The Bernice L. McFadden Collection. Bernice L. McFadden
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but seeing her skipping like a child through the downpour wearing a yellow scarf and carrying a stack of records was strange, even for Doll.
Normally, Hemmingway could care less about Doll’s comings and goings, but she’d sensed her father’s melancholy and was deeply concerned about his physical decline, which she suspected had everything to do with the love-bite on her mother’s thigh.
Oh yes, Hemmingway saw it too.
The morning August’s howling had startled Hemmingway out of her sleep, she lay in bed listening for a good long time. Assuming the noise was coming from a wounded animal, she closed her eyes and pulled the pillow over her face in an effort to block it out. But the pillow did little to muffle the persistent noise. Unable to take much more, Hemmingway climbed from her bed and padded down the hall to her parents’ room with the intention of waking her father. She thought the two of them could seek out the animal and either attend to its wound or put it out of its misery.
The bedroom door was ajar and without knocking, Hemmingway pushed it back on its hinges. The room was filled with heather-colored, early-morning light. She saw that August was not in the bed and that Doll was still fast asleep. She walked over to the bed and was stopped short by the pink and purple bruise that seemed to glow against her mother’s flesh.
Hemmingway could not mistake the mark for anything else—Paris had bitten her enough times to make her an expert.
Disgust snaked through her body.
Certainly, her father hadn’t pressed his mouth so close to that place that leaked blood every month. Not the good Reverend August Hilson!
Hemmingway backed out of the room, returned to her bed, and closed her eyes. There, the longstanding repulsion she’d held for her mother turned hard with hate.
Outside, the howling finally came to an end. The outhouse door banged open and then closed and Hemming-way now understood that her father was the wounded animal.
The second interesting thing Hemmingway witnessed from her bedroom window was Mingo, running so fast and so hard she thought he would take flight. The near head-on collision with the horse and then Doll slowed him down to a stop. What Mingo called out to Doll, and Doll’s reply, would remain a mystery to Hemmingway. But whatever her mother had said, or not said, seemed to leave Mingo confused.
“You coming or what?”
Hemmingway turned around to find Paris standing in the doorway, raking a comb through his wooly hair.
“You go on ahead, I’ll be there soon.”
“You better not be late.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Hemmingway hummed, then asked, “Where’s Dolly?”
Paris’s face went blank.
“What do you mean? Ain’t she in her room?”
Before she could respond, Paris was ambling away calling, “Dolly?” He stepped into the empty bedroom, pushed his fists into his sides, and bellowed, “Dolly!”
“She ain’t here!” Hemmingway screamed from her room.
Paris reappeared with a perplexed look on his face.
“She ain’t there,” he said.
Hemmingway rolled her eyes. “I just said that, fool.”
“Where she at?”
Hemmingway shrugged her shoulders.
Paris smirked. “Probably went to the church early,” he said confidently.
“Yeah, that’s probably where she went,” Hemmingway replied, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
On Candle Street Cole Payne was in bed, propped up on four silk pillows, watching Doll dance around the room naked, save for the wet yellow scarf she wore tied around her midsection.
He’d moved the phonograph from the drawing room into the bedroom and Doll had placed the well-worn Muggsy Spanier record “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate” on the turntable and was raunchily swaying her hips.
It was the first time the two had had sex in his marriage bed. Before that, they’d ravished each other in the cellar on a stack of croker sacks, and up against the walls of the shed. Once they did it in the drawing room, on the couch, while Melinda slept in the bedroom above them.
The song ended and Doll took a bow. Cole sat up and applauded. “More, more!” he cried jubilantly.
Doll happily obliged, replacing Spanier with King Oliver. She lowered the needle onto the vinyl and King Oliver began to blare: Ev-’ry bod-y gets the blues now and then, and don’t know what to do. I’ve had it hap-pen man-y, man-y times to me, and so have you …
Doll rolled her shoulders and sang along. Cole grinned and reached for the cigar that was smoldering in the ashtray on the nightstand.
“I like that song,” Cole said. “What’s it called?”
Doll crossed the floor in sleek, long strides. “‘Doctor Jazz,’” she purred.
After Paris left for church, Hemmingway headed out of the house, across the bridge, and down Candle Street in search of Doll. What Hemmingway would do if she found her hadn’t quite come together yet.
The street was empty, but Hemmingway could feel curious eyes watching her from behind heavy-curtained windows. Halfway down Candle, the wind snatched the umbrella out of her hands, blew it across the road and into the river. Within seconds, she was drenched.
Deflated, Hemmingway started back toward the bridge. As she passed Cole Payne’s house, she thought she heard King Oliver’s rippling voice exclaiming, The more I get, the more I want, it seems …
She knew that song well, because Doll played it endlessly. Hemmingway stopped and strained to hear above the roar of the rain. Soon Oliver’s famous horn splintered the din and Hemmingway followed the melody straight to Cole Payne’s front door.
Just as the weather turned sinister, August took his place behind the pulpit. He was so surprised to see Mingo Bailey, soaked through and shivering in the third pew, that he nodded in his direction and bellowed, “Welcome, Brother Mingo!”
Paris alone was seated in the front pew. August shot him a questioning glance, and the boy shrugged his shoulders in response.
August’s mind screamed: Probably with that man!
Probably, August concurred with himself inwardly. But where’s Hemmingway?
“Let us bow our heads and pray. Dear Father …”
Outside, the thunder clapped so loudly that the parishioners shrieked and grabbed hold of one another.
After the opening prayer, August turned to the choir. “Choir,” he prompted, and the men and women burst into song.
The wind roared in protest, and August raised his arms high above his head and commanded, “Sing louder!”
Upstairs, in one of the numerous bedrooms of the Payne residence, a window banged open, shattering the glass. Cole jumped from the bed and darted from one room to the next until he came upon the mess. Rain, fueled by the wind, spewed in through the broken window and pooled on the floor.
At the church, someone looked down and saw that water was rising up through the seams of the floorboards. Another member spied it seeping in from beneath the door.
The choir continued to sing.
Outside, the wind raced around the church growling and snorting. The congregation rippled with fear.
“Stay calm, flock! Stay calm,” August warned.
Downstairs