by Nick Petrie
The weight of the gun was comforting given Peter’s recent experiences. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“You’ll be fine,” she said. “This place is a kind of neutral ground, like a church but with better security. Plus I have a friend who might be playing here tonight. He’s also a brickmason. I want to see if he’s got time to work on my house.”
“Okay,” said Peter. “Give me a second.”
He walked around the side looking for another entrance, and found a back door sheltered under a tin-roofed overhang. The trio of cheap folding chairs and an oil-drum barbecue told Peter this area was part loading dock, part employee lounge.
The overhang was supported by a pair of rusted triangular iron brackets bolted to the wall, probably there since the fifties. They were tilted out at the top, the years slowly separating them from the building. The stubbornness of inertia resisting the relentless pull of gravity.
Peter eyeballed the gaps behind the tops of the brackets. The space on the right side was slightly wider. He took the 1911 from his waist and tucked it between the metal and the cement block wall. The weapon fit, but just barely. He hooked a finger around the barrel and the gun fell into his hand without protest.
He put the pistol back in place and walked around front to meet Wanda.
* * *
• • •
Inside, the light was low and the air-conditioning was high. The static flared, but Peter damped it down with promises of a burger and a beer. A dark, narrow man blocked the entryway.
“Wanda Wyatt.” The narrow man’s mouth formed a smile but his eyes were on Peter.
“Saint James.” Wanda held open her camera bag so he could see inside. “The man playing tonight?”
“Due any minute. Get a seat while you can.”
James had a boxer’s scar tissue around his eyes, a well-worn nylon shoulder holster carrying a big pearl-handled automatic, and a cylindrical snap-top case on his belt that probably held an expandable spring-steel baton. Everything a bouncer needs for crowd control.
He still hadn’t looked away from Peter when he touched Wanda’s bag with a finger. “You’re good, honey. Who’s this?”
“This is Peter, a friend.” She closed her bag and stepped forward. “He’s with me.”
“Don’t know him,” said James. “Arms up, turn around.”
The frisk was quick, impersonal, and utterly thorough, evidence of years of practice and learning from past mistakes. When James was done Peter was pretty sure the other man knew his shoe size, the number of fillings in his teeth, and whether he wore boxers or briefs.
James put his eyes back on Peter. “Wanda tell you the rules?”
“Play nice and get along?”
“Don’t be an asshole and keep your hands off the waitresses. If you get drunk, be a happy drunk.”
Peter looked past James at the big room. A bar ran down one long wall, rows of tables down the other, with a small raised stage at the far end. The back hallway would lead to the kitchen, bathrooms, and the rear door where he’d left Chester’s 1911.
The ceiling was high and had been patched so many times the pattern had begun to look deliberate. The dark paneling was decorated with framed photos and newspaper clippings and old tour posters. Ella Fitzgerald was playing on the sound system, but not so loud you couldn’t hear the chatter of customers and the friendly clatter of glasses and silverware.
The bartenders were huge, all three of them, and their hands poured drinks while their eyes watched the crowd. Peter figured they had a couple of shotguns behind the bar, and baseball bats cut down to be useful in a tight space.
“When was the last time you had real trouble?”
Saint James gave Peter a tight smile. “Not since I been here, and tonight won’t be the first. Go on, sit down. Relax and have a drink. The band is something special.”
Wanda had found a table by the wall. The place was filling up fast, everyone from men in work-stained Dickies to couples dressed in flashy suits and flowery dresses. The waitress had just taken their order—Ghost River Gold for Peter, a double vodka on the rocks for Wanda—when the musicians emerged from the back hall, carrying their gear.
Wanda pointed at the two older men. “That’s my friend Dupree, with the standup double bass in the tall brown case. The guy in the hat is Romeo, the drummer.”
But Peter’s eyes were glued to the skinny kid with the guitar.
28
He was still dressed in the same black Fender T-shirt and baggy jean shorts and sneakers he’d been wearing that morning. He carried the guitar on his back, neck down without a case, with the wide cloth strap across his narrow chest like a gunslinger’s bandolier. He didn’t carry it off like Johnny Cash, but nobody else did, either.
Stepping onstage, the kid unslung the guitar and leaned it carefully in a corner as he surveyed the crowd. The lights were in his face and Peter had already turned away.
While the older men began to unpack what they’d carried, the kid went back down the hallway and returned with a hand truck loaded with round drum cases stacked like a wedding cake. He was small and thin, but he didn’t have any trouble moving the equipment. Two more trips for amplifiers and stands and milk crates packed with cords and microphones and other gear, and a final trip without the hand truck for another guitar in a heavy-duty black plastic case. He carried it with both hands, as if the contents were made of some rare, precious material.
Part of Peter wanted to get up and brace the kid, find out where his truck had gone, what he’d done to get those gangbangers all worked up. But that wasn’t an option, not with Saint James at the door and those nimble giants behind the bar.
Not unless Peter wanted to kill somebody, and he didn’t.
Not over a 1968 Chevy.
He wondered if his truck was parked right outside the club. He was pretty sure the kid was too smart for that, but he wanted to go see for himself. Then he looked around and realized that if he stood up to leave his pale Wisconsin skin would stand out like a spotlight in this brown Memphis crowd. The kid would see him and spook, and Peter would be no better off.
Besides, he’d just ordered a beer. Wanda’d said the burgers were the best in town, and Peter was hungry. He didn’t want to be rude.
He also wanted to know if the kid was any good on that beat-up guitar.
The drinks came while the musicians were still setting up. The beer on tap was excellent. Wanda’s double vodka went down in a hurry and she held up her hand for another. She was on the down slope of a long and difficult day, and the pills wouldn’t hold her up forever. Another reason for Peter to stay put and see how things played out.
Her friend Dupree perched one cheek on a tall stool, positioned a microphone, then draped himself around that upright double bass like a man ready to dance the tango with his wife of many years. He was somewhere in his sixties, iron-gray hair cut short, face creased by the sun, solidly built in jeans and a black suit jacket over a crisp white button-down shirt. Ella Fitzgerald faded out on the sound system and the microphone came up. Dupree spent a few seconds tuning, then began to play a tight-walking blues line, his long fingers effortless on the strings. The crowd noise began to soften.
The kid helped the drummer put his kit together. It wasn’t much, just a bass, a snare, a tom-tom, and a hi-hat, and it didn’t take long. The drummer, Romeo, was about the same age as Dupree, thick but compact in blue work pants, a white short-sleeved shirt, a red vest, and a pale straw fedora. He nodded the kid away, pushed the hat to the back of his head, and sat behind the kit. After a few tiny adjustments that only he would notice, he picked up a pair of brushes and began to do something soft and slippery behind the bass, which was gaining momentum. The crowd got quieter.
The kid arranged a pair of microphones and two control pedals in front of a wooden ladder-back chair. He went to the rear corner of the litt
le stage and laid the heavy-duty black case gently on the floor. He knelt before it, unfastened the clasps, and lifted out a metal-bodied National guitar that flashed silver under the lights.
He sat in the chair and set the guitar on his lap with a green glass bottleneck slide on the little finger of his left hand. He fished a flat pick out of his back pocket, and struck the open chord. Even with his microphones off, the bright metallic sound of that steel resonator filled the nearly silent room.
He was a small, skinny kid, dressed in unwashed clothes, but he seemed somehow bigger up there. He played a quick shimmering series of notes, barely touching the tuning pegs before nodding to himself. After a sideways glance at Dupree, he adjusted one mike to the guitar and the other to his face, tapped the control pedals to turn them on, then launched into what Peter quickly recognized as a version of the classic “Good Morning, Little School Girl.”
The sound was tremendous.
The kid played a rich open tuning, punctuated by liquid licks with the slide, some kind of oddball style of his own invention. He made altogether more music than had ever been intended to come out of even that magnificent guitar. He wasn’t showing off, not playing too fast, but every note and every space was in the exact right place. The amplified bass kept steady time at the bottom, and the drummer fooled around the edges, the brushes slapping, the hi-hat a syncopated snap.
Then the kid began to sing. His voice, coming out of that narrow chest and boyish face, was stronger and deeper than it should have been. His eyes were closed.
Can I go home, can I go home, with you.
Tell your mama and your papa, I once was a schoolboy, too.
It was a haunting song, filled with longing for something that would never come to be.
Peter thought of June. He wondered if he’d ever be able to stay with her, if she needed more than he could give. What each would have to give up to be together. If it would ruin them to try.
He looked at Wanda.
She was staring at the stage, camera forgotten in her hand, tears running down her face.
This music had power.
Jesus Christ, this kid was good.
When he finished, everyone in the room stood up and shouted and whistled and stomped their feet.
And that was just the first song.
* * *
• • •
The band picked up the pace with some blues classics. “Wang Dang Doodle” followed by “Got My Mojo Working,” then “Seventh Son,” “She Caught the Katy,” and the dirtiest version of “Little Red Rooster” Peter had ever heard. Dupree sang some, the kid sang others. Couples abandoned their meals half-eaten to dance between the tables. Some songs got a different tuning on the shining National guitar, which the kid seemed to do without conscious thought. The band didn’t sound rehearsed, but spontaneous, like water welling up from a spring. Peter couldn’t see a set list anywhere. One of the musicians started playing and the others joined in.
A pair of Louis Armstrong numbers, “West End Blues” and “St. James Infirmary.”
“That’s where Saint James got his name,” Wanda called through the music. “When he was police, he put a lot of people in the hospital. Nobody wanted to go to the Saint James Infirmary.”
When the kid switched to the battered old acoustic guitar for “Walkin’ Blues,” the drummer took up the harmonica and Dupree kept time by thumping on the body of the double bass. It was a sad song played faster than flight, a joyful racket. The kid sang this one, too.
Time to clear on out of my lonesome home
Got up this morning and all I had was gone.
Singing with his eyes closed, the kid’s face looked shining and clean, entirely different from that desperation he’d been carrying when he took Peter’s truck.
Peter knew how he felt. He was unarmed in a dark, crowded club with only two exits. He should have been jumping out of his skin from his claustrophobia, but the music had reduced the white static to the faintest whisper. Or maybe the static had been raised up into something new.
Wanda had her camera up, taking pictures of the dancers while the band raced through a few crowd-friendly soul classics. Without that Memphis horn sound, the songs felt stripped bare, taking on a new, more elemental life. The kid’s rich, greasy guitar licks filled in the gaps while women raised their arms and shook their hips.
Dupree mopped his face with a white handkerchief and said, “This ain’t Beale Street, but we still work for tips, so we appreciate anything you can give.” He launched into Tom Waits’s “Jesus Gonna Be Here,” done the way the Blind Boys of Alabama played it, while Saint James locked the front door and walked around with a tin bucket, stopping at every table and every seat at the bar. He didn’t say much, but the bucket filled quickly.
After a few more songs, Dupree laid down his big bass and mopped his forehead again. “We’re gonna take a little break, but we’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
When the kid looked up, he saw Peter staring right at him.
29
Peter had to give the kid some credit. He didn’t just run for the door.
He let his eyes slide past Peter as if just scanning the room. He went to place that shining National guitar back in its heavy-duty case, snapped the clasps, and stuck something in his back pocket.
Then he picked up the old acoustic by the neck and wandered over to the far end of the packed bar, where a young waitress handed him a tall glass of something fizzy, maybe Coke or Dr Pepper. The kid put his elbow on the curved wood and took his time with his drink, watching the room and talking with the waitress, who couldn’t have been any older than he was.
Oddly, she appeared to be wearing gloves.
Wanda was watching, too. She was on her third double vodka with her camera in her hand, starting to unwind. “You see how that girl leans toward him? She likes him. He’s really good, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he is.”
The kid made a casual gesture toward the tables. When the young waitress’s head turned to search the crowd, Peter got to his feet. “Be right back.”
He left Wanda at the table staring after him as he slipped into the crowd.
It was a happy tangle of people, mostly well-dressed and half-drunk and visiting from table to table. Peter was tall enough to see Saint James with his pearl-handled automatic back on station at the front door. The bartenders were hustling hard, trying to keep up with demand from people standing two deep and waving money. The kid was talking earnestly into the young waitress’s ear.
Peter closed in through the mass of people, sweating now despite the air-conditioning. He lost sight of the kid twice, but put eyes on him again within seconds, still talking with the waitress.
Then a fat guy in a maroon three-piece suit stood up and stretched, blocking Peter’s view for a third time. When he got clear, the kid was gone, so was the waitress.
Peter felt the static stir and rise.
This wasn’t going to go well.
Still, the kid couldn’t have gone far. Peter turned his head, searching, but the kid was too short to be seen. Peter saw only the swirl of someone passing through the crowd in the back hall. He followed at speed, his hand cleaving the crowd like a blade.
The hallway had a swinging door to the kitchen on one side, a pair of restroom doors on the other, and the rear exit at the end. Over the heads of the women waiting for both restrooms, Peter saw the back door swinging shut.
Then the same young waitress stepped in front of him holding a large oval serving tray in both hands as a sort of shield. She was, in fact, wearing thin leather gloves.
“Oh, ’scuse me,” she said, but she didn’t move.
She stood barely five feet tall, and couldn’t have been older than fifteen. The tray was almost as big as she was.
When Peter stepped left, she mirrored him with a smile.
When he s
tepped right, she mirrored him again, like the accidental hallway dance where each person moves where the other person is trying to go.
“I’m so sorry.” Her grip tightened on the tray.
She was doing it on purpose, and not nervous about it, either. Earning the kid a few valuable seconds. It was just one more reason to like him, that, for his sake, this bright-eyed girl was willing to put herself in Peter’s path.
Saint James had only two rules, and one of them was to keep your hands off the waitresses. All she’d have to do was scream for the bartenders and Peter would be up to his eyeballs in baseball bats.
So Peter took hold of her serving tray with both hands and swung her around like a dance partner, trading places in the hallway. “Your friend with the guitar has much bigger problems than me,” he told her, then released the tray and banged through the back door.
Where he found Brody, thick-necked driver and leg-breaker, up to his knees in the tall night grass with a shattered guitar hanging from one hand and the skinny kid dangling from the other.
30
Night had fallen. The streets were dark. The kitchen exhaust rattled and carried the smell of grease and meat. The single yellow bulb under the rusty tin-roofed overhang didn’t cast much light, but Peter could see the scene clearly enough.
Brody’s big hand wrapped securely around the kid’s narrow bicep, holding him off the ground. The kid’s anguished face, his feet scrabbling for purchase in thin air, his free hand rooting frantically in his back pocket. The guitar smashed shapeless, held together by strings.
Brody’s track jacket hung open, showing his gun in its shoulder holster.
“You let this boy take your truck?”
Peter shrugged. “He had a gun, and I didn’t.”
“Young man’s not quite how you described him.” Brody’s face was utterly unreadable.