Page 48 of Safe Enough

“Suppose he didn’t?”

“Are you a reporter?”

“Proud to be,” I said, like I always planned to.

“Who do you work for?”

“Anyone prepared to pay me. Right now a magazine in France.”

The guy said, “We thought he was killed. Why would he stay in France? I don’t see how that’s natural.”

I said, “Do you know his brother?”

“Sure,” he said, and he walked me a couple of steps, and waved the pointed end of his pepperoni pie at the last house on the next street.

I knocked on the door, and it was opened by another guy who looked about eighty. Which was about right. Cuthbert himself was eighty-two. His long-lost brother would be plus or minus. The old guy said his name was Albert Jackson. I told him a guy from these parts named Cuthbert Jackson had become very famous in France. Recently he had added to his bio that he had a brother.

“Why would he say that?” Albert asked.

“Is it not true?”

“On the television shows they want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

“I’m just a reporter asking a question.”

“What was the question?”

“Are you Cuthbert Jackson’s brother?”

Albert Jackson said, “Yes, I am.”

“That’s good.”

“Is it?”

“In the sense that the new bio is proved correct. Future historians will not be misled. In France, I mean. A guy wrote a whole book about five words he said.”

“I haven’t seen him for more than sixty years.”

“What do you remember of him?”

“He could play the piano.”

“Did you think he was killed in the war?”

Albert shook his head. “He told me many times. He was going to let them take him all over, and he was going to pick out the best place he saw, and he was going to stay there. He said if the war lasted long enough for me to get drafted, I should do the same thing.”

“Because it would be better somewhere else for a black man?”

“Who plays the piano, I guess. Although plenty of piano-playing folk are doing pretty good right here.”

“Did you ever hear from him?”

“One time. I wrote him about something, and he wrote me back.”

“Were you surprised he never came home?”

“I guess a little at first. But later, not so much.”

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