Highway 61 Resurfaced (v5)

by Bill Fitzhugh

  Crail aimed a smile at the peephole, gave a good country nod, and said, “Mr. Woolfolk?”

  “I know who I am,” Tucker said. “I’m asking who you are!” He opened the door until the chain was tight and half his face showed, creased and wary.

  Crail gestured over his shoulder with a hitchhiker’s thumb and said, “I’m with a record company outta Memphis, Mr. Woolfolk. I wonder if I could talk to you for just a minute?” He slapped the side of his neck. Got one.

  “Record cump’ny? The hell’re you doin’ callin’ on me this time of night? I didn’t invite nobody out here.”

  “No, sir.” Crail shaded his eyes from the yellow light that didn’t really seem to bother the mosquitoes much. “I’m real sorry about the time, but I was on my way to Greenwood and, well, I just wanted to come by and talk to you about some business. I apologize for not calling ahead, but my boss is real keen on acquiring the rights to some of your recordings.”

  “Izzat right?” Woolfolk squinted as he gave Crail the onceover through the crack in the door. “What record cump’ny’d you say you’re with?”

  “We’re outta Memphis, Mr. Woolfolk. And I think you’re gonna be interested to hear my offer. If we could talk just for a minute …” He nodded toward the living room, trying to invite himself in. “These skeeters are pretty hungry out here.”

  “You just hang on a second.” Tucker didn’t want to let on, but he was intrigued. He hadn’t been involved with the record business for forty years and all the sudden people were calling and dropping by at all hours. Of course, he knew the blues had been undergoing something of a renaissance lately, and maybe the time had come for the public to get interested in what he’d done. And, after a moment’s reflection, he figured it was about damn time. “All right, I tell you what.” He closed the door enough to take the safety chain off.

  That’s when Crail lowered his shoulder and busted in.

  7

  RICK OFFERED TO pick Lollie up at her house Sunday morning, but she insisted on meeting him at the Vicksburg. He didn’t make a big deal out of it since she kept handing him envelopes full of cash. When he walked out of the apartment building, she was in the parking lot, leaning against his truck and chewing intently on a cuticle. “You seem a little nervous,” he said.

  “Well, yeah.” She shrugged. “Big day and all.” She glanced down at the asphalt and said, “What if he doesn’t like me?”

  “Don’t worry,” Rick said, opening the passenger door for her. “You’re pretty likable.” He gave her the cat carrier, then went around and got behind the wheel. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “We need to make one stop on our way out of town.” With Crusty in his carrier, between them on the seat, they headed up Clay Street. Rick pulled into the Shipley’s and came out with a box of donuts and two coffees.

  Lollie said, “You think he’ll like me if I bring donuts?”

  “Bring him donuts? Hadn’t thought of that,” Rick said. “But if there’re any left, it couldn’t hurt.”

  She smiled, then slipped on her sunglasses and said, “Belzoni, here we come.”

  It was a nice day for a drive through the country, relaxed, windows down, elbows sticking out in the wind. As they left Warren County, Rick took note of three crosses perched up on a hillock to their right. Two white crosses flanking a taller, yellow-gold cross in the middle. It was the first of what would turn out to be many such displays throughout the Delta. A few minutes later Rick said that it seemed like they were passing a church every two miles. “So far I’ve seen a First Christian, Church of God, Independent Methodist, and a First Baptist,” he said.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Well, Mississippi’s not exactly what you’d a call a densely populated state,” he said. “Just seems like there’s a high ratio of churches to people, that’s all.”

  “It’s the Bible Belt,” she said. “Besides, look around. These folks have a lot to pray for.”

  Rick gave a nod to concede the point.

  “How ’bout you?” Lollie asked. “You go to church?”

  “You mean in a building?” Rick stuck out his lower lip and shook his head. “Nah, I get my spirituality delivered.” He turned on the radio, searching the AM band until he found a preacher preaching.

  “You better get right!” he said. “You better get right now!” The flock filled the pause in his preaching with noises of consensus. The minister continued, “You know you can’t stop no rat comin’ in yo’ house to eat yo’ cheese! That’s how the devil work! And it’s a dumb rat ain’t got two holes! Can I have a amen!” He got several, followed by a loosely played piano that prompted the congregation to song.

  “Amen,” Rick said over the hand clapping and hallelujahs. He held up his hand as if to testify and began imitating the preacher. “Brothers and sisters, in my experience, it’s a dumb rat ain’t got no donuts! Can I have a chocolate glazed?” He held his hand out to Lollie. “I need the salvation of sugar and grease! Can I get some cholesterol?”

  She handed him a donut and said, “You’re going to hell. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I thought I was already there,” Rick said. “But it turned out I was just working in radio.”

  The gospel song on the radio came to a rousing crescendo before yielding to the preacher again. He told a story about a cheating husband who drank too much and how his wife had tried in vain to reform him. “You can’t change no knuckleheaded man,” he said. “Only Jesus can, amen! Help me now! Can I get some help?” He got plenty. The parable of the knuckleheaded husband seemed to resonate with the congregation.

  In Yazoo City they picked up Highway 49, heading toward Louise, Midnight, and Silver City. Along the way they passed a Catholic church, a House of Prayer and Praise, the Grace Bible Church, and a congregation of Primitive Baptists. Rick said, “I never realized Mississippi was such a competitive market for those in the soul-saving business.” Up ahead, a highway sign testified that they were five miles from Belzoni. Rick handed Lollie the map he’d printed out. “You’re the navigator from here on.”

  She looked at the map for a moment. “Okay, we’re looking for Sweethome Road.”

  Rick pulled out his cell phone. “Do you want to call and let him know you’re coming?”

  “No, let’s just show up and see what happens.”

  “What if he’s not there?”

  “Where’s he gonna be?”

  “I don’t know, church?”

  “We can wait,” she said.

  “Have you thought about what you’re going to say when you meet him?”

  “Not really. You have some ideas?”

  Rick rubbed his chin for a moment. “Well, as an icebreaker, you could ask him if he knows he lives in a town named after an eighteenth-century Italian circus performer known as the Great Belzoni.”

  “What?”

  “It’s true,” Rick said. “I looked it up. One of the town’s founders was enamored of the man, for reasons that remain murky.” Rick was hoping to soothe his anxious client with a laugh, plus he really had looked it up and didn’t want to waste perfectly good information. “His real name was Giovanni Battista Belzoni,” he said in an exaggerated Italian accent. “He later became a great adventurer, traveling all over Egypt and—”

  “You just passed it,” Lollie said with a smile. “That was Sweethome back there.”

  “Mama mia!” Rick circled back and made the turn. When they came to Cemetery Road, he slowed down and looked at Lollie. “You nervous?”

  “A little, I guess.” She took a deep breath.

  “Relax. We still have a few donuts.” He drove on and, after a moment, they went around a bend. Ahead, no more than three hundred yards, the road was blocked by six or eight vehicles.

  Lollie leaned forward and took her sunglasses off. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know,” Rick said.

  As they came closer they could see that the cars belonged to the sheriff’s department and the Mississippi Highway
Patrol. Lollie put a hand to her mouth. “Oh my God, something terrible’s happened.”

  It seemed like a fair bet. A moment later, Rick saw the crime-scene tape around Tucker Woolfolk’s property. He knew there wouldn’t be anything good beyond that. He assumed a worst-case scenario. Someone was dead, and not from natural causes. Since, as far as he knew, Tucker Woolfolk lived alone, that meant the family reunion was over before it started. He put his hand on Lollie’s arm and said, “All right, listen. Don’t say anything. Let me do the talking.”

  Up ahead a deputy was leaning against his patrol car. He reluctantly pushed himself to a standing position and waved them to a stop. He was about the size of Durden Tate and looked like he might expire in the summer heat. The deputy leaned down toward the window and, in a tone intended to both intimidate and insinuate, said, “Wha’ chall doin’ out here?”

  “Just driving around,” Rick said. He hoped the lie wasn’t as obvious as it felt on its way out of his mouth. He gestured toward the house. “What’s going on?”

  The deputy didn’t answer at first. He just stared at them, sweat slithering down his jowls. Something about his stare almost squeezed the truth out of Rick. It was as if the deputy knew he was lying and suspected he was deeply involved in whatever terrible thing had happened in that house or was at least connected to it in a way that would justify pulling him out of the car and billy-clubbing a confession out of him. For the brief moment it took these thoughts to careen through Rick’s head, the deputy’s stare continued working its mojo. He seemed to be leaning closer now, his plump, pink, moist cheeks just inches away. Rick’s question about what was going on hung in the air, and the pressure to fill the silence kept building until finally it was too much for him to take. He had to say something. “No, like I said, we’re just taking a Sunday drive in the country, you know? Got my cat and my, uh, girlfriend, and a box of donuts.” He put a hand on the box. “You want one? Not that, I mean, I guess that’s a stereotype, huh? Cops and donuts. Well, never mind. Anyway, we saw all the police cars and that’s why I asked what was going on. Probably official police business and you can’t tell us, so forget I asked and, hey, I guess we’ll just be on our way.”

  The deputy seemed vaguely flummoxed by Rick’s speech. He mumbled, “Uh-huh,” just as a black SUV rolled past them with the words “County Coroner” painted on the side, finally answering the question. The deputy shook his head slightly and said, “Well, I guess that there let’s the cat out of the bag.” He turned and pointed back at the house. “Some old man ended up on the wrong side of a gun in there last night.”

  “Oh my God,” Lollie said, covering her mouth with her hand.

  “Sorry, ma’am.” The deputy put his round face farther into Rick’s window so he could see her. “Didn’t mean to upset you.”

  Rick shook his head like a man both surprised by, and disappointed in, human nature. He said, “They catch who did it?”

  “Nope,” the deputy said. “Probably some crackhead or a tweaker. The place was all tore up. We already got the pawnshop staked out. But you know, we’re finding more identity theft with these drug addicts nowadays. They look for Social Security and credit card numbers. But they not real sophisticated when they try to sell that stuff, so either way, somebody probably be in jail before tonight.”

  The Delta’s drug problem was no secret. The grinding hopelessness, poverty, and lack of education for many in the region made it a breeding ground for anything that could make the despair go away, even for brief periods. Where they’d once cooked up moonshine to help take the edge off their suffering, now they were cooking up crack and methamphetamine. It was as if they were saying liquor wasn’t strong enough anymore, that they needed a more powerful anesthesia to tolerate the conditions into which they’d been born and over which they felt powerless.

  “Let’s go,” Lollie said. “I don’t want to stay here.”

  Rick looked at the deputy and said, “Well, all right, I guess we’ll be going.”

  As the car started to roll, the deputy grabbed Rick’s arm and said, “Just a second there.” Rick had a moment of panic, as if the cop suddenly knew who he was and what he was doing there, and that he’d had a phone conversation with the deceased, and that made him a suspect. But the deputy just nodded toward the seat, smiling. “I’d take a chocolate glazed if you had one.”

  A 1971 COUP DeVille was rumbling down Highway 82. Drivers passing in the other direction could be forgiven for doing a double take, since it looked like there was no one behind the wheel of the enormous car. Upon closer inspection, however, one could make out the top of a porkpie hat and a pair of dark glasses peering out between the steering wheel and the dashboard. Blind Buddy Cotton wasn’t a big man to begin with, and in his later years he’d shrunk a bit, so he kind of disappeared when he sank into the driver’s seat of the massive car.

  He had death’s grip on the wheel and his right blinker had been flashing since Indianola. When he got to Leland, he finally honored the turn signal. He passed Neisa Ray’s Diner, Gigi’s Hair Port, and then H. R. Watson’s Cash Store, where five old men in overalls were sitting out front on benches, passing the day like it was 1932. Buddy gave a honk, and one of the men held up a hand to wave for them all. Someone else would get the next one.

  Buddy made his next turn without benefit of a signal. He drove up the dirt road and came to a dusty stop right in front of a small frame building, white paint peeling from the boards and a lopsided cross perched above the gable. A handmade sign welcomed all to worship with the “Full Gospel Church of the Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith and Reverend W.J. Johnson.”

  Buddy shuffled up the stairs like a slow blues and went inside. A row of pews faced a bare plywood lectern. The upright Fischer piano off to the side had seen brighter days. Buddy took off his hat and called out, “Reverend! You here?”

  A voice came from a small side room at the far end of the church. “Who’s that?”

  “It’s Buddy,” he said, moving toward the voice.

  There was a pause before the voice replied, “Buddy?” A chair pushed back. “Hang on.” He heard the distinctive footfall of his old friend, and a moment later Crippled Willie Jefferson was standing in the doorway, his big hush-puppy nose in the middle of a broad caramel face. “Wha’ choo doin’ here? Service ain’t till Sunday,” he said. “And Lord knows, if you showed up then, you might just have to preach my funeral.”

  Buddy tipped his head down and peeked over the top of his dark glasses. “Next time you find me in this old church or any other, it’s gone be a funeral, and it’s gone be mine,” Buddy said, trying to hide his smile. “How you doin’?” The two men came together and embraced.

  “Not bad for a jake-leg preacher.” He stood back to look at his friend.

  Buddy waved his hat at Willie’s right leg. “Lord still ain’t fix that for ya, huh?”

  “My cross to bear,” he said. “That and friends like you.” He urged Buddy back toward the room he’d come from. “Listen, you hungry? I got some nicky-nacks back here.”

  “Naw, unh-unh,” Buddy said. “Ain’t hungry.”

  Willie led the way, his left leg doing most of the work, his right leg swinging forward to catch up and slap onto the floor before the process started again. The room was spare, with a couple of folding chairs and a card table with a Bible open on top of it. There was a window, a fan, and a small shelf with some peanut butter Nabs and a few cans of Vienna sausages. An old guitar case leaned against the far wall. Willie gestured at the chairs and said, “Let’s siddown, visit.”

  Buddy put his hat on the table and they sat, did some catching up. “You know Miss Annie Turner and Pine Bark Parker both passed.”

  “Yeah, and I hert old Junior Curtis had a stroke, not doin’ too good.”

  Buddy gave a doctor’s nod. “He always had the high blood.”

  “ ’At’s right, sho did.”

  “And somebody told me Toots Odom is up in some nursing home outside West Me
mphis, don’t even know who he is anymore. It’s a shame.” Buddy aimed a crooked finger toward the guitar case and asked if Willie was still playing.

  “Yeah, but not that stuff we used to do.” He said he kept his chops up playing the gospel. “Much as folks wanna hear me preach,” Willie said, making a little fun of himself, “I bet half of ’em come for the music.”

  “That’s all right,” Buddy said. “Nothin’ wrong with that.”

  At one point Willie said, “Hey, you still play up at O.V.’s Place?”

  “Naw, unh-unh,” Buddy said. “He been closed awhile. Only a few jernts still open I know of . . Po Monkeys, Crawdads, uhh, that Club Centerfold, couple others. But you know the kids, they ain’t listen to the music no more anyway. They taste is change, ain’t like it used to be. All they wanna hear’s that damn rap.” He shook his head. “That ain’t music.”

  “Things is change, all right,” Willie said. “Never gone be way it was.”

  “And I tell you one thing what done it,” Buddy said, sure as he could be. “Casinos.”

  Willie dipped his head. “ ’At’s right.”

  “Givin’ ‘way free liquor you put enough of yo’ nickles in they machines. How’s O.V. gone compete with that?”

  “Ain’t.”

  “ ‘At’s right.” They carried on like this for a while, but they both knew it wasn’t why Buddy had come. Finally, when the well of small talk ran dry, Buddy rubbed the top of his head, front to back, real slow, then he nodded at the open Bible. “So,” he said. “Wha’ choo preachin’ on Sunday?”