Paper Doll by Robert B. Parker

thumped a tail on the floor when she saw me. The others watched me but did nothing. Sprawled on the floor, they moved only their eyes to look at me. Air-conditioning buzzed unseen somewhere above us. Despite the sunlight the room was cold.
    The old black man gestured me to the other seat with one gnarled, still graceful hand. I sat. Jumper Jack stared at the car race. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
    “Care for some whiskey and branch water, sir?” the black man said.
    I thought about it. It might keep my teeth from chattering. On the other hand, it was ten-thirty in the morning. I shook my head.
    The black man nodded and shuffled a little ways off, near the door, and stood. Nelson continued to gaze at the stock car race.
    I waited.
    Nobody did anything. It was as if immobility were the natural order of things here, and movement was aberrant.
    Jumper Jack drank some more whiskey. The race announcer was frantic with excitement as the cars went round and round. The excitement seemed contrived in this room where time was suspended and movement was an oddity. The huge television set itself was inappropriate, a blatting, contemporary intrusion into this motionless antebellum room full of dogs, and old men, and me.
    I sat. The black man stood. The dogs sprawled. And Jumper Jack stared at the race and drank whiskey. I waited. I had nowhere to go.
    Finally someone won the car race. Jumper Jack picked up the remote from the table beside him and pressed the mute button. The television went silent. He turned and looked at me, and when he spoke his clotted voice rumbled up out of his belly like the effortful grumble of a whale.
    “Got no daughter,” he said.
    “None?”
    “No daughter,” he said and finished his whiskey and fumbled at the fixings to make another one. The old black man was there. He made the drink with no wasted movement and handed it to Nelson and returned to his motionless post near the door.
    “You know a woman named Olivia Nelson?”
    He shook his head, heavily, as if there were hornets around it.
    “No,” he said.
    “Did you ever?” I said.
    “No more.”
    “But you did once.”
    He looked at me for the first time, raising his head slowly from his chest and staring at me with his rheumy, unfocused gaze.
    “Yes.”
    I waited again. Nelson drank. One of the dogs got up suddenly and walked over and put his head on Nelson’s lap. Nelson automatically patted the dog’s head with a thick, clumsy hand. There were liver spots on his hands and the fingernails were ragged, as if he chewed them.
    “Married a African nigger,” he said. “I…” He seemed overcome, as much by forgetfulness as by memory. He lost track of what he’d begun to say, and dropped his head and buried his nose in the lowball glass and drank.
    “And?” I said.
    He looked up as if he were surprised to see me there.
    “And?”
    “And what happened after she married?” I said.
    Again his head dropped. “Jefferson tell you,” he rumbled.
    I looked at the black man. He nodded.
    “Jefferson,” Nelson said, “you tell.”
    He drank again and turned the sound back on, and faced back into the car races, as if I’d vanished. His chin sank to his chest. Jefferson came over and took the whiskey glass from his hand and put it on the table. From an inside pocket he produced a big red bandanna and wiped Nelson’s forehead with it. Nelson started to snore. The dog withdrew his head from Nelson’s lap and went back and lay down with a sigh in the bright sun splash on the bluestone floor.
    “Mr. Nelson will sleep now, sir,” Jefferson said. “You and I can talk in the kitchen.”
    I followed Jefferson out of the cold room where Nelson lay sweating in his sleep, with his dogs, in front of the aimless car race. Despite what Ferguson said, Jumper Jack no longer seemed a danger to virgins.

chapter twenty
    IT WAS A servant’s kitchen, below stairs, with a yellowed linoleum floor and a big gas stove on legs, and a soapstone sink. The room was