me to deliver. She said Pops would be at 242 Plume Noire. He would be there calling on a customer to fix a stereo, and I was to go give it to him, this note. As usual she was very specific. She said: “Now, when you knock and the person comes to the door, say good morning, ask for your father and hand the note to him.” I said OK, cos that sounded real simple for a ninja mission, but somehow as I stood there looking at the note in my hand, something began to stink about this whole thing.
    The damn door knocker seemed to know it too. It was one of those knockers that you see all the time with a mean-lookin’ lion bitin’ into a big ol’ cast-iron ring. But this pa’ticular lion was grinning like he was saying to me: “Go ahead and knock,if you have the balls, kid.” So I did. Well, after the fifteenth knock-knock-knock, Harry was getting antsy, cos his hair was melting in the sun and I was all ready to quit this mission. But someone peeped through the fancy fleur-de-lis latticework over the top of the door. Then the latch goes kruckkruck, I hear the bolt sliding out slow, the door groans open, I look up and... I’m standing face to belly button with Miss Fiola Lambert.
    I’m thinkin’ Moms set this up cos I’m always