Ace Atkins - Dirty South

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.

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.”

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.