Every Man a King: A King Oliver Novel

by Walter Mosley

It was a day of many deep breaths.

You know love is true when it survives the devastation it causes.

“I can’t say that Coleman wouldn’t hurt a fly,” I went on, “but if he got into a fight with one, it’s a toss-up who’d win.”

Solitary confinement, aka isolation, was the certainty of having no rights whatsoever. My hunger and thirst, my loneliness and need for love, my freedom to pick up and go—all of these were gone. This was true poverty. This was the experience of being slowly murdered by a state of being, by uncaring humans, by systems that did not, could not, share my suffering.

“Expect is a strong word,” I said. “I expect the sun to rise in the east, the sky around it to be blue, the Democrats to believe in their impossible dreams, and the Republicans to revel in their own stink.”

“That’s right, son,” he said. “Alcohol is poison for the serious gambler.”

Brownsville. It is a place that creates heroes and villains, where people cling to their dreams because they know for a fact that that’s all they’ll ever have. It’s poor and it’s angry, intoxicated and hopelessly in love. It is a place where children learn lessons that they spend the rest of their lives trying to forget. Sharper than a razor, it is the cut you never see coming.

In spite of appearances, the majesty of nature is just a fancy blanket draped over the malevolence of the creatures of earth.

It felt right to be inside a life based on principle and not selfishness. Standards are all that the descendants of Cain have to keep them upright and respectable.

Pure love, like distilled nicotine, was as deadly as a bullet through the brain.

“We were living the kind of life that made about as much sense as an ostrich chick in a sparrow’s nest,”