In Search of Satisfaction

by J. California Cooper

  by the same author

  the future has a past

  a piece of mine

  homemade love

  some soul to keep

  family

  the matter is life

  some love, some pain, sometime

  the wake of the wind

  some people, some other place

  FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, OCTOBER 1995

  Copyright © 1994 by J. California Cooper

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday in 1994. The Anchor Books edition is published by arrangement with Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

  Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  FRONTISPIECE COURTESY OF STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition as follows:

  Cooper, J. California.

  In search of satisfaction / J. California Cooper.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Fathers and daughters—United States—Fiction.

  2. Sisters—United States—Fiction. 3. Afro-American women—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3553.05874I5 1994

  813′.54—dc20 94-9555

  eISBN: 978-0-307-77862-8

  www.anchorbooks.com

  v3.1

  Dedicated

  With All My Love

  to

  My Beloved, Beloved

  Only Brother

  Joseph Carlton Cooper, Jr.

  in

  My Heart and Memory

  Forever

  Kay Cooper, his wife

  Joseph Cooper III, his son

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  About the Author

  acknowledgments

  i asked God so many times to help me with this book I have to acknowledge Him first. Thank You.

  My daughter, Paris Williams, for her support. Always. The wonderful people of Doubleday. They are all so important to me. My editor, Casey Fuetsch, one of the nicest; smart and quick. Thank you for all your help, Casey. The assistant editor, Brandon Saltz, who makes it such a pleasure to work with him.

  To the others, some of whom help me every day in some way and let me know they are concerned about my well-being. A special, special regard for Martha Levin. Other special people include Stephen Rubin, David Gernert, Evelyn Hubbard, Arabella Meyer, Janet Hill, Michael Coe, Charles Thompson, David Lappin, Jim Chandler, Ellen Archer, Byron Baker, Delia Kurland, Anne Bentley and Phyllis Mandel.

  Then, the marvelous wonder-workers: Ellie Sims, Russell Thelen, Ellen Schoemer, Julia Neves, John McPartland, Karen Fink, Barbara Suter, Josephine Brooks, Bryan Petty, Steven Fruda, John Murray, Helen Ortiz, Dom Durante, Annette Trial, Marion Seith, Alan Trask, Beth Facter, Claudine Morales and all the other wonder-working people at Doubleday I have missed.

  I miss Sallye Leventhal and that handsome devil of an excellent publicist, Russell Perreault.

  I must say thank you to those at St. Martin’s Press whose kindnesses are still so ready: Keith Kahla, Michelle Coleman, Yvonne Phidd, Betty Banks and John Clark.

  A huge thank you for special things to Jessica Henderson Daniel, Ph.D., of Boston, Ms. Georgene Bess, Atlanta, Georgia, Susan Shorter of New York, Santelia Steven Johnson, California, and my Spirit Sister, DeDe Reagan, Encinitas, California.

  Thank you all. I love you. God bless all of us. And everybody.

  author’s note

  i cannot think of anyone—any age, any color, any sex—who is not in search of satisfaction. Everything living, in fact. From a king to someone sitting in the poorhouse or no home at all. From a murderer to a child playing jacks. TIME is to be used to build our minds, our tool to get to some satisfaction. We are building our minds, our values, as we find what will give us satisfaction, how to get it, how to keep it. Our minds decide the quality of our lives.

  Take the story of the three little pigs. Say they built their houses as you build your mind. One built his house of straw. Was he in a hurry? Didn’t have much time? Went out to play? Lazy? His house did not stand against any danger from the world outside. It went down at the first blow from the wolf, the world. The second pig built his house of sticks. Did he believe lies? Settle for whatever he could get easy? Did he not care? Was he lazy? It did not stand in the time of need. Was not safe from lies, the world, the wolf. Time.

  The third pig built his house of solid, precious, heavy bricks: Truth. It took time, sweat and thinking. That house withstood blows from the wolf, the world. Lies. That home was a safe place of security where his life and happiness could live safely within.

  Build your house, your mind, of truths. Bricks. Don’t settle for straw-tinsel. Let the mortar be love and goodness, but, always remember everyone else may not be full of love and goodness; that is why you build your mind and house of bricks anyway.

  Lastly, do not depend on anyone else for your happiness. Happiness is something a person acquires for themselves with their energy and the tools of their mind. Don’t say to anyone, “Make me happy, please.” Make your own happiness inside yourself and, when you have enough to share, find someone to share it with. We cannot blame anyone for our misery, aloneness and impotence. If we fail, we cannot say, “It is not my fault!” If we never have anything to give that another person might want, we cannot blame it on parents, wives, husbands, circumstances or lack of opportunity. We, alone, are to blame. I believe you can survive anything and move on … with the right tools. Move on to seek, to find what you need … in the search for satisfaction.

  prologue

  once upon any time, when a person is born, no matter what color of mankind you are, a body with a mind seeks for the truth of life. A way. A chest is opened for you, filled with many truths and things that pass as truths for you to find, pick, choose from, live your life with. Be the things yo
u value.

  Now, you may have a brain and still be a fool. Many people choose those things that pass as the truth but are false. Still others find real truths then twist, bend and misuse them, even bury them. Some, the lazy, don’t search or dig deep for the truth but find a way and use it until they find it is not so good, then they pick up another way, often just as useless. They spend years and years, their lives, doing this. Very often to the detriment of themselves and others. Very often … just a nothing life.

  It’s a sad truth that many get all the way to the end of their lives then stop and look closely at their way, their imposter truths; then they cry out to life, “Cheat! Empty!”

  The mind is a mighty, mighty tool. A body just has to think and reason.

  I think one of the main ingredients to reason your way to the truth is, first, love. If love is missing from your soul, your mind, you won’t be able to find what you need. You may not recognize it.

  It’s a wise, wise person who looks into the Ten Commandments. Christian or not, they are a universal, huge power. They are tools. They are good. They are the main wisdom, the main direction in the search for truth, peace, love and ultimately happiness here on earth. Don’t just wait for heaven. What you believe has no effect on what is the truth. One thing is sure, you will bump your head hard on the truth if you don’t recognize it when you need to.

  Almost everyone on earth believes there is a God. Some god. Some wise people believe there is a Satan or evil power. This Satan laughs at God because he, the devil, the evil power, has so many people following him. It’s a hollow laughter. Because who can really be pleased and proud of fools? But another fool?

  God waits for His own time. Time is passing. His time is coming. He has a plan. He need not be concerned with the laughter of fools.

  chapter

  1

  the past comes forward

  yoville was a small, legal township founded by the very rich for their own personal use. It had one lawyer, a two-room bank that belonged to the rich Befoe family, a doctor for immediate needs until they could go to larger, more efficient places. A mill, a gin, a blacksmith, a small hotel for uninvited guests or business associates unwanted in their homes, a small shop carrying all sorts of things. There was a dressmaking shop, often closed because the seamstress was nearly starving; everyone really shopped in New York or other places.

  The gentlemen of the area had built and kept a house of quiet, ill reputation in which at all times there was at least one woman so the local gentry could go there to drink and talk and relieve themselves if they wished. But many were in Yoville only seasonally, and, as the original founders of this little house grew older and their young left Yoville for college and cities offering more to their greedy young lives, the old gentlemen stopped bringing in a new refined whore to replace the last one who had become inevitably bored and tired of Yoville. There were, finally, few customers. In the old times, however, it was a bright, gay place to spend a few hours with other friends who had nothing to do.

  Yoville was close enough to the Northeast to call itself northern upon occasion, and it was south enough to have had some of the advantages of slavery. A river ran through Yoville, hastening away to some happier place and people. A railroad spur was built in Mythville, a larger town some ten miles away. A clean barge could be engaged to carry a person down the river if one did not feel like driving their carriage or riding a horse. Over the years since slavery ended, some of the rich had moved further east, still holding to their land in Yoville, returning seasonally. It seemed, now, to be a dying little town. But it was not dying. It just never grew.

  Following slavery, there was a man named Josephus Josephus. He chose to take the name he hoped his mother had given him, twice, rather than take the name of the cruel owners he had lived under. He had never known his mother or father, a sister or brother. He did not think his father had been white because his own skin was of a deep brown-black color. Emancipation came when he was between fourteen and nineteen years of age. He had known no other home than the one he had in Yoville with the Krupts, who owned him.

  After freedom came, all the other slaves at the Krupts fairly flew away, for all they could remember of their masters was the sadistic treatment of the slaves they had owned. Both the master and mistress had had very sexual proclivities, much indulged. Master Krupt had married his wife, Virginia Krupt, because of her love of pleasure and her youth. Her family having name but no money, she married him for his money. They’d been married about 25 years. During their later years together, their lives and land deteriorated. They had even grown to hate each other; they hated everything else already. In old age and sicknesses, their tired, abused bodies had dwindled away, his more than hers. They had no children to care for them now in their old age. She had never been pregnant for him, ever. At Emancipation time, no slave but one able to walk had remained behind to care for them. Those unable to walk were carried away by able-bodied ex-slaves to people who had heart and land enough to let them live out their short lives and die in peace. God bless them.

  Josephus Josephus intended to go away someday. But he had absolutely nowhere to go. He had looked around the farm and its owners and knew he could work almost as he pleased, be his own overseer. He could have gone to work for the Befoes, the very rich family on the next plantation down the road, but he figured all white folks were alike anyway. And there, he would have an overseer. He stayed where he was. Years. Why change?

  Among other things once produced on their huge farm, Master and Mistress Krupt had made their own wine and whiskey. This was one thing they continued, except now, they gave none away. They drank it all. They were not in any condition, most of the time, to watch anybody. Josephus could choose which cabin he would live in and worked just enough to keep food on the table, his and theirs, and to feed the livestock. He kept the place in a generally clean and livable condition. The Krupts depended heavily on him. Josephus thought of marrying one or two of the neighboring, courtable ladies, poor, without everything. But poor as they were, the ladies did not want to move and live with him at the Krupt plantation, such as it was. One, Bessel, liked him enough to let him make love to her once, even while she courted another and tried to decide between the two. But she did not want to live at the Krupts. She became pregnant, then promptly married the other whom she thought would be able to support her and the child decently. She bore a girl-child named Ruth Mae, around 1879. Josephus did not know whose child it really was, so he made no fuss. What could he do anyway? He just watched the child as she grew for signs that she might be his. He saw them and knew she was his child. But there was Bessel’s husband now, so Josephus did nothing but watch the child, Ruth, and love her from a distance.

  Ma Lal, with her little daughter, Mae, was the midwife. She knew all kinds of things about everybody. She knew the child belonged to Josephus even before she delivered it. The married father was so light, and the baby was brown like her father, even with tiny features like Josephus. Josephus watched the child, yearning for a family of his own. Anyway, time passed.

  During the last years Josephus was at the Krupts’, a fierce storm had blown the roof and parts of the poorly built slave cabins away, so he moved into the servants’ quarters in the main house. There he saw money and valuables all over the house that it was his job to clean. That is when he finally began a real plan to move away. Then, his mistress really saw him one day when she was sober.

  Mistress Krupt, in her late thirties, was not so old but was married to someone old she did not love, and her life of quiet debauchery had ruined whatever looks she once had. She was puffy and pasty looking, bruises smeared over her body where she had stumbled against something or fallen. Both she and her husband kept mostly to their rooms, coming down to the kitchen for meals when they could walk. Sometimes they ate what she threw together, sometimes what Josephus cooked. He cooked more often because he now had access to and ate the food they had delivered. Then, too, he was always sober enough to cook.
>
  Josephus did not know why they did not hire someone to cook and care for them, they certainly had the golden money. But the once lovely mistress was ashamed to be seen lest the tale be carried along the roads to people who had known her when she first arrived in Yoville. Oh! So many years ago! Before she became—ugh!—a lovely young bride to old Mr. Krupt. When even the wealthy Mr. Befoe, Carlene’s father, had loved her and given her gifts. She had been a lovely young guest at the wedding of Carlene Befoe when she met Mr. Krupt, a very rich old man. Her family had lost everything during the wars. She was in need. When she thought of Carlene Befoe, her friend then who hated her now, she would laugh to herself. And take another drink.

  One morning as Josephus was bringing her food to her rooms again, she saw him through the fog in her brain and beckoned him, pulled him into her. Ever and even, the body does not want to be alone. In his fear of death, he resisted her. She laughed and said drunkenly, “Nigger, you are still my slave!” The slave did her bidding. “Fill me up!” she laughed. Her body was too sotten to have orgasms, she just wanted something done to her body, in memory. An emotional need.

  Somehow, enough of these times and one of those times, she became pregnant. She had never been pregnant in her life. Never having had a child, she wanted this child. Not his child, but this child. Sometimes, the fact that it might be black faded from her mind. For her own reasons, she wanted the child, black or not. She had no one on earth except that ole bastard lost somewhere in his rooms, in his liquor. Mistress Krupt even took to taking better care of herself during her pregnancy, with Josephus’ help.