Ace Atkins: Dark End of the Street

When they broke company a while back, the young man said he’d soon leave word in the same place if everything worked out as planned. Good wishes. Maybe a prayer. Or, again, the need for help.

As a couple Hondas raced by Black Elvis on the holy boulevard, the shops sitting dark across the street, he stood high in his patent-leather boots and checked the rock.

No wish. No prayers.

Just a simple message dated three days ago.

JESSE GARON LIVES!

The words were signed by the loopy signature of a man named Lucky Jackson who listed his home as Las Vegas, Nevada.

Black Elvis smiled.

He’d look him up when he got there.

ALL THAT REMAINED of JoJo’s Blues Bar was a blackened shell of stucco and brick with charred beams running overhead where a mess of crows had decided to roost. I scanned the ruins and noticed the skeletal remnants of chairs and tables, even crushed red, blue, and green ceramic Christmas lights in the soot and rubble. The old jukebox that once shined in chrome and neon sat in a deflated lump next to a black brick wall where the Sheetrock had been eaten to the bone by flames. Warped and fried old Chess and V.J. 45s littered out of the side of the machine like discarded pie plates.

As awful as things turned out, I was still glad to be back in New Orleans and out of Memphis.

My plan with U had worked, for the most part, the way we’d hoped. Neither of us had fired a shot and Abby had used one of the Sons of the South’s guns to kill Ransom before throwing it into the river. U was a little worried about the cops finding his truck and that nice little dent he left in the bridge, so he’d concocted a story about chasing a bounty on one of Ransom’s henchmen. That was about it.

The shitstorm landed on the Sons of the South. They’d really left themselves swinging in the wind, leaving bullet casings and cartridges, tire tracks and rappelling equipment near the bridge. They even abandoned one of their damned Hummers and pretended like some black kids had broken in to their compound and taken it for a spin. Several were arrested. Several were dead. Besides Ransom, their names didn’t mean anything to me.

Elias Nix was mentioned in the Commercial-Appeal for his loose association. But by the time the arrests took place, Nix was old news. When Jude Russell bowed out just days before the election due to an “undisclosed medical problem,” a former U.S. senator and state favorite on the lecture circuit decided to take one last ride for the party.

His win over Nix was so big that the ten o’clock newscasts declared him the winner barring a massive natural disaster.

There was no satisfaction in my role. I wished none of it had ever happened. I wished I could close my eyes and open them again, watching the lights brightening inside the bar and hearing JoJo’s keys jangling on his hip as he opened up.

I heard a shuffle behind me.

The crows flew off in a flock, their black feathers almost blue in the afternoon sun, as JoJo peeked through an opening where those big Creole doors had stood. He reached down and found the handle and lock in a pile of ash, his keys in his other hand.

“You want to help me lock up?”

“JoJo,” I said, resting on my haunches and finding a half-eaten framed picture of a blues man named Earl Snooks. We called him Henry. I showed it to JoJo as he peered over my shoulder. “Jesus.”

“Jesus? He can’t help us now,” he said. Across the street, I noticed his Cadillac chugging exhaust into the cold air.

“You goin’ somewhere?” I asked.

“Headed back up Highway 61 for a while,” he said. “Not hidin’. Just searchin’.”

I squinted into his deep black face framed by the bright white light. “You mind if I stop by sometime?”

“Listen, Nick,” he said, his hands shaking on the meat of my back arm. I never knew that man’s hands to shake ever. He was the definition of steady. “Why didn’t you tell me about what you was doin’ for Loretta?”

“Didn’t think it was necessary at the time.”

He took the photograph of Snooks from my hand and studied his old friend’s face. “You want it?” he asked, handing it back.

“No, I remember him.”

I walked with him back to the Cadillac and talked to him over the long car door where he’d rested his elbows.

“What you gonna do?” he asked.

“Not far behind you,” I said, smiling. “A woman I met in Oxford invited me up to take riding lessons.”

“That what they callin’ it now?” he said and laughed. It was a JoJo laugh, deep and weathered and came from deep within him. It made me pretty damned happy as I watched the red twin taillights of the Cadillac disappear.

I stood on Conti after he left, staring back at the shell of the bar, and wondered how he’d ever packed so many people into such a tiny space. I thought about the beer and the smoke and the nights I’d played harp, sweating my ass off in the New Orleans heat, as Loretta had belted out her nasty blues. I could almost hear the cheers and yells as she’d step into the crowd, those little red and blue lights on her face in the darkened bar, making fun of JoJo or me. A sweet cold Dixie by my side, my friends floating nearby, feeling like we were immortal, our party would never end.

I knew I wouldn’t come back here for a while. I wanted to believe the bar was still there, that the next time I was ever in the Quarter I could stroll down Conti Street and hear the music from blocks away.

I flipped the photograph around in my hands and tucked it back into a pile of soot and ash. The night air was cold and punk music began to blare across the street as if the town bully was announcing he’d won the neighborhood fight.

I listened for a while and smoked a couple cigarettes. I was almost done when I saw JoJo round the curve, this time with Loretta in his front seat. She waved. Her face glowed with a mammoth smile.

“You want to get somethin’ to eat with us in Vicksburg?” she yelled to me.

I nodded, stubbed out the cigarette, and got off my ass.

I jumped into Gray Ghost, much uglier than she’d been a few weeks ago, but still running. I thought about that for a long while as we turned onto the old blues highway and headed north.

TO MEMPHIS AND BACK, the following provided needed help, inspiration, or some top-notch grub: my family, Michael Baker, B. F. Vandervoort, Gayle Dean Wardlow, Jim Kennedy, Harry Smith, Debbi Eisenstadt, Bogie “Raven” Miller, Joe Durkin, Darryl Wimberley, Burnis Morris, Elvis (my canine companion), the gang at Square Books, and the staff at Ajax Diner, Taylor Grocery, and the Bottletree.

Much thanks to Richard and Carolyn for their continued direction, support, and for being great friends to Loretta. I’m looking forward to many more adventures.

Without a doubt, Peter Guralnick’s Sweet Soul Music transported me to Memphis 1968, and Edward Humes’s Mississippi Mud took me into the core of the Dixie Mafia. Shangri-La Records’s Lowlife Guide to Memphis and Tad Pierson provided invaluable information and true “grit” away from Beale.

Special thanks to Robert Gordon, whose article, “Way Out on a Voyage,” gave voice to Clyde James and Paul Bergin, who heard of an evil woman that I had to meet.

While writing this book, the world lost three soul legends: Johnnie Taylor, James Carr, and Rufus Thomas. Without them and their inspiration, this book wouldn’t be in your hands.

Ace Atkins, author of Crossroads Blues and Leavin' Trunk Blues in the popular Nick Travers series, lives somewhere in Mississippi with his dog Elvis. As a football star at Auburn University he made it onto the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1993 for a perfect season. As a crime reporter for the Tampa Tribune Ace was short-listed for a Pulitzer Prize in 2000 and the Livingston Award for outstanding journalism in 1999 and 2000. Today he writes about music and murder and whatever else he finds on Highway 61. Visit www.aceatkins.com.