Ace Atkins: Dirty South

“JFK is on Wisner, right?”

THE SCHOOL’S security guard stopped us as soon as we hit the front door. He had a big belly and a small gun and snorted when he talked as if announcing a sermon on where dogs are welcome. Apparently school wasn’t one of them.

“That’s racism.”

“A dog ain’t no race.”

“It’s a species.”

“That ain’t no race, and it needs to be outside.”

He put his hands on his hips.

“Will you call Coach Woods?”

“Why would Coach Woods want to see some dog?”

“She’s the best placekicker in the southern parishes.”

He squinted his eyes up and shook his head, turning his back to us.

“Wait till you go pro, Annie,” I said. “They’ll all be sorry.”

Coach Woods found us a little while later on this old practice field where Annie and I were playing with a tennis ball she’d found. He was about forty and black. Wore a crewneck T that said KENNEDY D-LINE. LIKE A ROCK.

“You lookin’ for me?” He kept his hair short and it had started to turn gray at the temples. Annie trotted over with the tennis ball and dropped it against my leg. I took the slobbery ball, tossed it about thirty yards, and she took off for it.

“Heard you used to be DJ Capone.”

He just watched me.

“Heard that Cash stole your beats.”

Woods walked closer. “What you sellin’, man?”

“I’m a friend of Teddy Paris. Said maybe you could help me figure out Cash a little bit.”

“Teddy?” he said, smiling.

He squinted into the sun behind my head as Annie looped back and dropped the ball by my foot. Out in the field, the team still kept the old-school goalposts that were shaped like an H . They reminded me of a field with high grass in south Alabama where my dad coached. He used to have to cut the grass himself. Sometimes he’d make me weed the field as he slipped back into his office to drink some Beam on ice.

“You know Cash?”

I shook my head and dropped to a knee to slow Annie down a bit. She was still too skinny to be a healthy dog.

“He give you that scar on your face?”

“Got that myself.”

“Figured as much,” he said. “What business you got with Cash?”

“Teddy and Cash are fighting over money and recording this boy out of Calliope.”

“ALIAS,” he said. “Yeah, I know all about that.”

“I’m looking out for the kid’s interests.”

“Cash will kill you if you get in the way.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But would he really kill Teddy?”

“Teddy owe him money?”

“How’d you guess?”

“Teddy owes everybody money.”

“You want to take a walk?”

I hooked up Annie to her leash and we began to walk around a rubberized track that circled the football field. We kept looping around the field and I still felt like I needed to be weeding all these years later. I thought about ALIAS at fifteen, wondered how long he’d been out of school.

“You’re Nick Travers, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said and shook his hand.

“I seen you play many times, man. Y’all had the best defense those years. You and that man from Mississippi, linebacker?”

“Ulysses Davis.”

“The Black Knight.”

“Yeah, I’ll tell him that somebody remembers him,” I said. “He’ll like that.”

“Y’all stay in touch?”

I nodded.

“Tell me about what happened with you and Cash.”

“I grew up in Calliope,” he said. “Proud of that. Most of my kids come from there or Magnolia. I got out by workin’ block parties. Hustlin’ for any money I could make. I invented bounce, man. You know bounce?”

“It’s the Dirty South sound.”

“Damn right,” he said. “That’s me.”

“Cash took it.”

“Took my beats, put his lame-ass raps over it, and threatened all the record stores in Uptown. Made ’em sell his record or he’d fuck their ass up.”

“Man, that’s good marketing.”

“That ape don’t play,” he said. He patted Annie on her head and reached down to pull some high grass from some broken asphalt inside the track. “When I confronted the man, he just walk away. We was at a block party at the Y when I let him know he was a thief. Didn’t even answer me. But that motherfucker sure broke into my apartment one night. Tied up me and my girl. Made her watch while he beat my ass.”

I changed the leash into the other hand. Woods put his hands into his coaching shorts and pulled out a whistle. He twirled it into his fingers. “Stuck a knife into my mouth. Cut my tongue.”

He shook his head. “Made me go back to school, though. I played ball in high school but I wasn’t like y’all. Didn’t have the speed. No real size. Got my degree from Xavier on my twenty-sixth birthday, man. Now I teach computer skills to these kids.”

Annie kept pulling on the leash, not sure why it was slowing her down. Her tongue lolling out, antenna ears askew.

“Someone took ALIAS,” I said. “They conned him. Made him think he was represented by some big agency. Does Cash have the connection or the smarts to make that work?”

“Man’s smart. But he don’t have the patience for something like that. He wants the kid. Wants Teddy to look bad. But see, Cash doesn’t work that way, conning somebody. If he wanted something done, he’d head right to it. He’ll lie, steal, and cheat. But he’ll do it face-to-face. Con games and playin’ ain’t the man’s style.”

“You answered my question.”

“What kind of dog is that anyway?” he asked.

“A Delta dog,” I said. “The finest breeding outside Memphis.”

“Got some pit in her?”

“Maybe.”

“What else?”

“Boxer. Shepherd. Wookie.”

“Man,” he said, laughing. “Listen. You think you could come by practice sometime this fall? Kids ’bout to get out of school now. Tryin’ to make ’em show up to workouts this summer and all. Ain’t workin’ that great. All kinds of distractions. Girls. Drugs. Money. Man, when I was a kid, football was everything. Now they just into ballin’.”

“I guess when you hit the big time, you don’t even need school.”

“ALIAS will have to come down hard one day,” he said. “You ever want to help out, let me know.”

“Sure, man,” I said. “I work at Tulane. They know how to find me.”

I stopped walking at the gate to the parking lot. Annie needed some water and to be fed. I needed to make a few calls. “Who would want to cheat this kid?” I asked.

Woods stretched out his fist and gave me the pound. Hard black clouds rolled in from the east, a few small trees planted around the field started to shake. I heard thunder crack. The rain was back.

“A millionaire kid with a Calliope education?” he asked. “I’d look at everybody who breathes in this city.”

“Will Cash come for me?”

“If you’re in between him and the boy, you better bet on it.”

CASH STAYED UPTOWN in this purple mansion with yellow shutters just off the streetcar line where white people played tennis and parked their cars behind thick iron fences. You’d heard that his neighbors don’t like him none. Not ’cause he’s black and rich but ’cause he throws parties about every night, rips apart some old-as-hell house breakin’ the law, and threatens folks with sawed-off shotguns. He even made some white lawyer get on his knees and kiss his buck-naked ass after the man told Cash to cut his lawn. In a lot of ways, you got to respect that.

At 3, it’s dark as hell from that storm rollin’ in off the Gulf, and you see all his boys sittin’ in rockin’ chairs on this wide porch like gunfighters from old movies. Drinkin’ Cristal and forties and listenin’ to the music comin’ from open windows. Thin curtains ruffle like ghosts. The thunder breaks above your head, and fat little salty drops that you imagine come from around Mexico slap you in the eyes as you walk to the porch. You don’t pay them niggas no mind. Cash called you. This his invite and you welcome as hell. It’s payday and you got to smile.