Ace Atkins - Dirty South

But the rain hadn’t discouraged the onlookers and fans. Some held up fluorescent yellow-and-orange posterboards with words of love for Malcolm. The words, written in black ink, ran and smeared over the paper and down on the arms that held them high. News crews from local TV stations waited in vans with open doors for the right time for a live shot. I saw one cameraman with a BET T-shirt on standing beside a tall black woman with extremely long legs and soft relaxed hair. I followed the echoing sounds of a preacher’s voice into a basketball court where rows and rows of folding chairs had been set up.

“No Jesus, no peace,” said the gray-suited man at the podium. “Know Jesus. Know peace. Our friend brother Malcolm knew peace. Knew it before the Lord came knockin’ on his door. Knew he had family. Knew what family meant. Y’all hear what I’m sayin’?”

I looked around the basketball court and at the elevated stage where there was a purple casket with an inscribed P on the side. Teddy sat wide-legged on a small chair by an older woman who I’d met last night. I think a distant aunt who’d helped raise them. Several long-legged beauties, some holding children, sat closest to the coffin. Many wearing dark sunglasses and nodding to the preacher’s words. Nae Nae was absent.

The thunder rattled the high panes above the bleachers and kept cracking out in the distance. We weren’t far from the channel and I suddenly had the thought of all that dirty rainwater washing out into the port and then into the Mississippi.

Teddy walked up in a draping black suit, jacket falling to his knees, and spit-polished boots. He kept on his shades and the size of his earring made an impact at even forty yards.

“We all family,” Teddy said, holding his hands tight on the podium. Old preacher-style. Even his cadence reminded me of two-hour sermons I’d heard sitting between JoJo and Loretta. “That name. Our name. The Paris name. That’s what it all about. Malcolm and me used to talk about that. When we was growin’ up and used to take the streetcar past all them fine homes, he used to say some hardworkin’ man made that family about two hundred years ago. Ain’t that a trip. We just layin’ it all down for our grandkids…”

Some of the well-dressed women with children shifted in their seats behind the coffin.

“And their kids. That Paris name. We always gonna have that, Brother,” Teddy said, dropping his hands to his side and walking to the coffin. I could only see the profile of Malcolm’s gray face and the edge of a satin pillow. I didn’t want to see. I’d had problems with these kind of things since I was a child.

Teddy kissed the tips of his fingers and touched them to the coffin. He reared his shoulders back and strutted to the edge of the stage, where he stopped. I saw his head drop, his arms shake, and he fell to one huge knee, rocking the entire platform.

I stood.

But two rappers I’d met, T.H.U.G. and Stank, grabbed each of his elbows and helped him down the stairs. He’d reached the back door, near the locker room, when I heard the cry. A deep gut-churning moan and scream that made me drop my own head and pray.

After the ceremony, people stood and talked. The television news crews moved in. Hundreds of flowers continued to be dropped at the base of Malcolm’s body. Cards and little notes written on napkins. Rain-streaked signs and CDs of his music. Some dude even dropped a baggie full of weed into the casket. One woman dropped her red panties.

I pushed past them to find Teddy but he’d already emerged from the back locker room and had a strong gait as he walked through the huge crowd on the court. You could hear his shoes click above all the talking. Strong and confident.

He smiled at me. And I believed he was headed toward me when they entered.

Beneath the exit doors, right beside the “Drugs Kill” sign, stood the entire crew that had wrecked my warehouse. They all wore identical black leather jackets and shades.

Cash grinned at Teddy in the thirty yards that separated them.

He tossed down a white wreath and it skidded for about ten yards before stopping way short of my friend’s feet.

“That’s the way it go,” Cash yelled, his platinum teeth shining with the fluorescent light.

I looked at Teddy.

“He’s a little upset,” Teddy said.

“Why?”

“I had his Rolls torched last night.”

“Why?”

“He set Malcolm off.”

Cash nodded. “Sleep tight, Teddy. Watch out for them bedbugs.”

He and his thugs disappeared.

IT WAS DARK AGAIN and I knew I’d slept through the day. I awoke to a cracking sound rattling my warehouse. It sounded like the floor, but in the darkness I heard a deep roll of thunder and knew the storm from the Gulf was blowing over the city. The air smelled of ozone and salt. The bank of windows facing Julia Street shook and I turned back into my pillow, hearing Annie get to her feet and start into a low growl. I’d been dreaming about Maggie. I was at her house in Taylor and we’d been staring up at the branches of a huge pecan tree and the blue sky beyond.

“Annie,” I whispered. “Annie. Lay down.”

I pulled the pillows over my head, waiting for the sleep that would come to me so easily from the tap-tap-tap of rain against the windows and roof above me. Another flash of lightning broke close and the air became charged with electricity and white light. The brightness startled me and I opened my eyes to see Annie had disappeared.

She was growling near the front door.

I padded my way through the warehouse, scratching the hair that was sticking up on my head and calling her name.

Another flash of lightning.

A man stood in the corner. He had a gray face and wore a tattered overcoat.

He looked to be a thousand years old.

I didn’t even break stride. I ran for the kitchen in the darkness, feeling my way through the drawer where I kept my Glock.

I wanted to make it to the switches and light up the floor. I couldn’t see shit. I thought maybe I was just tired, dreaming of ghosts the same way I did when I was hunting old blues singers. Robert Johnson at the foot of my bed.

But there was a different smell to my room. It smelled of fish oil and mothballs and tattered winter clothes left too long in storage. A musty basement odor.

I held the gun strong in my hand.

Annie kept growling.

Then she yelped.

Hard.

I fired off a round in the direction where I’d seen the apparition. High above the range of my dog.

She trotted back to me and I felt her stand at my side. Her back was wet and sticky.

My eyes adjusting in the darkness and then lit up again with lightning.

The sliding door rolled back. I heard it. I saw a flash of brown coat and then it disappeared into my stairwell.

I ran to the door and flicked on the lights. I stooped down to Annie and looked at her bloody flank. She’s been scratched hard but not deep, like another animal had clawed her.

I left her and ran down the steps with my gun. The door to the street was wide open and I saw a sweeping mist of rain hitting the asphalt outside in the dull glow of the city’s crime lights.

I carefully peered out, making sure I didn’t get my head blown off.

A block away and across the road, I saw the darkened shape of a man in a long tattered coat, his face hidden into the lapels. He seemed to be made of nothing but shadows. His weight did not shift. He did not move.

I squinted into the rain as I walked to him, half in a dream, half expecting his shape to dissolve into my hands when I touched him.

He turned and walked into the hole of another warehouse covered in plywood. The wood over the lower windows ripped away by the homeless. I guess I needed to know if this was one of Cash’s boys back for more or some crack addict from the Hummingbird ready to make a score.