by Ace Atkins
He'd watch the bubbles as the world pulsated in an electric vibe around him. Not quite in, not quite out. Somewhere in the middle. In his mid-thirties and getting soft mentally and physically. No challenges. No immediate goals. He needed to get back on it.
He reached down to the plastic chair beside him and grabbed a handful of quarters from a pile of keys and Dixie beer caps. He tossed the soggy clothes into a double-load dryer and walked next door to an all-night convenience store. He bought two quart bottles of Colt 45, one for him and one for the wino. The Vietnamese woman never blinked at his pantlessness.
"Hey pal, here you go," Nick said, handing him the water-beaded beer.
"Tanks, Chief," he said.
Nice of the guy to say thanks. Proved he was all right. It didn't matter that he was homeless as long as he had some manners. Nick had seen some rich bastards not even thank a waiter for bringing them a meal at Emeril's. "You from here?" he asked, unscrewing the cap.
The man jerked his head back giving him a double chin. "Naw, man, dis ma' summer home. Just on a vacation from France."
"Well, you don't have to get all surly about it. You could be just passin' through."
"Naw. From New Awlins. Stay in New Awlins."
"Yeah, I know what you mean. It's like I can't leave, as much as I hate this fuckin' city sometimes."
"Yeah, I know, man. Listen, I know. Twenty-nine, ninety."
"What?"
"That's the degrees this city sits on, man. Like a big magnet, it draws folks in." He set his hands a few feet apart, then crashed them together. "Smack. Just like that, your ass is stuck and you can't leave."
"I could get out if I wanted to," Nick said.
"Reason you hangin' out here is you ain't got a woman."
"Had one."
"Had me a meal yesterday but my stomach still empty."
"Brown hair and eyes like morning coffee. Voice kinda raspy like a jazz singer and a comma of hair she constantly kept out of her eyes."
"I ain't ask you to unload on me. Jus' sayin' you need a woman."
"I need to get back on it."
"On what?"
"Life."
"Life is easy," the man said, gathering his rags and a dirty plastic bag of crushed aluminum cans. "Livin' is hard." He winked at Nick and disappeared into the thick night as a streetcar clanged past.
Chapter 3
The Warehouse District Streets were empty the next morning, just a few parked cars outside the art galleries and handful of restaurants. The old district had changed a lot since Nick bought his 1922 red-brick warehouse on Julia Street. Back then, it had just been a few crazy artists who needed the space to work. Now, there were restaurants and renovated apartments for the Polo shirt crowd. But, God love them, there were still plenty of weirdos left. Nick had bought his dilapidated building on the advice of JoJo, who was good friends with the former owner. A stocky Italian who just wanted to unload the place, he'd been using it to store stolen goods--from televisions to mattresses.
It was a great deal for the district, but the old building needed a lot of work.
Nick kept the bottom level a garage but added a new metal staircase to the second floor, where he created a loft apartment. He installed an open kitchen and an enclosed bathroom. The deeply scarred and water-stained red maple floors were sanded and resealed. When he uncovered the stamped tin ceiling and brick walls, it was like taking a pound of makeup off a naturally pretty woman.
Nick did most of the work with his ex-girlfriend but left the dangerous stuff for the pros. It was still a work in progress, but the warehouse had certainly come a long way.
He admired the brass intercom system he'd reworked as he walked out the side door onto Julia Street and toward Louisiana Products--the only grocery in the district. He walked under a warped awning and past a flophouse where the yellow marquee flickered like Las Vegas, beckoning patrons to AIDS and weekly overdoses.
A block over, he tramped into the general store's tall, bleached doors and bought two blueberry muffins, orange juice and coffee. He ate at a checker-clothed table, waking up and watching his eclectic band of neighbors doing the same. They included a sculptor who worked only with old Harley Davidson parts, an artist who painted his pet chicken, a massage therapist from another planet, a bodybuilding lesbian couple, and an eighty-year-old woman, still in her nightgown, talking with her imaginary friend.
As he sipped on the chicory coffee, thick as motor oil, he tried to stare away from the old woman picking the scabs on her head as she read The Times-Picayune to the chair beside her. He knew he should feel sorry for her, but instead he squashed the second muffin in his napkin, feeling sick.
He thought about offering her some Head and Shoulders from the rows of toiletries Louisiana Products kept for the district's residents. Instead, he filled up his Styrofoam cup again and walked back to his pad.
He took a shower, heated the coffee in a speckled pot on his gas stove, sat at his desk, and just stared through the dirty panes of industrial glass. But the work wouldn't come.
He sipped on more coffee and glanced back down at his notes for the biography of Guitar Slim he was working on. It was the same pain from last night -- the feeling of being out of the loop, like a fat kid at a basketball court. He put on a record from Slim's Speciality recording days to jar his thick head into the fifties.
Back then, Slim would wear his outrageous red suits with white shoes and prowl through nightclubs with his two-hundred-foot guitar cord. His preaching-soulful blues was a forerunner to soul and rock and roll, a sound that came from singing gospel music back home in the Mississippi Delta.
Nick couldn't find out much about Slim's early life other than that his real name was Eddie Jones, and he was a ladies' man around the local jukes in the Delta. He'd conducted four interviews with people who knew Slim before he joined the army in 1944. But the bulk of the biography would be about when Slim came to New Orleans in 1950 and formed a trio that included Huey "Piano" Smith.
It was in the Big Easy that the tall, skinny flashy dresser gained his nickname. JoJo had already told Nick some stories about Slim that made Elton John seem demure.
More than for his panache, Slim was known for his soul-powered blues number "The Things I Used to Do," which sold a million copies. "I'm gonna send you back to your momma and, Lord, I'm goin' back to my family, too," he sang, backed by a young Ray Charles on piano. Some have even said Slim's blues lyrics in a gospel bar structure heavily influenced that young, blind percussionist.
But just obsessing over patterns and similarities in music wasn't the fascination for Nick. He never cared to be a desk professor theorizing about recordings. He wanted to know about the men and women who made the music. It was far more interesting to know about Slim's first recording session for Atlantic Records with producer Jerry Wexler.
As Wexler tells the story, they were waiting for Slim the day before and were worried the performer wasn't going to show. But soon, a tidal wave of people poured down the streets announcing, "Here come Slim! Slim on the way!" Slim rolled up with a fleet of three red Cadillacs and a harem of women in matching red dresses. A throng of others surrounded him as if he were a king holding court. One of the ladies in red explained to Wexler that the performer had picked her up in Las Vegas just three days before. "You know that two-thousand-dollar advance you gave him?" she said. "Well, I got most of it now--at three hundred a week."
That kind of story was what it was all about--the reason Nick became a blues historian. That was the gold nugget after sifting though mountains of dirt and hundreds of hours of tape. It brought a humanity to a man who felt life like a lightning bolt.
Slim's role in the big blues picture ended quickly. His hard drinking and living caught up with him, and he died in New York from pneumonia in 1959. He was only thirty-two years old.
Listening to Slim's music just made Nick more depressed. He stared back out the warped window panes and sighed. The coffee tasted over-brewed and bitter. Above him, h
e saw a spreading dark spot on the ceiling he'd just painted.
Then JoJo called. He said Randy Sexton was looking for him, even came to the bar last night. Randy probably wanted him to teach that Postwar Blues class for fall quarter, instead of waiting until winter when he rolled back on.
Nick had thought he'd have the fall to finish the Guitar Slim book, but hell, the funk he was in wouldn't do the master justice. So he started his old black Jeep and drove down St. Charles Avenue toward Tulane University.
On the way, mottled shadow patterns of oak leaves fell over him like jigsaws.
Chapter 4
Opening the doors to the Jazz and Blues Archives building was like taking a hot shower and then getting thrown into a meat cooler, felt good and human. Randy's office was down the corridor and to the right, next door to the office Nick kept during his rotations. The head of the department had no anterooms or secretary, just a small, simple office with sagging bookshelves filled with magazines and biographies. There was not a man alive who knew more about the development of New Orleans music than Randy Sexton -- author of more than a dozen books on early jazz and the roots of African music, from Congo Square to Satchmo.
However, his knowledge didn't come from genetics. Randy was a short white man who squinted through his round glasses like a cartoon mouse staring at cheese. He had a head of curly brown hair and talked in excited sentences flowing from an information-flooded brain.
At his desk, Randy wore a black T-shirt from the1981 Jazz Fest and black jeans. A stack of papers marked with a red felt-tipped pen sat on his desk, and one finger was stuck up his nose.
Nick knocked on the outside door.
The finger shot out of Randy's nose and behind the desk.
"Catchin' anything good?"
"Shut up, man. It was a scratch."
"Right. Hey, JoJo said you were drunk last night at the bar. Said you had a hooker with you and she was dancing on the table."
"Yeah. That's right. How you been, man?"
Nick plopped down in the chair across from him. "Fine. Life's one big exciting party."
"You want a cigarette?"
"I quit."
Randy shook one loose from the pack of Marlboros, lit it and threw the pack at Nick.
"Just in case."
"Thanks." Nick shook another loose. Most of the trackers he knew smoked. With long hours in clubs, cars, and conversations, smoking was just something to do while waiting for a interview that would be catalogued in the patchwork of music history.
Blues experts could be sociologists, anthropologists, historians, or psychologists. But to Nick, if you really got out there to find the folks who lived it, you were a tracker. To conduct interviews with someone who cut a record fifty years ago for a now-defunct label wasn't like looking in the phone book--although sometimes it was that simple.
Tracking usually consisted of running names through driver's license checks in dozens of states, cultivating sources in the business, making hundreds of phone calls, and writing dozens of letters. But most of the time, finding the subject wasn't enough. Sometimes they didn't want to be found. They sold their guitars, let go of the rambling lifestyle, and settled down. To them, the lonesome blues highway was just a tattered memory. Many had found religion and remembered their musical accomplishments as that "ole devil time."
Many nights, Nick had waited outside a clapboard shack somewhere in Mississippi or a snow-covered home in Chicago, only to be ignored, insulted, or threatened.
"So, what's up?" Nick asked Randy, as he leaned forward resting his elbows on his knees. "You want to show me those dirty shadow puppets again?"
"Michael's missing."
"Haven't talked to the guy since June. Course, I never talked to him much then anyway."
Michael Baker, a tenured professor in music history, was a real jackass. Nick couldn't stand listening to his pompous lectures or erroneous facts based on his political ideology. Guys like Baker took the stick and muddied the waters of a diminishing river of information.
"He was in the Mississippi Delta looking for some blues performers from the thirties and stopped checking in with his wife."
"Blues? He doesn't know shit about blues."
"I know. I think he was freelancing for somebody. Anyway, he seemed excited. Talked all about how great it was taking pictures of these abandoned clapboard jukes in the woods."
Nick laughed. "That's bullshit. He'd be afraid his Gucci loafers would get a speck of cowshit on them."
"Last time we talked, he was in Greenwood. He wanted me to look up a few things and I haven't heard from him in over a month."
"Did you call the police in Mississippi?"
"Yeah," Randy said, leaning back in his chair and tossing a pencil into the corkboard above. It didn't stick. "Nick, how many times have you been to the Delta?"
"Oh no."
"Please. Just drive to Greenwood, talk to some people. Have dinner at that restaurant you like . . . Lucky's."
"Lusco's."
"Whatever. You know how Michael is, sometimes condescending and rude."
"If he's condescending in the Delta, they'll string him up by those pleated slacks and make him into a life-size pinata."
"That's what I'm afraid of. Please?"
"Will you recommend me for a two-year grant on that Babe Stovall project?"
"Uh, no. Remember, I don't like Michael that much either. He came with the department job. I'm sorry, that's terrible. His wife is really upset."
"I guess I can take off Friday from JoJo's. But I've got to be back in two weeks for a gig at Tipitina's. We've planned it for a while."
Randy smiled. "Thanks, man."
"What'd he want you to look up, his ass?"
"Impossible. Too tight. He had me fax him a list of living performers from the thirties and forties who lived around Greenwood."
"You mean all I have to go on is an outdated contact list, half of which I wrote?"
"Yeah."
"I guess it's time to get back on it then," Nick said, squashing the cigarette in a plastic ashtray.
"What?"
"Words to live by, my friend," Nick said. "Why didn't you tell me he was snooping around? That's all I need is him pissing off my contacts."
"Academic cooperation? You scratch my back . . . "
"Shiiit."
"He was excited when we talked," Randy said as he fished around his rat's nest of a desk. "Here it is."
"Thanks," Nick said, taking the wrinkled coffee-stained sheets. "I have a dozen copies in my office."
"Probably won't help anyway."
"Why's that?"
"I think he spent the most time with an old man in his seventies. He's not listed. Interesting thing is, the man claims he knew Robert Johnson."
Nick laughed. "Everybody in the Delta claims they met Johnson."
"I know, but Michael believed him. Said the old man lived like a hermit out in the woods. No electricity. Nothing. Said he hadn't much contact with anyone in years."
"Where's he live?"
"Greenwood, I think. Can't tell you his name or how to find him. Can't be too hard though."
"Why's that?"
"The old man is an albino."
Chapter 5
In Memphis, Jesse Garon honed his switchblade knife on the rough, concrete edge of the Heartbreak Motel's empty swimming pool. He sat and watched the Sri Lankan manager tossing handfuls of wet, moldy leaves onto the mildewed diving board above and thought what a waste of time. No one comes to this end of Elvis Presley Boulevard anymore. Only the devout. But E would appreciate the effort he had made to live close to Him.
"Oh, sir, it is hot. Yes?" the little dark guy asked him. His bare feet stuck in the brown, oozing muck, with his black trousers rolled to the knees. The man's scraggly mustache dripped with sweat.
"Uh-huh," Jesse answered.
"You do not talk much, sir, for such an energetic young man."
"Uh-huh."
"I have told you I left my count
ry when I was only twenty. Now I work so that I may bring the rest of my family to the United States. Might I ask what has brought you to Memphis?"
Jesse stopped in midscrape of the knife, looked down into the empty cracked pool, and simply said, "God."
He stood and walked back to his room, one of only three with a working toilet, where the red shag carpet deeply covered his toes. He winced. The damp, musty smell was like ghosts from a hundred puking guests. He opened a window as an 18-wheeler roared past.
No television, no "Kool AC," like the neon sign advertised out front. Just a room and a hot plate at the Heartbreak Motel. He grabbed his last two pieces of white bread, smeared butter on the spongy pair, and placed them on the plate. The smell of burning butter made his mouth water as he changed into a black T-shirt with the sleeves cut out and blue jeans. He sat on the edge of the bed and rolled the crisp new jeans into a two-inch cuff. Perfect, he thought, running a hand over his bare upper arm to make contact with a stenciled black tattoo. He'd paid a hundred bucks for it on Beale Street.
The tattoo was of a young Elvis Presley wearing a crown of thorns, a simple inscription below: "He died for our sins."
Every afternoon was the same. After eating supper and getting dressed, Jesse would leave the Heartbreak Motel and walk two miles to Graceland. There, he would stroll through the gift shops at the Elvis Mall and sit for hours in the darkened car museum. He could watch clips from E's films in '57 Chevys cut in half and turned into seats.