“Chippo,” he spoke.
Chippo smiled and nodded his head. “How are you, man?”
Phillip stood up. He was much heavier than Chippo, but not quite as tall. Chippo set the glasses and bottle on the floor, and he and Phillip shook hands. Then they both sat down, and Chippo poured whiskey into each glass. He handed Phillip one of the glasses, but Phillip shook his head. Chippo looked around for a place to set the glass and finally placed it on the arm of Phillip’s chair.
“I got little coffee back there,” he said. “Just need to warm it up.”
“No,” Phillip said. He was very tired, and he wanted to get back home. He could tell by Chippo’s face that Chippo knew why he was there, and waited for Chippo to start talking.
“How you been?” Chippo asked him.
“All right,” Phillip said.
“Put on little weight there, I notice,” Chippo said.
“Yes,” Phillip said, looking at him and waiting for him to start talking.
“Me, myself, I stay the same,” Chippo said, and slapped his flat, hard stomach. “Not an ounce.”
He drank from his glass and looked down at the heater. Phillip was still looking at him and waiting. Chippo could feel it on the side of his face.
“How’s the folks?” he asked Phillip.
“Everybody’s fine, Chippo,” Phillip said.
From the tone of his voice, Chippo could tell that Phillip didn’t want to talk about the folks here. But Chippo didn’t want to talk about the ones in California either.
“I have to get down there and see them sometime,” he said. “When the last time you seen the old place?”
“Today,” Phillip said. “I talked to Louis.”
“Louis?” Chippo asked.
“Louis Patin.” Phillip said.
For a moment Chippo still didn’t understand what he meant. But as he and Phillip continued looking at each other, he remembered that he had seen Louis in Jimmy’s liquor store only a few days ago. He remembered that he and someone else were talking about California and he mentioned the names of some of the people that he had seen out there. He had only casually mentioned Johanna’s name, and that was by accident. Louis must have overheard it.
“Well?” Phillip said.
Chippo took a quick drink. He didn’t feel like talking about what he had seen and heard. This was why he had not gone to St. Adrienne to see Phillip, or to Reno Plantation to visit the old people. He knew they would have asked him a lot of questions, and he probably would have said things that he wished he didn’t know anything about.
“I know you saw her,” Phillip said. “Did you see the children too?”
“Just one,” Chippo said, nodding his head but not looking at Phillip. Then suddenly he stopped and shook his head. “No, no, I didn’t see him, I heard him.”
“Which one?” Phillip asked.
“The oldest one. Etienne.”
Phillip moaned deep in his chest and covered his face with both hands. Chippo jerked up his head to look at him.
“Something the matter?” he asked.
Phillip shook his head, his face still covered. Chippo thought he knew why.
“Well, it’s been a long time,” he said.
Phillip drew his hands down slowly. He was looking toward Chippo, but not directly at him. He was ashamed to look directly at him.
“The others?” he said.
“Antoine and Justine?”
Phillip nodded his head. “Yes,” he said. “Etienne, Antoine, and Justine.”
“It’s been a long time,” Chippo said.
“Yes, a long time,” Phillip said.
Chippo took a big drink and looked down at the heater. He was really sorry now that he had come back here. For a while neither one of them said anything else. The house was so quiet, it seemed that no one was in there. But Chippo knew that Phillip was sitting only a couple of feet away from him, and he knew that Phillip was watching him again.
“You said you didn’t see any of the children?”
“No. I just heard Etienne in the room.”
“You never seen him, not once?”
“No. He stayed in that room all the time.”
“And the other two—Antoine and Justine?”
“They had gone,” Chippo said.
“Gone where?”
“To the North. I think she said New York. Somewhere out that way.”
Phillip watched him in silence a while. Chippo could feel it.
“What happened out there, Chippo?” he asked.
Chippo had been staring down at the heater all the time, but now he raised his head.
“What you mean?”
“What happened out there in California?”
“Nothing I know of,” Chippo said.
“You know all right,” Phillip said. “You know a lot. And I want to know too, Chippo.”
“Know what, man?”
“About my other two children,” Phillip said. “About Johanna. My other two children, they live or dead, Chippo?”
“I just said they was living in New York.”
“Why did they go to New York, Chippo?”
“Why? I don’t know why. Tired of Frisco, I reckon.”
“That’s a lie, Chippo, and you know it,” Phillip said.
Chippo drank from his glass and looked at Phillip with his one good eye. Phillip was waiting. Chippo sighed deeply, resignedly.
“She told me not to tell it,” he said.
“Not to tell what?”
“About the children.”
“What happened to the children, Chippo?”
“Chippo nodded toward Phillip’s glass on the arm of the chair, but Phillip wouldn’t look at the glass. Chippo leaned forward from his chair and poured himself another drink from the bottle on the floor.
“Well, Chippo?” Phillip said.
“Why don’t you have a drink, man?” Chippo said. “It’ll make me feel better.”
Phillip didn’t even look at the glass. “Well?” he said.
“I don’t want talk about it,” Chippo said.
“You will talk, Chippo, before I leave from here,” Phillip said. “What didn’t she want me to know about my children?”
Chippo shook his head. “It wasn’t her. She was too ’shamed of it. The old man who runned the store, he was the one.”
“What did he tell you, Chippo—so shameful she didn’t want me to know about?”
“Have a drink, man,” Chippo said. “Old Foster never killed nobody.”
Phillip raised the glass but barely let it touch his lips. He was looking at Chippo and waiting.
“Johanna still love you, Phillip,” Chippo said.
“I still love her.”
Chippo grunted and looked at Phillip accusingly. “No, no,” he said. “You don’t love her that way.” He touched his chest with his glass. “Deep, deep love for you. Up till a month ago, she thought you might knock on that door any moment to take her back.”
“After twenty years?” Phillip asked.
“Up to a month ago she still thought so.”
“Is she all right?” Phillip asked.
“You mean is she crazy?”
He didn’t say it. But Chippo could see that’s what he meant.
“No,” Chippo said, shaking his head. “She ain’t crazy. Not crazy at all. Some people just hope forever.”
“But all that time, Chippo. No word. No letters. Nothing.”
“At first I couldn’t believe it either,” Chippo said. “I kept telling myself, ‘No, no, no.’ But it was there. It was there, all right.”
He drank.
“Y’all talked, and you told her about me?” Phillip asked.
“She asked about you,” Chippo said. “I told her. That was before I knowed how she felt. I told her you was married, you had a family, you was preaching in St. Adrienne.”
“Etienne was there when you told her this?”
“In that room—yes.”
“So
that’s how he found out where I was,” Phillip said to himself.
“Who?” Chippo asked.
“Etienne.”
Chippo had been looking at Phillip from the side. But now he swung his chair round to face him directly.
“He’s here?”
“Been in St. Adrienne over a week now,” Phillip said.
“What—he come to see you?”
“He wanted to kill me. When he heard where I was he went to her and told her he wanted to kill me.”
“That boy’s crazy,” Chippo said. “Not her. Him. He’s the one crazy.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Phillip said. “I don’t doubt it at all. But something drove him crazy. What drove him crazy, Chippo? What she didn’t want me to know about?”
Chippo turned his head to keep from looking at him. “The girl was raped,” he said. “Antoine killed the man.” He drank quickly after saying it.
Phillip’s whole body sank further down into the chair. Etienne had described the rape and killing that morning, but he didn’t know whether he could believe him or not. He could have been saying it just to hurt him more. But Phillip knew Chippo had no reason to lie.
“She come through it all right,” Chippo said, looking back at him. “Married. Living in New York with her husband and children.”
“And the boy?” Phillip asked.
“They gived him five years,” Chippo said. “He’s out now.”
“That was ’leven years ago?”
“Yes. ’Bout ’leven years ago,” Chippo said.
“Something else happened in that house during that time, Chippo. What was it? Why they both left home?”
“I don’t know,” Chippo said.
“Today he told me his brother and sister was both dead.”
“He told you a lie,” Chippo said. “They living in New York.”
“I didn’t finish,” Phillip said. “He said they was dead to him and his mama. What he meant by that, Chippo? I want to know. I have to know everything.”
Chippo looked at him painfully a long time. He didn’t feel like talking, but he knew he had to. He took another drink, a big one. He coughed twice. Phillip was watching him and waiting.
“I had just come in from Seattle—visiting my sister Mildred and her husband there in Frisco,” he began. “I know lot of people all over that West Coast from my Merchant Marine days, and whenever I go out there I’m always hopping from one place to the other. One day I got on the bus to go visit an old white seaman we have there in the Marine hospital. I’m sitting there thinking about the old seaman, all them days we shipped together, when I see this woman stand up and get off the bus. I don’t pay her too much attention at first, but after she start walking up the block, I think to myself I must know that woman there. But it just don’t come to me that can be Johanna. The woman is too old to be Johanna. I go, sit, talk with the old seaman couple hours, then go on back to Mildred’s place. All this time I’m still thinking ’bout that woman on the bus. When Mildred and her husband come in from work I ask her if she know if Johanna Martin live here in Frisco. She say, no, she don’t know. I told her I was almost sure that that woman I had seen was Johanna. The only thing that held doubt in my mind was that the woman looked too old to be Johanna. Johanna was much younger than me; this woman looked much older. I told her I was going back. She told me ’fore I did I ought to look in the telephone book to see if I could find her name. We looked under Martin, we looked under Rey. Nothing. Mildred’s husband gived me his car keys and I drove back to where I had seen her get off the bus. I asked everybody I met if they knowed a Johanna Martin or a Johanna Rey. Nobody knowed a thing. Then I went in a little corner store owned by an old black couple. I find out they from Texas, I’m from Louisiana, so we start talking. Just me and the husband at first, his wife was still upstairs. After we had been talking a little while, I asked about Johanna. At first he make ’tend he don’t know who I’m talking ’bout. But when I tell him I been knowing her all my life—least till she left the South—he come out and tell me he know her very well. Just about then his wife come downstairs, and he tell his wife I’ve been asking ’bout Johanna. The old lady looked at me the same way he did at first—like she don’t want talk about it. I had to tell her, just like I told him, how long I had knowed Johanna. I told her about you, I told her about the three children, I told her about the people back here. ‘They live up the street there,’ she told me. She told me what the house looked like, she didn’t know the number, but she told me it wouldn’t be hard to find. I thanked them and started to leave. I got almost to the door, and the old man stopped me. ‘We didn’t send you there,’ he said. ‘You just stumbled on the place. They don’t like no visitors.’ ‘Her and her husband?’ I asked him. The old man grunted and looked at his wife. ‘Husband,’ he said to her. ‘Husband. That’s funny, ain’t it?’ The old lady didn’t answer him, just looking at me all the time. ‘Him,’ he said to me. ‘Him?’ I asked. ‘Him,’ he said again. I thought him and his little wife was acting a little crazy, and I thanked them again and left.
“Johanna didn’t live a block from the store, in the basement of one of these big old three-story buildings. She answered the door soon as I knocked. But I couldn’t believe it was her. Her hair was grayer than mine is now. She had lost teeth. Her skin loose, sagging. She looked ten, fifteen years older than she ought to be.
“ ‘Chippo?’ she said. ‘Chippo Simon? Lord have mercy, if it ain’t Chippo Simon.’
“ ‘Yes,’ I said.
“She throwed her arms round me, hugging me, then she stood back wiping her eyes. ‘Chippo. Chippo Simon,’ she kept on saying.
“ ‘Yes, it’s me,’ I said.
“Then I caught her looking toward the door. I thought she was looking for the person who had brought me there. But I know now she was looking for you. Her mind was still locked on how we used to travel together years, years ago. When you saw one, you saw the other. And she just figured that the both of us was together this time too.
“We stood there talking in the front room a while, then she invited me back in the kitchen for some coffee. We had to go through her bedroom, then pass another little room on the left ’fore you reached the kitchen. None of the rooms was too big, but in that kitchen you felt like you was in a box. The ceiling was just a few inches over my head, and no matter where you stood in there you could touch one side of the wall. I sat down at the table, and she went to the stove to warm the coffee. She never quit talking all the time she was over there.
“She wanted to know everything. How was the old place? Had it changed much? How was the people? Who was still there? Was so and so still there? Was the church still there? Was the graveyard still there? Was the people still farming? What did they grow in the fields now? Did they still fish out there in the river.
“She brought the coffee to the table and sat down, but I did all I could to keep from looking straight at her. It hurt me to see her like this. ’Cause I could remember how pretty she was when she left from here. She went on talking and talking. I played round with my hat, I grinned a lot, and kept my eyes down. But she was so glad to see me, she never noticed I wasn’t looking at her.
“After a while the talk came round to you. When was the last time I had seen you? I told her. And what was you doing now? I told her preaching. She couldn’t believe it. She said it over and over. Preaching? Preaching? Phillip Martin preaching? Then she started laughing. Laughed and laughed and laughed.
“ ‘Lord, have mercy,’ she said. ‘Will miracles never end? I reckon he’s got lots and lots of girlfriends? Preachers, you know, always got to have the girls round them.’
“I told her no, no more girlfriends; you was married now, wife and children. And soon as I said it I seen it was a trap she had been setting all the time. Just like that it got quiet. No more laughing now, no more talking—quiet. To say you had girlfriends was one thing; you had always had lots of girlfriends, and you was always leaving them. But to say you had a w
ife, children, and settled down was the last thing in the world she ever wanted to hear. It was quiet now—quiet, quiet. The little happiness I’d brought for a moment was gone now—gone for good.
“ ‘Who?’ she said.
“I didn’t look at her. I couldn’t look at her. All I wanted was to get out of there and get out of Frisco.
“ ‘Who?’ she said.
“I looked down at my old hat, touching it here, touching it there.
“ ‘Chippo, who?’ she said.
“I told her.
“ ‘She was a child when I left from there,’ she said. ‘Not much older than my oldest boy. You sure that’s the one, Chippo?’
“I didn’t answer her. I just wanted to get out of there. A minute later I told her I had to meet somebody. I didn’t have nobody to meet. All I was go’n do was go back to Mildred’s place and sit there with her and her husband and drink. But I didn’t care what I did, long as I got away from that house.
“She wanted to know when I was heading back this way. I shoulda told her I was leaving first thing in the morning, but, me, no, I told her I wouldn’t be leaving till that weekend. That was Tuesday. Now she told me she wanted me to come take dinner with her Thursday ’fore I left. Me, ’fore I knowed what I was saying, I’m telling her I would.
“We had smothered beef shank, rice, mustard greens, and cornbread. Cake and coffee for dessert. I was sitting cross the table from her, and for no reason at all—no reason I can tell—she all a sudden raised her head and looked toward the door behind my back. What got her ’tention? I don’t know. She remembered something? I don’t know that either. Heard something? I don’t know—’cause I sure hadn’t heard a thing. But since they had been there all them years by themself, maybe they had a way of sig’ling each other ’thout nobody else knowing. Anyhow, next thing I know, she asking me: ‘Where you say he was?’ We hadn’t mentioned your name at all that day, but she couldn’ta been talking ’bout nobody else but you. I told her, ‘St. Adrienne.’