Free Charcoal Joe by Walter Mosley Page B

guess that was too much for her.”
    “Some orphan?” I asked, being an orphan myself.
    “We agreed that if there was to be a father it would be you.”
    I frowned and Jo peered into me and then gasped.
    “Bonnie done gone,” she said as a revelation. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry. Here I’m such a mess I didn’t see what was written on your heart.”
    I never asked how Jo interpreted the world. I didn’t believe in voodoo or black magic, Jesus Christ nor any of his relatives or counterparts. But even though I had my own worldview I couldn’t deny that Jo knew things and did things that I could not explain.
    “Can I help?” she asked me.
    There was no one else in the world that could ask me that question and give me pause. Jo had power in her potions, notions, and hands. I could ask her to help me forget or maybe even how I might get Bonnie back. I could ask her anything, confident that she would never take an action that would hurt me or mine.
    “No,” I said after stumbling through the corridor of those thoughts. “Bonnie’s left me and that’s the right thing for her. It’s right for me too. I love her but her need is not me.”
    Tears flowed down Mama Jo’s black cheeks. I believe that she saw my truth in her own breast. This feeling was a balm because I had never before felt on equal footing with the backwoods witch.
    “Then why are you here?” she whispered.
    “Maybe it’s that thing about the earth spirit you’re always talking about.”
    “But even then you had to have a reason to come,” Jo offered.
    I told her the whole story of Joguye Cham and my ex.
    “Hard to be angry in the face’a true love,” Jo said. “Add to that how generous Bonnie is and your heart could break three times over.”
    “You know people who could take her and her husband in,” I said, “people that could hide him from whatever assassins the governments might shake out the woodwork.”
    “America might grab him,” Jo agreed. “Kill him in his cell or deport him to his enemy. Money could do that in its sleep.”
    “Do you know a place?”
    “I do. I’ll call Raymond and have him make the right moves. By Saturday morning nobody’ll find them.”
    “You need to call Jewelle or Jackson,” I said. “They put them somewhere safe until I got in touch with you.”
    “You wanna know where I’m sendin’ ’em?” Jo asked.
    “No.”
    She smiled and reached for me even though I was too far away to touch.
    “But I need somethin’ from you too,” she said.
    “What’s that?”
    “I ran Coco outta here ’cause I loved her too much. I could see the mother in her and the changes a baby would bring out. I could feel the strength of her womanhood and the hidden mind that was sleeping inside the mind she knew. I know better than to try and wake a woman up to what she is, what she can be. But you know love’s a fool; they tell you that on the radio a thousand times a day. We hear it but that don’t matter. We done heard it so often that it’s just sounds in the air.”
    I was surprised that Jo knew anything about a radio.
    Jo stopped talking and stared at the dirt floor. The raven vocalized some kind of complaint and the cat pounced on something in a corner.
    After maybe three minutes I said, “You wanted me to do something for you, Jo?”
    She smiled and then looked up.
    “I wrote a letter,” she said.
    She turned on the bench and rummaged around the jars and bottles, bunches of branches and dried dead things. Finally she came out with a stack of blue-lined school paper, maybe eighteen, twenty sheets. These she handed to me.
    She had written on both sides of each sheet. Her tiny script made up two lines for each space provided. I didn’t read the words.
    “I been writin’ it since she walked out the door,” Jo said.
    “You want me to take it to her?”
    “She’s at that hippie house above the Sunset Strip.”
    “No problem.” I folded the tome and put it in my jacket pocket.
    Jo stared at me for a