by Ace Atkins
I was seated right next to Spencer Faircloth.
I’ll never understand why he came. He was far too smart to put himself anywhere near something as dirty as this. I’m pretty sure it was just ego. The gutless turd remark must have gotten to him.
I poked him in the ribs with my Browning.
“Spencer, you old dog.”
I reached over the driver’s seat and pulled the keys from the ignition while I kept the gun
pointed at him. I then motioned him outside, found the key for the trunk, and pushed him in with the flat of my palm.
My face felt cold and wind-bitten when I smiled.
They had made a real mess of my turn-of-the-century door, which had scrolled patterns around the mail slot. Splintered wood and muddy boot tracks led up my side staircase.
This time I did not run. I crept.
But I had the advantage. I knew every weakness in that staircase. Each creak. Every loose board.
I heard crashes and thuds. They were throwing my shit all around. And they must have enjoyed making a mess because they were laughing the whole time.
At the top of the landing, I straightened my right arm and fired a slug into the shoulder of the black man with curly, greasy hair. As he spun, one of my old books flew out of his hands, pages fluttering like a wounded bird before it crashed to the floor.
The young preppy white guy I’d encountered twice wasn’t ready either. It took him a full four seconds before he tried to reach inside his raincoat. His eyes were wide with fear when I fired, hitting him in the thigh.
His gun slid along the floor, several feet away from him.
He was no bodyguard or the trigger man. He was just the guy fetching laundry and coffee for Faircloth.
But ole Billy Dee was the real deal.
I walked over to him, slowly. My boots clanking hard in my warehouse, the place where I slept, ate, and read.
The book he’d been tearing pages from was Robert Palmer’s Deep Blues. The dog-eared pages littered the floor around him, some misted with blood from the bullet’s impact.
He had his gun still in hand. A revolver.
“You’re not a blues fan, are you?”
He looked up at me and laughed.
“You remember that old man who you shot in the head?”
“Should have been you, motherfucker.”
“That old man could play “Blue Monday” and break your heart.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Maybe.”
With my gun pressed flat against his nose, I took his revolver.
“I’ll find you,” he said. “I promise you that.”
The police arrived a short time later, and with the coaxed testimony of Tom Cat, all three were charged with murder.
On New Year’s Eve, I played “Auld Lang Syne” on Fats’ tarnished sax while Loretta sang. Everyone made toasts and kissed while I placed the battered instrument in a dusty glass case where it still remains today.
Sam came over, put an arm around my neck, and kissed me hard. I stood back and looked at Fats’ picture on top of the wooden case.
She kissed me again, and I turned away.
JoJo told me I did a “real nice job” playing harp that night and handed me another Dixie. Drunk, JoJo ambled up on stage and professed his love for his wife. She watched him and smiled, then gave him a kiss, too.
I wish I could’ve kept the moment, everything the way it was right then. But that was the year I met Cracker and went looking for the lost recordings of Robert Johnson in the Mississippi Delta. And my life was never the same.