Ace Atkins - Dirty South

“That sounds nasty.”

“Wait till you try it,” I said. “Best in the state.”

I imagined ALIAS’s do-rag and thick platinum chains would draw some stares from the truckers who were hunkered over their lunch platters. But I needed some good, warm food and often stopped here on my way to Clarksdale.

I let Annie make a deposit on the grass and left her in the shaded car with the windows down. ALIAS mumbled and planted his feet on the ground outside the truck. He yawned tall and hard and motioned at the windows of the restaurant.

“You takin’ me to a Klan meeting, Old School?”

“Bring your sheet?”

“Come on, man,” he said. He looked at all the spindly pine trees in the forest across the road and pickup trucks in the lot. The air was silent except for the roaring of semis every ten seconds on the interstate.

Two black truckers in tall cowboy hats – toothpicks wandering from the sides of their mouths – pushed the front doors open and gave long looks at ALIAS in his baggy FUBU jersey and low-ridin’ jeans.

I ordered coffee from a teenage waitress who looked as if she’d just woken up and the world held a million possibilities. Her smile plastered and hard, eyes so wide open that they gave me a headache. ALIAS got a Coke.

“That was some fucked-up shit, man, in New Orleans,” ALIAS said, playing games with his fingers. They fought one another as he refused to look me in the eye. “Don’t want to be part of that.”

“I’m sorry about Malcolm.”

ALIAS shrugged. “Nigga made his play.”

“That’s hard.”

“What ain’t?”

He looked away from me for a moment and I nodded.

“You want me to drive?” he asked.

“No one else drives the Ghost.”

“That ole piece of shit?” he asked. “I got some silk underwear that cost more money.”

“Probably runs better too.”

The waitress came back and I asked for the Texas-size chicken-fried steak and ALIAS ordered a cheeseburger and fries.

“You want to tell me more about your buddy Cash?” I asked.

“Cash ain’t my buddy.”

“Teddy heard he was at your place the other night,” I said. “He sent some folks by to find you and they said you were outside smokin’ it up with Cash.”

He didn’t say anything.

We stared out into the parking lot at the trucks until the food arrived.

The country-fried steak sat brown and covered in white peppery gravy in front of me. ALIAS ate a few fries and looked around for a ketchup bottle. There wasn’t one, and he tried to show he was so damned interested in finding the bottle that he wouldn’t look me in the eye.

“You made up your mind?”

“Man, Cash want me to join his label,” he said. “You know that? Said I’m a punk for runnin’ to the Ninth Ward when you got a straight-up Calliope brother with L.A. connections.”

I watched his face. He blew out his breath and rubbed the top of his head. He’d quit eating his food.

“So you’re gonna stay with Teddy?”

“I’m gonna do whatever ALIAS want to do.”

“That have anything to do with Tavarius Stovall?”

“Man.”

“You know that your name comes from a plantation where we’re headed.”

“Slave name.”

“Sort of,” I said. “But someone in your family came from Clarksdale. I’d bet money.”

“My people come from Mississippi?”

“Where did you think they came from?”

“All I know is Calliope.”

“Maybe we can stop by,” I said. “Always good for the soul to know your roots.”

He looked up at me, in the eyes, and smiled. “’Cept when those roots are rotten.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Just repeatin’ the words my grandmamma tole me,” he said. “She said my mamma was a drug addict and a whore. Said she was sick in the head and I was just like her.”

The waitress came back and leveled a ketchup bottle on the table. She smiled at us and looked pretty even though she had crooked yellowed teeth and brown frizzy hair.

“I saw your video on BET,” I said. “You got talent.”

“You watch BET?”

“Frequently,” I said.

“Which one you see?”

“I don’t know. You were driving a Mercedes in the Quarter with three girls in bikinis. You looked pissed off talking on that cell phone.”

ALIAS laughed. “So where you takin’ me?” he asked, happy with the ketchup and tapping the bottle.

“I told you, we’re going to stay a few days with some friends of mine.”

“That old dude.”

“Yeah, that old dude,” I said, cutting into the steak.

“What he to you?” he said. “Some kin?”

“He and his wife took me in when no one else wanted me,” I said.

I watched ALIAS in his wrinkled shirt. His face covered in oil and sweat. Then I looked at two truckers by a window drinking a cup of coffee and enjoying a moment of silence. I could not see much beyond the road.

JOJO AND LORETTA LIVED in a turn-of-the-century farmhouse a few miles outside Clarksdale in a town that once had a name. I’d learned to recognize the county roads by piles of rocks or trees, since signs were rare. Soon I crossed their old footbridge and headed down a gravel road. The house was two stories and white with a wide screened-in porch where Loretta had draped blue Christmas lights right below the tin roof. It was just before sundown and JoJo and I slipped into some metal chairs flecked with green paint and rust and drank whiskey. The whiskey was hot and warm but surprisingly mellow.

Annie lay at JoJo’s feet.

“See?” he said. “That dog’s smart. She remember me.”

“Maybe she just wants some food.”

“Dogs remember who save their ass,” he said. “She’ll always remember me. Right, girl?”

He scratched the back of her ears and she barked.

Loretta had shown ALIAS a bed in the back room of the old house and in the last few minutes had begun to make us dinner in the kitchen. I could smell the greens simmering with a fat, salty ham hock and cornbread baking in the oven. She served sweet tea and scowled at JoJo’s whiskey.

I returned to the porch with JoJo. The sun slowly headed down over his pastureland to the east in a slice of yellow. Dark patches of shadow hung beneath his hickories and pecan trees as I sipped on the tea and told him about ALIAS and Malcolm.

JoJo propped his feet up on the ledge and continued to run an oilcloth on his old.22. Chickens cackled behind the house.

“When did you get chickens?” I asked.

“When I decided I wanted eggs,” he said.

JoJo was in his late sixties now. Broad-shouldered and black. His arms starting to thicken from his return to farmwork and his rough fingers tough and quick over the stock and the barrel.

“What you gonna do with the kid?” he asked.

“Stay with him around here for a few days,” I said. “If you don’t mind.”

“Why he got them gold teeth?”

“They were out of diamonds.”

“He’s street, Nick. Watch your ass. I don’t mess with those project folks in New Orleans.”

“Kid’s a millionaire.”

“You got to be shittin’ me.”

“I shit you not. He owns a big mansion on the lake-front. Has a Mercedes and doesn’t even have a learner’s permit.”

JoJo put the gun down on an old table. “You brought a drug dealer to my house?”

“Worse,” I said, and laughed. “A rapper.”

“No shit,” JoJo said, laughing too. “Kids will listen to anything these days. Man, when I was a kid, we all wanted to be Muddy Waters. The way he sang about women and whiskey. Made me want to play that ole blues.”

“Not much has changed,” I said.

“Except plenty,” he said. “That music is against God. Makes thugs into heroes, women into things, and money above all.”