Highway 61 Resurfaced (v5)

by Bill Fitzhugh

  He shook his head and waved the handkerchief at Rick. “Last I heard about that Morgan, he’d gone to prison for killing a man.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s right,” Rick said. “A guy named Hamp Doogan. I was wondering if you knew anything about it?”

  “Why would I?”

  “Well, it goes back to that recording session. We think the murders have something to do with the tapes.” Rick recounted the version of the story Beau Tillman had told, including the part about Pigfoot agreeing to drive them to Memphis.

  When he finished, Buddy said, “You know, peoples been talkin’ about that for an extensive time and I ain’t ever heard the whole story tolt right. See, Mr. Suggs was s’posed to come and cut some sides on account of he knew we was fiddna sign with Paramount up there in Grafton, Wisconsin, and he wanted to get some before that happened. But as I recall, he was late getting to where we was playin’ on account of he had to drive down from Memphis and the roads back then weren’t all that much, you know. Time he got there, we was packed up, fiddna leave, goin’ right back up the road he’d just come down. But I had my own car. We didn’t need Pigfoot Morgan to carry us nowhere. I don’t know where that come from.”

  “You have any idea why Morgan killed Mr. Doogan?”

  “I heard it was over some money. Usual thing.” Buddy shook his head. “But I can’t say for sho, weren’t none of my affair. You been to the courthouse?”

  Lollie said, “All the records were destroyed in a fire.”

  “That right?” Buddy smiled just a little and said, “Tha’s a shame. Well, I guess you gone have to ax him yourself.”

  “I’d like to,” Rick said. “But I don’t know where he is. Does he have family in the area?”

  “Not as I know of.”

  Rick asked if the Blind, Crippled, and Crazy session had ever happened.

  “Oh yeah,” Buddy said. “We went on up to Wisconsin and cut us some lively sides, mostly my compositions, as I recall. But they never did release them, as far as I know, at least I never heard ’em. Not sure why either. They give us our little nickels and we took the train back on down here. Ever since then, peoples just been telling stories they don’t know nothin’ ’bout.”

  16

  CRAIL WAS LOATH to admit it, especially under the current circumstances, but the pain was almost unbearable. Finally he said, “Cuffie, honey, can we do this in a different position? This knee’s really startin’ to hurt.”

  Without breaking stride, she looked over her shoulder and said, “I know it is, baby.” She sounded sympathetic. “But don’t worry about that right now.” Cuffie bit her lower lip and started rocking faster. “You can put some ice on it when we’re done.” She faced forward, gripped the headboard, and shortened her stroke. “Just a little more for your Cuffums. Just a little. Just …”

  The truth of the matter was that Crail could have put the entire polar ice cap on his knee and it wouldn’t have made any difference. And the reason for that went back to the summer of 1957, when Lamar Suggs paid five dollars to have his way with a hustlin’ gal out behind the Midnight Special, a juke joint on the outskirts of (ironically) Rolling Fork, Mississippi. This dalliance had resulted in a state-of-the-art case of gonorrhea for which Lamar eventually sought treatment and was cured. However, being the opportunistic bacteria that it is, the gramnegative intracellular diplococci had taken up residence and lived happily for five decades in the membranes of his rancid old mouth, whence it migrated to every spoon and fork that passed his lips.

  Crail’s knee flexed with each thrust, a white-hot needle plunging again and again into his nerves. For a moment he thought he might pass out. It was a testament to his masculinity that he could keep his erection throughout the torture.

  “Just, just, just …”

  He flashed back to his high school football coach screaming about how a man has to learn to play through pain. And all those years ago Crail had been happy to suffer for the team, but this was pure agony. Couldn’t she just get on top?

  “Just.” She was pushing back harder now. “Uh.” Breathing heavier. “Littllllle.” One last thrust. “Morrrrre.” Then a long exhale as she collapsed onto the bed. “Oh, baby.”

  Crail withdrew and stumbled backward, his hands reaching for the wall behind him. He caught himself and, putting his weight on his one good leg, thanked God it was over. Cuffie rolled to the bedside table and took a cigarette from Crail’s pack. She lit up, took a drag, then said, “Oh, hey, you know, I been meaning to ask you. How’s your mama doing?”

  “ ’Bout the same,” Crail said as he looked down at his throbbing knee. “Hasslin’ with those insurance people about those treatments she needs.”

  “Ohh, bless her heart.”

  “Yeah, they keep sayin’ it’s not on their list of approved procedures even though that doctor said it was what she needed. So we told ’em that and they sent more forms to fill out, you know, that old game.” He took the cigarette from Cuffie and said, “But, you know, she’s hangin’ in there.”

  “That’s good.” Cuffie took the cigarette back and had a drag. “So I’ve been thinking about what we’re going to do next.” She blew some smoke out of the side of her mouth.

  Crail limped over to the chair where he’d thrown his sweatpants. “You sure your papaw ain’t got those tapes? It was his radio station, right?” He eased himself down into the chair and struggled into the pants.

  “Baby.” She looked at him as she took another drag on the cigarette. “Sometimes? I just don’t believe you.” Shaking her head, she exhaled in his direction.

  “What?”

  “You think we’d be bothering with all this if he had ’em?” She rolled her eyes. “Let’s just concentrate on finding that Mr. Morgan.”

  He picked up his Jim Beam and took a slug. “Okay. But what about my leg?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She reached over and pulled a plastic prescription bottle from her purse. “I brought you some antibiotics.” She tossed them to him and said, “Just take those. You’ll be fine.”

  EARL TATE WAS an ill-shaped baby, born with three birthmarks on his back. His mama told him it was a sign, that he’d been marked, that he was special. His foot was deformed and the woman who helped bring him out of his mama said he had a look in one eye that scared her half to death. These were the sorts of things he told people when they came around wanting to meet Crazy Earl. Some of it was true, but mostly he liked the attention, the identity, and the respect it earned him. He liked that others thought he was special that way. And the drunker he was, the more special he got.

  On Saturday nights in the old days, after he’d done a few sets, wailing on his guitar or a piano if there was one in the house, he’d be all worked up on his gin and he’d fix some stranger with his Judas eye and start hollerin’ about how he was a blue-gummed nigger could kill you with one bite. He’d get that crazy look about him, wobbling his jaw and swearing that even hard-shelled hoodoos gave him respect. It was a stunning performance, and it convinced more than a few that Earl was a genuine fetish man, the real thing, primitive and powerful. After a while, they came offering good money for him to lay tricks on enemies and engage in all kinds of conjuration, from making love potions to curing the sick.

  The blues business being what it was, Earl studied up on the black crafts. He lived in a sharecropper’s shack between the Morgan Brake Wildlife Refuge and Milestone Bayou, so it was easy to find the things he needed to make the charms and signs and cures people wanted. His little place was choked with clay jars and tin cans and odd little boxes filled with bird wings, jaws of small mammals, rattlesnake fangs, the ashes and powders of things burned on red-hot metal, dirt from the graves of the old and wicked, congealed blood from pig-eating sows, a can of rusty nails, some patches of red flannel, and all the other ingredients necessary to bring about everything from love to sorrow to death.

  Since he hadn’t yet heard of Pigfoot Morgan dying or going away, Earl was drunk and getting more so. He was about a
s special as he’d been in quite some time. So he figured his best chance to stay alive was to keep conjuring hands, each one more powerful than the last, until his enemy was gone—literally or figuratively, it didn’t matter.

  It was past dark and he was sitting at his rough little table with a bottle of gin and two dozen containers spread out around him like chess pieces. Problem was, when Earl got special enough, he’d forget if he was supposed to cook the snakeroot with the sand-burr and the fish eye to blind his enemy or if it was black cat hair, and a chicken-snake skin wrapped up in a tobacco sack to cripple him. This went a long way toward explaining why he’d ground up a dried rattlesnake head and mixed it in an old Silver Crest lard can with some pine resin, tobacco spit, and stewed coon root in an attempt to drive Pigfoot crazy.

  Earl sat there, swaying side to side, trying to remember if he had to wait for a waning moon before he hung the bag from the branch of a black willow or if he could just invoke Pigfoot’s name as he flung the thing into a slough. He figured the answer was inside the bottle of gin, so he grabbed it and was throwing his head back when from out of nowhere, the goddamn lard can exploded. Earl jumped backward more than a little and blinked a few times when he came to a stop. He was too drunk to realize what had happened, and, for a moment, he thought maybe he’d conjured up some bad mojo. He scratched his head wondering if he should’ve used some John the conquer root instead of the pine resin. But the second shot, which shattered a corked bottle of four thieves vinegar, disabused him of the notion that his recipie was the thing at fault.

  When it dawned on him that Pigfoot Morgan was taking potshots at him from the edge of the wildlife refuge, Earl got mad. The gin and adrenaline moved him across the shack and toward the drawer with the real cure in it. He started shouting about how he was sho gone come out there and demonstrate the proper way to shoot a man. He snatched a .38 from the drawer and, standing to the side of the door, got to thinking about his next move.

  At seventy-three, Earl figured he and his deformed foot weren’t going to make much of a run for it out the front door, even if it was dark out and the man shooting at him was seventy-two. But what was it going to look like if he slipped out the back way? It would look like he was half a man, that’s what. Damn. What kinda choice was that? Same as always, that’s what. The Lord had never once put Earl on equal footing with his situations, always made it harder for him, like testing him, like he did Abraham. “Nothin’ but bad luck and troubles,” he mumbled. And frankly, he was tired of it.

  All his life people been stealin’ from him and blaming him for things he didn’t deserve blame for. And now one of ’em was out there shootin’ at him. Earl shook his head, disappointed in his fate, thinking that son of a bitch had his nerve shooting at him the way he was. Ain’t my fault what happened. It was one of those wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time kinda situations. Sorta thing where it all would’ve been okay if they’d just stuck together. But driving off the way he did, leaving them to face the consequences? What’d he expect? Done brought it all on hisself. Deserved everything he got and then some. And now, gots the nerve to come shooting? Well, Earl Tate wasn’t so crazy that he was fixin’ to step out that door and make things any easier. The way he figured it, being half a man alive beat the other choice. So he slipped out the back and headed for the bayou.

  And that’s just what Pigfoot was waitin’ on. Because it gave him the angle he hadn’t had before. The light shined out the back door and lit up his sluggish target. He propped the rifle on a fence post and looked down the barrel. Then he took one last shot.

  IN THE DAYS following Tucker Woolfolk’s death, Lollie befriended the lead investigator on the case, a Detective Cruger. She told him no offense, but she planned to hire a private investigator to help and said they would share any information they got. Detective Cruger was fine with that, said he was glad to have extra manpower at no extra cost. Lollie said she just wanted the guilty caught and punished.

  On the drive back from Ruleville, Lollie called him. Detective Cruger said he was sorry but that he didn’t have anything new to tell her, said they were still pursuing the crackhead theory. Though she knew better, Lollie told him she thought he was probably on the right track. “But I wanted to let you know we’re still looking into the possibility it has something to do with his days as a record producer.” She had mentioned this theory to Detective Cruger before, but he hadn’t lent it much credence. “I know you think it’s a dead end,” Lollie said. “But I told you I’d keep you informed, so I wanted you to know we just talked to Blind Buddy Cotton.”

  “Dee say anything useful?”

  “Not really.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I know, you were right,” Lollie said. She always told him he was right, figuring it was the best way to keep him on her side and willing to help if she asked. “But do you think you might be able to get an address on Willie Jefferson or Earl Tate? We can’t find either of them.”

  Cruger snickered and said, “Maybe you need a better private investigator.”

  Lollie studied Rick’s profile for a moment before she smiled and said, “No, I like the one I’ve got.” Cruger said he’d see what he could do.

  Rick wasn’t listening. He was thinking about something Buddy Cotton had said. When Lollie flipped the phone shut, she noticed his expression. “You look flummoxed,” she said.

  “I’m trying to understand something. You remember after we told Buddy we were investigating two murders and he asked what it had to do with him? And then I mentioned Willie Jefferson and Earl Tate? Buddy immediately assumed they were the two men who’d been killed. Now why would he assume that?”

  Lollie remembered. She said, “He did, didn’t he? Should we go back and ask?”

  Rick shook his head. “We’re almost home and I’m too hungry to turn around. We can ask him next time we’re up that way. But it seems odd.” He glanced at Crusty, who was curled up in Lollie’s lap. “Besides, booger boy there needs his medicine.”

  She looked at Crusty’s nose. “Yeah, he needs a tissue too.” A bubble formed on one of his nostrils each time he exhaled. Lollie pulled a Kleenex from her purse and wiped the trouble spot. “But you know, Buddy’s assumption isn’t so odd if we’re right,” she said. “I mean, if this is about the tapes, Earl Tate and Crippled Willie are as connected to them as Suggs or my grandfather.” She looked out the window, then back at Rick. “I don’t know, the more we find out, the less sense it makes.”

  “Welcome to my little corner of the world,” Rick said. “And here’s something else. Buddy’s not as blind as he acts. I held out my business card and he took it. I didn’t have to put it in his hand.”

  “You handed a business card to a blind man?”

  “It was reflex, but that’s not the point.” He paused before he said, “I really don’t have a point, other than … it’s weird.”

  Lollie changed the subject to Beau Tillman’s characterization of late-nineteenth-century Leland, Mississippi. “A little Sodom and Gomorrah right in the middle of the Bible Belt. You gotta love that,” she said. “And what about that Hamp Doogan character? I mean, maybe I’m naive, but a coke-dealing photographer in 1950s small-town Mississippi?”

  “He sounds colorful, I’ll grant you,” Rick said. “But he’s way too dead to be answering questions. I’m more interested in talking to Henry LeFleur if he’s still around. He was the sheriff when Doogan was killed, and according to Smitty Chisholm he was a partner in the radio station with Suggs and your grandfather.”

  “Sure, but we should at least try to find somebody in Doogan’s family. Maybe one of them went to the trial or heard stories and might be able to tell us why Pigfoot killed him. Maybe there’s a connection to this somehow.”

  As they drove along, kicking around theories and strategies on how to proceed, Rick kept stealing glances at Lollie. Her profile charmed him as she explored possible scenarios and followed the threads stemming from the clues. She beamed an enthusiastic smile whenever she
thought she was onto something, gesturing excitedly as she arranged and rearranged possibilities in an attempt to explain what might have happened. Rick kept marveling at the French-speaking martial artist in the passenger seat and found himself wondering what else she was good at.

  A few minutes later, they pulled into a funky little beer-and-tamale joint on the outskirts of Vicksburg. Rick ran in and grabbed an order to go, then headed back to his office.

  The antiques shop closed at five on Saturdays, so they had to use the metal stairway up the back of the building. Lollie was behind Rick the whole way up the stairs and wasn’t shy about admiring his back pockets. She had the urge to say something nice, something flirty, like, Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’ve got a nice butt. Then she might add something like, For a guy your age, just to take the curse off it, but not so much that he wouldn’t get her meaning. She’d noticed him sneaking glances at her for the past few days, but he seemed to be adhering to some sort of professional code about not hitting on his client, which was admirable but wasn’t doing her, a woman with urges like anybody else, any damn good. Maybe it was her own fault, she thought. Maybe she needed to let him know she’d be open to a little this and that. So she resolved to say something to see if she could move things forward. She just couldn’t think of the right words.

  They stopped on the landing while Rick fumbled with his keys. Lollie said, “So you never really told me why you’re not seeing anybody. Are you gay?” During the awkward moment that followed, she thought: Boy, that came out wrong.

  Rick turned to her with a confused look. He looked down at Crusty, then back at Lollie. “No,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

  Embarrassed, she tried to shrug it off. “Just curious.” Oh, jeez, what an idiot, she thought. Why didn’t I say “just kidding” instead of “just curious”’? Oh my God, now he thinks I think he’s … She looked over the edge of the landing and thought for a moment that if they were higher, she just might jump off.