Paper Doll

chapter thirty-nine

I WAS THE only white person in the Hunt Grill. No one appeared to care much about that fact, couple of heads turned and at least one guy nudged another, but mostly people were interested in their drinks and watching Jeopardy! The room was done in pine paneling. There were pictures of athletes on the walls, and sports pennants, and schedules of televised games. There were two very big-screen television sets, and a big sign advertising Happy Hour, which, according to the sign, I was in.

The bartender nodded at me when I squeezed onto a bar stool. I ordered a beer and got it. His dark eyes were without expression. His face held neither hostility nor welcome. He put a bowl of peanuts on the bar in front of me and moved away. I picked up a peanut and ate it carefully. No need for a whole handful. One at a time was just as succulent. I sipped a little of the beer. I picked up two peanuts. Everyone on Jeopardy! was having a hell of a time. Just like me. I drank a little more beer. I took a handful of peanuts and munched them vigorously.

Sedale came in and walked toward me. The Blue Tick hound was with him. The bar was nearly full, but there was an empty stool on either side of me. Sedale sat on one. The hound sat on the floor near his feet.

“Seven and seven,” he said to the bartender.

“Do you like that?” I said. “Or do you just order it because you like the way it sounds?”

The bartender put the drink in front of him and Sedale drank half of it.

“You know the difference between a toilet seat and a hotel worker?” Sedale said.

“No, I don’t.”

“Toilet seat only services one asshole at a time.”

He drank the rest of his drink and gestured another at the bartender.

“His tab,” Sedale said and jerked his head at me. The bartender looked at me. I nodded. Sedale took a handful of peanuts and ate some and gave a couple to the dog. The bartender brought him his drink.

“My aunt Hester, my momma’s oldest sister, she a midwife. Been a midwife fifty-something years. She a lot older than my momma,” Sedale said.

He paused and sipped his second drink. “Woman named Bertha Voss come to my aunt Hester ‘bout forty years ago, little longer, and ask could she do an abortion for her.” The dog sitting on the floor had his nose trained on the peanuts. I took a couple, and held them down in the palm of my open hand, and he scarfed them off.

“Bertha was a no-account cracker. But she was white. Those days black people get lynched for things like that. My aunt Hester say, `No, you got to find somebody else, or you got to have the baby.”‘

Sedale sipped again. He took in his second drink quite delicately, holding the glass in his fingertips. The first one had been need. The second appeared to be pleasure. I finished my beer. The bartender looked over and I pointed at my glass. He brought a fresh beer and another bowl of peanuts. The first bowl had somehow emptied. Must have fed the dog too many.

“Well, Bertha couldn’t find nobody, I guess, ‘cause she married another no-account cracker name Hilly Rankin, and she had the baby. And she tell everybody it’s his.”

“Cheryl Anne?” I said.

“Yes, sir,” Sedale said and there was a gleam of mockery in his eyes.

“Rankin believe he’s the father?”

“Seemed to. Hilly ain’t very smart.”

“And do we know who the proud poppa was?”

“Sho ‘nuff do,” he said. “Care to guess?”

Sedale grinned at me like he was the host of Jeopardy! He let the pregnant pause hang between us.

“Jack Nelson,” I said. Sedale’s grin widened.

“You a by-God real live detective, ain’t you,” he said. “Bertha told my aunt Hester that it was Jumper Jack knocked her up.”

The Blue Tick hound nudged his head under my hand and stared at the bowl of peanuts. I gave him some. On the big-screen television, Jeopardy! had ended and the local news was on. It looked and sounded exactly like local news everywhere: a serious-looking anchor; an attractive, though not frivolous, anchorette; a twit to do the weather; and a brash guy that talked fast to do sports.

“You know where Bertha Rankin is now?” I said.

“Sure.”

Our voices sounded hollow to me. As if they weren’t connected to humans.

“Where?”

“She and Hilly got a dump out on the Batesburg Road ‘bout five miles. Right past the gravel pit, dirt road goes down on the right. They at the end of it.”

“You know Cheryl Anne?” I said.

“Nope. She musta gone to school in Batesburg.”

“They kept it a secret,” I said. “All this time.”

“Sure,” Sedale said. “Only the niggers knew.”

“And now she’s dead,” I said.

It was one of those things you know for a long time before you know it. The dead woman in Boston was Cheryl Anne Rankin.