Paper son, p.23
Paper Son, page 23
At that point, Bill had thanked the warden and hung up. “So,” he said. “Four days?”
“I don’t think we have four hours before Bert Lucknell figures out we’re harboring a fugitive.”
Pete spoke through his sandwich. “I’m harboring my nephew and I’ll harbor who I please.”
Jefferson shook his head. “Uncle Pete, if they come with a warrant—”
“Oh, shut your piehole. I have an ace or two up my sleeve. Let ’em come.”
I could see that argument was going nowhere. Sure, let ’em come; but after they came, I wondered how I was going to explain to my mother that not only hadn’t I gotten Jefferson out of jail, but Pete was in now, too. And, for knowing about it and not alerting the law, Bill and me.
Briefly the room was full of nothing but the grunts of men chowing down on nasty sandwiches, and me, nibbling. Good thing I’d had those cookies. I looked at Bill. I knew he was thinking as hard as I was. I hoped he was coming up with something, because I also knew that Pete was counting on us. Me, I had nothing.
It was Pete, though, who broke the silence. He issued a garbled sound through a mouthful of bologna, swallowed, and said, “Hey! There’s still a McAdoo left!”
“What?”
“Old Miz McAdoo’s gone, Tremaine’s gone, Trevor’s in solitary, but old Miz McAdoo’s sister is in some nursing home somewhere. Remember, Henry and them were talking about it, and Big Bone, too? How sad it was that she come down here to spend her last days with family and now she’s all alone in a nursing home?”
“Hmm,” I said. “Dubious. But it’s something. Pete, do you know where?”
“No. But those layabouts might.”
Bill was on his feet, grabbing the car keys with the hand not holding his sandwich, before I could tell Pete and Jefferson, “Stay here.”
43
Henry, Sam, and Bobby Lee were sitting out in front of H. Tam and Sons, smoking and watching the traffic, which, foot or vehicle, didn’t offer a lot to look at.
“Hey,” said Sam as Bill and I got out of the car. “Lookee here, it’s Pete’s detectives. How y’all doing? Gonna open up?”
“We don’t have a key, Sam, sorry.”
“Dang. I been sitting here waiting for Pete so I could get my malt. Where’s he at?”
“He might be along later,” I said. Unlikely, I reasoned, but possible. “We have a question, though. About old Miz McAdoo’s sister.”
“Lunetta?” said Henry. “She up in a nursing home, ever since her stroke. What y’all want with Lunetta?”
“We have a few questions we thought she might be able to answer. Do you know the name of the home? Where it is?”
“Questions have to do with Jefferson?” Henry and Sam looked baffled, but Bobby Lee smiled.
“Hey, they’re detecting,” he said. “They ain’t about to tell you why. I expect when they solve this thing they gonna let us in on it”—he looked at me; I nodded—“so, Henry, you go on and tell them where Lunetta staying, if you know. Let them get on with it.”
Henry grunted. “Lunetta’s over at the Villanova Home, in Crenshaw. Married name is Briggs, Lunetta Briggs. Can’t see she gonna tell you much. Even before her stroke, she ain’t spent much time in Clarksdale. Don’t know as I ever seen her in the store. Probably she ain’t never met Jefferson at all.”
“Still,” I said.
Bill grinned at Bobby Lee. “Thanks, little brother.”
Bobby Lee grinned back. “Anything for family.”
Set back from the street, the Villanova Senior Home sprawled behind a grassy yard in the decrepit, dusty town of Crenshaw. Long and low, built of brick, bordered by bushes, with geraniums waving in boxes under white-trimmed windows, the unexpected cheeriness of the place made me smile. Then I laughed.
“What’s funny?” Bill asked as we walked up the concrete path.
“I was just wondering if this might be not such a bad kind of place to spend your twilight years after all. And then I heard my mother saying, ‘Don’t even think about it.’”
Bill grinned, too, and pulled open the wreath-hung door into the home. Tinsel draped the front of the laminate counter and a cornrowed receptionist sat behind it. I asked her if we might see Lunetta Briggs.
“Sure can. Just sign in here.” She gave us a curious, though not unfriendly, head-tilt. “Are y’all friends of Miz Briggs?”
I guessed young Chinese women in the company of middle-aged white men didn’t come calling on elderly black ladies very often. “We haven’t met her yet. We’re doing some research, though, Mississippi history. We have questions about her family.”
The receptionist looked dubious. “Well, I hope y’all’s questions is about the old days. Miz Briggs a mighty nice lady, and she can tell stories about them days till the cows come home, but she don’t necessarily recall what she had for breakfast.” She waved to an orderly who was walking down the hall and asked her to show us to Lunetta Briggs’s room.
The orderly led us along a vinyl-tiled, fluorescent-lit corridor, where a thick coat of glossy white paint brightened but didn’t disguise the concrete block walls. Bulletin boards announced movie nights and upcoming school group visits. A Christmas party was in the offing. Posters reminded staff to wash their hands and illustrated the Heimlich maneuver.
The smells of disinfectant, air freshener, and baby powder almost, but not quite, covered the scents of urine, institutional food, and decay. A slack-jawed man whose wheelchair was tucked into a sunny niche followed us with his eyes as we passed; except for those eyes, bright and large, he could have been a statue.
Near the end of the hallway, the orderly knocked on an open door and said, “Miz Briggs? I brought you some friends.”
In a wheelchair by the window, a nightgown-clothed woman sat gazing out past the geraniums to the front yard and near-deserted street. She turned her head and smiled when the orderly spoke. Her mahogany face, her coiled white hair, her arms and fingers, everything about her was long and thin. She looked like she’d probably been tough and energetic before the stroke that had paralyzed her left side. Her right hand, I noticed, absently rubbed the left, smoothing out the fingers, massaging the palm.
The orderly went around the bed to turn the wheelchair to face us, without asking whether that was what the occupant wanted. Still, Lunetta Briggs said, “Thank you, child,” and smiled.
The orderly smiled back and departed. Lunetta Briggs looked from Bill to me. “Good afternoon.” Her voice was strong but slightly slurred. “I’m sorry. I’m sure I know y’all but I can’t recall just now.”
“No, ma’am. We haven’t met. I’m Lydia Chin, and this is Bill Smith.”
“Pleasure, Miz Briggs,” Bill said. He took her extended hand and cupped it briefly in both of his. I shook hands with her the standard way, but I tempered my usual I-am-Woman-don’t-mess-with-me squash so as to avoid ninety-six-year-old broken bones.
She looked at us quizzically through heavy glasses. “Are y’all doctors? Is it time for more of them e-valuation tests? Where’s y’all’s white coats?”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Lunetta Briggs wasn’t displaying any signs of her older sister’s reported animosity toward Chinese people. That meant Bill and I wouldn’t have to put plan B into effect, which would have been to good-cop-bad-cop it, winding up with him suggesting I go wait in the hallway while he talked to the nice lady my presence was upsetting.
“No, ma’am, we’re not doctors. We came to ask you some questions, something we’re hoping you can help us with. But first, we’ve brought you this.” I held out the box of candy we’d stopped for on the way.
Behind the glasses, Lunetta Briggs’s eyes lit up. “Oh, ain’t y’all just the sweetest things? Yes, I surely do like me some fudge.” She shakily took the box and balanced it on her lap. One-handed, she started picking at the cellophane wrapping.
“Might I do that for you, ma’am?” Bill asked, his Southern speech once again in full bloom.
“That’s very kind, young man.”
Bill ripped off the cellophane, lifted the cardboard top and fit the bottom into it, and replaced the box on Lunetta Briggs’s lap. She examined the pieces with care, though they all looked the same to me. “Please. Y’all help yourselves,” she said, selecting one and popping it in her mouth. Bill, naturally, took a piece. I thanked her but declined.
“Child, you don’t know what’s good. Now. What kind of doctors did y’all say you are?”
I said, “We’re not doctors, ma’am. We came to ask you some questions.”
“Questions? About what? Must be important, y’all’s bribing me with chocolate.”
I smiled. “It is important. But the fudge, that’s because Big Bone Stafford told us you liked fudge.” I said that so Lunetta Briggs would know we had mutual friends.
“Big Bone Stafford?” Confusion clouded her eyes; then they cleared. “Oh, you mean Li’l Billy Stafford. I recall someone tell me they calling him ‘Big Bone’ now.” She nodded, as if re-registering that information. “I believe he still live down to Oldman’s Brake. I ain’t seen him in some time.” I glanced at Bill. Big Bone Stafford had said he’d been visiting Lunetta Briggs regularly. “Y’all got questions about Li’l Billy, probably best ask Lentitia.”
Uh-oh. Had Lunetta Briggs not been told her older sister had died? Or had that fact also not made it into her failing memory?
“The questions aren’t about Mr. Stafford,” I said. “We want to ask you about your nephew Trevor.”
“Trevor. Lentitia’s boy. Can’t come visit me no more, Trevor’s down on Parchman.” She frowned in disgust and reached for another chocolate.
“Yes, ma’am. Can you think of a reason he’d want to talk to a man running for governor?”
She blinked. “Why who’d want to do what?”
“The candidate’s name is Reynold Tam. Trevor wants to talk to him.”
She bit into the fudge and gazed at me.
“Ma’am,” I said, “have you heard of Reynold Tam?”
“I don’t believe I have. Who might he be?”
“He’s a congressman, running for governor of Mississippi.”
“Democrat or Republican?”
“Democrat.”
“Well, then, y’all can tell him he’s got my vote. And thank him for the fudge.”
My heart sank. As Bill had said, it was a stretch, anyway, to think Lunetta Briggs might know what her criminal nephew wanted with Reynold Tam. Clearly we were going to have to wait until Trevor was out of solitary to talk to him. Meanwhile, what? I didn’t know.
Oh, well. At least we’d made an old lady happy by visiting and bringing chocolate.
I shrugged at Bill, who was obviously thinking the same thing, and I cast an eye over the room. Opposite the bed hung a print of a sunny garden with robins and masses of—aha!—bougainvillea. A lavender sweater draped from a hook on the wall, a quilt was folded neatly over the room’s guest chair, and a pair of fuzzy pink slippers sat by the door. The bed table held a well-worn Bible and two old, framed photos. In a faded Kodachrome, Lunetta Briggs, in late middle age, held a baby on her lap. A man her age sat beside her, and a younger man and woman—the man in an army uniform—stood behind. The other photo, black-and-white, had clearly been taken much longer ago, in a yard with a wooden shack to one side and chickens pecking the grass. A stocky man stood with his arm around the shoulders of a gangly woman an inch or two taller than he was. Two girls and a boy, thin and loose-limbed like the woman, were arrayed in front of them. It reminded me of the photo Pete had of him with his parents and brothers, except all these people, adults and kids both, wore wide grins. Leaning down to look more closely, I felt an electric jolt.
The similarity to Pete’s photo was based on more than the setup. While the girls shared the woman’s dark skin and curly hair, the boy, who was the youngest and palest of the children, had the man’s features.
Asian features.
Chinese, really. I’d seen that man before—in Pete’s photo. He was my great-grandfather’s brother, Chin Song-Zhao, called, in Mississippi, Tam Hong-Bo. The original H. Tam.
I caught Bill’s eye and nodded toward the photo. Bill glanced at it. His eyes widened.
“Mrs. Briggs,” I said, “may I look at this?”
“Look at what? Oh, my pictures? Of course, child. Just be a tad bit careful, if you don’t mind. They pretty much all I got left of the old times. That one there, that’s me and my Walter before he passed, and our Ralphie with Carla and little Mason. Ralphie, he’s career army, live over in Germany. Fixing to retire soon, likely going to stay there, he like it so much. Don’t know why, never been there myself. Little Mason, I don’t rightly know how old he’d be by now. Grown man, for sure, married with his own family. Over there, too, somewheres in Europe, ’cause he grow up there. Get a letter from him on my birthday and Christmas, every year.”
“You must be very proud of them, ma’am,” Bill said, as I lifted the black-and-white photo for a closer look. “What about the other picture, who’s that?”
“Oh, that so long ago.” She shook her head with a little smile. “That there in the middle, that skinny thing, that’s me. Don’t look like much, do I?”
“I think you look lovely. Who are the others?”
“Mama, and Daddy, and Lentitia—she’s bigger than me—and Paulie.”
“This man,” I said, keeping my voice calm though my skin was sizzling, “he’s your daddy? And this is your brother, Paul?”
“Yes, child.”
I looked at her eyes behind her thick glasses. Like Reynold Tam’s glasses. Her eyes slanted just slightly. Like Reynold Tam’s eyes. “What was your daddy’s name?”
“Harry Tam. ’Course, Harry not his name for real. He have some Chinese name, but Mama the only one ever call him that, and only when she mad with him. She don’t say never it right, though, so he laugh, and then she laugh, and then she can’t stay mad no more.” Lunetta Briggs reached for the photo. I handed it to her, making sure she had a firm grip, and watched her smile as she gazed into it. “This from way back before the flood, all of us still living in that broke-down shack.” She laughed. “Flood took that away, for sure.” Her face grew more thoughtful. “Took Daddy and Paulie away, too. They come back, but they live somewheres else after that. Don’t stop with us no more.”
“The flood, you mean the Great Flood of 1927?”
She laughed again. “I surely do. Ain’t no other flood like it before or since, excepting the one the Lord sent Noah.”
“Mrs. Briggs,” I asked, still trying to keep my voice steady, “can you tell us the story of the flood? About how it took your daddy and Paulie away?”
“Why, of course I can, y’all want to hear it. Y’all best sit down and be comfortable, though.” She looked around at the room’s sparse furnishings. “Or I got a better idea. Down past the community room, they got a little porch. We can all go set there, if this young man would be kind enough to push my chair.” Her face was glowing. The receptionist had said Lunetta Briggs could tell stories about the past until the cows came home, but I wondered how often anyone gave her the chance.
“Of course.” Bill went around behind her. “Should we take the chocolates?”
“No, we should not. Them people be jumping on that fudge like a duck on a june bug. My special friends, gonna invite them in, maybe after supper. Have me a little chocolate party.”
44
Bill pushed Lunetta Briggs’s wheelchair along the corridor. In the community room, a group of elderly men and women, both black and white, sat watching or not watching a blaring TV. I guessed a nursing home was like an airport. Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t control who was there with you.
We navigated to a screened porch facing the side street. Lunetta Briggs’s room looked onto the main road, but the view was essentially the same: dilapidated buildings, cracked sidewalks, parked cars, the occasional person sitting in the sun.
Lunetta Briggs had asked that I bring her lavender sweater, and now I helped her into it. “These people here, they freeze themselves in weather like this,” she said, with what sounded like a chortle of satisfaction. “Me, I been more of my life in Chicago than here. This don’t even seem like December to me.”
“What sent you to Chicago, Miz Briggs?” Bill asked, settling onto a steel-framed chair beside her. I was dying to hear the flood story, but it occurred to me Bill might be priming the pump, starting Lunetta Briggs off delving into the past. I pulled a chair around to face her.
“Well, like for lots of folks, it the war. They have work in Chicago because of the war. Down here, we was sharecroppers. Wasn’t no way to get out from under, anyone could see that. Walter Briggs, he go on up north, in 1942, that was. We was married just before he leave. Couple months, he find himself a job and send for me. End up to be a electrician, that’s how come I got my union pension.” Her pride in her man was evident. “Quite some time before we have Ralphie. We think we gonna have more, but the Lord say, Ralphie enough for anyone. Now, Lentitia and them, I want them to come, too, but Mama want to stay, and Lentitia don’t like to leave Mama. She say someone got to take care of her, since Daddy gone.”
“Your father had died by the time you went north?”
“No, no, by ‘gone’ I mean they living elsewhere. Oh, but y’all got to understand, Daddy be taking care of us all along, even when him and Paulie be over in Clarksdale. That’s why we come to live at Oldman’s Brake, make it easier for them to come see us on Sundays. I always be happy to see him, happy to see Paulie, too. But Lentitia, she so mad with him even Mama couldn’t never make her like him no more. She ain’t want nothing to do with him, nor with Paulie neither, after that.”
