Ace Atkins - Dirty South

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?”

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.