Crossroad Blues (The Nick Travers Novels)

by Ace Atkins

  The sound came from back toward St. Charles Avenue. Maybe he was hearing things, his mind becoming a paranoid trap from the day. Could have been a kid, anything. But he needed to find Virginia before Cruz did. That line of action wasn't a stretch for the man; it was the way he operated. For her to be prancing around smelling the roses and shit like that was ridiculous.

  He needed to find her and take her to Jay's to stay, while he fixed this mess. Damn, why didn't she understand? She should have known to stay inside and wait. Wasn't that clear?

  ?

  Jesse had a hand over the woman's mouth as they lay flat on the ground. They were right next to a fence and under some bushes. He could hear the dude shoutin' the woman's name like a crazy man. Ain't no way the big dude could see 'em unless he came over and started rootin' around here. It was a little trick he picked up from that pasty ole fool. Make like an animal. Blend in like a rabbit or a monkey.

  Jesse had his other hand underneath the woman's soaked flannel shirt and knotted her undershirt so tight around her chest it made her gasp. She needed to know this was takin' care of business. That big dude come 'round here, the deal was done. Jesse was too smart for that.

  He would wait until the dude was out of sight, and then crawl under the fence to where Floyd was waitin' in the van. He was probably wonderin' where he was at now, as he bobbed his head to that awful jungle music.

  The woman smelled good. Kinda sweet. He licked her face to see what her sweat tasted like. She gasped again on his wet hand and he gripped her face tighter. The big dude just ran on by, none the wiser.

  "C'mon. Let's go, baby doll. You're my ticket."

  ?

  Nick roamed the park for almost an hour. His knees ached from trudging the concrete in his cowboy boots, and his casted hand had turned a bright purple from the earlier fight. He walked the entire perimeter and inside the park four times, from St. Charles Avenue to the Audubon Zoo.

  He sat down on a bench and cradled his head in his hands. He finally called the warehouse and his machine picked up. He called again a few times, then went back to the park.

  That was when saw it: a wadded, soaked flannel shirt. He reached for it and smelled the damp odor of her honeysuckle perfume. But it was the freshly carved letters in a nearby oak tree that made a huge stone sink in his stomach.

  In the glow of a high fluorescent lamp, it was clear: TCB and a jagged line of a lightning bolt's flash.

  Chapter 46

  The rain fell in a long, silver curtain outside the open Creole doors of JoJo's Blues Bar. The reverse neon letters bathed the flagstone sidewalk, where a prostitute argued with a bouncer. The woman bit hard on her lip and called him a motherfucker before leaving, her stance tough as she hunted for a place to hawk her body. Nick watched the action in a fogged alcohol haze, a mass of empty shot glasses catching a candle's light.

  Maybe he felt sorry for himself. Maybe what he was doing equaled crawling into a cave and hiding. But there was nothing more he could do. A few hours earlier, it'd taken five security guards to throw him out of the Blues Shack. Cruz had coolly walked out into the alley where they had him pinned. His thin devil face flushed underneath his dark sunglasses, and he smirked and said, "You know what I want."

  JoJo pounded another two Dixies down, breaking Nick's angry thoughts, and joined him. He looked Nick up and down and turned to face his own reflection in a mirror framed in multicolored Christmas lights.

  "You call Medeaux?" JoJo asked.

  "No," Nick said. "They'll kill her."

  JoJo's craggy face twitched in the dim light. His eyes were bloodshot and his hand shook when he turned up the beer. His emotions seemed as brittle as plate glass.

  "JoJo, I don't blame you."

  "It wasn't your thing. I've always carried my own water."

  "How long you have?"

  "Got me a nice eviction notice to be out at the end of the month. Been here for almost thirty years. I'd like to take Pascal Cruz and kick that notice up his ass so far he chokes on it. That ain't the big worry though."

  Nick got up, dropped a quarter in the jukebox for "Walkin' After Midnight," and returned to the back of the bar. Sometimes when you're in love, it's hard to see the woman's whole face for concentrating on every curve and line. Nick could only imagine pieces. Dimples, chin, and a spray of freckles across her nose. Then he saw the gold mouth of Cruz's man and gripped a shot glass hard in his hand. He wanted to take it and throw it into the warped, staring reflection and see all the candied liquor pour out in a sweet mess of color. Nick pulled his hand back as Henry walked in and shook rain from his ragged houndstooth hat.

  The old man didn't look back into the bar's narrow corner, just found his stool at the end of the bar, like it was any other night, and ordered a drink. Nick slowly placed the shot back on the bar.

  "There might be a way we can save them both," Nick said, his head soft and blurred.

  "He ain't gonna tell you where he stashed them records," JoJo said.

  "He doesn't have a choice."

  Nick walked over to the bar and sat down next to Henry. The old man just stared straight ahead until Keesha plunked down a tall Beam and Coke.

  "You know where they are?" Nick asked.

  "I ain't going back to Mississippi," Henry said.

  "Can you help me?"

  "What? So you can make all that money?"

  "Listen to me, Henry. I listened to your story, and I appreciated your being honest about what happened on that night in thirty-eight. But if you want a quick shot at redemption, this is your chance. Another man is after those Johnson records, and he took a woman who didn't have a damn thing to do with any of this."

  "Shiiit."

  "They'll kill her, Henry, just like they killed Baker and Cracker."

  JoJo moved behind both of them and put his arms around both their shoulders. His soft cotton shirt felt smooth against Nick's neck. Fatherly. "Henry, don't fuck with us, if you know about them records. I ain't bullshittin'. It's time for you to come through."

  Henry took a long pull of his drink and stared at the old photo of himself. He turned back to look at JoJo.

  Two hours later, all three were in JoJo's Cadillac headed on a midnight run to a small town outside Greenwood, Mississippi, where it all began.

  ?

  Hours later, Nick felt the humid Mississippi night air on his face and heard JoJo and Henry mumbling in the front seat. His head pounded as he looked at the luminescent dial on his stainless-steel diver's watch. Past three A.M. The old leather seats smelled of mothballs and faint mildew.

  Nick tried not to think of Virginia. When he did, he became queasy and could see a torrent of hair-pulling and rape. He ground his teeth hard to escape the image, and pushed himself up from the backseat to see the flat expanses of fat white cotton almost ready to harvest.

  The moonlight kept everything washed in surreal colors like a black-and-white film. Sun-parched clapboard shacks, rusted trailer homes, and laundry still on the lines dotted the landscape. A few pine and oak trees were lonely islands surrounded by the naked dirt. Scenes best accompanied by a lone bottleneck guitar.

  "God, I feel like a cat just shit in my mouth," Nick said.

  "I wasn't pourin' them Dixies and Jack down your throat," JoJo said, looking back into the rearview mirror and shaking his head. "Henry's takin' me the rest of the way to Quito--"

  "Turn right over there," Henry said, pointing to a lonely crossroads.

  Headlights hit a single dead tree near a cotton field. The tree's sun-bleached branches hung like mangled arms. Nick wondered if Robert Johnson found a similar crossroads to cut his fingernails to the quick and play the guitar until the devil tapped him on the shoulder.

  "We gonna go straight for a while," Henry said.

  In the window glass, Nick could see Henry's gray eyes wide, taking in his home like a man returned from a time machine. A look of shock with a world not quite the way he left it.

  "My uncle used to live right there," h
e said, pointing to a crooked row of trailer homes. "Had him a mule, used to plow rows of corn by himself. Sweet ole thing. Don't know what happened to him. Don't know what happened to anybody after I left."

  The road was the same one Nick had taken with Willie Brown on the night he first met Cracker, which felt like years ago. Too many things clouded his mind in such a short time. He wondered if Brown had a family, if they understood the complexities surrounding a fine man's death. Nick wished Brown was with them now.

  "Henry, when was the last time you were home?" Nick asked.

  "Nineteen forty-nine."

  "Why'd you leave?"

  "After years pass, rumor becomes fact," Henry said. "You know what I mean. It was best I lost myself in the biggest city I know. One day I pointed my truck south to New Orleans and never looked back."

  JoJo looked back and caught Nick's eye in the mirror and winked. First time he'd seen JoJo like his old self in a long time. It was a little redemption mission for both men, Nick thought, as they hit a straight mile of highway with crooked crosses of telephone poles. Nick couldn't help but hear Johnson's eerie voice sing:

  You may bury my body

  down by the highway side

  so my old evil spirit

  can catch a Greyhound Bus and ride

  Chapter 47

  JoJo turned onto a darkened dirt road and followed it for at least two miles before Henry told them to stop. It was silent in the car as dust flew back through the windows. Nick didn't say a word; he wanted to watch Henry's reaction. Henry cocked his head back and searched through the rear-window glass. The taillights glowed red onto the soft dirt.

  "Goddamn, it was right here. Right over here," Henry said as he pounded a fist into the Cadillac's dash.

  "All right, Henry," JoJo said. "No need to be abusin' my automobile."

  "Henry, they moved the Three Forks," Nick said.

  "Listen, kid, I ain't senile. I know where my store was at."

  "That was over fifty years ago," Nick said.

  "JoJo, tell this kid to shut the fuck up."

  "Where do I need to go, Nick?" JoJo asked.

  They followed the dirt road back to the crossroads where Nick pointed to an old wooden home with a satellite dish on the roof and plastic sheeting for windows. The same house Brown had taken him to, where they sat on the porch and listened to stories about Johnson's exploits. Nick could still hear their laughter and the twittering cicadas.

  "That ain't my store," Henry said.

  "JoJo, let him take a good look."

  JoJo turned onto a soft, dusty road in front of the porch. Before he could fully stop, Henry was already out of the car and hobbling onto the porch. A pile of rotted wood and rusted metal scraps lay in a nearby heap.

  "He said he wasn't senile, shiiit," JoJo said.

  Nick jumped out and followed Henry, who tried to open a chain-caught door. Outside, a yellow light clicked on, and Nick could hear the clack of a shotgun loading.

  "Henry, move," Nick yelled. "Get away from the door."

  A wiry black man opened the door completely naked, carrying his gun in both hands.

  "Y'all get the fuck out!" yelled Brown's friend James, firing the gun into the air. "Y'all get the fuck out!"

  "Listen, you little dingdong," JoJo said, unfazed. "This man right here used to own this here house."

  James looked down at his flaccid penis and tightened his grip on the gun.

  "I'll give you fifty bucks if yo' cover your ass up and let us come inside," JoJo said. "Can we come inside? This man left something here."

  "I ain't no fool, y'all rob me," James said.

  "James?" Nick said, stepping onto the cracking porch. "Remember me? I was here with Willie."

  James lowered his shotgun and put his hand out. "Nick, Nick? Is that you? Man, I'm sorry. Y'all scared the shit out of me. Been keepin' this gun with me after what happened to Willie and Cracker. Y'all c'mon inside. I ain't got much."

  Henry walked ahead of everybody, his gray eyes lit. He traced his hands over the battered molding around the doorframes and stooped low to put his hand on the crooked floor planks. His eyes shut tight as if he could still feel the reverberation of a Delta steel guitar.

  Planks of wood painted long ago in a seafoam green crudely buckled from the wall. Plywood separated some of the rooms, hammered lazily with crooked rusted nails. Nick could imagine sacks of feed, rows of fruit jars, and farm supplies lining the old building before it was partitioned. A woman yelled in a back room, and two pig-tailed little girls stared wide-eyed at Henry.

  Henry smiled back and said to James, "You have a pick?"

  "Yeah."

  "Get them kids outa here," Henry said. "What we 'bout to find ain't for them."

  As James turned, there were heavy footsteps on the porch outside. Everyone stopped cold. Nick walked over and pulled the plastic sheeting from a nail. His breath caught in his throat when he saw who was outside. Sallow-faced and dressed in rags, Cracker paced on the porch.

  His weak face drew into a smile when Nick opened the front door. "I was w-wonder-wonderin' when y'all show up here," he said.

  "Cracker," Nick said, putting an arm around the old man. "You okay?"

  Henry slowly ambled onto the brittle porch and stared at Cracker as if he were a reflection of an ugly woman. He spat on the ground, twisted his head away, and then looked back at Cracker, his tired red eyes rimmed with tears.

  "Cracker," Henry said, his voice like brittle ice.

  "Earl. Earl," Cracker's age fell away and once again he was a scared fifteen-year-old boy. "What are we gonna do? They know? W-What-what we gonna do?"

  Cracker got close to Henry, and for a moment, Nick thought Cracker was going to hug the older man. Nick could imagine the pair of them working in the heat of a Mississippi night to hide the body of a white record producer from Texas.

  Henry gave Nick a mean stare, then placed his quivering arm around Cracker's shoulders. "Jes like I said, Cracker. Every little thing gonna be jes fine. Jes fine."

  ?

  After several more payoffs from JoJo, James finally let them tear the pick into two separate walls at the front of the house. The old two-by-fours became exposed through several layers of wood until there came a loud thunk.

  "That's it," Henry said.

  Cracker was outside eating some cold chicken with James's children. He hadn't eaten for days and had made his way back to Memphis through the kindness of a white Methodist minister. Then a trucker, on advice of the good-hearted minister, whom Cracker said liked cherry pie, took him down to Greenwood. Cracker walked the rest of the way back through the fields and woods he knew so well.

  The pick was embedded and Nick strained until he felt his shoulders might leave their sockets again. His cast was a sticky mess and he wanted to cut the thing off. Nick finally dislodged the pick and then began to pry the wood off the section of the old wall. The dawn filtered weak sunlight through the plastic-covered windows. Nick carefully removed sections of the wood, his back and arm aching.

  A large, jagged chunk came away to expose a human skull and torso. Henry walked outside as Nick and JoJo stood staring at the upper portion of the skeleton. Clutched in its arms sat a wooden crate, identical to the one from under Cracker's porch.

  They'd found the man who'd served Robert Johnson his last drink.

  Chapter 48

  If Jesse crossed his eyes real hard, it made Mr. Cruz look like some kinda biblical man. Jesus? Naw, maybe Moses. He kept crossin' and tryin' different faces until he felt Floyd kick his foot under the table. He gave one of those "cut that shit out" looks. Who cared? These weren't his people anyway, and this wasn't what was going to make him great. This was like Sun Records--a beginning. Hell, the harder he crossed his eyes, the more Cruz looked like Sam Phillips.

  "You got some kinda problem, man?" Floyd asked. "You lookin' strange, brotha."

  Jesse moved his hand up quickly, like a draw, and Floyd flinched. He just kept the hand movin' on and
brushed his hair back. Sucker. Still fist-shy over that ass-kickin', he thought as he looked out the Amtrak train's window at all the Mississippi scenery rollin' past. Jesse bit down on his knuckle and hummed a little gospel tune to himself. Wouldn't be much longer. Wouldn't be much longer.

  That morning a big nigra in a straw hat came into the Blues Shack wantin' to see Mr. Cruz. Said his name was Sun and gave Mr. Cruz a note sayin' to be in Greenwood tonight. They were supposed to take that redheaded piece and some kinda paperwork for them ole records. Didn't seem worth the effort. But they sure must be worth an awful lot to Mr. Cruz, since he was pacing and sweating round the train station this morning like a rat fucking in a wool sock.

  Mr. Cruz's flask caught the sunlight just right as he took a sip and made the redheaded woman squint. It hadn't been tough to get her on the train. Hell, she was so doped up she'd probably done a striptease in the projects. She'd just walked real cool-like until they got in their train cabin and shut the door. They hadn't messed with her. Floyd wanted to, but Cruz said no way, not till after.

  If they got the records, Mr. Cruz wanted all them old men dead, and the big white dude, too. What all them didn't know, hadn't a damned idea in their heads about, was that Jesse was gonna take it all and meet Puka and Inga in a suite at The Peabody in Memphis.

  He'd be high as a kite and talkin' to the ducks on the roof by midnight.

  "Jesse, I sure am proud of what you've done for me," Cruz said. "Must be that good Mississippi breeding. You know, I'm a Southerner, too. Have a little water moccasin in both of us."