Crossroad Blues (The Nick Travers Novels)

by Ace Atkins

  Sometimes, when no one was around, he would slip under the velvet ropes and slide into E's cars, feeling the leather where He'd sat, the steering wheels and the gear shifts He'd touched. A vehicle to that connection he'd always felt with E. Jesse would sink low into the floor of the backseat and smell the holy air that E had breathed. Sometimes he'd stay there until the following day, sleeping in E's cars.

  Today they showed Viva Las Vegas, and he thought about that incredible chemistry between Ann-Margret and E. They did everything but touch each other. It was like they were so damned close to tearing each other's clothes off, but it was like there was some kind of force field between them. Somethin' holding them back. All she could do was coo and purr the whole damned film. Man, oh man.

  Jesse shook his head and walked next door to the gift shop, a buzzin' in his loins like a snapped electric cable. Out of all the official shops, this one concentrated mostly on T-shirts and small tokens of love. The pencils, coffee mugs, buttons, necklaces, postcards, and toenail clippers, all of them icons of affection.

  Inside, he watched two middle-aged women--one short and dumpy and the other trim and athletic with frizzy hair and big boobs. Jesse massaged a hand over a dusty porcelain head of Elvis. He smiled and walked toward them, pushing back the jet-black pompadour that cascaded over his forehead. He ran his fingers over the back of his neck, real modest-like, and gave the trim woman with big boobs a good two-second eye contact. He knew he had it, that confidence E had. The way of working the eyes and body. A way of showin' that you were a little shy, but the devil sure did know where you lived.

  "Afternoon, ma'am," Jesse said.

  She nodded her head and gave a little grin. "Do you work here?"

  "Ah, no ma'am. Why do you ask?"

  "Well, you look just like him. I guess you know that, though," she giggled.

  "Ma'am, I can show you all Memphis like you've never seen. I can take you to some of the places not on the maps. Where he worked. His high school."

  "Actually," she said, laughing, "we don't even like Elvis." She and her friend both kept snickering as they left the store.

  Jesse could feel the heat in his face. It wasn't that they were laughing at him that made him mad. It was how they did it. Like he was some kind of freak. Well, he wasn't.

  He turned and walked down to Rockabilly's malt shop and waited until he saw an old couple leave. Before the busboy could clear the table, Jesse sat down, finished half a cheeseburger, and gulped down a melted chocolate milk shake. He belched as he stared through the plate glass and across the boulevard at the grand house. The damned center of it all.

  It wasn't until two hours later that he saw another target. She stood at the wishing wall around Graceland. Seventeen or eighteen years old. About his age. She smoked a cigarette and doodled a message to E on the wall. Short dark hair, tight blue jeans, and a short, black baby-doll shirt that showed a pierced belly button. He just stood and watched.

  She leaned on the wall and stuck the pen in her mouth, twirling it around. Her lips were red and puffy. On the ground next to her was a tattered brown teddy bear, some kinda weird purse. She stopped working the pen and stared.

  "If looks could kill," she said, putting her hands on her hips and looking at him with the greenest eyes he'd ever seen.

  "No," Jesse said. "If eyes could fuck."

  Chapter 6

  That night, Jesse snuck the girl inside Graceland. A few months, back he'd made himself seduce this nasty, alcoholic-hag employee so he could learn the back-entry code. He already knew where to hop the fence behind the meditation gardens where E, Vernon, and Gladys were buried. And E's twin brother--the one they said died at birth.

  The girl was a German tourist and said she quivered just thinking that E had once been in her country. She could imagine feeling the stubble of His army haircut and the way He smelled after basic training. She worked nights in a McDonald's in Frankfurt just for the airfare to New York City. After arriving in the States, she'd hitched all the way to Memphis. There was a little trouble with a trucker in Kentucky, but she grabbed his balls until his eyes bulged. Gutsy little piece.

  The girl thought she was psychic or something because she knew this was where she would meet another E. It was a vision that told her she'd find that missing part of her soul at Graceland to make her a complete woman.

  Her hands tousled Jesse's black hair as he popped the back door.

  Jesse and the girl made love all over the holy estate--in the deep, green shag carpet of the Jungle Room, on the stairs leading to the basement TV room, and on E's pool table. She was on top mostly, but sometimes he would get behind her. It was what he needed.

  He worked her until his body rolled with sweat and his chest heaved. About three in the morning, he took her upstairs to a place where the tourists weren't allowed. They stood naked in E's bedroom and stared around His room as dark branches from a tall oak tree clicked against the window. He took her to the bathroom where E had taken his last breath. They knelt in front of the toilet and cried as a purple dawn cracked near the stables like a ragged bruise.

  Later that morning, they said their good-byes at a Hardee's over sausage-and-egg biscuits and Dr Peppers. He told her that he loved her, that he wanted her to be his girl. But she just laughed and wiped a piece of egg off his lip.

  "Shh. We will be together, one day," she said in a heavy German accent. She pressed a folded note with the number of a Biloxi hotel in his hand.

  Then she was gone.

  ?

  Jesse traveled southbound in a Greyhound bus on Highway 61 to Hollywood, Mississippi. The old man had said to meet back on Wednesday. So there he was, his pelvis aching from working all last night, and his head hurting from the lack of sleep. A copy of The Prophet rested on his knee, along with an old copy of a Captain America Junior comic book. Too tired to read, though, so he slept the rest of the way, until the driver yelled at him to get off at the gas station.

  He walked a few miles along a dirt road until he saw the sign for Puka's Appliance Repair. Actually, it was just a junkyard where Puka sold parts off old refrigerators, stoves, and washing machines. There must've been thousands of them baking in the hot August sun behind his shop, rust runnin' down their white sides like blood.

  He banged on the old screen door. Nothing. He walked back outside through the weeds to a concrete staircase that led to the cellar. The bottom door was open. He could feel the cool, moldy air as he reached the last step.

  The cellar was filled with all kinds of crap: old furniture, rusted car parts, a 1971 Playboy calendar, and a long workbench. A light was on.

  "Puka?"

  Through the back door, he could see the rusted rows of appliances, a weird graveyard. Mixed with the mold and grease, he smelled something. Smelled like somebody had shit all over himself.

  He walked over the sawdust-sprinkled floor to a storeroom door and opened it. Inside lay a black man twisted at a weird angle. The man's head slumped down to his chest like a doll's, and his leg twisted clear in back of him. Jesse spit on the ground.

  "Shit," he said.

  "Had to," Puka's weak voice called behind him.

  He turned to see the dim outline of Puka standing in a bare corner the sun had yet to touch. A thin rod of light hit a bottle of Old Grand-Dad in his shaking arthritic hands.

  "You promised, Puka. You done told me he was mine. I'm the one who found him."

  "He tried to run out of here. He was halfway to the row of pines out there. Didn't mean to. All I had was an old twenty-two to scare him a bit."

  "He's been shot more'n once."

  "Can't leave a man squirmin'. I know you know better than that."

  "What are we gonna tell Keith?"

  Jesse looked back down at the dead man. A Polo shirt pocked with dried blood lay over what had once been his face.

  "Already called him. Said he wanted it done anyway. And there's somethin' else, too."

  ?

  They sat on the porch and drank sw
eet tea. An AM radio played old country music inside the store as a few cars whizzed by on the back highway.

  "Maybe it was better that I killed him anyway, Jesse. Your momma wouldn't wanted you to have that on your mind."

  "I've killed before."

  "When?" Puka said, scrunching up his nose.

  "Plenty of times."

  Puka bent forward in the nylon folding chair and spat on the ground. One of the straps on his bib overalls unbuttoned, and Jesse could see the two long, thick scars where Puka had one of those heart surgeries. Triple somethin' or other. Too much fried catfish.

  "Keith's got another deal for you, son. Said he likes you. Maybe if you do good at this, he'll get you workin' in New Orleans with him. He's a big man there."

  "What's your son want?" Jesse asked.

  "You found this uppity nigger down in Greenwood, didn't you?"

  "Yeah, at the motel where Keith said he'd be."

  "Well, he wants you to go back. There's an old nigra man that this dead man was workin' with. Well, I guess he's a nigra. He's got white skin and pink eyes. Keith wants him too."

  "Yeah, I seen 'em together," Jesse said. "Can I kill 'im?"

  "I reckon that's what he wants," Puka said, spitting on the ground again. "I tole your momma I'd look out for you."

  "You mention my momma's name again and I'll kill you too, Puka."

  Chapter 7

  Wood smoke hung heavy in the air as he emerged from the thick trees near the highway. In a rumpled black suit, he walked along the uneven ground, sweat rolling off his face. He opened a tattered black umbrella and adjusted dark sunglasses to shield his eyes.

  It had been the same routine for many years: the suit, the flowers and the long walk, a few miles from his place back in the woods. He had found the umbrella like most things, something someone had thrown away. He had made it work again, as he did with everything he owned.

  He turned onto the highway that lead to the tiny Zion Church, a simple white building in the middle of endless cotton fields. A weathered doll's house on a piece of wedding cake.

  When he approached the church, he reached inside a brown grocery bag and pulled out seven purple flowers--the kind he used to call shaving brushes when he was a kid, growin' up in Texas, seventy-five years ago.

  Breathless, he cautiously stepped around the headstones to a tiny plot in the church's dark shadow. He knelt at a pointed, granite monument, laid the flowers at its base, and said a short prayer, hands laced in front of him.

  And as he stumbled to his feet, bracing himself with a white hand on a knee, he mumbled the penanced words he had said for so many years: "Forgive me, R.L. Dear Lord, please let him forgive me."

  Chapter 8

  Early the next morning, Nick slept away the Highway 61 trip in a Greenwood motel room until a dul, yellow light leaked through the brittle curtains and onto the flowered bedspread. It was the kind of place they used to call a motor court before the superhighways destroyed the character of travel. Nick stayed there out of sheer hatred of the new crackerbox chains. The Dixie Motel advertised outside with a neon rebel flag and had about twenty units, a chain-locked coffee shop, and a swimming pool filled with acrid chlorinated water.

  His head felt thick with the smell as he crawled out of bed and changed into a gray Tulane football T-shirt, shorts, and a pair of running shoes. He hooked his feet under the bed and counted a hundred sit-ups, then rolled onto his stomach and counted four sets of twenty-five push-ups.

  After stretching, he walked outside and started a slow jog down the four-lane highway, trucks blowing by him and scattering grit into his eyes. He continued and smiled, remembering the last piece of advice JoJo gave him: "Watch your white ass."

  It wasn't exactly ancient Zen but it was real. Typical of JoJo, to grab the point right by the throat and not fuck with a long explanation.

  That was the reason he liked blues and blues people. They all hated bullshit, not a phony bastard among them. Of course, there were the white guys who sang "Mustang Sally," wore fedoras, and snapped their fingers on Bourbon Street. But that was like comparing an artist to someone who worked with paint-by-number kits.

  The Delta was the soul and the heart. Mother blues. Sacred, fertile ground for the most influential music of the twentieth century. At that moment, Nick felt like he was in the center of the world. It was good to be back. Didn't matter if the story Randy fed him was crap.

  Johnson was the holy grail of blues. For years, no one even seemed to know how he died. Some said he was poisoned; others said he was stabbed. The murderer was never caught. Only through some truly brilliant work by men like Mack McCormick and Gayle Dean Wardlow did a shadowy picture of the man slowly emerge.

  Johnson probably didn't want to be found. The phantom of Mississippi seemed to like playing the elusive and mysterious stranger. When McCormick went searching for Robert Johnson, he found a handful of recollections of a blues singer that met Johnson's description and repertoire. Sometimes the name was Spencer. Sometimes it was Dodds. Both were surnames of Johnson's stepfather in Memphis, and soon McCormick was able to trace his route.

  When Alan Lomax, one of the first blues historians, went looking for Johnson in the 1940s, he didn't even know Johnson was dead. There were no press releases or radio tributes. Johnson was known mainly by southern blacks and by a few white collectors who recognized his brilliance. But by searching for Johnson, Lomax discovered Son House and Muddy Waters, who spoke of Johnson with awe. Johnson was the link between those two men. House was old school blues, and Muddy Waters would later leave Clarksdale, Mississippi, to become one of the greatest and best-known musicians in the world.

  Decades after Johnson died, more clues surfaced. Stories from traveling partners, photographs from his family, and, after a four-year search in four states, even a death certificate from Greenwood, Mississippi. No cause of death listed--no doctor present. Even his gravesite was disputed. Two cemeteries still claim his burial. But through the tales of men like Honeyboy Edwards and Johnny Shines, Johnson became more human.

  Shines said he'd met Johnson in Helena, Arkansas, while they were playing on opposite street corners "cuttin' heads." Head cuttin' was a battle of street musicians over tips. Johnson drew a larger crowd, and soon Shines started tagging to learn secrets. He later told stories of a man almost Mozart-like in brilliance. He said Johnson could carry on a conversation and remember details of what a radio played in the background. Even though Johnson didn't seem to take note of the music, he could play the same song weeks later. It was almost as if Johnson could pick music out of the air. "Chord for chord, lick for lick, note for note, word for word."

  Others have said Johnson would sit silent by a window at night and finger guitar frets to himself. No sound. Just the internal music only he could hear.

  Johnson didn't play blues. He was blues. To Nick, Robert Johnson would always remain the sallow-faced figure from the dime-store photograph, drooping eye and dangling cigarette. A man who made music like chilled rain with iron chords that intermittently walk like heavy footsteps.'

  Nick stopped jogging, his breath coming in steady gasps, as he looked over the banks of the Yazoo River.

  ?

  The diner was in a crumbling brick building sided by an appliance store and a defunct law firm. Pickup trucks and dusty sedans parked along the railroad tracks. The bell above the glass door jingled when Nick walked in, and a peroxided woman smiled at him from behind a broken-spined romance novel.

  He ordered eggs, grits, bacon, pancakes, and coffee. As he ate, he scanned through the Living Blues contact list and marked five names and addresses. Most of them were remnants of a better time for Greenwood's music scene. The blues had left the southern town long ago. Most modern music centered around Clarksdale or Oxford. Greenwood was unfortunately a place of history, not action. But there were signs of a rebirth, like other Delta towns which now saw blues as a marketable asset.

  When Nick finished eating and drained a second cup of coffee
, he paid the check, used a Greenwood map, and started tracking Baker.

  Greenwood was a classic To Kill a Mockingbird town: richly restored antebellum homes, a decaying downtown unchanged since the thirties, and endless rows of poor living in shotgun shacks. The Leflore County Courthouse dominated a business district full of churches, feed stores, flower shops, used-car lots, and a Chinese restaurant.

  Outside the grand courthouse stood fat magnolias and a statue of a stone woman cradling a fallen soldier. An inscription read: "A testimonial of our affection and reverence for the Confederate soldier."

  Nick drove past the monument to the have-not part of town, listening to the song "I'm a Steady Rollin' Man" on the radio. No one was home at the first address, and the second was a washout. Could've been for Baker, too. The former occupant died two years ago.

  The third address was a woman's. Well, he hoped it was a woman's--Blind Lilah Rose. She lived in a shotgun cottage not far from Lusco's restaurant where train tracks ran right through her backyard. She was a piano player for an obscure bluesman in the forties by the name of Little Tommy. She stared at Nick through cloudy, unblinking brown eyes.

  Lilah couldn't have been five feet tall. Her hair was wrestled into black pigtails all over her head like worms sprouting from their holes. She invited him in and offered a "Co-Cola."

  "That's OK, ma'am. Thanks."

  "Don't be all nice and shit 'cause I'm blind. You think I can't find it?"

  "Thank you, a Coke would be nice."

  In about five minutes, she shuffled back in the room with all the speed of a windup toy that needed recranking. "So yo' from the in-surance comp-any?" she asked, holding the bottle in the opposite direction of Nick.