by Ace Atkins
I heard the scream of a nutria in the slate-gray-and-pink morning. The swamp rat’s bloated body swimming in the high grass, slabs of yellow and brown teeth like a prehistoric animal. Red eyes watching us in the fresh light.
Dawn was here.
Dead cypress silhouetted the landscape like amputated appendages.
As Christian slowly moved into the marsh, engine revving and stopping, revving and stopping, I saw an eagle turn in the sky and hang there for a moment, just riding in the wind that moved him.
72
“AIN’T NOBODY GOING to get through that mess,” JoJo say, lookin’ into that smelly-ass swamp. Cash keep the boat back a ways from where Teddy stand on the Scarab. You once wanted that boat but now you want to drill holes in it and watch it sink way down deep into all that brown-green ooze you passin’ through.
You hear the crack of a gun. A bullet spiderwebs the window on Cash’s boat.
JoJo pushes you down. Cash yells.
“He’s dead,” he says. “I should’ve killed that fat son of a bitch when I got the chance. Goddamn. Shootin’ my boat. Man.”
He reaches for a big-ass .44 he got kept in a little cover by the steering wheel. “Yeah, that’s right.” He revs the motor and drifts closer. “Come on, motherfucker. Cash here to play.”
Bronco inches down on the side of the boat, his gun aimin’ right toward the Scarab.
Y’all drift.
The sound of the cars on the bridges fade away. All you see now is high grass and these tall things that look like bamboo. Ducks. Big funny-lookin’ pelicans and shit. The high grass parts and you see an alligator.
You fall down on your face tryin’ to get to a corner. It’s green and scaly with a knotty back swimmin’ away from the boat.
JoJo look at you and kind of laugh. “Bronco? Guess Tavarius don’t like gators any better than you.”
“I make that motherfucker into a pair of boots.”
Cash squeeze off a couple shots and you hear Teddy’s boat shoot out, engine revvin’ real hard. Cash slam down that throttle and y’all ride, beatin’ through the tall grass and sendin’ up muck, like some kind of green-ass milk shake, splatterin’ behind you.
“Got him,” Cash say, laughing. “We got him.”
Teddy’s boat revving real hard. Smoke shootin’ from the engine, whining almost like a scream, but not moving.
CHRISTIAN TRIED to reverse the boat and then run her forward. But nothing would get him untangled from the high grass and mud that clogged the propellers of the engine. I looked back and saw JoJo with Cash in this big, purple Cigarette boat and then Bronco and ALIAS. My eyes wavered and I bent at the waist for a few more dry heaves.
Christian turned to me, seeing the smile form on my face, and plodded back, knocking me in the chest with his fist. I tumbled back into the water, twirling in the bayou, feet sucking deep into the muck, and finally finding the way to air. I swallowed in light and oxygen, brushing reeds away from my face.
He looked down at me. “Push, goddammit. Push us out of this shit.”
I moved to the side of the boat, found my fists on the hull loosening, handprints painting brown patterns on the white paint, and pretended to move the boat from the reeds.
Christian revved her motor again and foul-smelling bubbles of marsh gases erupted from deep in the bottom.
Teddy stood over me, his arm extended with his gun. He squeezed off a few in the direction of Cash.
Still, I heard the steady, constant motor of Cash’s boat. Chugging. Ready to pounce.
I pretended to push more. My weight not moving a feather.
Teddy disappeared from the stern.
I walked backward in the thick water. The water level coming up to my neck.
I saw a water moccasin glide and curve sideways from the middle of the little lagoon.
Cash hit the engine hard and the long torpedo of boat shot forward hard and fast.
Teddy fired, the glass windshield exploding from Cash’s boat.
The boat whooshed by me and collided hard with Teddy’s Scarab. A cracking thunderous crash.
I heard two splashes and saw Teddy scrambling into the water, paddling his way to a shore that barely existed. Deeper into the reeds and grasses.
Silence. The engines died.
Yelling.
JoJo jumped in and high-stepped his way to me.
I felt my eyes roll back in my head and I tumbled backward.
He caught me and dragged me to a long flat of mud. My face flush into the gray muck, seeing scattering animals’ footprints. The early-morning heat rising in odorous waves from the pile.
I collected myself. Wavered to my feet.
I heard a few more shots.
Two other big purple Cigarette boats ran close to the line of tall grasses. Some of Cash’s boys getting up to their waists, guns held high over the water, slogging through. I saw a couple up to their ankles in marsh. Each step taking a grimace from the men, mud and decaying earth sucking them down.
I heard rustling. Grasses shifted near where I stood.
I wandered forward, the heat and sun and loss of blood wrapping the whole earth in a halo.
JoJo yelled for me.
I fell to my knees, sinking up to my elbows and thighs through it all, water and mud covering my face. Losing a boot and pulling off the other one, crawling for the sound through a tunnel of broken reeds, where cloven feet scattered in a labyrinth of high grass.
I tumbled out about thirty yards on the other side.
I stood on a muddy little bank, the bayou holding me up to my knees.
Teddy was stuck, frozen. Birds trilling all around us.
He turned to me. His red shirt muddy and torn. Dirt and mud caked over his face and into his hair. He looked almost comical.
But he wasn’t laughing.
His gun hung loose in his hand.
TWO of Cash’s boys haul Dio’s ass out of the damned bayou, pulling him out by his neck. Cash stand like some kind of general, shirtless and scarred, on our boat waiting to meet him. He reach down into the water, grab him by his arms, and pull him on board with all of us. Ain’t no real sound comin’ from nowhere. Just animal sounds and water slapping real low from beneath them bridges. You don’t say a word.
You just walk over with Cash and look down at the man you thought was God.
He look the same but don’t seem the same.
He look at you, recognize you know he ain’t shit, and then see his eyes jump down to your Superman platinum.
He reach for it and you knock his hand away.
“You just takin’ my place,” Dio says. “You just like me.”
Cash says, “Shut the hell up.” He knock him across the mouth with the butt of his gun. Then you hear him cock the motherfucker and hand it to you.
It feel strong and warm in your hand and don’t take you but two seconds to aim that bitch right at Dio’s heart.
“What’s your name?” you say.
“What?”
“What’s your name?”
JoJo behind him now and he got his hand out. He got his palm out, waiting for you to lay that steel in his hand.
“Shoot him!” Cash yell. “Shoot. Shoot.”
JoJo shake his head on the other side.
“My name is Christian,” he says. “Christian Chase.” His eyes are green but loose and heavy. He don’t show nothin’.
You thumb back the hammer and let it down loose.
You hand that gun to JoJo.
He take it.
Just as you step back, Christian turn and come at Cash with a knife in his hand. He gets that blade right at his face.
But Bronco steps from beside you, grab him at his wrist, and you see the punk drop to his knees and start cryin’ like a bitch. The knife fallin’ out of his hand.
Cash pick up the knife, look at it, and toss it in the water.
He nod at Bronco.
Bronco nod back at him, their shapes gettin’ thrown down on the tops of water i
n a silver mirror.
A boat pull up beside you and Cash pulls Christian from his feet and throw him in with some of his boys.
“Welcome to the Dirty South, Christian Chase.”
Cash smile at y’all from the other boat, throwing you the keys.
They float off and turn, breaking hard in the middle of the bayou and headin’ back out into Pontchartrain.
JoJo’s hand feel good on your shoulder.
I LOOKED at Teddy frozen in the mud. We didn’t exchange words. His eyes watched something beyond my shoulder, maybe a sound he heard, and wavered deep into the marsh that held him.
“Come on.”
He stretched the gun out from his arm. His eyes reflected a person I’d never met.
“We all go back to mud,” Teddy said, the fat shaking under his chin. Contorting with the emotion in his voice. “My preacher used to tell me and Malcolm that. Told us to be like the mud. That’s what we came from. What we all gonna be.”
I breathed, smelling the putrid smell of animals and plant life rotting around us in a big compost pile. Bile rose in my throat.
I heard boats buzzing and scattering away out in the bayou.
He pulled the gun back into him. An eagle swooped down and then caught a wave of rising air, shooting quickly back up into the blue sky.
Teddy Paris smiled. “Always knew you could take a joke, Travers.”
He slid the gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
The hard cracking sound brought a scattering of birds and insects floating off the marsh in a black stream and pinpointed dots that covered the white sun.
I dropped my head, turned, fighting the marsh, and made it halfway back through the grassy tunnel carved by a wild animal.
I crawled to get away from the place I’d seen Teddy slowly disappear into the bayou.
73
THE WORD CAME DOWN two weeks later that Ninth Ward Records was no more. You thought you was headed right back to Calliope, slidin’ right back in with your grandmamma and workin’ block parties to feed yourself. But right when you think you broke, you find yourself in New York City. You and Cash got a mack deal with a record company that been around for a hundred years. You see pictures of all them folks that come before you down this long white hall at these tight offices. Jazz women and blues daddies like the old man and Nick listen to. And that’s all cool, ’cause you know someday you just gonna be down that same line.
That new joint you’re workin’ in New York keepin’ you away from the Dirty South. You like seein’ your face off buses and bein’ thug-lipped over Times Square and it’s cool and all meetin’ Diddy and LL at some party in the middle of a big park made out of green grass. But somehow you feel like you losin’ you. Your rhymes not comin’ out the way you feel. The beats you hear sound like someone openin’ up a tin can.
You make a call. You on a plane.
You ride onto Canal, cruise uptown, pick up that little honey you’d met at this club with Malcolm Paris back when, and roll down to the Quarter in a white Escalade limo. See how Old School makin’ out. You don’t need to know. You just wonderin’.
You pay some big man in a straw hat five dollars at the door and see Loretta howlin’ a big mess onstage. Man, you ain’t never known that woman could sing like that. She got a storm inside her that always seem quiet to you.
Nick behind the bar with some bald black man. JoJo hangin’ in the back, leanin’ against the wall by the door. He smilin’, watchin’ his wife and Nick. Kind of takin’ it all in. You smile at that, shrug off your mink coat, and order a bottle of Cristal from some little honey waitress. Little Miss you with punch you in the ribs and you laugh till they ask you for ID and say champagne ain’t on the menu. And that shit ain’t cool.
Loretta keep singin’, all wrapped up in some fine-ass green satin. Face all painted up, silk hankie in her hand. “Don’t ask me no questions, and I won’t tell you no lies.”
The music is old. You don’t like it. But you can’t help but move your feet. ’Cause you been to where it come from and some way you knowin’ more about yourself.
Nick come by and say hello to you and your girl in between sets, but a few seconds later, he get called back to the bar to give a mess of folks some more beer. He seems to like poppin’ the tops of those Dixies and you thinkin’ about grabbin’ some while he ain’t lookin’.
Your date not hangin’ with the scene and disappears back into the bathroom. You tell her to hang. But she want to move on now. She got some girlfriends down at some club that you used to know. Everything in New Orleans change. But still the same.
The old man and you talk about New York and he ask you about some clubs in Harlem that you know ain’t even real. He make fun of your mink and them boots you paid a thousand bucks for and you laugh at that. ’Cause that teasin’ ain’t no disrespect. That ole man like you.
Nick still won’t pour you no alcohol and you knock hard on the bathroom tryin’ to find the girl. You hear her laughin’ inside and you push open the door, findin’ her snortin’ up off the top of a towel rack with some little white dude.
She don’t see you. But you leave her there and walk the Quarter. You got $2,000 in your pocket, a room at the Monteleone, and a record in the gate just jumpin’ for number one.
You sit down at Jackson Square, where you used to make money shinin’ shoes, and down past the mall, where you was thrown out for hustlin’. Your mind race over these months. Teddy’s ride. Malcolm and you hangin’ at the clubs. All the champagne and the way Malcolm treated you. He tellin’ you it’s family. But he just treatin’ you like he treat himself.
Time on your Cartier say you left the bar two hours ago. You thinkin’ about the girl, you guess. Ain’t no way you thinkin’ about Nick and the old man. But they all there. Them doors on Conti closed, houselights on in the bar, and JoJo and him just clearin’ up beer bottles into a trash can.
JoJo singin’ along to the jukebox.
You knock on the glass.
And Loretta lets you in.
Everyone stops for a while. No money bein’ counted. No beer bein’ drunk.
Just all y’all sittin’ at this little table. Loretta and JoJo. You and Old School. And you laughin’ about things that been and some things that JoJo think gonna happen.
That jukebox slows after the last song. Neon and chrome real bright.
Another record slips onto the turntable and finds its groove.
That beat, man. It’s old but strong.
You’re home.
EPILOGUE
I STILL TRAVEL the Delta when I find myself lost. I like the feel of the wide expanse of flat brown earth, the clapboard bars with cold beer and greasy pork sandwiches, the tiny white Baptist churches that shake and pulse with religion on Sundays, the barren plantations and forgotten towns where ghosts still live. JoJo and I would meet halfway during our exchanges, most of the time along Interstate 55 down in Vaiden for a chicken-fried steak meal. It was early fall and even just off the interstate, I could smell the leaves burning from the little houses and trailers off the road.
I had a seat in a booth when JoJo walked in and hung up his Carhartt farm coat on a spindly hanger by the door. He slid into the seat, scanned the menu, and tossed it in the center of the table.
“ALIAS didn’t care much for this place,” I said. “Ordered a cheeseburger.”
He laughed. “Maybe he knows something we don’t.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Why wouldn’t that surprise me?”
“You seen that new video he got out?” JoJo asked.
“He’s doing fine in L.A.,” I said. “Asked me to come out and see him.”
“You going to?”
“Can you see me in L.A.?”
“He may need you to,” he said. “This ain’t over. You understand?”
“I do.”
“When you side with a man, you keep on.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If not, you ain’t no better than Teddy.”
I looked out at the trucks lining up to hit the interstate. On the side of a trailer, someone had painted the image of three cowboys running cattle in a wide open prairie. The fall sun struck the painting as it turned and elevated up on the high road heading north.
“What made him sick in the mind?” JoJo asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You’re mad at yourself, but you always knew it,” he said.
I nodded. We ate the chicken-fried steak and drank coffee, talking more about ALIAS, two new hands JoJo had hired on the farm, the team I helped coach at JFK, and the possibility of getting Buddy Guy to play a small show during Jazzfest.
“Meet you back here in ten days,” he said. “Same time.”
I nodded.
“You quit teaching,” he said. “Didn’t you?”
“Tulane hired a Harvard professor to replace Randy,” I said. “He wanted me to expand upon theories of the blues and intercultural dimensions of the framework of the South.”
“That’s a lot of thought about blues.”
“Tell me about it,” I said. “I can do what I do on my own. And the bar is working right now.”
JoJo laughed. “Blues ain’t nothin’ but a botheration on your mind.”
“I’ve heard that.”
We shook hands and I watched his old truck stop before heading south to New Orleans. I thought I heard some pounding bass work and bounce coming from his cab. I tried to listen harder but JoJo pulled out onto the road and the music followed.
I shook my head.
I drove as far as Batesville. If I turned west, I’d head to Clarksdale, where Willie T. Dean wanted to meet. He said he had the most unbelievable lead on the best bluesman I never heard of. True Willie T. Always the next adventure.
I stopped at Highway 6 and instead headed east. The sun sank down behind me, swallowing the road and disappearing into the Delta.
I took a shortcut off 6 and wound down through a cypress swamp where men in small boats drank beer and fished with cane poles, the misty blue-and-yellow light filling the cab of my truck, where Annie slept on the rear seat. A bone tucked under her paw.