Because nothing turned up in the data search I ran at the newsroom, I’m left to rely on my telephone skills and the kindness of strangers. First, I make a list of cities where my mother has lived in the forty-three years since Jack Sr. walked out. In order: Clearwater, Orlando (where I attended high school), Jacksonville (where my mother met my stepfather), Atlanta, Dallas, Tallahassee and, now, Naples. Unless my mother is fudging about the time frame, my old man’s death occurred at least two decades ago. That automatically knocks out the last three cities. Twenty years ago, my mother and stepfather were living in Atlanta, so that’s where I begin—with a call to the morgue of the Journal-Constitution.
As soon as I identify myself as a brethren journalist, I’m transferred to an efficient-sounding librarian with a honey-buttered Georgia accent. She puts me on hold while she manually searches the paper’s old, alphabetized clip files, the stories that predated electronic storage. As I’m waiting, my palms moisten and my heart drums against my sternum and—for one fleeting lucid moment—I consider hanging up. Whether my father croaked at thirty-five or ninety-five shouldn’t matter to me; I don’t even remember the guy. We had nothing in common except for the name and the blood; any other attachment is illusory, coiled like a blind worm in my imagination.
Yet I don’t hang up. When the librarian comes back on the line, she apologetically reports that she cannot find a published obituary for anyone named Jack Tagger, nor any news stories relating to the death of such a person. “It’s always possible it was misfiled. I could crosscheck the daily obit pages on microfilm,” she offers. “Can you guess at the year?”
“Till the cows come home,” I say. “Thanks for trying.”
I get the same discouraging results from the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, the Orlando Sentinel and the Clearwater Sun. No obits, blotter items, no stories, no Jack Tagger in the clips. I wonder if I’ve overestimated my mother’s integrity. Suppose she invented the bit about seeing my old man’s obit in a paper. Suppose she contrived to send me off on some winding, futile quest, just to get me off her back.
If so, I went for the bait like a starved carp. Two hours working the phone and zip to show for it. Serves me right.
I dial her number and Dave, my stepfather, picks up. We engage in innocuous chitchat about the tragic state of his golf game until he gets sidetracked, as he often does, on the subject of Tiger Woods. While acknowledging the young man’s phenomenal talent, my stepfather fears that Tiger Woods is inspiring thousands upon thousands of minority youngsters to take up golf, and that some of these youngsters will one day gain entry to my stepfather’s beloved country club and commence whupping some white Protestant ass.
“I’ve got nothing against blacks,” Dave is saying, “but, Jack, look around. They’ve already got basketball, they’ve got football, they’ve got track. Can’t they leave us something? Just one damn sport we can win at? Don’t read me wrong—”
“Never,” I say. Arguing would be futile; Dave is old and dim and stubborn.
“—don’t read me wrong, Jack, but what can they possibly enjoy about golf? For Christ’s sake, you don’t even get to run anywhere. It’s all walking or riding around in electric carts in the hot sun—can that be fun for them?”
“Is Mom home?” I ask.
“Jack, you know I’m not prejudiced—”
Perish the thought.
“—and, as you’re aware, me and your mother give generously to their college fund, that Negro College Fund. We never miss the Lou Rawls telethon.”
“Dave?”
“But what concerns me about this Tiger Woods—and God knows he’s a gifted athlete—but what troubles me, Jack, is the message that’s being sent out to the young people, that golf is all of sudden a game for, you know… the masses.”
“Dave, is my mother home?”
“She went to the grocery.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, Jack.”
“Not to change the subject.”
“That’s quite okay.”
“She ever talk about my old man?”
“Hmmm.”
“Because she told me he died,” I say. “She said she read about it in some newspaper a long time ago. You wouldn’t happen to remember when that was?”