Read Baby Brother's Blues for Free Online Page B

place were, and how much
shakin’
and
grinnin’
they expected before they would part with their little sweaty George Washingtons.
    But that was about to change. She could feel it. General Richardson didn’t remember her, but she knew exactly who he was. She had met him when Mr. Blue had helped Madonna handle a problem she was having with that fool King James. They didn’t actually meet, per se. General was just there in the room when Brandi told Mr. Blue what was going on and asked him to help her cousin, who was afraid for her life and hiding out at her mama’s house.
    Blue said he would help and there’d been no more trouble, so there was no reason for Brandi to go back to his place of business. Sometimes when she went to the twenty-four-hour beauty salon in West End, she’d see General driving that big black Lincoln around and think that was the kind of man she needed. Somebody who could take her places, spend some money on her. She’d never even been to Vegas and she was almost twenty-five years old!
    She wished she had spoken to him that night at Mr. Blue’s after she got through talking about Madonna, but she hadn’t had a chance to make any introductions. She’d told herself back then that if she ever ran into him again, she’d get in his face until he sat up and took notice. Well, she thought to herself with a smile, she sure did that. She didn’t know what it was about that damn mark on her ass that got his attention, but when she asked him if he wanted to kiss it, he looked like he had seen a ghost, handed her another hundred-dollar bill, and left. That was a total of two hundred dollars and he’d never laid a hand on her. She didn’t make that much for having sex.
Not that she was hookin’!
There were just times when a girl had to do what she had to do to make ends meet. Brandi was tired of that kind of life. She knew she could do better and she knew General could help her do it. All she had to do was
grin and shake that ass.
Just like always.
    She snubbed out her cigarette, pinched her nipples to life, and headed back out to the pole.

6
    T his was not Blue’s favorite part of the life he had chosen, but this was the essence of it. It was his willingness to do what had to be done that made it possible for him to impose order on one small southwest Atlanta neighborhood. He used to say this life was chosen for him, as if he had no choice in the matter, but that wasn’t exactly true. Nothing happened to Blue Hamilton by accident or coincidence. His lives—this one, and the others he could remember—were ruled by the same vast organizing principle that connected all things to one another and to themselves in one endless cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth.
    His lives were no more or less extraordinary than anyone else’s. The extraordinary thing about Blue was that he remembered them. He carried forward clear memories of where he had been and what he had done. He knew there was still penance to be done and scores to be settled that went back centuries, crossed oceans, survived slavery, and now brought him to West End to try to make some sense of himself and his people.
    In the front seat, General kept his eyes on the two-lane blacktop, looking for landmarks. As they passed an abandoned Shell station, he slowed the car and glanced in the rearview mirror. Blue met his eyes and nodded. General turned the big Lincoln left and eased it down the unpaved stretch that would dead-end at the trailer where the man they were looking for was hiding.
    “Cut the lights,” Blue said.
    General’s immediate obedience to the command plunged the narrow road into sudden darkness. Without being asked, he lowered the windows so they could hear anything out of the ordinary and popped the locks on all four doors while they were still too far away for the dull thump to alert a careful listener. As was his habit, Blue was dressed in a black cashmere overcoat and a dark suit. His one concession to the mission that