didn’t show up at the coffee shop until 11:48.
He came in wearing the same dark green slacks and yellow sports shirt that Assistant Warden Lumpin had provided him with for the impromptu trial that freed him.
I stood to shake his hand when he approached my table but he wasn’t in a welcoming mood.
“Damn fool want me to jump through hoops like a trained seal,” Tempest said as he sat down.
“Who?” I asked.
“Bring me a menu,” he snapped at the waitress, who was startled and jumped to comply.
“What’s wrong, Tempest?”
All my concern got me was a glower and a grunt.
He opened the menu but wasn’t actually reading it. The brunette waitress was maybe twenty, white, and most certainly afraid of Tempest. I didn’t blame her. Violence was pulsating around the newly released ex-con like the raised quills of a porcupine.
“You got eggs?” he asked her.
“We stop serving breakfast at noon.”
“Damn!”
“You still have ten minutes.”
“Gimme five eggs and some bacon,” he said.
“How do you want that?”
“The bacon?”
“The eggs,” she said apologetically.
“You got real eggs or powdered?” he asked.
“Real.”
“Four scrambled and one hard-boiled.”
“That’s more than one order,” she said.
“Fine. He’s payin’ anyway.”
The frightened young woman looked to me and I nodded. She went off to make the orders and Tempest turned his head to look out of the window.
“What’s wrong, Tempest?” I asked again.
“You know what’s wrong, man. You know. I got to tell you about how they shot me down? How your people want me in hell? Or, when I just stood up for what I believed, how I was put in a body on the run from conviction for manslaughter? I got to tell you I’m on parole and I been in that office across the street for almost five hours waitin’ for a eight-minute meetin’?”
“No.”
“Then why you ask?”
“I’m concerned with your feelings.”
“You want to send me to hell is what you want,” Tempest said in a voice loud enough to attract the attention of other patrons.
“Tempest.”
“You mean Ezzard,” he said. “Killer, thief, and ex-con—Ezzard Walcott. Puppet of angels and hounded by hell. Now I’m an ex-con with a record and a clock tickin’ away like a time bomb strapped to my back.”
The timid waitress came up and slid the breakfast toward the angry man.
As she backed away I asked, “How did the meeting go?”
Tempest looked at me and for a moment I thought he might throw a punch. It was a wonder that we had never come to blows in the years that we’d known each other. He was an angry man and violent to the degree of protecting his territory. He’d just come out of prison but still he held his rage in check.
“They give me a envelope wit’ sixty-two dollars in it,” he said when the tension abated. “I got a bed in a rooming house in East Harlem and a whole page full’a deadlines that if I don’t meet ’em they put me back in prison.”
“Who did you speak to?” I asked to soften the words and their meanings.
“Aldo Trieste is his name. White guy look like he exercise three times a week but tells people he work out like some kinda athlete. Got a college degree on his dirty wall and a picture of a woman look like a stripper on his desk. Picture probably came with the frame and the degree came in the mail—I bet.”
“What did Mr. Trieste say?”
“Sixty-two dollars a week and a room with two keys. One of the keys is his. I got to try for at least twelve jobs a week and I have to get a job before the month is out, or I get sent back. He needs to know who hires me and he might visit my employer if he thinks that’s justified. I can’t be in proximity of any criminals and, even if I don’t know about their records, I could be sent back to the joint for any what he calls ‘fraternization infractions.’ I need to be in my place by eight thirty every night unless I have a night job and then I have to be back home
Chelle Bliss, Brenda Rothert