Dirty South

by Ace Atkins

  We turned off the main highway and passed some loose storefronts, all sun-bleached and bare of paint, that had once been a town. Around a small curve and down an unpaved road, we found it.

  We parked under an old oak bare of leaves, slammed the Bronco’s doors with a thud, and walked out onto the dirt hill of a cemetery. Children and old people and some lost in accidents and others from yellow fever or world war or Civil War. Marble crosses and lambs made of mortar and sculptures of open Bibles. The rocky earth was filled with them.

  “What happened to the town?” I asked.

  “This is the town.”

  “Oh.”

  “This was where Theora Hamblett lived,” she said. “You know? The folk artist.” Maggie brushed her hair from her eyes and squatted down near a grave covered in mud. She wiped away the dirt so she could read the headstone better. “You ever think about dyin’?” she asked.

  “Not when I can help it.”

  “I think it’s good,” Maggie said. “Makes you remember life.”

  I liked the way she said “life,” really strung out that I, and told her.

  She raised up off her haunches and stood up in front of me, nose to nose. So close I could smell the mint on her breath. “Can you stay?”

  “Just tonight,” I said. “I’ve got to get back to New Orleans.”

  “Because of that kid?” she asked. “ALIAS.”

  I nodded and kissed her on the forehead.

  “Didn’t that man who stole his money kill himself?”

  “No,” I said.

  She squinted into the sun behind my back. “When will you be back?”

  “Soon.”

  “What did you do for your birthday?” she asked.

  “Slept and watched Hud. It was on TV.”

  “I love that movie,” she said.

  “I knew you would,” I said. “Why do you think I hang out with you?”

  “I hired a sitter tonight,” she said.

  “We can take Dylan.”

  “He’d like that,” she said. “Then what?”

  LONG AFTER dinner and two Disney movies later, Dylan fell asleep and I watched Maggie hoist him into her arms and take him back to his bedroom. Saturday Night Live was on her old TV that flickered when the volume got too high and we drank some Abitas and kissed for a long time on her old plaid sofa.

  In her bedroom, windows cracked so we could hear the early summer of crickets and hot wind in the tall skinny pines, I watched her strip out of her gray T-shirt and kick out of her boots and jeans. The numbers on her AM radio said it was almost 1 A.M.

  Moonlight scattered across her body. I watched her as I tripped out of my boots and clothes. She hooked her thumbs into her cotton panties and rolled them down her long legs.

  We met in the middle of her old iron bed and I wrapped my right arm around her waist, feeling her small breasts against my chest and her long legs hooked around mine. She kissed my ears and my cheeks and mouth. I felt the heat and softness between her legs.

  In the small room, I only heard her breathing. A bright bit of sweat on our bodies. In the end, she gripped the back of my neck and bit into my shoulder, only the slightest scream escaping her lips.

  “Do you love me?” she asked. As she broke away, I heard her breathing hard.

  I wanted to say yes but the answer seemed too easy, so I just kept kissing her, hoping she’d forget the question.

  31

  TREY FOUND TEDDY sitting on the steps of his brother’s tomb smoking up a fat one and telling old stories about when they were kids. Trey wiped off the edge of the marble and sat down, just kind of listening, and trying to find out if the big man had finally lost it. Teddy took a hit off the joint and passed it over to Trey. He took a hit too and stared around him at the little cemetery wedged between a bright red shotgun shack and a tiny white church. He’d heard from someone that Fats Domino lived around here. Trey couldn’t name a single song that dude wrote but his father talked about the man like he was freakin’ God. Trey always wondered why a man who made so much money would still live in a shit-hole like the Ninth Ward. All those little shacks shoved together about ten feet apart. Crappy junk cars parked out front and a bunch of restless blacks just trying to make it day to day. Paycheck to paycheck.

  “What’s up?” Teddy asked.

  “You haven’t called me back.”

  “Been busy.”

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  Teddy smoked down the joint and tucked a carton of Newports on the tomb. He wiped away the pigeon shit from the steps and stood. “I ever tell you about when Malcolm findin’ sound for his records?”

  “No.”

  “He was always lookin’ for that perfect cut,” Teddy said. “That right guitar or beat. He find this weird shit off these old records. He’d mix some album about science projects and shit and some Tito Puente. Malcolm could keep people movin’ with the beats and breaks.”

  Trey nodded. He watched an old woman shuffling down the sidewalk in her curlers and nightgown. Her hand was on her hip, black skin slunking off of her like a Shar-Pei.

  “Hey, Miss Davis,” Teddy yelled.

  “Hey, Teddy. You seen Kenny?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Teddy lowered his voice and kept talking, hands in his black pants pocket, Hawaiian shirt untucked and flowing over his belt. Sandals. Straw hat.

  “I used to take him to this record store called Elysian Fields,” Teddy said. “They had some right shit upstairs, you know? Rap, blues. Even some country. But downstairs is where all good records went to die. You know? Real humbling lookin’ down in that basement among all those leaky pipes and shit and seeing thousands, no, man, I’m talkin’ millions, of records down for the count.”

  Trey pulled the joint from Teddy’s fingers and smoked it down to the edge. “You want to go get drunk?”

  “Na, man,” he said. “Can you see it? Stacks and stacks of records as high as you is tall down in Elysian Fields, that ole record smell comin’ in your clothes and down into you lungs and you can hear people walkin’ upstairs in the store. Man, I didn’t want to have no part of it. Here I was makin’ all that money, wearin’ the Armani and drivin’ a Mercedes and tryin’ to get my family out of this.”

  He waved his hand in the little cemetery. “You know? But all my brother wants to do is rescue sounds. He just want to save the soul of musicians who ain’t really never made it. A dead man’s voice. Maybe some weird-ass beat or guitar.”

  “Come on,” Trey said, hand on Teddy’s back. “Let’s go. You smokin’ too much hyrdro.”

  “No,” he said. “Make me see it all. I want to be back down in that little record shop and feel that energy that young nigga felt. Man, he’d carry them ole records in crates and boxes all over this city. All he wanted from me was to go down in that basement with him. Rescue records. Find beats.”

  “Teddy, why don’t I get you a girl?”

  Teddy’s red eyes turned on him and he spit on the ground. “Fuck that shit, man. I don’t go for that.”

  “Fine,” Trey said. “I’m leavin’.”

  “Those L.A. folks don’t want nothin’ from Nint’ Ward but-”

  “Dio.”

  “You right on that.”

  Trey pulled out two discs from his suit pocket and handed them to Teddy. “Are we cool, dog?”

  Teddy smiled.

  “Make that deal,” Trey said. “We need to keep your brother’s dream alive.”

  32

  THE NEXT DAY, I could smell the dust boiling under the tires of JoJo’s tired white F-150 while we followed a long row of split-rail fence we’d built in the last five days. ALIAS sat in the back of the truck with Polk Salad Annie and sipped on a Coke as we rounded a turn and headed into some flat, strip-logged acres JoJo wanted to turn into some pastureland for his cows. I pushed the bill of my Tulane hat from my eyes and looked into the rearview at ALIAS. JoJo stopped abruptly, making me reach out and hold on to the cracked dash of his truck.
/>   He bounded out of the truck and opened the stainless-steel toolbox, pulling out a Glock 9mm and an old.38 he used to keep on him when he closed up the bar. My Glock was tucked under the driver’s seat in the Ghost. I wanted no part of this.

  The dust gathered in the afternoon haze and I squinted into the light. I needed to get on the road to New Orleans but still had a favor to ask.

  JoJo laid out some old blue medicine bottles on the side of a dirt mound and handed the kid his gun. “You show me how to shoot, then,” JoJo said. “You want to talk all tough, then back it up.”

  The argument had started at Abe’s BBQ right off Highway 61 after we’d worked for three hours on a section of split-rail fences. The kid said he’d wanted the Glock back that JoJo had confiscated while I was over in Oxford. I hadn’t known ALIAS had brought a gun. I didn’t even know ALIAS had a gun. But I wasn’t surprised.

  I tried to cool them down but then backed off when JoJo got a little hot. We didn’t even have time to eat the damned barbecue we bought. Instead, we rode in silence to get this thing finished. That was tough because Abe’s made very good barbecue.

  “You first,” ALIAS said, taking off his basketball jersey and tucking it into the pocket of his jeans.

  JoJo pulled the.38 from his waistband, leveled it with one hand in a side stance, and cracked open three bottles in a row. He smiled and handed me the gun. The barrel felt hot and a slight haze of gunpowder hung biting in the air.

  “Forget it,” ALIAS said, leaning back into the truck. “Let’s go, man. I need to get back to my crib. This place is a joke.”

  I started to say something but JoJo held up a hand.

  The kid pushed himself away from the car, ejected the magazine from the Glock, thumbing through the rounds. He leveled the gun at the targets.

  In a one-two pop succession, he cracked open the shards of JoJo’s run, breaking some tiny blue pieces of glass into slivers. The shells from his 9mm bullets popped out in brassy confetti down at his feet. He missed only one of the six.

  I smiled.

  ALIAS dropped the gun at his side.

  JoJo looked at me. “Good shot. But that don’t give him an even head.”

  He pulled the gun from ALIAS’s hand and tossed it back in the truck. He grabbed the.38 and arranged six more bottles in the same order as before.

  “Make you a deal, kid,” he said.

  ALIAS looked at him.

  “You get more than me and you can keep the gun,” JoJo said.

  “So?” he said. “I’ll keep it anyway.”

  JoJo held up his hand. “But if I take them all out, then you have to follow through with something.”

  ALIAS looked up at JoJo.

  “You got to take some readin’ lessons with Loretta.”

  “Who said I can’t read?”

  “Them things you mouthin’ off the cereal boxes don’t make no sense,” he said. “That rappin’ ain’t gonna last long.”

  “I got money.”

  “We got a deal?”

  ALIAS flashed a golden smile. “Whatever you say, old man.”

  JoJo didn’t seem to like those final words as he took aim about five feet back from where ALIAS stood and blasted every single bottle into shards as if he’d tapped them with the electric finger of Zeus. JoJo smiled.

  “Shit, can we eat lunch now?” I asked. “A growing boy needs that barbecue.”

  “You that hungry, kid?” JoJo asked ALIAS.

  “I was talking about me,” I said.

  “When you headed back to New Orleans?” JoJo asked, his face covered in sweat.

  “After I say good-bye to Loretta.”

  JoJo nodded. “What about him?”

  I looked over at ALIAS, who stood with his fists on his hips, grinning big and gold as he leapt back into the truck bed. Annie followed.

  “You’re gonna like Clarksdale,” I said.

  “Ah, man,” ALIAS said.

  “JoJo, I’ll be back in a week,” I said.

  JoJo eyed the boy. The sun was yellow and full. High beams on the back of our necks and forearms. Cicadas screamed their high-pitched sounds all around us in the distance of trees just starting to fully leaf.

  “That okay with you, kid?” JoJo asked.

  He shrugged.

  “Could use some help painting the barn.”

  “Shit, man.” ALIAS spoke up. “I ain’t no slave.”

  JoJo walked over to the pile of broken glass and examined a sliver ALIAS had blown apart with his gun. The light refracted hard in my eyes. Multicolor prisms twisting and playing on the earth.

  We piled into the truck.

  In the grind of the truck’s engine and crunching of gravel and dirt under his old tires, JoJo asked: “Why do I think you’ve just brought me some kind of riddle I can’t figure out?”

  33

  WHEN I DROVE BACK to New Orleans, I checked my messages. I’d received six since I’d been away, four from credit card companies, one from an old student working on her thesis, and one from Jay Medeaux. I didn’t even stop to unpack, only poured out a little Dog Chow for Annie and jumped right back into my truck and headed up Canal and down Basin to the Ninth Ward. Teddy and I needed to talk.

  When I arrived at the studio, I felt I’d entered some type of medieval castle. A high chain-link fence surrounded the warehouse made of gold cinderblocks and a black tin roof. Saints colors. Young men in bandannas and stocking caps stood tough, their arms across their bodies, guns tucked into their fat belts. Wide-legged jeans down low. Some smoked cigarettes. None talked. They wore sunglasses, Secret Service-style, and held on to radios. Muscled and hard, they watched me as I parked the truck, my Creedence still playing loud, and walked up to the front of the building. They didn’t seem to appreciate John Fogerty the way I did.

  A kid I didn’t recognize squashed a cigarette under his foot. He wore a thick platinum rope around his neck with the Ninth Ward “9W” symbol. The air was so hot outside it felt like radiation off the asphalt.

  “You that white dude?” he asked. His skin glowed with a feverish sheen.

  “That’s the rumor.”

  White, red, and yellow roses had been laid on the leather seats of Malcolm’s Hummer.

  “Teddy waitin’ on you,” he said.

  Two of his rappers, or guards, escorted me into a backroom studio. The studio was dark and about thirty degrees cooler than outside. They’d set red and blue bulbs in floor lamps to create a mood. Thick glass hoodoo candles flickered in the air-conditioning. The air smelled like incense and weed.

  “Where you been, man?” Teddy asked. His black silk shirt was rolled to the elbows. Pizza boxes and Chinese food cartons lay in huge piles on tables near the console. On the other side of the glass, I saw some kid with headphones on studying a small spiral notebook. He looked pissed-off with himself and kicked a stool across the room.

  “Malcolm knew this was gonna be Stank’s ride,” Teddy said, watching him and shaking his head. “This thing called ‘Project Girl.’ He’d laid down this track straight on, sampling some ole Louis Armstrong shit. You know, workin’ that Louisiana sound like Mystikal? Man, he had it. But damn if I don’t know what the fuck I’m doin’ and I’ve seen him work this shit all my life.”

  I took a seat by him in the cramped control room watching Stank in a black muscle shirt and a hooded parka. I could smell Teddy’s Brut aftershave but it disappeared when he fired up a plump cigar. The room suddenly became clouded and thick. I wedged the door open gently with my foot.

  Teddy’s face had grown gray and he sweated in the sixty-degree coolness of the room. Great bags hung under his eyes and his fingers shook around a big plastic bottle of Mello Yello. Stank tapped on the glass and startled me.

  He circled his index finger in the air.

  Teddy squashed the new cigar into an empty coffee can filled with roach clips and the beat started once again. He slid his fat fingers across the mixing board, that same bounce that every other rapper in the country had tri
ed to copy ever since it had been born in the South. The sound track to every black neighborhood in the U.S. Women and ice. Cars and clubs. Stank took a deep stance, hat sideways on his head, and rolled into it.

  I watched Teddy’s head bobbing up and down, almost hearing the cash falling from the sky in green rain as he moved with his arms. I smiled.

  Teddy smiled too until he swung his big arm too close to his food and knocked the Mello Yello all over the console, seeping into all those tiny knobs.

  The equalizer’s green and red lights dimmed and then shut down. The music ceased in the monitors above us and I watched Stank’s hands turn to fists. “What the fuck’s up?”

  Teddy grabbed his Italian leather jacket and started dabbing off the console. I pulled the jacket from his hands and found some napkins near a pizza box. I wiped the metal and plastic clean but knew it was no use. He’d shorted out the system.

  He stood and kicked open the door, leaving the room. I sat there for a while and watched the others clear out. Some more of Teddy’s men walked around, prowling, making sure I didn’t start any shit. I saw some accusing stares and I smiled back. These boys were in their late teens. Twenty if they were lucky. Their scowls and the hard-edged violence in their eyes reminded me of angular men who’d worked the Delta land and had been beaten down for generations. They were teens; they were old men.

  I grabbed a cold Coke from a cooler and found Teddy in his office. Glass desk. Black leather furniture. Boxes and boxes of CDs obscuring the windows. He yelled for everyone to leave him the fuck alone. About a dozen men streamed from his office, a couple of obscenely beautiful women. Black with ringlets of soft hair, T-shirts cut off below their breasts.