Dark End of the Street - v4

by Ace Atkins

  “You need help.”

  “Shit.”

  “Watch your language, boy.” Her face didn’t break, just kept on listening to those city sounds like it was music.

  “Bluff City was a long, long time ago. All of us in that same neighborhood. Stax. Hi. Called it Soulsville.”

  I watched her as I took off my boots. Then I stretched out on a rollaway that had already been laid out, smelling of the bleach in the sheets. I closed my eyes still listening to her stories.

  “Why are you here?” I asked in a groggy voice. “I can handle it.”

  “You need me, boy. They ain’t talkin’ to you. Are they? Tomorrow we’ll find Clyde. All right? Tomorrow let’s go get my brother.”

  Chapter 38

  MEMPHIS MUSIC IS not dead. Although it’s pretty damned hard to get away from the past. The droves of Elvites to Graceland, the well-known mantra of Sam Phillips’s contributions to rock and roll, and even the B. B. King imitators playing covers in nameless, soulless bars along Beale. But beyond the history, the tributes, and even the fiction, there is a real, breathing music scene at little clubs in Midtown with singer-songwriters who’ve come to the city as if it were Mecca, hoping just to soak up a little bit of what has inspired musicians for generations. Knowing that the name Memphis attached to you somehow makes you more interesting, more soulful, more real.

  One of the best places to get immersed in the local scene was down at the Hi-Tone on Poplar. I hadn’t been there since the bar screened a documentary of local bluesman Will Roy Sanders a few years back.

  Tonight, men with sideburns and wallet chains prowled the bar, smoking as if the surgeon general had suddenly changed his mind. Women in satiny vintage dresses and funky ‘fifties glasses shaped like cat eyes sat around small tables with mismatched chairs sipping imported beer and listening to the music.

  That was the thing about the Hi-Tone. People listened to music. They didn’t come to be seen or to pick up, or, for the most part, just to get drunk. They came to respect the music.

  The interior was a funky mix of early Fred Sanford: kitschy ads for Chesterfield cigarettes, a bullfighting poster, a cow skull, a poster for an Elvis movie, Japanese lanterns, and a Schlitz beer sign, circa 1972. Loretta and I walked under drooping Christmas lights that had been snaked overhead.

  “In Memphis, you don’t throw away shit,” Loretta said.

  I kind of liked it. Memphis, a blender of the last five decades.

  On a low stage near the front of the darkened bar stood one of those twenty-something punks. Wallet chain, check. Sideburns, check. Even had one of those grease monkey workshirts with some improbable name on the pocket. Earl. Every garage has an Earl.

  “That him?” Loretta asked.

  “Could be. Don’t see his father.”

  “He’ll show. Tole me he would.”

  I hadn’t woken up till about 2:00 P.M. with a massive headache and a sore-as-hell back. Loretta, God bless her, had gone downstairs and bought Abby some new clothes in the Peabody’s shops, and brought me back a club sandwich and a Dr Pepper. As I ate, I told her more about my days in Memphis and what I believed and what I still needed to know. She was particularly interested in Cleve. She seemed to think he’d been bullshitting me because he didn’t talk that much about her. I said it was probably an oversight, but she called it bullshit. She said Cleve, a former member of her band, too, should have been kissing my ass if he knew I was a friend.

  “I get uncomfortable with the ass kissing,” I had said. “I can chafe.”

  She ended up calling Cleve from the hotel and he said he’d meet us at the Hi-Tone to talk some more. Once again, he told Loretta the same story that he’d told me about Clyde probably being dead and about getting in touch with Cook. But Loretta was pretty damned good. Without another question, she said she looked forward to seeing him at the bar.

  Loretta had a tall glass of ice water and I had an Abita Purple Haze, somehow that raspberry ale kind of having a tonic effect on me. Or maybe I’d been knocked loopy yesterday. Anyway, that slight fizz felt pretty good.

  The kid on stage was singing an acoustic ballad about meeting his teen love at the Wal-Mart and the girl’s mouth tasting like honeysuckle. He wasn’t bad. Had a nice talent for images and words and sang in a rough, gravelly voice that spoke more of his experience than his age.

  “You remember when you first started playing?” Loretta asked, carefully folding her long jacket over her arm and taking a sip of the ice water.

  “Sort of.”

  “You were scared shitless, Nicholas. Remember, you were playin’ those licks for JoJo out back makin’ sure they sounded in key? And he was laughin’ at you and blowin’ ’em back in D instead of C to make you fret ’round.”

  Loretta laughed.

  “I got over it.”

  “Kid’s good,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “I always said, blues about lots of things,” she said. “People can play blues music but not play blues. You see? Kid has soul. He knows pain.”

  “How about you? What was your first gig?”

  “Beale Street, nineteen fifty-seven. Sang ‘Things I Used to Do’ with a little combo. My little brother came with me but they wouldn’t let him in. Had to watch the show from a stack of beer crates out back. He was lookin’ through a little window.”

  I smiled. “You did good.”

  “Hell yes, I did good. Kicked the crowd right in the nuts. Bar owner, little midget with dandruff, offered me a deal singin’ for eighty-five dollars a week that night. I was cool back then, son. Had that platinum hair and cherry-red lips.”

  “You knew JoJo?”

  “Not yet. That fool had no idea what was waitin’ for him.”

  “And then you met him when he joined your band?”

  “We met at a Fourth of July church party. He’d churned some ice cream and I just looked at those arms and hands streaked with cream and knew that was a man. You know how JoJo got them knuckles with scars on them? Don’t know why, but always kind of turned me on. Had the preacher introduce us. His country ass had just come up from Clarksdale.”

  The main entrance to the Hi-Tone was cracked and I felt a broad chill when it opened again and Cleve walked in the door. He had on a mustard-colored rubbery-leather jacket and plaid slacks with white shoes. His shirt was satiny and tropical and wide-collared and about thirty years out of style.

  I knew he’d just raided the back of his closet for something clean. But here, he was vintage and hip. A few people stopped him at the door and shook his hand but then he quietly found a seat next to a small lounge table topped with a glowing red candle. I could tell he didn’t want anyone to pay him any attention. He sat down and intently watched his son finishing out his song about animal crackers and foul-tasting beer.

  “Look like he stole them pants off a dead man,” Loretta said.

  I laughed and walked over to Cleve, tapping him on the shoulder and pointing out our table. As soon as he saw Loretta, he got up off his ass and came over and gave her a huge hug. Laughing, no longer paying attention to his son, and holding on to her like he was asking forgiveness.

  She held his hand and pulled him down in the seat next to her. She did it almost regally. Like he had his honored time to sit beside the queen of the blues. Loretta took out a silk show handkerchief, probably JoJo’s, and dotted her brow.

  I could make out a few words of the conversation, trying to hang back and be cool. Let her take the lead to relax Cleve. If I was leaning over the table watching his every breath, he’d repeat the same story, drink up on our tab, and we’d be wasting more time. I wanted to find Clyde. We had to find Clyde.

  “So Cook told you he was dead. That was the last you saw him?” I heard her ask during the intermission, Junior sitting at the table now.

  Senior nodded. Junior drank two Buds on our tab. I’d had two also. Enough to make me contemplate some cheesy movie poster by the stage about juvenile delinquent drag racers and its deeper
meaning to the Hi-Tone. I leaned in closer and joined the conversation.

  Loretta asked questions I’d already asked. Sidetracked onto some pretty good stories I’d never heard. Real gems about playing gigs in the segregated South. Black and white musicians trying to sleep in the same hotel.

  “You remember that li’l ole sissy man in Atlanta?” she said. “That man actin’ all funny when you said you and Eddie Porter were stayin’ in the same room. What did Eddie say? Somethin’ about not lovin’ you?”

  “Yeah, that man asked us if we wanted one bed or two,” Cleve said. “Guy grinnin’ like he’d gotten ole Eddie. Eddie didn’t hesitate; he said, ‘Listen mister, I like this white boy, but I don’t love him.’ “

  We drank into Junior’s next set, the light reflecting off the mirrored shards on the disco ball, white squares crossing over Loretta’s face. Felt odd being in Memphis with her and without JoJo, outside our French Quarter patterns. I wanted to be back in that far corner of JoJo’s, next to the back exit, a mess of Dixies before me, listening to Felix hum as he emptied the night’s ashtrays.

  Cleve and Loretta’s conversation finally left Clyde altogether and settled into family and life and Cleve’s new belief system he’d acquired after watching a cable television show on Hinduism. Loretta was getting tired, too, and her conversations lapsed into a lot of Mm-hmm, honeys, and I know what you means.

  I helped Junior break down after his set and carried his guitar out to his green Pinto. He told me about this cool Dukes of Hazzard episode when Beau and Luke go to Atlanta to participate in some government conference to find a substitute for gasoline.

  “It was Uncle Jesse’s moonshine. It was awesome.”

  But a few feet away, there was another conversation going on with Cleve. Just caught a bit, something about Bobby Lee Cook being a criminal.

  “A criminal?” I asked. “You mean with the strip clubs?”

  “Shit, he’s always been a criminal,” Cleve said, smoking a clove cigarette and pulling his hair into a ponytail. “Bluff City was nothin’ but a Laundromat for the Dixie Mafia. You knew that, Loretta. Didn’t you?”

  Chapter 39

  WE FOUND BOBBY LEE COOK in a back booth at the Golden Lotus playing Boggle with three strippers. A little girl, looking about fourteen and wearing a gold bikini, shook the bubble and plunked down the game removing the plastic lid. A black woman, who looked as if she’d been stripping since Earl Long’s days on Bourbon Street, was the first to yell out a word from the dice-like letters, “There it is: Cooch.”

  The other two girls, identical blondes with bobbed hair and rhinestone-studded halter tops, squealed with laughter. The young one in the gold bikini protested, “That’s bullshit, Tiki. That ain’t no word.”

  Always seemed strange to me when such beautiful people can have such guttural accents. The little girl looked like she should be shopping at some midtown mall with her daddy’s credit card, but instead talked like a featured part of an Appalachian documentary, the kind with snake handlers, brother-sister marriages, and kids who thought toothpaste was a rare but tasty treat.

  “Sure it is, cooch,” the black woman said. “Like as in coochie.”

  “Yeah, but you spellin’ it with a K, ain’t that right, Bobby Lee? Look. K-O-O-C-C-H-I.” The little girl thrust the game in front of him for closer inspection. “That ain’t no word. It’s some kind of furrin country.”

  Cook hadn’t seen us yet, even though we’d slid into a booth right next to him and his girls. As we waited, Loretta didn’t take off her coat, her gaze wandering over the cinder block walls and concrete floor. A half-dozen girls thrust and ground their hips to some Huey Lewis and the News relic on mini stages around the bar.

  I kept listening to the women, shaking off a waitress who came over to take our order. A few seconds later, Loretta nodded and I tapped Cook on his shoulder. He was wearing a black muscle T-shirt, the nape of his neck coated in black-and-white hair. Even over the booth he emitted an odor of vinegar and talc.

  I stared over his shoulder at the game. “Oh, there’s one more,” I said. “A-S-S, and on the other side there is a big ole hole.”

  He turned.

  “Hey, get the fuck out of here, Travers,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger when he saw me, being surprisingly cool. “You ruined my shirt. It was Calvin Klein.”

  He scooted out of the booth, the little girl pulling the game close to her and reading different words she saw. I think she was really looking for asshole.

  I remained seated, smiling up at him. But his eyes moved right over me to Loretta, his face softening. All that hard light in his eyes gone as he moved in beside her. “Holy shit. Loretta. Good God. I thought this boy was kidding.”

  He hugged her tight and Loretta hugged him back. Her thick hands covered in gold rings, patted his shoulder. He motioned quickly over to the waitress and asked us what we wanted.

  “Where’s the pooch?” I asked.

  “Vet.”

  “What happened?”

  “Diarrhea. Got into my protein powder the other day. Shit all over the D.J. booth.”

  His teeth looked yellow in the low light and I had to bend my ear toward him to make out what he was saying over the pumping music.

  “Too bad. Nice dog.”

  Loretta said something and he nodded. “You want something, buddy?”

  “Beer,” I said. “Just a beer.”

  He shrugged, told the waitress, and off she went. The girls remained at the next booth, its vinyl sealed in places with duct tape, laughing and shaking the Boggle bubble. I heard one of them make up another dirty word that I’d never heard but thought I understood from the way it sounded.

  Loretta folded her hands before her and leaned in close to Cook. “Bobby, I known you for thirty-five years and I need help. Where’s Clyde?”

  He looked at me and I could tell he was grinding the hell out of his teeth. The waitress came back and handed me a beer. Miller Lite. The worst.

  “Clyde’s dead, Loretta,” he said in a soft graveled voice. “I’m sorry.”

  I started absently peeling the label from the beer — much better than drinking it — and watched the neon light flash across Cook’s craggy face and blue eyes. I could tell he was holding his breath, his eyes staring straight into Loretta’s.

  “He’s alive,” I said, looking at the table. I held my gaze for a few seconds and then stared up at Cook. “I know. I have witnesses. We just want to know where.”

  “You don’t want—”

  “To what? Let this woman that you like so much find her only brother? Yeah, that’d be a real shame. Listen, I know you guys were into some pretty fucked-up shit back then. Using the label as a wash for your buddies from Biloxi.”

  Cook kept his head down and nodded along with a wide grin. He started laughing when I mentioned the name Levi Ransom and said that I believed Ransom had sent two men to hassle Loretta in New Orleans.

  “You want to tell me what all that means?” I asked.

  He just kept laughing. “Man, you have a hell of an imagination, Travers. Loretta, this boy really your friend?”

  She smiled. “We just want to find Clyde. We don’t want to get you in no kind of trouble.” I felt her hand tightly grip my knee under the table.

  “I do that to your head?” Cook asked, motioning at my bruised temple.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Cook, you are the toughest.”

  “Loretta,” he said, grabbing her hand and massaging her fingers. “Clyde is dead. All right? You understand? He’s not been with us for a long time. You remember how he used to get? He left us when all that stuff happened with Mary. Those blackouts and the fits. It got so much worse. Be glad you were in New Orleans. We all tried to help.”

  I watched Loretta’s face tighten and eyes wander to an old jukebox in the corner, lights flashing and neon pumping with music that was a relic from another age.

  “If he’s alive,” she said, “I want to know.
”

  The music faded out and the jukebox started playing Otis Clay’s “Tryin’ to Live Without You.” That driving Willie Mitchell beat and Hi horn section unmistakable. Pure Memphis.

  Cook ran his fingers over his biceps with pride and nodded slowly to himself until the black girl stood before us and tossed the Boggle on the table. “That little bitch broke it,” she said. “Redneck can’t spell and blame me. She spell tootsie like in Tootsie Pop with a U: T-U-T-S-I. You hire some trips, Bobby.”

  The woman left and Otis Clay kept singing. Loretta watched his face while I looked away. This was her move. Anything he would tell us would come to her, not to me. He probably just wanted to move our scuffle over to a Winn-Dixie.

  “You remember when we first started?” he asked. “You remember how I got that little movie theater over in Soulsville and me and Eddie Porter spent two weeks in July cutting up old mattresses and hanging them on the walls? I thought I was going to be a failure. Thought I’d never have enough money to pay my aunt back, thought I’d have to go back to driving trucks. But you changed it. Those first singles you put out made me. We bought new equipment. Hired a secretary. You remember Mae? Made me. You know?”

  “So where is he?” she asked.

  Cook ground his teeth some more and softly pounded his fist onto the table. “This is all show, you know? The girls. This isn’t me, Loretta. This is money. Got to make that money.”

  She smiled at him and moved her hand over his, his fingers delicate and manicured.

  “Y’all know the Harahan Bridge?” he asked.

  Loretta nodded.

  “He may still be there. It’s been a few years. Little camp where people live on the Tennessee side. I just didn’t want you to see what he’d become.”

  Chapter 40

  I WAS THINKING about a story I’d read about Clyde James when, in the glow of the neighboring Memphis-Arkansas Bridge, Loretta and I saw the two Erector setlike tunnels stretching out over the Mississippi. As we neared the bridges, I remembered a short profile of Clyde in the Living Blues soul section a few years back. It was an interview with a manager of his who Loretta said had died years ago. The manager talked about how, even before the death of his wife, Clyde would disappear for weeks at a time, already suffering from deep depression. He said it got worse after the events of ‘sixty-eight. He said Clyde took off during a tour of south Mississippi and showed up on his doorstep in Memphis a month later. Clyde very calmly said, “I been lookin’ all over for you. Where you been?”