Michael Lister - Soldier 03 - The Big Hello (3 page)

“Wait,” Nancy said. “We had a negro on the ward that night.”

“Congratulations,” Clip said.

“No. I mean there was a negro nurse because of it. Army nurse. Brought in to take care of a negro serviceman. It was … Everything happened so fast. And we were short staffed. She shouldn’t have, but it was crazy––she … I saw her helping out with Lauren.”

It was no surprise that it stood out to her. There were very few negro nurses in the army, but a negro serviceman would require a negro nurse.

“She wasn’t here long, because he wasn’t,” she said. “He should’ve never been here at all, but it couldn’t be helped.”

Black nurses were rare, but so were black servicemen. Though many tried to enlist, few were allowed to, especially by the local draft boards run by whites in the South. The general perception by white people in our area was that blacks were disloyal, lazy, cowards, intellectually inferior, unfit to serve.

For the few actually accepted, they were mostly assigned non-essential roles and menial duties, becoming waiters and cooks, janitors and maintenance workers, and musicians in service bands. Segregation laws and the Jim Crow system in the South meant that white and black servicemen had not “closed ranks” as W.E.B. DuBois had encouraged during World War I. “What’s her name?” I asked.

“Bernice Baker.”

“Where can I find her?”

Her eyes narrowed and her pointy chin jutted forward a bit and she looked at me like I had just asked her to consider joining the Nazi party.

“I have absolutely no idea,” she said. “Why would I?”

“Think,” I said. “I’ve got to find her. Did she ever say anything? Did you ever overhear anything?”

“No, but our cook is a negro. He might know.”

“’Cause we all know each other,” Clip said.

***

Augustus Jackson was a large, slow-moving man with a huge head and hands the size of catchers’ mitts. His too-tight white uniform was soiled, its seams fighting a losing battle that would be over soon and wouldn’t end well for the garment.

We found him in the kitchen, humming to himself as he cleaned up from the evening meal.

“Sorry suh,” he said when he saw me, “but kitchen closed. Be serving breakfast bright––”

He stopped talking when Clip walked in behind me.

“Clipper Jones,” he said with genuine delight. “How the hell you been, boy?”

I looked over at Clip. “Y’all know each other?” I asked with a smile.

“All right, boss,” he said to Jackson, ignoring me. “How about you?”

“You know, just old. Gettin’ older every second. Near about out of my prime now.”

“Not even close according to all these little white nurses runnin’ ’round here.”

Jackson frowned and cut his eyes over, indicating me.

“He all right. Whatcha been up to? ’Sides being thigh high in white pussy.”

“It’s all pink, boy,” Jackson said. “You ever get any, you’ll see.”

I laughed out loud at that.

“Look like you’d get a little sympathy slim just from the eye,” he added.

“Would, wouldn’t you?” Clip said.

Jackson shook his head and smiled. “Nah, still just slingin’ slop for the sick and dyin’.”

“Maybe it your slop what killin’ ’em,” Clip said. “Thought of that?”

He smiled. “It’s been suggested before, boy. Don’t think you’s the first.”

“This here Jimmy Riley,” Clip said, nodding toward me. “He a detective lookin’ for a nigger.”

“Heard of you,” he said. “And not just from Clipper here, but talk around this place. You’s here not too long ago.”

I nodded.

“Army nurse here the night I arrived,” I said. “Baker.”

“What you need her for?”

“Questions about that night,” I said. “That’s all.”

He looked at Clip. Clip nodded.

“That’s easy,” he said. “She be over to the jook tonight.”

Juke joints or “jooks” began in the South in sharecropper shacks as places where blacks could congregate, drink, dance, and socialize out of the sight of whites.

Birthplace of the blues, a jook was little more than a ramshackle room with a few Christmas lights strung up, a place for a local or traveling band to play, space for dancing, maybe a few mismatched chairs and tables, and a small crowd of people checking the injustices of their lives at the door.

These days jukes were a little more sophisticated, but not much.

Bud’s Beer and Barbeque looked to be a converted service station, its intact overhang serving both as a covered porch and a place to tack up advertisements for everything from beer and cigarettes to war bonds and upcoming bands.

Even from the damp dirt and mud hole parking lot, you could tell Bud’s was hopping tonight. Ginned-up hep cats and kittens, young and old, soldiers and civilians, spilled out of the joint with the sounds of blues-infused jazz and the laughs and shouts, whoops and hollers of people having a good time.

The raucous crowd, both inside and out, lived up to what I had read about joints like this and reminded me that the term
juke
was said to have come from a Gullah word that means rowdy or disorderly.

Gullah, the Creole language spoken by Southern negroes living by the sea, could still be heard on occasion, its influence lingering on. It was most commonly used by slaves in the Carolinas, Georgia, and North Florida in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

When I parked, Clip said, “I’a get this one. Be right back with her.”

“Why?”

He looked at me like it was obvious. “Figured you might be more comfortable waiting here.”

I shook my head.

“Well, hell, let’s go,” he said. “Not like anything bad ever happen to a white man in a place like this.”

I smiled.

“Nah,” he said. “It’a be fine. Ain’t nobody gonna pay you no mind.”

As we approached the place, I got a few sideways glances, but no overt glares or hostility. More than a few men nodded their heads and most of the women smiled.

The missing arm and my overall compromised and disheveled appearance had to help. I may have represented oppression, but it was obvious I posed no threat to anyone––except maybe myself.

Inside, the relatively small room was packed with people. Dancing. Drinking. Talking and carrying on. The five-piece band was set up in the back left corner. Diagonally across from them in the opposite corner, a group of men sat around a table playing poker. And though there were a few other chairs and tables spread randomly throughout the room with people on and around them, it seemed as if everyone else was moving.

The moment we stepped through the door, a thick young woman with a smallish waist and large, pointy breasts buzzed a beeline for us from the back of the room.

A few more looks here and there, but mostly everybody paid me no mind.

As far as I could tell I wasn’t just the palest face in the room, I was the only white one.

“Clipper Jones,” she said. “Where ya been keepin’ yourself,
baby
?”

“Been around,” he said. “Busy working my way back to you, girl.”

“Took you long enough,
shuga
.”

She emphasized
shuga
the same way she had
baby
, her voice rising an octave and stretching it out, her mouth making it sexy and seductive.

“Came back as fast as I could.”

“Who dis?” she asked. “He cute.”

She wore a light blue dress just a bit too small and black heels too narrow for her feet and too tall for her frame.

“This here Jimmy,” he said. “Jimmy, this here Nadine.”

“How’d you lose your arm, soldier?”

Before I could respond, a tall, narrow nervous-looking negro came up with a small suitcase of liquor and cigarettes.

“Drink, soldier?”

I looked at Clip, eyebrows up, asking not if but what.

“Let us get a bottle of that bourbon,” he said.

I looked at Nadine.

“I’s partial to that Dixie Belle gin, baby.”

I pulled out some of Harry’s money, bought the bottles and gave him a big tip.

“Thank ya, suh,” he said, and moved off.

“I’m looking for someone,” I said to Nadine.

“You found her,” she said.

I smiled. “It’s very important.”

Clip said, “You seen a nurse named Bernice Baker?”

She shook her head, her eyes still fixed on me. “No sir, I don’t believe I ever have.”

“You sure?” I asked.

She seemed to think about it a little more. “Sorry. Don’t know her.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

We began moving away from her.

“Wait,” she said.

We turned back toward her.

“That all y’all wanted me fo? Sniffin’ after some nursin’ nigger?”

“That’s it,” Clip said. “Least you got a bottle of gin out of it.”

She huffed away and we pressed further in.

We moved around the dancing, drinking, rollicking, frolicking crowd asking after Bernice Baker and coming up with nothing.

“Place this small,” Clip said, “crowd this close, either she ain’t ever been here or we being lied to.”

“Which you think?” I asked.

Before he could answer, an extremely large, muscular man in nothing but overalls and brogans pushed a few people aside and stood in front of me, flexing confrontationally.

There was something about him––the shape of his head, face, and features, and the way one of his eyes wandered––that hinted at a lack of intelligence or worse, but more troubling was the very real meanness and menace present too.

Those dancing closest to us stopped and began gathering around, believing something worth seeing was about to happen.

“Dis ain’t da place for you,” he said. “You needs to git on out from up in here.”

The big man’s body looked as thick and hard as a live oak tree, large, snaking veins showing beneath his dark, glistening skin. His arms looked like anacondas ready to attack, and real madness glinted in his too close eyes.

Clip shook his head. “They’s always one. Always. Always gots to be one nigger in every crowd gonna act the fool.”

At that, more people stopped dancing and gathered around.

“You only git one chance to leave on your own, mister,” he said. “I hate to mess up the good time dese nice folk be havin’, but you don’t git on from up in here now, you ain’t gonna be able to on your own.”

Now no one was dancing and the crowd around us pressed in even closer, pushed, no doubt, by those behind them.

“So I’s clear,” Clip said, “that go for both of us or just him?”

Without looking away from me, the man hit Clip so fast and so hard I’d swear he’d had professional boxing training. The blow landed right on the sweet spot, rocking Clip’s chin, jerking his head to the side and causing his knees to buckle. He collapsed to the floor, unmoving, unconscious.

The music stopped. The room went still and silent.

I glanced down at Clip again, willing him to get up. Nothing. He had yet to move or make a sound.

“Dere go his answer,” he said. “What gonna be yours?”

“Hey, come on, Deek,” a short, squat young man in alligator shoes said as he stepped in between us. “There’s no need for that.”

“Don’t put yor hands on me, Charlie,” Deek said.

Charlie had his hands up, but wasn’t touching Deek and seemed to know better.

“Deek, you know I know better than to touch you. Now come on, big fella, leave these men in peace.”

“Dey de ones leavin’,” he said. “And fast.”

Charlie turned to me. “Bernice my aunty. What you lookin’ for her for?”

“Just to ask her a few questions about a patient she saw at Johnston’s Sanatorium while she was there,” I said. “That’s it. Not looking to put her in a jam. She hasn’t done anything wrong. She may not even know much, but if she does, that’s all I need––a little information.”

“Okay, I’ll take you to her, mister,” he said. “Keep anybody else from getting hurt or killed. All right?”

“Thanks,” I said.

“I’ll even help you get your friend to the car and make sure he okay, okay?”

“Okay.”

He turned back to Deek. “Okay with you, big fella?”

“Just get ’em the fuck outta here,” he said. “And fast.”

Most everyone was still gawking at Clip, who had yet to move. The music was still silent and an awkward muteness had made its way in and hung palpably above and around the people.

“All right, everybody,” Charlie yelled. “Go on back to dancin’. This all over. Nothin’ to see.” He looked over at the band. “Well, play, damn it.”

They did, and as soon as the music had a full head of steam, people slowly began to drift away, a few even beginning to dance again––though without much conviction.

As promised, Charlie helped me gather Clip, but when he saw how I was struggling with my half, he yelled for another man to take my place.

Clip regained consciousness as he was dragged across the dance floor, the tops of his shoes scraping the bare wood, but he was clearly still dazed and had yet to regain his wits or equilibrium.

By the time we were outside, he was no longer dragging his feet, and when we reached the car, he was standing on his own.

The man who had helped Charlie had broken off the moment Clip was walking on his own and was almost back inside now. Charlie was standing with us next to our car in the dark parking lot.

I knew what no one else here knew. I knew that Clip had spent most of the previous day bound and gagged in the trunk of a car and had nearly died. I knew that he was weak and a good step slower than normal. I knew that was why Deek was able to catch him the way he did. And I knew Clip would never mention it, that it would never even cross his mind that he had a legitimate excuse for what had happened.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Won’t be ’til that nigger in the ground,” he said.

I also knew he could never let something like that go unresponded to.

All the men I knew worth anything at all as men had certain nonnegotiables––lines we drew in the sands of our lives. Things we would do and not do. Things we would allow to be done to us and things we would not. Mine and Clip’s were different but we both had them. That’s why he had asked me earlier what I was willing to do to find Lauren, why he hadn’t believed me when I said I would do anything.

What we lived for, what we were willing to die for, made us the men we were. Where we drew the lines of our lives was what defined us, was what distinguished us from other sorts of men. Something Emerson had said on the subject had always stuck with me. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of a man’s own mind. Something like that.

Clip’s lines included never surrendering his weapon and never letting a man put his hands on him. He had other lines, of course, but these two were big bold lines, the basis for many of the others.

Charlie shook his head, his eyes wide. “Let it go, brother. He ain’t a nigger to be fucked with.”

“No,” Clip said, “you got that backward. I ain’t a nigger to be fucked with.”

“He’ll kill you,” Charlie said.

“No, what he’a do is sucka punch a nigga. I”a kill one.”

I knew those weren’t just words for Clip, not an idle threat, but what he intended to do. I also knew there was nothing I could do to change his mind or stop him, short of killing him.

Headlights of leaving and arriving cars illuminated small parts of the lot, the weak beams gliding across parked cars––some of them with lovers leaning on them––and small groups of people smoking and sharing a bottle. It was colder now, a brisk breeze winding its way around and in between the vehicles and people.

Out here the music was muted but could still be heard. Somewhere in the dark lot a bottle broke and a girl laughed loudly. In the distance a dog barked.

“Even if you could kill him, and you can’t,” Charlie said, “you can’t kill a man for punching you.”

“You let any man put his hands on you, you gots to be willin’ to let every man,” Clip said. “I ain’t that kind of nigger.”

“But––”

“Ain’t got time to teach you how to be a man right now,” Clip said.

“I can’t just let you kill a man,” Charlie said.

“You welcome to go warn him.”

Charlie looked at me. “Talk to him. He’s still punch-drunk from the shot he took.”

I locked eyes with Charlie and said, “‘Comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance, that imitation is suicide, that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion.’”

He looked confused.

“More Emerson.”

“Huh?”

“Did the fact that I said
more
confuse you?” I asked. “It was just that I had quoted some earlier in my head.”

“Say what?”

“He read a lot,” Clip said. “Jimmy know he got no chance of talking me out of this.”

I did. I knew it to a certainty––a certainty like I knew few things in life.

I nodded.

Clip had a way of living. He knew of nor was interested in no other. He had no back-down in him, no compromise, no matter the cost. He’d die first. I had no doubt that eventually his death before (what he considered) dishonor conviction would get him killed––and maybe me too––and I also knew he was as resigned to that as anything in his life.

I couldn’t say I understood exactly why Clip was the way he was. I knew it involved pride, but it wasn’t just that, wasn’t as simple as that. I knew he couldn’t live with himself if he couldn’t live this way. I couldn’t say we were identical on this particular point. But I could say it made a certain sense to me. Like Clip, there were things I was willing to die for. They were just somewhat different things––though not that different––and not as many.

“Would you just help me find Lauren first?” I said.

“This can’t wait,” he said.

“It’s gonna make what we’re doing more difficult and it’s difficult enough. Maybe even impossible.”

“Can’t be helped,” he said. “I didn’t deal the play, but I damn sure gonna play the hand.”

I nodded.

“You go on and talk to Miss Bernice,” he said. “I’a catch up with you later.”

I shook my head.

“Can’t take a chance on––”

“I can’t leave,” I said. “You know that.”

He nodded.

“It’s a good thing, ’cause I don’t know no Miss Bernice,” Charlie said. “I’s just tryin’ to get y’all up out of there.”

I looked at him.

He nodded. “Got no Auntie Bernice. Sorry. Was just trying to save your life.”

“Well, thanks for that,” I said.

He shrugged it off and shot me a look of mild futility.

“Shit just got simple,” Clip said.

“Oh yeah?” I asked in surprised amusement. “How’s that?”

“We ain’t got what we came for,” he said. “So we go back in and get it. And if that big Farmer Brown motherfucker got anything to say about it, I’a deal with him.”

“I’m sure he said all he had to say before,” I said. “Sure he’ll just let us go about our business.”

“Well, let’s just say he don’t,” Clip said. “You know, for the sake of argument. He start something again, maybe even take the first swing or stab or shot, it’a make you feel better ’bout me pine-boxing his ass. The result the same. I get what I want. You sleep better about it. Everybody happy.”

“’Cept Farmer Brown,” I said.

“Man, fuck him,” he said. “I tired of tryin’ to make everybody happy.”

I smiled. “I know that’s been a real big burden on you.”