her dead daughter. Now how you think your daddy feel about that? You think that’s gonna do my job any good?”
I was disappointed. I thought I was going to be in on it. Not only the investigation, but meeting Margret’s mother, and a live whore. I sat there for a while and listened to the reel clatter in the projector. I knew pouting would get me nowhere with Buster. Finally, I said, “Well, when are you going to do it?”
Buster pursed his lips. “Tonight, when I finish here.”
“Won’t that be late?”
“Not for her. I’ll report to you tomorrow mornin’, if you’ll come over to the street alongside the grocery. We can sit on the curb and visit. Let’s say nine in the mornin’.”
“If I’m not there, Daddy or Mom hung me up. Okay?”
“I understand.”
———
NEXT MORNING I was up early. I left a note saying I was going to buy comic books at the drugstore with my allowance.
Rosy caught me on the way out.
“Where you runnin’ off to this mornin’ without yo’ dog?” She was sitting up on the couch, scratching her head.
“I’m going to buy comics. I thought I might be in town for a while, so I left Nub in my room. Will you let him out later?”
“Them comics won’t be there after breakfast?”
“I don’t want breakfast.”
“Don’t need to go without yo’ breakfast. Let me fix you toast and eggs.”
I started to beg off, but didn’t want to seem too hasty.
Rosy made eggs and toast, prepared some for herself, along with coffee. She had gotten a lot more sure of herself around the house, and had even taken to giving Daddy orders. Which he took.
While I ate, Rosy said, “I can read gooder now. Gonna start workin’ on the way I talk next. Don’t want to sound like no field hand all my life. You can help me on that.”
“I don’t have perfect diction either.”
“You don’t sound ignern’t, though.”
“Well, you might say ‘I can read better’ instead of ‘gooder.’ There really isn’t a word called gooder.”
“Gotta be. Been sayin’ it all my life.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I ain’t so sure you ought to be goin’ out there with Bubba Joe around. I ain’t like yo’ daddy. I ain’t so sure he’s not gonna bother no white boy.”
“I think I’m all right, Rosy. Really.”
“Yeah, well, I ain’t one to tell you nothin’, but you watch yo’self, hear?”
———
I RODE MY BICYCLE to the place Buster asked me to meet him. It was Saturday, and the town was jumping. I saw Buster standing at the far end of the street. He had a pop bottle and was sipping from it.
As I got closer, I noticed just how old he was. He had quit putting shoe polish on his hair, and it was white at the roots. He was tall, but slouched, as if the world were on his shoulders and it had grown too heavy.
I leaned my bike against the curb and sat beside him. A white lady carrying a shopping bag of groceries came by and saw us sitting there. She gave us a kind of smirk and kept walking.
“What she got to sneer about,” Buster said. “She was any uglier they’d have to hire someone to guide her around while she wore a sack over her head.”
I laughed. He grinned, reached inside his shirt pocket and took out a PayDay candy bar. “Thought you might like one. I got myself a plain Hershey’s. My teeth don’t like them peanuts in a PayDay.”
“Did you see Margret’s mother?”
“I did. It was kinda interestin’, Stan. And we got to rethink a few things.”
I had unwrapped the candy bar and, in spite of Rosy’s breakfast, dove into it.
“Now, I couldn’t just go out there and say howdy, I want to talk about your daughter got her head run over by a train, or whatever the hell happened to it. Took some of them letters you had, Stan, and I gave them back to her.”
“You did?”
“Uh huh. May see them as your letters, but really they belonged to her daughter, so I thought the mother should have them. Some of them anyway. I wanted to keep a few around for the flavor, case we needed to look back over them and make sure of somethin’. Just picked out ones didn’t matter much, repeated what had already been said.
“Told her I found them workin’ out back the drive-in fence, buried in a jar. I don’t know why I said a jar, but I did.”
“What did she say?”
“Let me set this up. Went out there late last night. Her husband—he’s common-law, which means they just live together—he invited me in, gave me a cup of coffee, ’cause she was busy, if you know what I mean, in the back room.”
“Her husband knows?”
“He’s her pimp, Stan.”
“Pimp?”
He explained what a pimp was, added: “He gets a big share of the money. Likes money so much, I had to pay him some to sit and talk for a half hour. He didn’t care I had letters from Winnie’s daughter, felt I was burnin’ work time. So, I had to pay. Expensive coffee that way.”
“He isn’t Margret’s father, right?”
“I told you. Some Puerto Rican, or Mexican. Winnie is mixed herself. This here was a colored gent.”
“What did Miss . . . Miss Winnie think?”
“Hate to report, but she feel same as her husband. Least, she had to act like she did around her old man, ’cause he’ll beat her she don’t do right the way he sees right. I didn’t see him whup her, but I know how it works with pimps and whores, even if they live together as husband and wife.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Well, Stan, they ain’t the PTA. Know what I’m sayin’? She looked the letters over a little, gave ’em back to me. Said toss ’em, whatever.”
“She didn’t cry?”
“She didn’t even tear up. She said, ‘You got money on the clock, boy, why don’t you use it for somethin’ matters.’
“Now, I was tempted. She don’t look too bad, and I did put down ten dollars . . . I told her, sure, and we went in the back room, and when she closed the door, she said, ‘You’re gonna have to be kinda quiet so we can talk.’ We sat on the bed and she took the letters again and looked them over. This time she cried a little.”
“So she was sad?”
“In her own way. You see . . . Well, let me go through it. I showed her the letters again, and she said, Margret always treated her good, but she didn’t believe the girl got pregnant.”
“But Margret says she is in the letters.”
“No. No she doesn’t, Stan. What I noticed right off was she talked about pregnancy, didn’t say she was with baby. There’s never one line in them letters says she’s pregnant. Says she and J can deal with pregnancy, but she ain’t talkin’ about herself.”
“Who could she have been talking about? James can’t get pregnant.”
“No,” Buster said. “No, he can’t. But I’ll come back to that. Asked Margret’s mama about James Stilwind, and she said she didn’t know him, but that Margret was friends with the little Stilwind girl.”
“Jewel Ellen.”
“That’s right. Said they together all the time. That she knew the Stilwinds didn’t approve. Margret couldn’t go over to her place, for instance. She said the Stilwinds didn’t approve of her profession, and they didn’t approve that she had turned Margret out.”
