The Right Mistake

It was the title that sold me. Having made so many wrong mistakes, I wondered what the right one might be...and my random book pick turned out not to be a mistake at all. Walter Mosley, author of the Easy Rawlins series, chronicles the continuing journey of a man named Socrates Fortlow. Socrates is not a hero. He's a convicted murderer...a man who killed a man, raped the man's wife, and killed her too. And he actually did it. This isn't like the Hurricane or any other story where the "killer" was just guilty of being in close proximity to crime while being black. While his guilt is never in question, it is his journey of redemption that asks all the right questions.

Is there such a thing as freedom? What does it mean to be free and what do you do with your freedom? After living in a cage like an animal for more years than he actually lived outside, Socrates is unexpectedly paroled and forced to set upon an adventure he never dreamed of...one of living a different life.

The story begins with Socco playing dominos with a bunch of old black men. They are laughing and gossiping about Freddy Bumpus and Vannessa Tremont. Not only did Vanessa cheat on Freddy, but then she kicked him out of his own house, the house his grandfather built...and was up there livin' in it with the other man. Everyone has an oppinion. Most think it's a shame, then a man named Comrad says if it were him, he would kill the man who ever tried to take his woman and his house. Socco takes exception to this and pushes the point. "What if it were me," he asks? Everyone knows he's a bad man, a marked man, someone you don't want to fuck with...so then the question becomes if pride compells us to do the right thing, the wrong thing, or the easy thing. It may be the wrong thing to kill someone to save your pride, or maybe in some people's eyes, it's the only right thing you can do when someone wrongs you that way. But for Socrates, it's not the answer, it's the question, it's the idea that maybe there are other solutions.

In fact Socco comes up with a totally unexpected solution. Since no papers have been signed, Freddy still owns the property and Socrates decides to rent it as a meeting space. As he is "a bad man" he doesn't even really have to fight to get Vanessa and her lover off the property...and from here the book opens up into a series of meeting held at the Big Nickle, the tin plated house next to the one Freddy's grandfather built.

Socco basically forms his own sanga, recruiting a diverse cross section of people from all walks of life from lawyers, to drug dealing gansters to famous singers. They form a Thursday night dinner club where people talk about everything and anything. Sometimes there are arguments, sometimes people talk about what's happening in their communities or their minds and hearts and are able to come up with solutions...and sometimes there are no solutions, just space enough to be heard.

I won't go into much more detail. It's a rich book, thick with the complexities of trying to learn how to be a better person when you've already made the worst mistakes you can make. Reading it made me think, it made me hope, it made me wonder what other revelations my own sangas might bring.