Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned by Walter Mosley

Most readers know of Walter Mosley via his masterful Easy Rawlins mystery series. His faithful readers would no doubt hurry to get hold of a new book in that series, but my hunch is that Mosley wanted to speak with a different voice than the relatively well off Easy Rawlins who has both money and muscles on his side. Instead, the hero of Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned is Socrates Fortlow, a man of the streets, a convicted murderer who spent twenty-seven years in jail and has been out of jail and has lived  in Watts for eight years.

Like the Greek philosopher, Socrates, Socco is a deep thinker and one who questions those around him. The Greek philosopher Socrates says that his only claim to wisdom is that he knows that he knows nothing, and he sets out to expose those who make grand and unjustified claims to wisdom. He calls himself a gadfly (a kind of horsefly) that has attached himself to the flanks of the state, stinging  with questions. To those who claim knowledge, he asks simply, “What is knowledge?” just as he asks politicians, “What is justice? What is good?”

Socrates of Watts who lives in a two room shack and works at a chain supermarket is also a man who asks questions, and then questions the answers he receives.

“…we don’t want nobody cain’t stand up to what’s got to be done,” Socrates said.

“And just what is that?” Howard asked.

“What’s the biggest problem a black man have?” Socrates asked as if the answer was as plain as wallpaper.

“The po-lice” said Howard.

Socrates smiled. “Yeah, yeah. It’s always trouble on the street—and at home too. But they ain’t the problem--not really.

So what is?” Stony asked. 

“Bein’ a man, that’s what. Standin’ up and sayin’ what it is we want. An what it is we ain’t gonna take.”Say to who?” Right asked,  ”To the cops?”

“I don’t believe in goin’ to the cops ovah somethin’ like this here.” Socrates said. “A black man—no matter how bad he is—bein’ brutalized by the cops is a hurt to all of us. Goin’ to the cops ovah a brother is like askin’ for chains.

There are fourteen interlocked stories in this marvelous little book, and each is a kind of morality tale. Tales about what to do and what not to do. Like the historical Socrates, Socco is trying to live a good life. In one of the chapters, Socco runs into a young man who steals from the rich while dressed in a suit and tie, and then quickly covers his suit with overalls and becomes an invisible black man. 

“I’m sayin that this good life you talkin’ ‘bout comes outta your own brother’s house. Either you gonna steal from a man like me or you gonna steal from a shop where I do my business. An’ ev’ry time I go in there I be payin’ for security cameras and’ security guards an’ up-to-the-roof insurance that they got t’pay off what people been stealin’. An’ they gonna raise the prices higher’n a [expletived] to pay the bills, wit’ a little extra t’pay us back for stealin’”

Along his  way Socrates runs into a young boy who is perilously close to joining a gang, because he needs street protection. Socco lets the boy sleep in his shack and he feeds him and tries to get him away from the neighborhood where is  in danger of being killed or killing others. 

Socrates thought about a promise he’d made. A murky pledge. He swore to himself that he’d never hurt another person—except if he had to for self-preservation. He swore to try and do good if the chance came before him. That way he could ease the evil deeds that he had perpetrated in the long evil life that he’d lived.

In my not-so-humble judgment, I think Socco is wiser that the Greek Socrates who lets the state convict him of a crime he did not commit (atheism and corrupting the youth), when he could have saved himself, instead leaving his wife and children to fend for themselves while he takes the hemlock.

As for religion coming to the rescue, Socrates’ aunt Bellandra Beaufort tries to set young Socco staight. 

“God ain’t nowhere near here, child…He’s a million miles away, out in the middle ‘a the ocean somewhere. An’ he ain’t white like they say he is neither.”

“God’s black?” little Socrates asked the tall skinny woman. He was sitting in her lap, leaning against her bony breast.

“Naw baby,” she said sadly. “He ain’t black. If he was there wouldn’t be all this mess down her wit’ us. Naw. God’s blue. 

“Blue?”

Uh-huh. Blue like the ocean.  Blue.  Sad and cold and far away like the sky is far and blue. You got to go a long long way to get to God. And even if you get there he might not say a thing. Not a damn thing.”

It is no accident that Mosley chooses Socrates as the name for his new lead character. Mosley understands the dialectical process of Socrates, But unlike the historical Socrates, Mosley’s charter does not revel in his ignorance. He is an evangelist for good.

Blood Grove by Walter Mosley

Easy Rawlins is a tough and hard-boiled as  any detective in the mystery genre. He has been asked by a Viet Nam vet to look into a possible murder in a southern California orange grove.

I would have turned him down out of hand if it weren’t for my understanding of the America I both love and loathe.

In America everything is about either race or money or some combination of the two., Who you are, what you have, what you look like, where your people came from, and what god looked over their breed--these were the most important questions. Added into that is the race of men and the race of women. The rich, famous, and powerful believe they have a race and the poor know for a fact that they do. The thing about it is that most people have more than one race. White people have Italian, Germans, Irish, Poles, English, Scots, Portuguese, Russian, old-world Spaniard, new-world rich, and many combination thereof. Black people have a color scheme from high yellow to moonless night, from octoroon to deepest Congo. And new-world Spanish have every nation from Mexico to Puerto Rico, from Columbia to Venezuela, each of which is a race of its own--not to mention the empires, from Aztec to Mayan to Olmec. 

I’m a black man closer to Mississippi midnight than its yellow moon. Also I’m a westerner, a Californian formerly from the South–Louisiana and Texas to be exact. I’m a father, a reader, a private detective, and a veteran.

In his most recent novel, Blood Grove, WalterMosley lets Easy describe the America of the 1960s in which a black detective is a rarity. In lieu of payment from a client, Easy is given a yearlong lease of a pale yellow, 1968 Rolls-Royce Phantom VI which will become his at the end of that year unless he is paid sixty thousand dollars. Since he has a written contract showing he has the right to drive such a fine car, he decides to drive into Beverly Hills. 

I had even made it a block or two past that when the flashing red lights appeared in the exta-wide rearview mirror. It was one of those wake-up calls that happen in the lives of black men and women in America when they mistakenly believe they have crossed over to freedom.

I pulled to the curb, put both hands on the steering wheel, and sat patiently awaiting the rendering of the calculation of my situation. That equation was a matter of simple addition: Rolls-Royce + black man without driver’s cap + any day of the century = stop and frisk, question and dominate—and, like the solution of pi, that process had the potential of going on forever.

The whole process took about half and hour. If I added up all the half hours the police, security forces, MPs, bureaucrats, bank tellers, and even gas station attendants had stolen from my life, I could make me a twelve-year-old boy versed in useless questions, meaningless insults, and spite as thick as black tar.

Although the story told in Blood Grove is a detailed and interesting one, what I find much more interesting is the social commentary Mosley provides along the way. Easy quickly garages the Rolls and borrows a plain blue car, knowing that the he will be unable to drive the Rolls to do his business without daily repeats of being pulled over and questioned or worse.

In this, his newest novel, Mosley adds an ingredient he had touched on in an earlier novel Little Green, his fasciation with counter-culture youth. 

Driving west down the Strip was slow going, but I liked the streets filled with hippies, head shops and discos. There was what they were calling a cultural revolution going on among the youth of America. They wanted to drop out and end the war, make love for its own sake, and forget the prejudices of the past. These long-haired, dope-smoking, often unemployed wanderers gave me insight into what my country, MY COUNTRY might be.. 

There is the usual cast of characters in this novel: Easy’s adopted children, Jesus and Feather, the dangerous best friend Raymond, called Mouse, who is usually called in to do the dirty work for Easy, a couple of good cops who help Easy obtain information and get him out of scrapes with the law. 

After many harrowing adventures, Easy helps the Viet Nam vet and solves the mystery, giving the reader his summation of Easy’s reflections on the state of the world. 

Nineteen sixty-nine was an interesting year. There was strong anti-war action from the colleges and universities and all kinds of black political insurgence. The sleeping giant of white guilt was awakening and there seemed to be some hope for the future. If you were innocent enough, or ignorant enough, you might have believed that things were improving in such a way that all Americans could expect a fair shake.

But of my many flaws, neither innocence nor ignorance played a part.

It seems to me that it is easier to describe and call out racial injustice as a writer of fiction than as a social scientist or reporter. Walter Mosley describes things as he sees them, and he does so with the direct experience of what it is like to be black and poor in America. He also understands how racism and sexism are connected, and he blows the whistle loudly and clearly. If you, like many readers I know, have read Devil in a Blue Dress, but not others of Mosley’s many novels, I recommend them all to you as wonderfully told stories and stark pieces of social commentary