Purgatory Chasm: A Mystery

by Steve Ulfelder

  We were quiet awhile, Randall and I thinking about how to respond to that.

  “Once we get this house fixed up, I’ll be lucky to get a hundred grand for it,” I finally said, then nodded at Randall. “He’s driving around in his dad’s twenty-year-old station wagon with rust holes you can step through.”

  Trey got it. “I hear you, and I’m sorry about the dilettante bit,” he said. “In my defense, I just spent four years with four generations of in-laws in an apartment no bigger than this kitchen. I’m not exactly a silver-spoon kid.”

  “Or maybe you were, but got past it?” I said.

  “Maybe.”

  That was enough for me.

  From the family room came a song about the letter P.

  After a while Randall said, “So what the hell was he doing with seventy-five K stashed in his floorboards?”

  “And living like a bum?” I said.

  “Who the hell killed him?” Randall said.

  “Where the hell do we start?” Trey said.

  Randall and I locked eyes, said it at the exact same time. “Hebron Crossroads, South Carolina.”

  * * *

  Eight hours later I sat in a rented Ford Focus at the bottom of Myna Roper’s driveway, wondering whether to knock on her door or backtrack to a Motel 6 I’d passed twenty minutes ago.

  My Seiko said 9:05. Purplish daylight hung tough to the west, this being one of the longest days of the year, but the eastern sky was black. I squinted up a rise at an unlit house—a small ranch or a big trailer—and wriggled my shoulder blades. The flight to Charlotte, then the three-hour drive south, had more or less locked up my back. Stiff, hungry, and tired, I wondered how the pizza was down here and lit the Focus. As I got set to U-turn north and head for the Motel 6, a light went on in the house. “Hell,” I said out loud, wriggling my shoulders again as I pulled up the asphalt drive.

  I’d spent most of the flight trying to think through my approach to Myna Roper. How would I establish trust? What info should I use? What should I hold back? But my brain doesn’t like to work that way, so I’d mostly read Racer magazine and watched the college girl next to me play a game on her laptop.

  As I climbed three wooden steps, I saw the house was a double-wide trailer, but a nice one: Mature bushes and flowers hid the bottom, and the vinyl siding was no more than a couple years old. I heard a TV, hesitated, knocked.

  The TV went off or mute, and after a few seconds of scrabbling—dog?—the trailer turned quiet. I figured Myna Roper didn’t get a lot of callers at this hour. I knocked again and said her name.

  No movement, no sound. Just a frightened old lady keeping still and wishing she hadn’t turned the damn light on.

  “I’m here about Tander Phigg,” I said, and waited.

  It took her a full minute to crack the door. “Pardon me?” she said.

  “He hanged himself last week in New Hampshire,” I said, wishing I was better at planning these things. “Can I come in?”

  She opened the door wide, took two steps backward, and hit a light switch. By the time I stepped in and closed the door behind me, Myna Roper was leaning on a Formica counter, one hand over her mouth.

  A spiky gray dog no bigger than my cats sniffed my ankle. I was grateful it hadn’t barked the way those dogs usually do. I dropped to one knee and petted it and waited for Myna Roper to say something.

  But she didn’t. I rose and took a good look at her.

  Chas Weinberg had called her an Amazon. You could see why. She was five-ten, even with an old woman’s stoop; must have been very tall for her time. Her hair had been straightened and was cut in a very short pageboy, like something from an old Motown girl group. She wore no makeup, but her eyelashes were long and her dark skin was pure. Her flannel nightgown touched the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know how to do things like this. He killed himself, and I’m working with his son to figure out why, and we both thought I should talk to you.”

  She looked at me another ten seconds, then uncovered her mouth and nodded. “He did have a son, didn’t he?”

  “Tander Phigg the Third,” I said. “He goes by Trey.”

  She put the hand over her mouth again—tried to make it a casual gesture, but I’d already noticed she didn’t have her teeth in. “Pardon me,” she said behind the hand, “but who did you say you were to Tander?”

  I said my name and told her I’d known him a decade or more from AA. She nodded, waved to a brown-and-tan sofa, and asked if I’d like to sit while she made herself decent. The wave pulled my eye to an end table. Atop it were a short lamp and a tall mixed drink with two cherries. Her eye followed mine to the drink.

  Her dark skin couldn’t hide the blushing.

  I waited ten minutes. At first I sat near the lamp, but I could smell the drink and it bothered me. It was a Manhattan. Funny the things you remember, the things you can’t clear from your head.

  I moved to the opposite end of the sofa and looked around. The walls were paneled, the TV an off-brand plasma, a thirty-two-incher. The dog sat beneath the TV and stared at me, head cocked. On the walls were a clock made to look like a compass, a framed thank-you from a church youth group, and a twin frame with two pictures: a high-school graduation shot of a girl who had Myna’s eyes and lashes, and an uncomfortable-looking man with a broad nose and a half-assed Afro.

  There was also a black-and-white photo, framed, of young Myna Roper.

  She’d been stunning. In the shot she wore a black dancer’s leotard and posed on a stage or platform, right thigh tucked beneath her rear end, left leg extended straight before her. The twist of her arms and the way her neck swanned made her look like a hurdler, a ballerina, and a warrior all at once.

  “Tander shot that one,” she said, stepping from the bedroom at the end of the narrow trailer. “It’s the only memorabilia I keep from that time.”

  She’d put on black stretch pants, a baggy T-shirt that said CLEMSON, and her teeth. She must have gotten over her embarrassment about the drink while she changed, because she plopped into her spot on the sofa, hefted her Manhattan, and took a pull. “To the memory of Tander Phigg Junior,” she said, toasting, and took another. “You said he hanged himself? Dear God. Please tell me the circumstances.”

  I did, while she drank.

  When I finished, Myna Roper said nothing for a long time. I watched her play movies in her head. Her eyes would crinkle, then soften as she moved from scene to scene. “My, that was a long time ago,” she finally said. “I imagine you’ve got quite a story to tell about how you managed to run me down. Are you a detective?”

  “Just a friend of Tander’s, Miz Roper.”

  “Myna, please. Just a friend, and come all this way?”

  “We were in the same AA group,” I said. “Tight bunch. We help each other out.”

  “How do you plan to help a dead man?”

  “His son’s not dead.”

  “What is the son like?” she said. “Did the apple stay good and close to the tree, the way they tend to do?” She sipped, watched me close. I made a quick decision to go for honesty.

  “I’ve only known Trey a week,” I said, “but I think he’s a much better man than his father was.”

  Myna smiled big, showing me bright white dentures. “How so?”

  I thought about it. “He knows who he is,” I finally said. “I’ll bet he knows what he’s good at and what he’s bad at, and I’ll bet he’s okay with both.”

  “Hmm,” she said, maybe looking closer at me. Then she sipped and went quiet and reached a hand down for her dog to lick.

  It hadn’t taken her long to get to the bottom of a big drink. I needed to get her talking soon, especially if she was planning to build herself another Manhattan. I said, “How’d you end up in New York?”

  “In ’fifty-six, when I was fifteen,” she said, rising and taking the three steps to the kitchen, “two Jewish boys and a Jewish girl came to school and talked all afternoon about civil ri
ghts. They were from Columbia University, and, my God, they were the wisest, smartest, kindest things I’d ever laid eyes on.” She splashed the dregs of her Manhattan into the sink and assembled ingredients for a fresh one. Her movements were efficient and swift, the way they get when you practice a lot and live by yourself: She knew within a quarter-inch where everything would be.

  “You were what, a sophomore?” I said. “A junior?”

  “I was the teacher!” she said, the word sounding just a little like teashur. “I learned everything I was going to in the colored school here by the time I was thirteen. After that I more or less ran things.”

  “You went to New York because of the Jewish kids,” I said. “You bought what they were selling.”

  “Yes I did,” she said, pouring vermouth. “I was reasonably bright, and I knew if I didn’t get out of here soon I’d be stuck running that colored school the rest of my life. I spent two years up in Olanta getting the quickest degree I could, and off I went.”

  “So you got to New York when?”

  “Nineteen fifty-nine,” she said, pausing as she held an ice-filled shaker. From the way she smiled I guessed she was remembering the day she stepped off the bus.

  “Full of piss and vinegar.”

  “You read my mind,” she said, laughing and shaking her drink.

  A minute later she was on the sofa, still remembering but not smiling anymore. “It took me two days to learn my first hard lesson,” she said, licking her index finger. “All those white boys and girls, the college crowd, were more interested in theoretical Negroes than the genuine item.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a soda or a glass of water,” I said.

  “I am so rude!” she said, more or less shrieking it, spilling some Manhattan as she slapped my shoulder. “Help yourself.” Heppy shef.

  I rose, stepped to the fridge, found a Diet Sprite, sat.

  “I looked up the Columbia kids who’d visited Hebron Crossroads,” Myna said as I opened my can. “How their faces fell when I told them who I was and why I’d come to the big city! They couldn’t hustle me out of there fast enough. They were all in favor of educated, self-confident Negroes, but introduce them to one and they didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.” She giggled, covered her mouth. “Pardon my French.”

  I needed to push before the second Manhattan wiped her out. “You found work as a receptionist,” I said, “and modeled for art classes on the side. You met Tander Phigg and started dating.”

  “How on earth did you learn all this?”

  “I spoke with Chas Weinberg.”

  “Goodness, the King of the Queens. He’s still alive?”

  “Still runs the gallery on Wooster Street, still owns the building. Sells rusty wheelbarrows for forty-six hundred dollars.”

  Myna laughed and punched my shoulder. “It was a racket fifty years ago and it’s just gotten worse, hasn’t it?”

  “Did you love Tander?”

  That shushed her, straightened her up. She thought and sipped. “I loved the respect he had for me,” she said. “I had plenty of offers from young white men, especially when I began working nude, but they were all wink-and-a-nudge offers. They were willing to be seen in a restaurant with me—they all assumed it was what I wanted—as long as I was willing to go to bed after.” She slowly twirled an index finger. “Big damn whoopee.”

  “Tander was different?”

  “Oh, yes. He was earnest and stumbling and stiff, just as he would have been with a white girl.” She plucked a cherry, popped it in her mouth, and faced me. “Did I love him? No, I did not.”

  “I think you were the only girl he ever loved,” I said. “For what it’s worth.”

  “Really?” Myna touched her hair. “Now why do you say that?”

  I told her Trey called his father’s time in New York his “five happy years.” Told her how Phigg had come home to Fitchburg like a whipped dog, had spent the rest of his life going through the motions.

  When I said Phigg’s wife had died in childbirth and he’d never remarried, she put her hand over her mouth and nodded fast. “Goodness,” she said, “a brand-new baby and he didn’t find himself another woman?”

  “That’s what hit me, too. You’d think a guy like Tander, in 1972, would remarry on the double, find somebody to take care of his only kid.”

  After a very long pause Myna Roper said, “His only son.”

  I looked at her, then at the girl in the high-school graduation photo on the opposite wall. “Well I’ll be damned,” I said.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  We were quiet awhile. Myna finished her Manhattan but was sharp now, focused. I didn’t know how long that could last.

  “Chas Weinberg still wonders why you and Tander left New York in a hurry,” I said. “He talked abortion.”

  “That was the plan, actually. That’s how I broke from him. He kept saying he wanted to ‘be there for me,’ the fool. I told him he’d do no such thing. I told him I’d get it taken care of, and go back home, and I never wanted to see him again. I was doing my very best—” ver besht, the booze creeping back into her speech—“to be a modern Manhattan missy.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was 1962,” she said, jiggling ice, “and I was a Southern Baptist, and I wasn’t a modern Manhattan missy. And I couldn’t go through with it.”

  “You came home and had your baby.”

  Myna half laughed. “There was more to it than that. I came home, latched on to the lightest-skinned Negro bachelor in three counties, and made damn sure I had him hooked before I showed.”

  “Did he know he wasn’t the father?”

  “Bobby died in ’seventy-nine,” she said, avoiding the question, eyes cutting to her empty glass. “Maybe he wasn’t the smartest man, but he was a fine man, a railroad man. And do you know what, Mister Sax? Other than that one thing, I was a good wife to him.”

  I didn’t see any Kleenex, so I stepped to the counter, tore a paper towel from a roll, and handed it to her as I sat. “Now Diana,” she said, nodding at the photo and blotting tears, “she figured things out.”

  “How’d she manage that?”

  “Smart and nosy,” she said, pushing off. It took her two tries to stand, and she fought for balance before starting toward her Manhattan-building area.

  The dog whined just a little—he’d seen this routine, probably saw it every night. “You want me to let your dog out?” I said.

  “How sweet. Sometimes I forget.”

  I bet she did. I let the dog out, looked closely at the dual photos. “You said her name was Diana?”

  “Diana Patience,” Myna said, taking small, precise steps to the sofa, fresh drink in hand.

  “Smart as a whip, huh? I can see it in her eyes.”

  “Yes, sir, she was,” Myna said. Her new drink was two-thirds as tall as the others. Moderation. “She got a partial academic scholarship to Clemson. Studied journalism and communications.”

  “Those smarts made her wonder if your husband was really her father.”

  Myna set slippered feet on the small oak coffee table and closed her eyes and said nothing for a while. Just when I figured she’d passed out, she smiled, eyes still closed. “Both of them wondered. She was born in a little house down the road, not in a hospital, and the midwife fudged the birth date a few months.” She opened her eyes. “I told Bobby it was so my family wouldn’t know she was conceived early, and I suppose that was partly true. But he knew something wasn’t right.”

  “And went along with it?”

  She nodded. “Bobby Marx wasn’t complicated and he wasn’t demanding. He knew something wasn’t right, but he behaved as if Diana was his to the day he died.”

  Holy shit. Now I froze up. Finally I said, “Bobby Marx?” I rose to take a close look at the twin photos.

  “Robert No Middle Name Marx,” Myna said, eyes closed.

  Holy shit. Now I saw her in the high school graduation photo: Diana Patience Marx, aka Patty Marx.
>
  “You say Diana was curious?” I said it loud to keep her awake. Myna’s drink had listed, her breaths had lengthened.

  “Curious, yes.” Curioush, yesh. “Once she hit fourteen, that was her hobbyhorse. Oh, we had knock-down-drag-outs when Bobby was at work! She was persistent to a fault. ‘Show me this.’ ‘How about this?’ ‘And then there’s this.’” Myna laughed, slopping some Manhattan onto her lap. “I finally told her the summer before she went off to college that Bobby wasn’t her father. She cut me dead, said I was eight years too late. And I still wouldn’t say who was her father, and that just turned her persistent again. I think she studied journalism mostly so she could dig around and find her daddy.”

  “Did she ever figure it out?”

  “Course she did.” Courshedid. Myna raised an index finger. “Mister … sir, would you be a dear and bring over my trash can?”

  As I stepped to the kitchen and grabbed a pale yellow plastic can with a white liner, I said, “What’s Diana doing now?”

  But Myna left the index finger in the air, gesturing wait a sec. She nodded thanks for the trash can, pulled her feet from the coffee table, set the can on the floor in front of her, leaned forward, and vomited once into the trash. I turned my head.

  When she was finished Myna took one more dainty sip of her drink, set it down, rose. “And with that,” she said, “it’s off to bed.” Anwishatishoftabed.

  I said, “Are you all right?”

  “Oh, yes. Toodle-oo, sir.”

  “Miz Roper,” I said. “Where is your daughter now?”

  She opened her bedroom door, swayed, waved a vague hand. “Up north somewhere,” she said. “Doesn’t come around much anymore, damn her.”

  Her door clicked shut.

  When I stepped from the trailer, the little dog was sitting not three feet away. I held the door open. He hesitated, then made a wide arc around me and went inside. As he passed I said, “Take good care of her, pal.” It seemed he wagged his tail, but I may have imagined that.

  * * *

  “How’s Ollie’s knee?”

  “Coming along,” Josh said.