Besides, even if I’d had a gun and could use it, that wouldn’t necessarily do the job. In fact, there was one night when news arrived that he’d been in a drunken bar fight and his best friend, Simon Grant, had shot Freddie in the stomach. Glory Hallelujah, praise the Lord! But Freddie’s huge belly acted like a bulletproof vest. He bled profusely, but after they removed the bullet and kept him in the hospital overnight for observation, he went right on in to work the next day.
Not knowing what tactic would serve me in the quest I had absolutely resigned myself to undertaking, every violent episode was further proof that I had no choice but to do away with him. That was very much in my mind one night when he was obviously preparing to beat Momma again and I ran to call the cops.
Right near Sy’s at the intersection of Ninth and Meineke was a bar called the Casbah. Sure that somebody would loan me ten cents to make a call on the pay phone outside the bar, I approached the first guy I saw—a cat who looked like a postcard version of a 1962 north-side Milwaukee player, with a snap brim hat, sharkskin suit, and pin knot tie.
“Mister, look,” I say, dashing toward him, out of breath, “can you please give me a dime? I gotta call the police, ’cause my stepfather’s about to beat up my mother.”
This cat, he doesn’t blink an eye, saying only, “You can’t hustle me, nigger.”
Now I want to kill this motherfucker in addition to Freddie.
After I find someone willing to trust me that my mother’s life really is in danger, I get through to the police, and two police officers, both white, are sent to the house.
When they arrive, Freddie is sitting on the couch, and they’re obviously surprised to see a man of his size. After they exchange nervous glances at each other, one of them clears his throat, asking, “Mr. Triplett, can we use your phone? We need to call the wagon.”
One of the few times Freddie exhibits anything close to a sense of humor he leans in to them and replies, “Hell, naw, you can’t use my goddamn phone to call the police to bring a wagon to take me to jail. Fuck you!”
It was ludicrous. They eventually coaxed him to go with them down to the station. Once he was gone, I asked Momma why they had tried to use our phone to call the police if they were the police and were already at our house. She said, “Well, maybe they thought they needed a couple of big police officers to get him out of here.”
This was as maddening as the day that Momma ran to hide at Odom’s corner store on Tenth and Wright. The owner, Mr. Odom, was the daddy of a school friend of mine, and he didn’t try to stop my mother from lying down behind the counter.
