by only a few miles away but may as well have been in China. Remnants of an old town square hosted two gas stations (one of which doubled as post office), a cafe and steakhouse, a combined town library and meeting hall, a doughnut shop, a junk store or two, and an insurance office. For two or three blocks around that hub there were a scatter of paint and hardware stores, utility companies, used-clothing or — furniture shops. Then everything opened back up to farmland, trees and sky. I’d counted four churches, so far.
The Magnolia Branch squatted at the border of town and not-town. I can’t imagine who would ever stay there, in a town like that, but rates were cheap and rooms immaculate. They still weren’t very used to having blacks drop in, I’d guess. My request for a room occasioned considerable discussion behind the wall before the clerk (and owner, as I’d later discover) returned to push across a key and take two nights in advance. I asked about the possibility of getting a drink and was told I could get beer down at the cafe but if I wanted anything else I’d have to go over to Nathan’s.
Nathan’s turned out to be the gas station that didn’t double as post office. I dropped off luggage at cabin six, walked back into town and, saying I understood liquor was for sale here, got ushered into a shed out back of the station. Bottles were set out on cheap steel shelving before which the attendant hovered impatiently. I pointed to the Teacher’s and paid him. He followed me out, locked the door carefully behind us.
So now I stood there in my Magnolia Branch Motel doorway lapping at the first few most welcome sips of scotch and looking away (Dixieland!) into dusty Delta distances. News unrolled on the TV behind me. A coup attempt somewhere in Latin America, Philadelphia man’s citizen’s award revoked when it was discovered the recipient routinely molested the adolescents his Care House harbored, Housing Authority of New Orleans under investigation by feds.
Immediately upon returning to the motel I’d phoned Clare. Her recording had come on, and I’d started telling her where I was, how she could reach me. I’d got as far as the Missagoula part when she picked up.
“I’m here, Lew.
I spelled it for her. I may even have got it right.
“And the girl’s supposed to be there?”
“She gave it as an address at the hospital, finally, Richard said. Claimed she lived here with a relative. I’m pulling out in just a minute to try and find the place.”
“Good luck, then.”
“Thanks. I’ll call again tomorrow.”
“Lucky, lucky me!”
I finished my drink, rinsed the glass and put it face-down on a towel. I’d just pulled the door shut behind me when the phone started ringing. I unlocked the door and went back in.
“Lew,” Clare said, “remember when you said that about another man?”
“What?”
“You were talking about my cat. Joking that there was a new man in my life.”
“Oh, right.”
“Well, there is.”
“There is what?”
“A new man in my life.”
I didn’t say anything, and after a while she said, “You there, Lew?”
“I’m here.”
“I didn’t know how to tell you. I kept waiting for the right time, and it never came. Then you left, and the more I thought about it, the worse I felt. After I hung up just now, I knew I had to tell you, that I couldn’t wait anymore.”
“It’s all right, Clare.”
“It wouldn’t matter if I didn’t really care about you. I do, you know. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know I don’t want to lose you.”
We both fell silent, listening together to choruses of ghostlike voices far back in the wires, at the very edge of intelligibility.
“Oh Lew, are we going to be able to do this?”
“We’ve both been through a lot worse.”
“Indeed we have, sailor. Indeed we have.”
Silent again for a moment, we listened, but the voices, too, now were silent. Listening to
“You’ll call and let me know how it’s going?”
“I will.” Though as it turned out, I didn’t.
“Bye, Lew. Love you.”
And she was gone.
Chapter Fifteen
I stopped at Nathan’s to ask directions and, following a consultation between the surly black man chewing on cold pizza behind the counter and a mechanic with grease worked into the lines of his face so profoundly that it looked like some primitive mask, headed out of town away from the interstate, leaving pavement behind after a few miles, tires clawing for safe ground among gullylike ruts, the little Mazda sashaying and hip-heavy.
Houses were infrequent and set back off the road, simple wood structures built a foot or two off the ground, most of them long unpainted and patched with odd scraps of lumber, corrugated tin, tar paper, heavy cardboard. Many had cluttered front porches and neatly laid-out vegetable gardens alongside. Small stands of trees surrounded house and yard; beyond that, flat farmland unrolled to every side.
I pulled in, as I’d been told back at Nathan’s, by a yellowish house on the right, first one I came to after crossing railroad tracks and going through two crossroads. An old woman in a faded sundress scattered grain for chickens at the side of the house. She was oddly colorless, pulpy like wood long left outdoors, collapsing into herself with the years. She looked at me with all the interest a tree stump might display.
“Hello, m’am. Sorry to bother you, but I’m looking for Alouette.”
Nothing showed on her face. “Not bothering me,” she said. Then she turned and walked away, to a rough shed nailed onto the back of the house at one end, open at the other. I followed a few steps behind. She dumped grain back into a burlap bag and folded the top over. Hung the pail from a nail just above.
“Could you tell me if she’s around?”
“Have to ask what your business with her might be.”
“I promised a friend I’d look her up.”
She grunted. It was more like the creak of a gate than any grunt I’d ever heard. “Name’s Adams. Where you from, boy?”
“New Orleans.”
“Mmm. Thought so.” She looked to see how the chickens were doing. They seemed more interested in pecking one another than the food. “I was up to Memphis once. You been there?”
“Yes m’am, I have.” Memphis was where my father died, though I wasn’t there then.
“You care much for it?”
“Not particularly. It’s like just about any other town you see around here, only a lot bigger.”
She groaned-it couldn’t have been a laugh-and said that was God’s truth. Then she looked at me for a while before saying: “Well then, I guess I know who you must be. That Griffin fellow LaVerne took up with. Don’t much like you, from what I know. Don’t expect me to.”
“You knew LaVerne, then?”
Again that long, affectless regard.
“Mother gen’rally knows her only daughter.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Adams,” I said shortly. “I didn’t know. I had no idea Verne’s parents were still alive.”
“Just the one. But neither did she, boy, that you’d notice. Not that her daddy and I ever wanted things any different, you understand. Vernie had her life down there in New Orleans, and she was welcome to it, but
