Michael Lister - Soldier 03 - The Big Hello Read Online Free Page A

party.
    “I have absolutely no idea,” she said. “Why would I?”
    “Think,” I said. “I’ve got to find her. Did she ever say anything? Did you ever overhear anything?”
    “No, but our cook is a negro. He might know.”
    “’Cause we all know each other,” Clip said.

    ***

    Augustus Jackson was a large, slow-moving man with a huge head and hands the size of catchers’ mitts. His too-tight white uniform was soiled, its seams fighting a losing battle that would be over soon and wouldn’t end well for the garment.
    We found him in the kitchen, humming to himself as he cleaned up from the evening meal.
    “Sorry suh,” he said when he saw me, “but kitchen closed. Be serving breakfast bright––”
    He stopped talking when Clip walked in behind me.
    “Clipper Jones,” he said with genuine delight. “How the hell you been, boy?”
    I looked over at Clip. “Y’all know each other?” I asked with a smile.
    “All right, boss,” he said to Jackson, ignoring me. “How about you?”
    “You know, just old. Gettin’ older every second. Near about out of my prime now.”
    “Not even close according to all these little white nurses runnin’ ’round here.”
    Jackson frowned and cut his eyes over, indicating me.
    “He all right. Whatcha been up to? ’Sides being thigh high in white pussy.”
    “It’s all pink, boy,” Jackson said. “You ever get any, you’ll see.”
    I laughed out loud at that.
    “Look like you’d get a little sympathy slim just from the eye,” he added.
    “Would, wouldn’t you?” Clip said.
    Jackson shook his head and smiled. “Nah, still just slingin’ slop for the sick and dyin’.”
    “Maybe it your slop what killin’ ’em,” Clip said. “Thought of that?”
    He smiled. “It’s been suggested before, boy. Don’t think you’s the first.”
    “This here Jimmy Riley,” Clip said, nodding toward me. “He a detective lookin’ for a nigger.”
    “Heard of you,” he said. “And not just from Clipper here, but talk around this place. You’s here not too long ago.”
    I nodded.
    “Army nurse here the night I arrived,” I said. “Baker.”
    “What you need her for?”
    “Questions about that night,” I said. “That’s all.”
    He looked at Clip. Clip nodded.
    “That’s easy,” he said. “She be over to the jook tonight.”

Chapter 6

    Juke joints or “jooks” began in the South in sharecropper shacks as places where blacks could congregate, drink, dance, and socialize out of the sight of whites.
    Birthplace of the blues, a jook was little more than a ramshackle room with a few Christmas lights strung up, a place for a local or traveling band to play, space for dancing, maybe a few mismatched chairs and tables, and a small crowd of people checking the injustices of their lives at the door.
    These days jukes were a little more sophisticated, but not much.
    Bud’s Beer and Barbeque looked to be a converted service station, its intact overhang serving both as a covered porch and a place to tack up advertisements for everything from beer and cigarettes to war bonds and upcoming bands.
    Even from the damp dirt and mud hole parking lot, you could tell Bud’s was hopping tonight. Ginned-up hep cats and kittens, young and old, soldiers and civilians, spilled out of the joint with the sounds of blues-infused jazz and the laughs and shouts, whoops and hollers of people having a good time.
    The raucous crowd, both inside and out, lived up to what I had read about joints like this and reminded me that the term juke was said to have come from a Gullah word that means rowdy or disorderly.
    Gullah, the Creole language spoken by Southern negroes living by the sea, could still be heard on occasion, its influence lingering on. It was most commonly used by slaves in the Carolinas, Georgia, and North Florida in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
    When I parked, Clip said, “I’a get this one. Be right back with her.”
    “Why?”
    He looked at me like it was