Highway 61 Resurfaced (v5)

by Bill Fitzhugh

  There was a pause before Rick and Lollie simultaneously said, “If they were made.” They looked at each other and laughed. Her eyes lingered on his a moment longer than she intended and the only way to break it off was with a shy smile that simply compounded the moment. She made a perfunctory glance at the notepad, tapping it with the pen. “You know, it occurs to me that if these tapes don’t exist, we have no idea what the murders are about.”

  “It’s better than that,” Rick said. “Even if the tapes do exist, we don’t know what the murders are about.”

  “I guess that helps keep the job interesting.”

  Rick looked into her eyes and said, “Well, that’s one of the things.”

  CRIPPLED WILLIE JEFFERSON could have made a good living playing the blues if he’d kept at it. He had the chops on guitar and harp and he wrote a good song. But after that night he played only for Jesus. Over the years he’d been invited to play at folk-blues revivals and to tour Europe and Japan. But he never accepted, never even responded, like he wanted folks to think that that man had already died.

  Instead he turned to preaching and a life of atonement. Returning to his surname, Crippled Willie Jefferson became the reverend Johnson and vowed never again to play the devil’s music. He gave up life on the road and all its temptations, just stayed near home, found a congregation, and tried to save them and himself at the same time.

  He lived in a simple country house off old Highway 61, halfway between Leland and Stoneville. It was comfortable, with a small front room, a little kitchen in the back, and a skinny space on the side he called his bedroom. His backyard was five hundred acres of soybeans that was somebody else’s problem. To the east they were growing cotton that looked good this year. To the west was a creek and a stand of trees that broke the monotony of the landscape and gave some of God’s creatures a place to nest, while others used it as a place to hide.

  Willie had put in a long day at the Full Gospel Church. At ninety he still mopped the floor, wrote the sermons, and helped with the choir. It was past dark when he got home, and now he was standing in the kitchen with an old two-pronged barbecue fork in his hand. He’d found it on the side of the road one time when he was walking home, figured it was still good for something even with the one prong bent the way it was. At the moment he was using it to stir the contents of the pot on the stovetop. He was simmering some collards with a strip of salt pork and a couple of chicken neckbones. Willie put in a couple dashes of hot sauce while a rattling fan set on a chair in the doorway pushed the pungent air around the room. The heat from the flame caught Willie’s eyes and he stared for a moment as the fat boiled off in the water.

  Even with the fan, it was hot in that little kitchen. Periodically Willie dabbed the sweat off his forehead and sipped water from a blue plastic cup that he’d set on the kitchen table next to a place setting, a pencil, and some papers that started off by saying something about being of sound mind and body. Willie had been giving things some serious thought since he’d heard about Clarence getting out of jail. He wanted to make sure the people of his congregation who were most in need would get most of his few possessions when his time came. He felt like it was the least he could do after all they’d given him.

  He turned down the heat under the pot and sat at the table thinking about toothless old Miss Dobbs. He thought she could use that fan of his, so he wrote that down. His little saucepan too. Bless her heart, she didn’t have much, but every Sunday when that plate went by, she put something in it. Willie wished he could do more for her.

  He was thinking about who might be able to use his kitchen table and chair when the first shot came through the window. Glass scattered across Willie’s hands like sparkling ice. The pot on the stove exploded, sending greens and neckbones flying. Willie didn’t know whether to duck and try to put off the inevitable or stand up and get it over with. The second shot blew the plastic cup across the room and helped Willie make up his mind. He moved away from the table and made for the light switch quicker than your average ninety-year-old jake-legged preacher. His good limb was doing double time and the bad one was swinging like Benny Goodman to catch up and plop out in front of him.

  He switched the light off just as the third shot shattered the window completely. The splintering glass cascaded noisily onto the floor. Then everything was quiet. The only light in the room was the blue flame on the stove. Willie stared at it, wondering if Clarence would wait for him to come outside or if he’d come in to do the killing. He decided he’d rather die inside, so he crouched in the corner and started to pray. Deep in his heart he knew that a good Christian would be praying for Clarence to see the error of his ways and praying for God to forgive him. But at the moment, Willie wasn’t praying that way. Instead he was asking for some of God’s mercy, a little something for hisself for a change.

  14

  IT WAS ELEVEN forty-five when Rick opened his mike and said, “Welcome back to the Crippled Crusty Boogers Blues Hour. It’s time now for the part of the show where we spotlight a blues tune you never knew was there.” Rick started Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s version of Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” and talked over it, saying, “It was somewhere in the late 1950s when Pete and John met in a London high school. Embracing an early form of American jazz, they played in a teenage Dixieland band, with Pete on banjo and John on trumpet. They later joined two other English boys named Roger and Keith to form a little rock outfit known as The Who.”

  Here, Rick dropped out of the Emerson, Lake and Palmer and went into the crashing guitar and synthesizer intro for “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

  “Somewhere in the late 1960s, ex–banjo picker Pete Townsend wrote twenty-one of the twenty-four songs for his groundbreaking rock opera, Tommy. Around the same time, former trumpeter John Entwistle wrote two of the remaining three songs. The opera’s other tune had been written thirty years earlier by a guy from Glendora, Mississippi, of all places. He called himself the Original Sonny Boy Williamson after the original Original Sonny Boy Williamson was murdered in Chicago in 1948, but that’s another story,” Rick said as he faded out of “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” “So now, from the opera about that deaf, dumb, and blind kid who played from Soho down to Brighton, here’s ‘Eyesight to the Blind’ on WVBR-FM.”

  The overnight guy walked into the building and waved at Rick through the studio window. Rick was getting up to file his CDs when his cell phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number, but he answered anyway. It was Lollie Woolfolk. She said, “Did you make that up?”

  “Oh, hey. I was thinking about you earlier.”

  Lollie paused, then said, “Really? That’s intriguing. We’ll get to that in a minute. First, answer my question.”

  “Did I make what up?”

  “The banjo and trumpet business.”

  “No, that’s the story.”

  “Fascinating. The things you know.”

  “So,” Rick said. “You’re listening?”

  “Is there some other way I’d know to ask about banjos and trumpets?”

  “Well, there’s this one girl who calls saying she gets the radiostation signals through the fillings in her teeth.”

  Lollie laughed. “I bet you do meet a lot of interesting people in your job.”

  “Jobsssssss, plural,” Rick said. “And you’re a good example of the type I meet. So, what’re you doing?”

  “Calling in with research. I’m probably the best employee you have.”

  “Certainly the one who pays me the most.”

  “I’m also the one you claim to have been thinking about earlier,” she said. “What was that about, hmmmm?”

  “Oh, I got an address and a phone number for Buddy Cotton,” he said. “I did a title search with the county recorders up in the Delta. Turns out Bernard Lewis Cotton owns a bit of property up in Sunflower County, just outside Ruleville.”

  “And that’s why you were thinking about me?” She tried to make it sound as if her feelings were hurt. “It wa
sn’t because of my winning smile or my stunning figure, or some intangible you couldn’t quite put a finger on?”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “Men always disappoint me,” she said. “I’m used to it. Though I must say I had higher expectations for you.”

  “I appreciate that and I’ll try not to let you down again. Oh, hang on a second.” Rick cued another record and started it, then came back on the phone. “So, what did you find out?”

  “The sheriff’s department records before ′75 were lost in the same fire with the court records. But,” she said with dramatic emphasis, “it was all stored on microfiche.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Woulda been,” she said. “Except they were stored in the same building. It’s all gone.”

  “Damn,” Rick said. “I talked to Smitty Chisholm. He didn’t have any more leads on Pigfoot’s real name.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Lollie said. “I’ve got an idea on that.”

  “You do?” He paused, waiting to hear the idea, but she didn’t say anything. “What is it?”

  “A surprise,” she said. “Play me a song.”

  “What?”

  “I said play me a song.”

  “No, I mean which one?”

  “Surprise me.”

  “I’m off the air in seven minutes,” he said. “That’s not a lot of time to work with. Plus it has to be a blues.”

  “You’re not going to disappoint me again, are you?”

  “Jesus. Okay, hang on.” Rick looked through his song database and found one. He cued it up, then put on his headphones. He held the phone near the mike as he said, “That about does it for the Crippled Crusty Boogers Blues Hour. We’re going to wrap it up with a request from our favorite unemployed teacher. Here’s Champion Jack Dupree doing ‘School Days,’ on WVBR-FM.” He took off his headphones and let the overnight guy slip behind the board.

  Rick returned to Lollie on the cell phone. They made small talk while he gathered his stuff and got ready to leave. He put Crusty into his carrier and headed for the door. “So what’s your idea on Pigfoot Morgan?”

  “You’ll find out,” she said.

  With the phone in one hand and the cat carrier in the other, Rick turned and pushed backward through the door leading outside. “When?” There was no reply. “Hello?” He’d lost her signal. “Can you hear me now?”

  Rick nearly dropped Crusty when she tapped him on the shoulder and said, “I can hear you better if you turn around.”

  “Jesus!” He turned around. “You could’ve given me a heart attack!”

  She gave him a funny look. “Such a drama queen.”

  “You’ve been out here the whole time?”

  She shook her head. “Just got here.”

  “Okay, so what’s your idea?”

  Lollie turned and headed for her car. She said, “Follow me and you’ll find out.”

  RICK FOLLOWED HER to the parking garage for the Isle of Capri. As they walked toward the front doors, Rick said, “Do they let cats into casinos?”

  “For crying out loud, we’re just going to the bar,” Lollie said.

  It was twelve-thirty when they sat down in a corner booth. The crowd was thin for a Friday night. Rick was bent down, situating Crusty’s carrier on the floor, when he saw the waitress’s feet arrive. Lollie said, “I’ll have a vodka martini with a twist, please.”

  “And what can I get for …”The waitress paused when Rick came up from under the table. “… you.”

  “Oh, hi,” Rick said, obviously surprised. “It’s … Veronica.” After spending time with Lollie, he wondered what he’d ever seen in this aggressively unpleasant woman. He just said, “I’ll have a beer.”

  Veronica said, “What’s that?”

  “I think it’s barley, rice, and water cooked up with some hops.”

  Veronica smiled, but not in a nice way. She pointed under the table. “That.”

  “Oh, that’s my cat,” Rick said, reaching for the carrier. “More of a kitten really. He’s pretty cute. Wanna see him?”

  “I’m allergic to cats.”

  “And for some reason that doesn’t surprise me,” he said.

  She tossed two napkins on the table and went to get the drinks, leaving a chill in the air.

  Lollie wasn’t sure of all the dynamics in play, but she sensed some sort of history between the two. “Friend of yours?”

  “She lives in my building,” Rick said. “I sort of flirted with her for a while.”

  “Yeah? How’d that work out?”

  “Well, as you can see, she plays hard to get.”

  Lollie grabbed a handful of peanuts from the bowl on the table, tossing a couple in her mouth before she said, “Well, magical thinking’s better than nothing.”

  “One does what one must,” Rick said.

  A moment later, Veronica returned with their drinks. She gave Rick an unpleasant look and left without saying anything else.

  “She’s crazy about you,” Lollie said, sipping her martini. “No question.”

  “All right, here’s a thought,” Rick said. “Instead of ridiculing my skills as a Casanova, why don’t you just tell me why we’re here and what you know about Pigfoot’s real name and maybe we’ll get closer to finding out who killed your grandfather.”

  She looked at her watch. “I don’t know anything yet. It’s too early. Now relax.” She waved a hand at his glass. “Drink your beer. Pretend we’re on a date, maybe that’ll drive Veronica so wild with jealousy that she’ll have to have you.”

  “Okay, here’s another thought,” Rick said. “If you’re not going to tell me why we’re here, let’s at least make fun of your love life instead of mine.”

  She held up her left hand, wiggling her bare ring finger. “You already know about me.”

  “I don’t know much,” Rick said. “Like, for instance, who divorced whom?”

  Lollie hesitated before saying, “I divorced him.”

  “Unfaithful or violent?”

  “Aren’t you the cynic? Why not irreconcilable differences?”

  “You’re not the irreconcilable type.”

  She smirked. “You’re right. He cheated.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  Her expression darkened before she said, “I hired a guy like you, got a stack of ugly photographs, and only lost a couple years of my life.” She shrugged. “Unlucky in love. End of story.” She flashed an exaggerated smile. “But enough about me. You’re a decent-looking guy. Surely you have a girlfriend other than Veronica.”

  “Nope, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why,” he said in mock confusion. “I’ve lived in sixteen cities in twenty years, so I’ve cruised lots of bars in lots of towns looking for Miss Right. I’ve got a steady, low-paying job at the bottom rung of a medium whose prestige has been dwindling since Burns and Allen went off the air. And the private investigation business I started with the hope of escaping radio has turned out to be a break-even affair at best.”

  “With a résumé like that, you’d think women would be throwing themselves at you.”

  “Exactly,” Rick said. “But here I am, sitting in a bar at one in the morning with a woman whose only bad intention appears to be mocking my chaste existence.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t do that.” She poked a finger at the twist of lemon floating in her drink. “I just thought since I told you about me …” She offered him a wounded pout.

  “Okay,” Rick said. “There was a girl named Traci, when I was working down in McRae. And there were some others before that.”

  “A lot of others?”

  “Let’s see, if I’ve lived in sixteen cities during my radio career, there must be at least seventeen broken hearts out there. But that’s if you only count mine once.” He made a woeful face and looked at her. Their eyes connected for a moment.

  Lollie held up her glass, smiled sympathetically, and said, “Well, here’s to better luck all around.”
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br />   Rick joined her in the toast and took a long drink from his beer. “Now, would you please tell me why we’re here?”

  “You know,” Lollie said, “in addition to getting laid, you need to relax.” She checked her watch. “Patience is a virtue.”

  “Getting laid’s a virtue. Curiosity’s a curse,” Rick said. “I can’t help myself. So, let me ask again, why are we—”

  Lollie suddenly grabbed Rick’s arm. “There he is.” She was looking over Rick’s shoulder at a man who had just come into the room.

  Rick turned and saw an elderly black man walking toward the bar. He was alone and looking around as if lost or there to meet a stranger. Rick said, “That’s him? That’s Pigfoot Morgan? How the hell did you—” Rick stopped when he heard Lollie giggling. He turned back around and in a defeated tone said, “That’s not him, is it?” He watched as the bartender directed the man toward the rest room.

  “Sorry.” Lollie gave a sheepish grin. “Just having fun.”

  Rick stared at her. “You’re a regular barrel of monkeys.”

  She gave him a big smile, trying to be contagious with it. “Let me ask, what do you usually do on a Friday when you get off work, I mean for fun? You go home and hit your thumb with a hammer? Maybe watch some dreary Swedish movies? What?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. I go home, smoke some pot, and watch Ingmar Bergman films until the sun comes up.”

  Her face lit up with mischief. “You have some pot? I haven’t smoked pot in years.” Lollie stood up. “Let’s go to your place.”

  “What?” He was incredulous. “Why did we come here?”

  “To have a drink and kill some time.” She held her hand out to pull Rick from the booth. “Which we’ve done, now let’s go.”

  “You said if I followed you here, you’d tell me your idea.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t say when. C’mon. You’ll find out soon.”

  THEY LEFT THEIR cars in the parking garage and walked the few blocks to Rick’s apartment. It was an uphill climb from the river, but it was a nice night for a walk, not too warm and a steady breeze coming across the water. A tugboat’s horn sounded to the south as it headed for Natchez.