“Easy, your life is way harder’n mine and I’m what they call a career criminal,” he said before opening the door to his chartreuse Caddy.

“Thanks for helpin’, Ray.”

“Call me if the reaper at the do’, man. I like the way you do business.”

17

17

I stopped at a twenty-four-hour gas station on Sepulveda. The attendant filled the tank and checked the oil. He washed my windshield too. It was 12:47 in the morning but I didn’t hesitate to make the next call from a phone booth at a far corner of the lot.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Jackson.”

“Easy.” You could hear his smile over the phone.

“You up?” I asked.

“You know I am, brother. Between midnight and five a.m. is the only time I get for my personal studies.”

Jackson’s “studies” consisted of an in-depth examination of dozens of professional scientific and social-psychological journals that wrote about the latest research, inventions, and theories concerning their particular subject of interest. I once asked the cowardly genius why he’d spend so much time studying things that scientists around the world got paid for.

His answer was, “Capitalism.”

“So now you a communist?”

“No, Easy, I like my money like any other niggah do, but it’s the way we get it fucks with the flow’a knowledge.”

It always tickled me when Jackson started talking like a ghetto professor. I was reminded that understanding was not the property of any race or class, religion or revolution.

“How does an economic system fuck with what you know?”

“The production line, brothah. Man, woman, or child, you work on the production line. And when you on that line you only know your one specialized task. Attach the left front tire to the Ford; put the doodad in the big box. You a blind man strokin’ a elephant. And it’s not just Detroit puttin’ a car together. You work for Psychology Today an’ you prob’ly don’t know shit about the latest breakthroughs in quantum mechanics.”

Another thing I loved about Jackson was that he’d reel out some very complex notions and expect you to keep up.

“So?” I asked some years ago when we had this conversation.

“People know mo’ and mo’ every day, Ease. It’s exponential. And that mean that there’s things out there like jigsaw puzzle pieces that if you see where they connect, then you will know sumpin’ that nobody else in the world do. It’s like gold jus’ layin’ around waitin’ for somebody to pick her up.”

Jackson could give a great lecture, but that early morning I had more immediate things on my mind.

“Feather still there with you?” I asked.

“She sleep in the second guest room. You know that girl is a balm to Jewelle’s heart.”

“One of the drivers over my place will pick her up around ten,” I offered. “That okay?”

“No problem, man. Question is, are you okay?”

“Why?”