Colored Heat-Chapter 34

Chapter Thirty-Four

                I don’t know why any of us thought a beauty parlor might be open on a Sunday afternoon, but there we were, Lester, Sheriff Martin, and I, standing like three fools in the hot sun pulling at a screen door whose hook was on the latch.  The building was set back from the street, and a crumbling sidewalk led up to the front door.  There was no porch, and the first and only floor was at ground level.  A wide, cracking pavement stone sat in front of the door.

                “Looks like nobody’s home,” said Lester, and the sheriff nodded in agreement.  There was no movement by the passenger in the back of the police car.  We stepped back from the door and surveyed the building.  There was parched, yellow grass in front and on the sides, and I wandered around to the left to see what I could see.

                I had just walked around the corner of the building when I saw a man run out of the back and toward

South 12th Street

.  “Hey!” I called after him, and he glanced back at me briefly without slowing his pace.  Lester and Sheriff Martin came around to the side of the house moments later, and I pointed at the man.  We began to run after him.

“Shoot!” said the sheriff in frustration.  I was much younger than they and ran much faster.  Sheriff Martin at some point behind me pulled his radio from his belt to call Lucas for backup.  Lester must have given up running soon after we began, because when we rounded the corner onto

Elm Street

I looked back and saw only the sheriff, huffing and puffing behind me.  The man ahead of me was not far off, and he suddenly ducked behind a car and crouched down.  “Y’all better stay back!” he yelled.  “I got a gun!”  I froze in my tracks and Sheriff Martin overtook me seconds later and knocked me to the ground.  I lay there for a moment, stunned, before getting up into a crouch and running to shelter behind the only other car parked on the street.  Sheriff Martin was right behind me.

                Elm Street was deserted that day, in the hot middle of a Sunday afternoon.  It was a black neighborhood, and I suppose everyone must have been at Sunday church meetings that lasted till dinnertime.  The black man crouched behind a beat up old brown station wagon, about fifty yards down the street from us; we crouched behind an old Buick Regal.

                “You don’t want any trouble, do you, son?” the sheriff yelled.  “Just come out with your hands up and toss that gun out in the street where I can see it.”  There was no reply.  “Shoot,” said the sheriff quietly.  “I hate this kind of thing.  Where the hell is Lucas?”

                “I can’t believe this,” I said.  “Do you think that’s Earl?”

                “Who knows,” he said.  “Chances are looking pretty good, though, wouldn’t you say?”

                I agreed.  No cars went by and we crouched there for a minute or two.  Those minutes seemed much longer than any minutes I’d known before.  “Lucas should be here.  Where is he?” said the sheriff.

                Just then, along came Lucas in his police car, screeching around the corner from South 12th onto Elm.  His lights were on but his siren was off.  “Damn it, Lucas,” said the sheriff to himself,  “I told you to use the siren.”  He pulled up in a hurry, screeching to a halt in the middle of the street next to the car that shielded us.

                He got out and a shot rang out from behind the station wagon.  Lucas probably hit the ground before the bullet even arrived.  He crawled quickly over to us and joined us behind the Buick.  “What the hell was that?” he said, taking his revolver out of the holster and checking it.

                “Not sure,” Sheriff Martin replied.  “We were checking a report at Ruby’s Palace of Beauty on South 12th when a man suddenly took off out the back way.  We chased him and here we are.”

        “What now?” I asked, and the sheriff smiled.

                “He can’t sit there forever, Carey.  Sooner or later he has to make a move, and then we’ve got him.”

                Sure enough, as Sheriff Martin was speaking, the man sprinted from behind the station wagon, running across the street and toward a house.  Lucas was on his feet in an instant, aiming and firing low.  I was surprised to see that it only took him one shot to take the runner down.

                We all ran over to the sidewalk where he lay, shot in the calf, bleeding and yelling angrily at the sheriff.

        “Dammit,” he said.  “You didn’t have to shoot me.  Damn!”

                “Radio for an ambulance, Lucas,” said Sheriff Martin, and Lucas headed back to his car.  He looked at the man lying in the street holding his leg. “You Earl Pernell?” he asked.

        “Yeah,” the man replied.

                “We got a lot to talk about,” the sheriff said to him, then turned and walked slowly back to the cruiser.  I waited there a moment, standing next to Earl in the middle of

Elm street

, not knowing what to say.  I followed the sheriff back to Lucas’s car.  He was talking to Lucas, who leaned against the open door on the driver’s side.

“Don’t know what it’s all about, Luke,” he said, “but once we get the the hospital I mean to find out.”

                “What about Johnson?” I asked.  The sheriff looked at me blankly for a moment, then nodded and told Lucas to walk over to South 12th and bring Johnson down to the station and lock him up.  Lucas walked off to do his duty.

“I want you to come to the hospital with me, Carey,” Sheriff Martin said.  “You’re in the middle of this and you seem to know more than anyone.  I want you to talk to Earl with me.”

                “Will do,” I said.  After a few minutes, an ambulance arrived and Earl Pernell was loaded in the back.  We followed the van to the Carollo County Hospital.  I was glad to go there to see someone else than my grandmother for a change.