I turned on the radio, which told me it was ninety-eight degrees. I turned it off. That kind of news I didn’t need. Sweat was already dripping down my shirt collar and pooling in the small of my back. And that was before I knew how hot it was.
I looked at my watch. Ten fifteen. It sure as hell wasn’t going to get any cooler.
I picked up yesterday’s Times-Picayune and glanced through it. All the headlines were about the heat wave, or the brownouts, or the president’s trip to wherever, but right in along there, a little lower, were the usual burglaries, rapes and murders that make the world go round. Fine city, New Orleans. I’d been other places. It was still my favorite. Just don’t ask me why.
I was back in the book; submerged in it like an alligator, snout and eyes barely above water, half-living this story of Harlem hostess Mamie Mason, Negro race leader Wallace Wright (“one sixty-fourth Negro blood”), black journalist Moe Miller who at last has to abandon both “the Negro problem” and home when a rat (who’s had the habit of moving around the traps he sets so that he himself breaks his toes in them) takes it over, and black novelist Julius Mason, Mamie’s young in-law:
“Who’s he?” Lou asked.
“He’s a writer too.”
“My God, another one. Who’s going to be left to chop the cotton and sing ‘Old Man River’?”
Art chuckled. “You and me.”
— both speakers here white. I made a mental note to look up another book by the same writer mentioned on the back, one titled The Primitive.
I had heard, I realized, or thought I had heard, a knock at the door.
I waited but nothing else happened.
Finally I got up, walked over with the book in my hand, pulled the door open.
A man and his wife-there was no doubt about that-stood there. They were black and tired (a tautology?). He wore an ill-fitting black suit, she a plain black dress. Probably their best clothes, and some pretty sad-looking threads.
“Can I help you?” I said.
“We hope so,” the woman said. “We’re,” she said.
She looked at her husband. I guess it was his turn.
“We’re trying to find our daughter,” he said.
“I see. She’s run away, has she?”
They nodded together.
“Have you folks been to the police?”
The man looked at his wife, back at me.
“They told us there weren’t nothing much they could do. Said they’d check the hospitals and such. Said for us to keep in touch. We filled out this report.”
“But they also told us,” she said.
“They told us how many runaways there are,” he finished. “They said for us to go on back home, she’d turn up, most likely.”
“Back home. You’re from out of town?”
He nodded. It looked like that was about all he could manage. “Clarksdale,” he said.
“Mississippi,” she said.
Where Bessie Smith bought it.
“And what makes you think your daughter came to New Orleans?”
“Just she was always talking about it, coming down in the summer when she could.”
“Then you’re probably right. How long’s she been gone?”
“Three weeks now. Three weeks day before yesterday.”
A person can put a lot of distance between home and herself in three weeks,” I said.
“But we’re just,” she said.
“We’re sure she’s here, Mr. Griffin.”
“I was thinking of other things.”
Together, they looked down at the floor.
“We know, Mr. Griffin. We know what can happen once they’re gone. I seen it happen to my sister back home in McComb.”
“But she’s just sixteen,” the woman said. “Surely she couldn’t of got herself in trouble too bad, could she? We’re Baptists, Mr. Griffin,” she went on. “Not real good Baptists, but Baptists. We’ve been praying every meeting night, praying she won’t forget or be led from how she was brought up.”
I had a feeling the man had seen a lot more of life than his wife had. It wasn’t just the way they talked; it was something set into the lines of his face. Strange how one person can live in the middle of a minefield, stepping over bodies, and never see what’s going on around him, while another walks to the corner store for bread and in a hundred recondite images, shadows slouching in a doorway, light creeping up an abandoned building, sees everything.
“I hope,” I said. “She have any money?”
He shook his head. “A few dollars. We ain’t rich people, I guess you can tell.”
We all stood for a moment looking at various walls.
“Can you find her for us, Mr. Griffin?” the man finally said. “We ain’t got-we don’t have much, but we’ll pay what you ask.”
“We pay our bills,” the woman said.
“I’m sure,” I said. “Well, suppose for a start you tell me your names.”
“Sorry,” the man said. “We ain’t-we aren’t quite ourselves. Clayson, Thomas Clayson. My daughter’s name is Cordelia. This is Martha.”
“Tell me a little about what your daughter’s like, Mr. Clayson.”
“Quiet, kind of shy. A good girl. Never had a lot of friends like some others. Always read a lot, ever since I can remember. Loved the movies.”
“She was our pride and joy, Mr. Griffin,” the woman said.
I thought: when the quiet ones finally break loose … I shook my head to clear it. The woman was still talking.
“-so hoped she’d go on to college, make something of herself. Saved all our lives for it. Skimped and saved and did without. And now-” She stopped. He looked at her as though he were going to say something, but didn’t.
“What does she look like?” I asked.
“Well,” he said. “She’s a pretty girl. About, I don’t know, five-four or so. They grow up fast, you know.”
“Wears her hair short, with bangs in front,” his wife added.
“I suppose you might have a picture?”
He reached into his wallet and handed me a snapshot.
She was pretty, with wide, alert eyes and thin, serious lips. In the picture she wore jeans and a light pink sweater. She looked a lot like a girl I’d known back home.
“How did, does, she usually dress? Something like this?”
They both nodded.
“And you say she’s been in New Orleans before. Any idea where she might have liked to hang out, or any places she was especially fond of?”
This time they both shook their heads.
“Like I said, she don’t-doesn’t talk a lot,” Clayson said.
“Any friends in the city that you know about?”
“She talked some about a girl named Willona. An actress, if that’s any help.”
“What kind of actress?”
“Actress, is all we know.”
“You don’t know where she lives?”
He shook his head.
“Look,” I said, “I’ll give it my best shot, but I just can’t hold out a lot of false hope for you. This is a big, dirty city. It’s way too easy to disappear into it-just like those bayous and swamps not too far away. And it doesn’t much care about any of us individually, let alone a sixteen-year-old girl from Clarksdale. Where are you folks staying in town?”
“With my brother’s family on Jackson Avenue,” Clayson said. He gave me an address and I wrote it down. Over near the levee and New Orleans General, from the number. “There ain’t no-isn’t any-phone,” he said.
“Okay then, I’ll be in touch. There are a few things I can check out for you. Maybe something’ll come of it. I’ll let you know.”
They turned and started for the door. They looked even more tired now, and I wondered for a minute if they’d make it through to the other end of all this, and how.
I looked at the snapshot again and said a prayer myself-for Mr. and Mrs. Clayson.
Chapter Two
The clock on the bank at Carrollton and Freret said it was 102 degrees. I looked over at the palm trees lining the trolley tracks on the neutral ground opposite. The palms looked right at home.