CHAPTER 11

Rafer Malone answered the door. He raised his eyebrows. “So, you’re

back.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I’m back. Can we talk?”

“‘Bout what?”

I was starting to get pissed off. It was hot outside, even in the shade. I

could feel the air conditioning from inside the apartment slipping by me as it

drifted past the door to be lost forever in the summer heat. I took a deep breath.

“You know,” I said, “if I did or said something last night to start off on

your bad side, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d really

appreciate it if you’d talk with me about Charlie.” Rafer stared past me shoulder.

"Who's at the door, Rafer?" Arthur Davis call from inside.

"It's that friend of Charlie's who came by last night with Charlie’s sister."

"Well, don't stand there talking with the door open, son. Invite him in."

"Yes, Grandpa."

"You know we can't be wasting cool air on the front yard, Rafer."

"Yeah I know, Grandpa," Rafer said. He looked back to me. "Come on

in." He opened the door wider, inviting me inside.

Rafer’s apartment seemed luxurious compared with Charlie’s, thick off-

white carpet, nice furniture, bookshelves and framed prints on the walls -- good

taste rather than big money.

“Well,” Rafer said, “If we’re gonna talk, you might as well have a seat.” I

took the tan love seat while Rafer eased into a matching chair. “But first let’s get
one thing straight. You did not do or say anything to get on my ‘bad side’ as you

put it. I’m just a little baffled by you being an old friend of Charlie.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“You see, I’ve known Charlie since I was eight years old. During much of

the past twenty odd years I’ve spent more time talking with Charlie than with

anybody else I know, including family. And in all those years the only guy

named Jefferson he ever told me about was a white slave owner from Virginia

who had the audacity to proclaim that all men are created equal. So I got to

wonder just what sort of old friend of Charlie’s you really are.”

Rafer glared at me. “Yeah,” I said, meeting Rafer’s eyes, “I can see how

that could make you wonder. Charlie and I did go to high school together, but we

weren’t best buddies or anything. Then I spent eight years in the Army. When I

got out I went to ASU to study journalism. I ran into Charlie again then. He’s

helped me out on a few stories. Helped me out a lot.”

“Were you in ‘Nam?” The question surprised me.

“Yeah, I was there. Why?”

“Just wondered. My dad died there.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Long time ago,” he replied, shrugging it off. “If Charlie was helping

you, he must have liked what you wrote.”

“I think he did. Some of it I know he liked. Even so, I don’t know why he

told Heidi to call me.”

“But you told her you’d help?”

 “Charlie told her to call me. I couldn’t tell her ‘no’.”

Rafer looked at me. He nodded his head ever so slightly for a moment.

“Would you like a beer?”

“Yeah, I’d love one.”

Rafer walked into the kitchen, brought back two open bottles. He handed

me one and I thanked him.

Rafer sat down. I asked him to tell me about Charlie and how they knew

each other.

“Back in the early seventies, “ Rafer said, “when I was just a kid in grade

school, there was this program to get ASU students to come down to my school in

the evening to sort of mentor or tutor or whatever us inner-city kids. There was a

bunch of them at first, but after the first couple of weeks all those bright, shining,

middle class, suburban good intentions must have worn thin. Most of them

stopped coming around. The few that still showed up were pretty irregular about

it. But not Charlie. Every Monday and Wednesday night he’d be there, helping

kids with math or science or reading.

“By then I was living with my grandma and grandpa. They came a couple

of times to check it out. Once they saw what it was they had me there all the

time.

“Back then I was having trouble reading. I wasn’t keeping up with most

of the other kids in my class, and it was effecting how I was doing in other

subjects, as well. So my grandma, bless her heart, came one evening and talked

with Charlie about it. From then on he became sort of my personal tutor for
reading. He didn’t neglect other kids for me, but he’d work with me once a week

one on one in addition to the Monday and Wednesday nights.

“Even though he was like an adult to us, he told all us kids to just call him

Charlie. We didn’t even know his last name. Well my grandma would have none

of that. She insisted that I call him Mr. Charlie.”

"Just like Blues for Mister Charlie" I said.

Rafer's eyes opened wider at my reference to the play by James Baldwin.

I had surprised him. "How do you know about that?"

"I've read it. Powerful stuff."

“How’d you come how to read Blues for Mister Charlie?” Rafer asked.

"A long time ago an Army buddy of mine, a black guy from South

Carolina, told me I needed to expand my universe a little by learning about people

whose lives were different from mine. I asked him to tell me more, and he said

there were some books that maybe I should read. I told that I was willing if he'd

make the recommendations. So he wrote a list for me. Blues for Mister Charlie

was on the list."

Rafer sort of smiled and nodded his head, then took another sip from his

bottle of beer. Wanting to get back to Charlie I asked, "So how long was it

before," I said, then hesitated, searching for the right words.

"Before I learned that Mr. Charlie had a meaning other than what I called

Charlie Gonnerman?" Rafer said, grinning.

"Yeah.”
 "I was probably around 12 or 13 when I found a copy of Blues for Mister

Charlie on my Uncle Phil's bookshelf. In the neighborhood I'd heard white guys

referred to as Chuck all the time. But we never used the term Mister Charlie. So

when I saw it there at my uncle’s house, at first I thought somebody had written a

book about Charlie Gonnerman.

"When I took it off the shelf and asked my uncle if I could read it, he felt

obliged to tell me about the murder of Emmit Till down in Mississippi. He

explained how James Baldwin had used that killing of a black teenager, a proud,

young black man not much older than me, as the inspiration for his play. And

that's how I learned about the other meaning of Mister Charlie.

I nodded my head. "So, you and your buddy,” Rafer said, “the guy from

South Carolina, were you in 'Nam together?"

"Yeah," I said as I gazed past Rafer, out the window – that old thousand

meter stare.

"You ever see him these days?"

"No," I replied, my gaze drifting further than a thousand meters, out past a

new resort development at the foothills of South Mountain, and then beyond to

the mountain itself, "he didn't make it back."

"One of the names on the wall," Rafer said, "like my father." We sat in

silence. I was aware of the sound of the television coming from another room

where Rafer's grandfather was watching a ball game. "You read all the books on

the list?" Rafer asked.

"Yeah. It took me a few years, but eventually I read every one."

I paused. “So how long did you have to call him Mr. Charlie?”

“Oh, probably less than a year. It’s funny to look back on it now. But

Charlie became sort of big brother to me,” he chuckled, “a funny looking, white

hippie of a big brother.”

Rafer and I talked for another hour or so. I was hoping there was

something he knew that would help me find Charlie, but by the time I had heard

the whole story of Rafer and Charlie I still had no better idea of what had become

of Charlie Gonnerman.

We drank some more beer and Rafer opened up some more about himself.

When his father was killed in action in Vietnam, his mother was the beneficiary

of the Serviceman’s Group Life Insurance. Perhaps not trusting herself with a

large sum of cash, his mother gave the bulk of it to her uncle Sedrick, her

mother’s brother, who was a partner in one of the two mortuaries in Phoenix that

catered to the black community. She told Sedrick that the money was for Rafer to

use for college.

Sedrick was a shrewd businessman who had seen Phoenix start to grow in

the 1950s and knew that it would grow much larger. He invested the insurance

money and much of his own into 5 and 10-acre parcels of uninhabited desert far

out beyond the city limits. With no houses for miles around, there were no

neighbors to object to the land being purchased by a black man. By the early

1980s the value of those properties had increased exponentially as the constant

growth of the Valley’s surging population pushed the suburbs further and further
out from the city center. As Sedrick sold property he rolled the money into

income producing properties.

In addition to the apartments where he lived, Rafer owned four other

apartment complexes. He had not needed the money for college. Social Security

had paid his tuition at Arizona State.

When Rafer was five, his mother, who worked as a nurse at County

Hospital, was killed by a drunk driver as she was returning home from work on a

rainy night in December. Her parents, Arthur and Matilda Davis, raised Rafer

from the age of five. It was Grandma Tillie Davis who had approached Charlie

Gonnerman about tutoring Rafer once a week. Tillie had arranged with her

brother Sedrick to compensate Charlie for his time. Charlie wouldn’t accept any

money from Mrs. Davis, so she gave him the address of a service station in South

Phoenix in which Sedrick was part owner. Any time Charlie’s car was in need of

repair, he brought it to the Gulf station on the corner of 24th Street and Broadway.

Sedrick made sure that the blond, frizzy-haired white kid with the beat up old VW

bug always got a good deal.

Rafer was in his mid-twenties when his Uncle Sedrick turned over

management of the apartments Rafer owned. Rafer offered an apartment to

Charlie at monthly rent well below what Charlie was paying in Tempe. Rafer

said it was only fair. Tillie passed on in 1986 and Rafer convinced his

grandfather, Arthur Davis, to move into Rafer’s apartment. “I need you to help

me manage it,” Rafer had told his grandfather. “Got too many to work them all

by myself.”
 Before I left, Rafer apologized to me for being less than hospitable at first.

“I just couldn’t understand why Charlie would have his sister call you instead of

me,” he said. “And that still bothers me some. But there’s no use in blaming

you.”

I wondered about that as I drove back toward my office. All I could guess

was that Charlie, still acting like the big brother, didn’t want to involve Rafer in

whatever shit he had gotten into.

I hadn’t told Rafer the whole story about my conversation with Leon

Jordan. It had been late in the afternoon. We were covered in sweat and dust, up

by Nha Trang. Leon and I shared a beer, the last one we had until the next supply

shipment arrived.

“Here’s to racial harmony” I said, handing Leon the bottle.

Leon gave me a half smile. “Yeah, Trav, you like this. By sharin’ a bottle

with me you get to think that you don’t have a prejudiced bone in your body.”

Jordan and I had occasionally discussed racial issues a few times, but

always at the national or societal level. It had never gotten personal before.

“What do you mean, Leon? I’m not prejudiced. I think of you as a friend. What

have I ever done to make you think I’m some sort of bigot?”

“I didn’t say you were a bigot, Trav. I’m pretty sure you’re not. But let’s

not confuse bigotry, and by that I mean racial hatred, with prejudice.” He took

another sip of warm beer and passed the bottle back to me.
 I was brought up with fairly liberal attitudes about race, that everyone

should be treated equally. It bothered me that Leon didn’t seem to appreciate

what an enlightened, fair-minded guy I really was.

“So, help me out here, buddy,” I said and handed the bottle back, “just

what is it you’re trying to tell me.”

He took another pull on the near-empty bottle. “Well,” he said, “first of

all, we are friends.” He handed me the bottle. “Kill it,” he said. “But that’s

pretty easy here. We’re part of a good unit facing a common enemy. There are

black and brown and white faces, but here, as long as were all in the middle of

this shit, we are all green,” he said, and gave a little tug on the bottom of his

jungle fatigue shirt. “So as a result of our common situation, you and I, despite

our differences, are very much alike. As the sociologists like to say, out-group

hostility produces in-group solidarity.”

I nodded my head. “Now,” he said, “you told me yourself that you grew

up in the suburbs and attended schools that were mostly white with a smattering

of Chicanos and Indians thrown in. There were no Black people in your

neighborhood. Your friends were white, you dated white girls, and I imagine that

all your teachers were white, too. How’m I doing so far?”

“That’s a fairly accurate description of where I grew up. But I don’t see

what that’s got to do with it.”

Leon cocked one eyebrow. “Trav, where you grew up, you were not only

part of the dominant culture, it was literally the only culture. You had no reason
to feel threatened by other races because they weren’t even in the ball game with

you.”

“You mean I didn’t feel threatened ‘cause you weren’t there lookin’ to

marry my sister?”

“More or less. Not that I’d want to marry your sister. ‘Specially if she

looks anything like you.” Leon smiled. “But here’s my point. Since there were

no blacks around when you were growing up, your perceptions of black people,

and that’s what I’m talking about when I say prejudice, were shaped by white

people, whether they were your friends, your family, or people who produced the

movies and TV shows you watched.”

“Let’s take it one step further. There is a source through which you could

have absorbed a good deal of authentic black culture and history.”

“Why is it I suspect that it’s not going to be listening to the Supremes?”

“Because the black music you hear on the radio, has, for the most part,

been highly sanitized for mass marketing to white audiences.” Leon smiled at me

again, sort of reminding me that he had the benefit of a college degree from a very

good school, while I had spent most of my single year in college playing football

and getting high.

“No, my friend,” Leon said, “what you really need, if you want to learn

about people who are different from you, is to read books written by those people.

They will tell you the stories of their lives, how they grew up, what they learned

and how they survived. Then, whatever your perceptions and understandings

might be, at least they will be based in reality.”

 Leon was my friend, and I valued what he had said to me. “I’d be

grateful,” I said, “if you’d give me some recommendations.”

“It would be my pleasure,” Leon grinned. He must have hijacked the clerk’s typewriter

during the night. The next morning, Leon presented me with a list. James Baldwin’s

Blues for Mister Charlie was at the top.