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

obvious. “Figured you might be more comfortable waiting here.”
    I shook my head.
    “Well, hell, let’s go,” he said. “Not like anything bad ever happen to a white man in a place like this.”
    I smiled.
    “Nah,” he said. “It’a be fine. Ain’t nobody gonna pay you no mind.”
    As we approached the place, I got a few sideways glances, but no overt glares or hostility. More than a few men nodded their heads and most of the women smiled.
    The missing arm and my overall compromised and disheveled appearance had to help. I may have represented oppression, but it was obvious I posed no threat to anyone––except maybe myself.
    Inside, the relatively small room was packed with people. Dancing. Drinking. Talking and carrying on. The five-piece band was set up in the back left corner. Diagonally across from them in the opposite corner, a group of men sat around a table playing poker. And though there were a few other chairs and tables spread randomly throughout the room with people on and around them, it seemed as if everyone else was moving.
    The moment we stepped through the door, a thick young woman with a smallish waist and large, pointy breasts buzzed a beeline for us from the back of the room.
    A few more looks here and there, but mostly everybody paid me no mind.
    As far as I could tell I wasn’t just the palest face in the room, I was the only white one.
    “Clipper Jones,” she said. “Where ya been keepin’ yourself, baby ?”
    “Been around,” he said. “Busy working my way back to you, girl.”
    “Took you long enough, shuga .”
    She emphasized shuga the same way she had baby , her voice rising an octave and stretching it out, her mouth making it sexy and seductive.
    “Came back as fast as I could.”
    “Who dis?” she asked. “He cute.”
    She wore a light blue dress just a bit too small and black heels too narrow for her feet and too tall for her frame.
    “This here Jimmy,” he said. “Jimmy, this here Nadine.”
    “How’d you lose your arm, soldier?”
    Before I could respond, a tall, narrow nervous-looking negro came up with a small suitcase of liquor and cigarettes.
    “Drink, soldier?”
    I looked at Clip, eyebrows up, asking not if but what.
    “Let us get a bottle of that bourbon,” he said.
    I looked at Nadine.
    “I’s partial to that Dixie Belle gin, baby.”
    I pulled out some of Harry’s money, bought the bottles and gave him a big tip.
    “Thank ya, suh,” he said, and moved off.
    “I’m looking for someone,” I said to Nadine.
    “You found her,” she said.
    I smiled. “It’s very important.”
    Clip said, “You seen a nurse named Bernice Baker?”
    She shook her head, her eyes still fixed on me. “No sir, I don’t believe I ever have.”
    “You sure?” I asked.
    She seemed to think about it a little more. “Sorry. Don’t know her.”
    “Okay. Thanks.”
    We began moving away from her.
    “Wait,” she said.
    We turned back toward her.
    “That all y’all wanted me fo? Sniffin’ after some nursin’ nigger?”
    “That’s it,” Clip said. “Least you got a bottle of gin out of it.”
    She huffed away and we pressed further in.
    We moved around the dancing, drinking, rollicking, frolicking crowd asking after Bernice Baker and coming up with nothing.
    “Place this small,” Clip said, “crowd this close, either she ain’t ever been here or we being lied to.”
    “Which you think?” I asked.
    Before he could answer, an extremely large, muscular man in nothing but overalls and brogans pushed a few people aside and stood in front of me, flexing confrontationally.
    There was something about him––the shape of his head, face, and features, and the way one of his eyes wandered––that hinted at a lack of intelligence or worse, but more troubling was the very real meanness and menace present too.
    Those dancing closest to us stopped and began gathering around, believing something worth seeing was about to happen.
    “Dis ain’t da place for you,”