Highway 61 Resurfaced (v5)

by Bill Fitzhugh

  Lollie opened the folio and looked. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open.

  Ruby took great pleasure in the response. She said, “Quite the dish, wasn’t I?”

  18

  RICK DROVE DOWN Old Highway 61 until he came to the two tractors rusting in the weeds next to the listing toolshed with the faded Coca-Cola sign on it. The gravel road after that was the turnoff he was looking for. A minute later he was parked in front of a shotgun shack with knobby pine trunks holding up a tin roof over the porch. As Rick approached, the front door opened and an old man with an odd gait stepped outside, leading with his left leg. His hip turned and pitched the right leg forward in an expert motion until the foot flopped out in front of him. He wiped his hands on his overalls and said, “Can I help you?”

  Rick looked up at the man who was supposed to be ninety but whose smooth caramel face was ageless. “Reverend Johnson?”

  “That’s right.” He stood at the top of the steps like a roadblock, his hands dropped into his pockets. “Who’re you?”

  “I’m Rick Shannon,” he said. “Sorry to bother you on a Sunday.”

  He shook his head. “Already done my preachin’,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m a private investigator.” He pulled a business card from his pocket and handed it to Willie.

  Willie glanced at it and said, “All right. Wha’ choo want with me?” Like it could be any number of things and he didn’t want to waste anybody’s time answering the wrong questions.

  “I’m looking into the murder of a man named Tucker Woolfolk. I was hoping we could talk for a minute.”

  This seemed to change things considerably. Crippled Willie sort of bowed at the waist and said, “Yeah, you know, I heard old Mr. Tucker had got kilt.” He shook his head slowly. “ ’At’s too bad, he was a good man.” As he stood there, Willie was thinking about how things seemed to be going from bad to worse. Bad enough that Pigfoot Morgan was back and stirring things up, but worse, now there was a professional investigator looking into this mess. And didn’t nobody need that.

  Up until the moment Willie found himself crouched in the corner petitioning the Lord, he might’ve been willing to confess all he knew, which wasn’t everything but was enough to get the can of worms completely open. But after coming so close to a bloody end and praying on it the way he had, the answer was revealed to him. Willie came to accept that it wasn’t his place to mess with the Lord’s plan. He wasn’t so arrogant as to think he could understand it, and he didn’t have to, His ways being mysterious and all. He just had to believe that since the Almighty had brought these things to pass, it wasn’t his job to undo any of it by shining light in dark places. He figured the best thing was to invite the man in, act accommodating, then send him on his way with the belief that he knew more than when he’d arrived.

  “I be glad to help if I can.” Willie took an awkward step backward, turning at the same time he waved at Rick to join him. “Why don’t you c’mon in and we can talk, ax me whatever you think.”

  Rick followed Willie into the small house, wondering what had happened to the man’s leg. At first he imagined something violent and romantic, like a war injury, or maybe he’d been shot during a fight at a juke joint. But it was just as likely something mundane, like an accident involving a cotton gin, or maybe it was just an old hip that needed replacing. They went to the kitchen where Willie stepped and flopped over to a cabinet and then to the sink to pour a couple of glasses of water.

  Rick sat at the table and noticed the scissors and tape and the cut-up box on the counter. He looked at the window and the square of cardboard that had been put up to replace the missing glass. He imagined grandchildren, or maybe great-grandchildren coming to visit and causing trouble with their roughhousing. He said, “Kids bust that out?”

  Willie swung his dead leg around and handed Rick his glass without spilling a drop. He shook his head as he sat down. “Naw, done that to myself.” He pointed at the floor. “Went to clean up a mess of greens I spilt and busted the window with the mop handle. Just old and careless, I s’pose.” He pushed his right leg under the table with a strong hand. “Of course this sorry old leg don’t help any.”

  “It’s none of my business,” Rick said, gesturing underneath the table. “But what’s wrong with it?”

  Willie assumed a grave expression, leaned onto the table, and said, “Old jake got me.”

  Rick assumed this was yet another character from the old days and he wondered why Smitty Chisholm or Beau Tillman hadn’t mentioned him. He pulled out his notebook and said, “Jake who?”

  Willie slapped the table and laughed. He said, “You too young to know, I guess.” He shook his head at how old he was and how much he’d seen and how so many things happened in his lifetime that younger people had never even heard of. “It was in 1930,” Willie said. “That’s when I turned seventeen and I figured that was close to being a man as I was gone get, you know? So I figure that called for a little celebration, like any man. Well, this show come through town that day, all right, with dancers and one of them string bands playing reels and what have you.” He chuckled and said, “What we used to call the Ethiopian Opera. Anyway, I went down to where they was and found they was selling the jake.” He held his hand as if closing around a small container. “Them little-bitty brown bottles. I can see ’em in my mind’s eye.” He tapped the side of his head, then pointed at Rick. “See, that’s one way they got around the bone-dry laws, was calling it medicine. Sho was.” Willie got a faraway look in his eyes as he thought back on things.

  Rick listened to the story, so gripped by its telling that he forgot for a moment why he was there. The reverend’s voice was deep and captivating and Rick figured he preached a fine sermon. As the story unfolded, Rick imagined a young Tucker Woolfolk with a fistful of cash, carnival-barking from the back of an old flatbed truck and handing bottles down to the customers, the way he’d done before being run out of Tchula back in the 1940s. But then it occurred to Rick that Woolfolk would’ve been too young to be selling jake to Crippled Willie in 1930.

  “So I gots me a couple little bottles and stayed to watch they show,” Willie said. “Now at first I was interested in the music, ’cause I was already playing some myself, and the man they had on the guitar was pretty good. I never caught his name, but he did more of a ragtime style than I was playing, but real danceable, you know.” Willie took a sip of his water, then looked at the glass as he said, “But by the time I’s done with that second bottle, my eyes was cut more toward this dancer what was up on the stage. Sho was.” He scratched at the back of his head. “I can still see her too.” He smiled. “But the Lord will forgive me for that.”

  Willie went on to explain that the bottles were filled with something called Jamaican Ginger Extract, a “patent medicine” they claimed was the cure for just about anything that ailed you. He said he couldn’t remember why they called it jake. All he knew was that it came in a two-ounce glass bottle, it was 85 percent alcohol, and sales were brisk. “But,” Willie said with a severe scowl, “they’d done cut it with something bad, you see. And it wasn’t no time before they was a thousand men or more out on the streets, crippled, all across the country, and most a lot worse than me.” He waved a hand in the air. “They’s a buncha songs came out behind all that too. You know Ishman Bracey from down there in Byram?”

  Rick remembered a display he’d seen at the blues museum. He said, “Heard the name.”

  “He did that song ‘Jake Liquor Blues’ behind that, and the Mississippi Sheiks did a ‘Jake Leg Blues’ too.” He tapped a fingertip on the table, thinking. “Let’s see, who else? Oh, the Ray Brothers did a couple jake songs, but one was instrumental, so you wouldn’t know ‘less he said the name. Daddy Stovepipe and Mississippi Sarah did something too. I don’t recall the others right off, but they was more. Sho was. All around 1930, ′31.”

  Rick wondered how much truth there was to this story. It might’ve just been a wild ta
le to explain his gimpy leg where the truth wasn’t colorful enough. Regardless, Rick figured he could listen to this old man talk all day, no matter how much of what he said was actually true. The only problem was, he’d made arrangements to meet someone that afternooon at the Delta Democrat Times over in Greenville, so he guided the conversation back toward the murders, eventually asking about what had happened the night Hamp Doogan was killed.

  Crippled Willie gave Rick a sideways glance and said, “Now you understand that was longer ago than you even been alive?”

  They shared a smile and Rick said, “Whatever you remember. That’s all I’m asking.”

  Willie leaned back in his chair and said, “Well now, that was a weekend of a skin ball down in Leland. All the big money come to town, and by that I’m talking ’bout Puddin’ Hatchet, Baby Buddy, Hardface, Big Hand Ed, and ole fella called hisself Link. They was all there and more. Tell you truth, it was just some good times, and I admit I had some too before I found the Lord, you know. But it was just hardworking people taking some time to enjoy theyselves. Everybody had a little something jingle in they pocket and getting a drink and playing some cards with it and what have you. Now the way I remember, I’d been playin’ at Ruby Edward’s place. I believe Earl was over to the We-uns and You-uns Saloon and Buddy Cotton was over to the Roy Club. Anyway, around two that morning, we all ended up at Buster’s Joint, just outside of town. It wasn’t no plan, just how it turned out. And ole Stumpy Rivers was there picking his box. He could play good early in the night, but soon as he get too much in him, forget it. Wasn’t too long after we got there, ole Stumpy took drunk bad, and I mean droopy lipped.” Willie chuckled a bit before he said, “Stumpy was a fish now, and I’d say some of his ways could be contributed to his drinking. I seen him more than once just tip off the stage, still playin’ till he hit the floor. Sho did.” He chuckled some more before continuing, “Well, Buster finally had to get him off the stage, you know, so Buddy, Earl, and me just got on up there and made some pretty good sounds and a couple nickels too.”

  “Was Pigfoot Morgan there?”

  Willie was beginning to wonder if Rick was ever going to stop asking questions. He screwed his face up and looked like he was thinking as hard as he could. “Now some of this is real faint to me, you know. You play all the nip joints we did, all sortsa people packed in there like sardines, it all get kinda scrambled on you, you know? But I don’t recall him being there.” He shook his head. “Sho don’t. And if he was, he sho didn’t play none with us.” He frowned hard and shook his head. “Me and him I know never played together.”

  “What about Lamar Suggs? Was he there recording it?”

  “No, sir. Not that night.” Willie shook his head solemnly this time, then pointed at Rick and said, “Now that was the sort of thing he did, but he wasn’t there as I recall that night out at Buster’s.” Rick asked about the recording session in Grafton. Willie said, “We didn’t have no contract with Paramount or anybody else.” When Rick mentioned the long-standing rumors about the Blind, Crippled, and Crazy sessions, Willie shot him a contentious look. “You know anybody ever heard these records?” He shook his head in answer to his own question. “I don’t know where that story come from. You’d think somebody woulda heard ’em by now, don’tcha? Sho would.” Willie put his hand to his mouth and feigned a yawn. “ ’Scuse me,” he said. “I guess I needs to try and take my rest.”

  Rick said he only had a couple more questions. When he asked why Willie had stopped playing, he got a vague answer about a spiritual awakening. When he pressed for details, Willie dodged it by telling a story about a wild weekend he once spent with Bukka White and Muddy Waters. Rick didn’t mind the evasiveness. He was fascinated being in the presence of a guy who had played with so many of the great Delta bluesmen. When he finished his story, Willie yawned real big and apologized, said he was getting too tired to go on.

  Rick apologized in turn but pressed on, asking if Willie knew why Pigfoot Morgan had killed Hamp Doogan.

  “Nope. You’ll have to ax him yourself. I hear he’s just got out.” He pushed back from the table, trying to bring things to an end.

  Rick ignored it and kept going. “You didn’t read about it in the paper? Hear rumors, anything?”

  “Oh, I remember talk about some woman he was after bein’ at the base of the thing, but I also heard talk about some money he owed behind thowin’ some dice. It’s always something like that though, iddn’t it? Don’t put much stock in rumors, like those ones about us recording together. I think people be sayin’ stuff just to hear they own voices sometimes.” He looked at his watch and said, “It’s gettin’ late now.”

  Rick knew he was pressing his luck, but he still had a few questions. “You have any idea where I might find Pigfoot?”

  Willie rapped his knuckles once on the table and said, “Now I ain’t seen the man in fitty years. Why you think I know where he’s stayin’?” He waved toward the south and said, “I know he had some family over to Hollandale, but I don’t know as he’d go there.” He put his palms on the table to push himself up. “Now if you don’t mind …”

  “Just one last question.” Rick looked at his notepad and said, “What kind of sheriff was Henry LeFleur?”

  Willie stood up, glared at Rick, and said, “The white kind.”

  OF THE 1,700 employees at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, Crail Pitts knew about a dozen. They were guards. And tackles. And linebackers. Or at least they had been when Crail played football with them. Now they were correctional officers, criminal justice being one of the more popular majors for athletes of a certain size.

  Big Jim Magee was a starting offensive tackle for Ole Miss until he got booted for violating several of the team’s substance-abuse policies, primary among which was the policy about not getting caught using and selling steroids and painkillers. Big Jim opted not to disclose this on his Parchman job application, stressing instead the fact that he was six-four and weighed 275 pounds. He got the job and had been working there for eight years. So Crail figured nobody would ask what he was doing if they saw him looking in the old visitors’ logs, which were otherwise not for public consumption. Big Jim had agreed to help because, as the guy who had missed the block on the Texas A&M linebacker who ended Crail’s career, he felt obliged.

  They were nursing bourbons in the bar at the Bayou Caddy Jubilee Casino in Greenville. Crail was wearing a pair of blue jeans with one knee cut out. Big Jim reached over and gave the swollen joint a playful poke. “Ouch! Goddammit! Stop doing that,” Crail said. “It hurts like a mofo.”

  Big Jim chuckled. “Damn sure looks like it ought to.” He did it again.

  “Jesus! Would you stop?” Crail sank an elbow into Big Jim’s ribs.

  Big Jim laughed and said, “I can get you some OxyContins if you want.”

  “Oxy what?”

  “Hillbilly heroin,” Big Jim said. “You know, that stuff Rush likes.”

  “Oh yeah,” Crail said. “What is ‘at stuff?”

  Without resorting to large words or facts, Big Jim explained, in his own way, that OxyContin was a Schedule II controlled substance containing the opioid agonist oxycodone HCL, a substance roughly as addictive as morphine. It blocked the transmission of pain messages by attaching to opioid receptors in the brain. Or, as Big Jim put it, “You take one of those, you won’t mind if I hit you with a baseball bat.”

  That sounded good to Crail. He asked how much.

  “For you? Twenty a pop. And I’m losing money at that price.”

  “Got any on you?”

  Big Jim nodded toward the parking lot. “Out in the car.”

  Crail finished his drink and waved for another as he lit a cigarette. He glanced up at the baseball game on the big screen when somebody hit a dinger. Then he turned to Big Jim and said, “What about that other thing?” Big Jim pulled a slip of paper from his shirt pocket and handed it over. Crail looked at it for a moment before he said, “This is it? One lousy visitor?”
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  “I think that’s the one you need,” Big Jim said. “All the others were from forty years ago or more, which is pretty typical. Everybody swears they’re gonna come visit as long as you’re in there, but that peters out pretty quick. The drive’s too long or the place is too depressing or whatever. Old man didn’t have a single visitor for like thirty-eight years until that guy showed up.” He pointed to the slip of paper. “So, I figure that’s who you wanna talk to. That’s his office address down in Jackson.”

  “A lawyer, huh?” Crail snorted a mean laugh. “Seems a little late for … Ow! Fuck!”

  Big Jim had poked the knee again. He sniggered, hunched over the bar, and said, “Sorry, my bad.” He shook his head. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that shade of red before.”

  “Jesus H.!” Crail downed his new bourbon and gingerly stood up. “Let’s go get those Oxys.”

  As they crossed the parking lot in the warm night air, Big Jim said, “You seein’ a doctor for that leg?”

  “Nah.” Crail shook his head. “Taking some antibiotics.”

  “Good idea.”

  Though not really. Like many people, Crail and Big Jim believed one antibiotic was as good as the next. Unfortunately for Crail, such is not the case. In fact, taking the wrong antibiotic more likely kills off the “better” bacteria in one’s system, clearing the way for the bad stuff to bloom and lead to far bigger troubles. In other words, while the Bactrim Cuffie had given him was ideal for treating urinary-tract infections, it had no effect on the gramnegative intracellular diplococci that is gonorrhea and which was, at this very moment, breeding like rogue Mormons in his knee.

  When they reached the car, Big Jim popped open the trunk to reveal several large fishing-tackle boxes. He opened one and there, among the Hawaiian wigglers, was a cornucopia of pharmacopoeia. He counted out half a dozen OxyContins, then threw in a couple extra out of guilt. Crail looked at the handful of pills and said, “These things make you sleepy?”