The bell rings twice, so I know it’s James.

He knows I’m asleep — he gets up at the crack of dawn — it’s before 10 a.m., so I know he needs my help. Could be his weedeater’s bolt is loose again, and he’s got to do Jeff’s yard. Or, he’s found a critter in need. Or he’s found a student’s flute on the DART bus and needs me to help find the owner.

Courtesy Photo

James Rochelle, Christmas 2007, with a surprise gift left for him by Danny and Shelli, former Hollywood-Santa Monica residents who left him the present of lawn-care equipment — tools of his trade — before moving away.

Or, his hip feels better after months of relentless pain, and he wants me to know the cancerous tumor, that none of us knew existed, relented that day.

No, I’m talking about the time a few years ago … he’s found a lady’s purse sitting on a Casa Linda-area curb. Although he has many talents — friendliness and morality topmost among them — reading’s not in his toolbox.

He wants me to examine the purse’s contents so we can contact its surely upset owner. I find a number and make the call to a grateful lady. While we wait for the lady, talking on my front porch, he wonders if she’ll give him a reward.

She and her husband come straightaway to claim it. The purse is short $20. I assure her that whoever nabbed it took the money, but I know James did not. He wouldn’t do anything like that.

They thank James by treating him to breakfast at the old Lakewood Café Brazil.

He’s been rewarded many times.

About 10 or 15 years ago, I remember the pride on his face as we sat on my porch and he told me his chicken-fried steak recipe that he cooked for the elderly Hollywood lady who asked him to stay with her.

For nearly a year he lived with her — a big segue from mowing her yard and doing odd jobs. They loved each other, and he was heartbroken when her family, finally, showed up to visit her one day and found James living there.

They packed her up and sent her to an old folks’ home in Oklahoma. They wouldn’t even let him know how to contact her. Not before she gave him her car, though.

We sat on my porch way back then, and I taught him what was in the Texas Driver Handbook, so he could get his license.

Some years later, after that pretty black car called it a day, another of his retinue of customer-friends gave him a Taurus. He kept his lawnmower and rake in the trunk.

About once a month, someone new to the Hollywood-Santa Moncia neighborhood would call the police to say they just saw a black guy with a lawnmower in his trunk. To help him in those situations, he carried with him, in addition to every receipt he had and every form of ID, a letter I wrote that started: “To Whom It May Concern: I have known James Rochelle for more than 20 years, and know him to be an honest and hard-working man who carries in his car the tools of his business …”

His car was stolen along with all of his possessions, ID, and my letter.

When his mother died, not long after mine did, we hugged each other real tight on my front porch and we cried.

I wish I could hug him now, but James Rochelle, a very good human, 46 years old, died July 4 at 12:03 a.m.

I miss him very much. I wish I could tell about all of the things we spoke of over these almost 30 years, of the advice he gave, of his honest critique of the world and of racism, and of the many things we did for each other.

I will always miss my James.

His funeral is Friday, July 10, at 11 a.m. at the Sandra Clark Funeral Home. The wake for James will be this Thursday from 7-8 p.m. at the same site.

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