Crossroad Blues (The Nick Travers Novels)

by Ace Atkins

  Mr. Cruz was just funnin' with him. He must know that he was leaving them Sun Records days and going right for Las Vegas. He and his German woman would start their own shrine there. He'd be E without anyone else.

  He'd be E.

  E.

  Jesse watched the cotton patches, trailer homes, and gas stations roll by.

  Tonight was gonna be the first night of forever.

  ?

  "He ain't comin' and I need to take a shit," Henry said, as he dropped his head and spit on the weathered train station's floor. Nick could tell he was tired of reliving the past and confronting ghosts, the meanness powering his old age taken from him at the Three Forks as if he were a scolded child.

  JoJo was indifferent, asleep and snoring softly as Nick looked around the small station. Cracker had a couple of lollipops the kids at the Three Forks had given him. He licked on one as he watched a black man in indigo overalls and an elderly white woman in a faded, flowered dress. A steady night heat hovered, broken only by the momentary sweeping arc of a 1950s table fan.

  Nick stood and walked back into the station's bathroom, where the cream-colored paint was so thick on the door that it looked like spoiled milk. He checked for feet under the stalls before he inserted the clip into the Browning 9mm and thumbed down the slide release. He tucked it back into the inside pocket of his faded jean jacket and walked back into the station, wishing he was alone.

  None of the men would even listen to his reasoning.

  JoJo woke up as Nick sat back on the hard wooden bench and began to rub his fingers hard around his eyes. "Goddamn, I forgot where I was at," JoJo said. "Thought I was dreamin' 'bout all this shit."

  "How about we all become Hare Krishnas and play the tambourine on Bourbon Street if we get through this?" Nick asked.

  It was a mundane comment, something typical before a football game, when conversation is as pointless as chewing on a hangnail--a tool to focus away from the energy of an approaching conflict.

  "When he gets nervous, he talks," JoJo said.

  "Mmm," Henry said. "You good with that gun, kid?"

  Nick looked down at the bulky outline in his jacket and smiled. "We'll be fine, y'all just stay cool."

  Cracker continued to lick his candy and turned his head as a train whistle sounded outside and a light rumble shook the crumbling brick building.

  "What was he like?" Nick asked Cracker.

  "Who?"

  "Robert Johnson."

  "I don't know. H-he use to try to get me to take off from Mista Devlin. Say I-I could do better. Say just hop that ole train, son, and m-mornin' comes you at where you suppose to be. Never made much sense. How a train know where I suppose to be at?"

  "When we get done with this, would you talk to me? Tell me all about Robert. What he played. What he talked about. All of it."

  "Yes suh. But I'll t-tell you one thing," Cracker said as they all stood and walked to the platform. "He wouldn't wanna be used like this. Them r-records of his shoulda neva been found. He kept that music with him until the end. Didn't want no one hearin' it."

  "Why?"

  "He s-say it was all he was," Cracker said, turning to Henry. "W-why you make me think them record were mine. I-I stayed all them years in the woods to protect them, and weren't even R.L.'s. Why you do that, Big Earl? Why you do that to me?"

  Henry looked away.

  ?

  Cruz stood up and fell forward as the train slowed. "We're leaving the girl in the compartment. Jesse, you watch her. And, Floyd, you watch Travers."

  Floyd self-consciously touched his swollen lip and agreed. Jesse said he would too, but it wasn't part of his divine plan. He watched the black ovals of Mr. Cruz's sunglasses, but nothing registered. It was just like lookin' at the old wooden shacks slide by the window--shadows the color of old bruises.

  "How we know if we ain't bein' screwed?" Jesse asked.

  "I'll know," Cruz said, as he dotted the beads of sweat rolling into his eyes, his stiff black suit not much for the heat.

  Jesse rolled the sleeves higher on his black T-shirt and tightened the grip on the Glock 9mm. His hands shook a little on the rough handle as the train slowed, still feeling the constant rocking motion of the trip.

  "Kid, be tough," Floyd said. "Remember to hit it like a black man and take no prisoners."

  Jesse just stared at him.

  The view from the train's open window soon filled with a redbrick train station. Jesse heard the screech of metal-on-metal braking. He looked down at the redhead, her body as limp as a wet napkin, just lying there with no idea that her boyfriend was about to die. In a way, she kinda looked like Ann-Margret, and he wondered if she could dance like that.

  ?

  Nick opened the door for Henry, who held the boxed nine records packed in a moldy, red velvet cloth, brittle as a dried rose petal. JoJo winked at Nick when the train slowed to the platform, a little gesture to let him know everything was going to be all right.

  Cracker lagged behind. He hung loose from the crowd, reminding Nick of the omega wolf in the pack, his head down and not looking anyone in the eye. This isn't what he wanted. Nick could tell he felt like he was letting Johnson down, like he was throwing the very thing he'd sworn to protect into the abyss.

  A loose-tied man in a business suit got off the train and trotted inside with a travel bag thrown over his shoulder. A large black woman carried two sleeping children, and a coachman stepped outside with a notebook flipped open.

  Last train to Memphis.

  "Goddamn, I tole you," Henry said.

  Finally, Cruz and the big black man walked off the very last train car. Nick kept his empty hands in plain view as he walked toward them. A smile crept onto his face as he saw the swollen profile of the man, just a beaten dog. He could hear Henry cough and JoJo jingling change in his pocket behind him.

  Cruz's face split into a wide grin, and he opened his hands like a good host meeting guests on the stoop of his mansion. A dark, heavy silence beat around them in blackness.

  "Hello, hello, hello," Cruz said.

  "Where's Virginia?" Nick asked.

  "Where are my records?"

  "Got 'em right here, you sack of dogshit," Henry said.

  Cruz's face twitched, maybe from the comment or maybe from seeing Cracker lagging behind. Whatever the reason, the light went from his face like the last spark from a cigarette butt.

  "I guess you know my friend Cracker," Nick said. "Said you weren't too big on the hospitality. Didn't pour him a beer or offer him a job."

  "I don't need commentary, Travers," Cruz said.

  "Where's Virginia?" Nick asked again.

  "Let me see the records first."

  "Bullshit. Where is she?"

  Cruz nodded to the black man, who yelled back into the car. A light flicked on in the window of a train car and a limp Virginia appeared with the kid who looked like Elvis. Great. In the shadow, he could see the kid laughing and pretending like they were dancing. The scene framed by the smooth silver car.

  Nick whipped out his gun and Cruz's flunky drew his.

  "She's fine, just sedated," Cruz said. "Don't want her stressed out."

  The gun looked like a small toy in the black man's huge hands. His biceps bulging and his eyes were flat and hard, waiting to fire. Nick could see the injured pride in the man's reddened eyes.

  "Remember, Travers, just a white man trying to carve a little niche from the black man's world," Cruz said. "We're the same."

  "He ain't nothin' like you," JoJo said. "You the stink on the bottom of my shoe."

  Nick kept his gun trained on the black man as he heard the coachman make a last call. The train whistle blew and the coachman stepped inside.

  "Are we going to do this?" Cruz asked.

  Henry stepped forward holding the records flat and in both hands like a holy sacrament before he handed them to Cruz and spit his face. The white spittle trickled down his bearded chin.

  Cruz wiped it off, opened the crate's to
p, and peeled back the old material. He stared for a moment at the labels marked in faded pen ink. "Until they're played, I'll be taking Miss Dare with me. I've been fucked by these things twice before."

  Nick thumbed back the gun's hammer.

  "I'm a man of my word. You know that, Travers."

  "Oh. I feel so much better now," Nick said.

  The fumes coming from around the station made his eyes water, but Nick didn't let Cruz's man out of sight. A light went out from the passenger car like an extinguished candle.

  "I'm not leaving here without her," Nick said.

  Cruz raised his hand, "All right, Floyd, get the bitch."

  The train lurched forward and as Floyd turned, a quick double snap came from inside the car. Floyd's head lolled like a drunkard's. His gun raised and came upward, spinning in the palm of his hand.

  Nick pushed JoJo to the ground and covered his head, the rusted wheels of the train gliding by. A gun exploded and another double pop came from inside the car. Nick saw Henry pull out a revolver from his coat and level it at Cruz, who was looking back into the railcar at the Elvis kid, who'd apparently shot Cruz's bodyguard.

  Henry squeezed off four rounds into Cruz. Cruz leveled his gun at Henry and pulled the trigger as they both fell onto the concrete.

  Through his fingers, Nick looked up again, and saw Cruz lying in a twisted pile with Floyd. The top quarter of his head had been blown away and a small bubble of spit and blood formed on his bottom lip.

  The records were gone, and Henry lay dying on the cold concrete with a hole in his stomach the size of a silver dollar. Cracker was nowhere on the platform.

  ?

  Nick grabbed hold of the last passing railcar and ran through the baggage compartment, jumping over suitcases. But when he reached the connecting door, it was locked. He kicked it until his knee ached. The monotonous bump of the train thudded in his ears as the door flung open. He crossed into the next compartment and passed through three more before he was in the same railcar where Elvis had been.

  He had left JoJo on the platform to find help for Henry. Cruz and his bodyguard were positively dead and there was no threat to his old friend. JoJo had just yelled to get that kid.

  In the first cabin, he found a grizzled woman wearing an Atlanta Braves ball cap and spitting snuff. The next cabin was dark, and he fumbled for the light switch before a fist smashed into his stomach. He lost his breath reaching out for the kid, who ran by him into the hall. Nick lunged for his legs and brought him down. Still out of breath, he held him to the ground.

  "Where are they?" Nick yelled.

  "Eat me," the kid said, his black hair covering his dark-ringed eyes, his face as smooth as a woman's. He had to remember the kid just murdered a man before he smacked him hard in the face.

  "What'd you do with the records?"

  "I ain't got 'em, man. I ain't got them."

  Nick punched him again. There were no reservations now. He was so close to hearing the third recording sessions of Robert Johnson. Some punk-ass kid trying to make some cash wasn't going to destroy that. Nick had worked his entire life for this. This was it. There was nothing else. This was it.

  The kid tried to knee Nick in the crotch and scratch at his eyes. Nick locked his grip and was about to yank the kid to his feet when two train conductors ran down the hall and knocked him off. They pinned Nick to the ground and let the kid go. Out of the corner of his eye, Nick could see the young Elvis pick up a backpack, wipe his bleeding lip, and flee down the hall.

  "Get the hell off me!" Nick yelled. "That kid just murdered a man back at the station."

  One of the conductors, a middle-aged white guy with narrow eyes and a stubbled jaw, yelled back to another porter to grab the kid, who was already into another car.

  They let Nick up, and within a few minutes, four waiters from the dining car tried to wrestle the kid down. The kid shot one of them and jumped off the train a few miles later. No one, not even the police, was even sure where. Nick found Virginia in a drugged sleep in the railcar, and he held her hand all the way to Memphis.

  Nick never heard of the lost recordings again. No one would ever know what filled their lacquered grooves. The sound caught more than fifty years ago had vanished deep into the Delta night.

  Epilogue

  The story, as Nick read, ended in swirling blue and red lights outside the Graceland mansion in Memphis. A night security guard had called police after he'd seen a white male crawling over the fence and briefly weeping at the Presley family graves. The suspect then broke into the museum where they kept Presley's clothes and gold records.

  Jesse Garon-- a nineteen-year-old who was wanted for the deaths of a Mississippi deputy and two New Orleans security guards-- shattered the glass case containing Presley's "Sun God" outfit. He put on the costume, complete with cape and massive belt buckle, and fled the building.

  The security guard, quoted in the paper, said Garon was headed back over the fence when he saw several Memphis police cars outside the gates. Garon turned and ran back toward the mansion, breaking through a back door into the green-shag-carpeted Jungle Room.

  Police and security officers surrounded the building but didn't try to follow after Garon began shooting at them. About five A.M., the mansion was flooded with spotlights from police and news helicopters.

  Police tried to communicate with Garon inside the mansion with megaphones, but they got no response. The management of the tourist site threatened lawsuits if the mansion was damaged in any way during a siege for the alleged murderer. They said tear gas could damage the furniture.

  A few hours later, the sharp report of a pistol crack came from inside the mansion. The officer in charge gave the order to head in. Team members split up searching the entire home for Garon. Their guns were draw,n waiting for the killer at every turn.

  Instead, they found Garon upstairs, already dead.

  Past the red velvet ropes where simple tourists weren't able to go, he lay on Presley's black leather bedspread in a pool of blood. The bullet had made a gaping hole through the jumpsuit's emblazoned sequined sun and right through the kid's heart.

  Police later searched the motel where Garon had stayed. But no one ever found a single recording of a blues guitarist who was murdered on a hot August night in 1938, his twenty-nine songs a bible for twentieth-century music.

  ?

  It was a tattered November night and Nick was back at JoJo's bar sipping on a Dixie. He sat right under the framed black-and-white picture of Earl Snooks, the patchwork scar and gray eyes were more familiar now. They'd buried him under his real name back in Greenwood. There was even talk of reissuing some of the songs he cut in the forties, due to the press his reemergence attracted.

  A writer from Living Blues even came to JoJo's a few weeks ago to ask Nick and JoJo about Henry. Did they have any idea of his real identity? They both shook their heads and said he really didn't even seem like a musician. Nick fed him a few nice anecdotes and the guy left New Orleans pleased with the story.

  Nick didn't tell anyone except JoJo about the conversation he'd had with Henry in Algiers, about the night Robert Johnson was killed. It was like he was surrounded by this incredible wine of knowledge but couldn't offer a drink. Maybe that's the way Johnson would've wanted it. Forever the phantom poet of Mississippi, even his death a continuing debate.

  After the shooting at the train station, Nick spent weeks in Greenwood looking for Cracker and answering more questions for the Leflore County Sheriff's Department. Some of the deputies knew about Cracker but hadn't seen him. Nick stayed most nights on James's porch at the old Three Forks store, hoping he would return. He promised not to tell Henry's story, but he could tell Cracker's.

  Nick kept a vigil as the summer waned into a cool fall, the sun turning a bitter harvest orange over the cotton, as it had for decades. Their inky patterns quiet and brittle. Wind in the old woods, nothing but a whisper.

  But Cracker never returned. His old shack's doors and windows st
ayed open, allowing leaves to fall inside and mold. His walls, plastered with newspapers, turned brown and splotched, and the deep mildew made the entire shack smell like a decaying stump.

  Finally, Virginia came for Nick at his motel one night and begged him to come back to New Orleans. He finally started work again on the Guitar Slim book and the old patterns returned. JoJo laughed, Loretta cooked and sang, and that old deep melancholy feeling came back into the pit of his stomach.

  Even having Virginia cradled on his chest with the industrial windows wide open and the soft sounds of an urban night didn't help. He jogged every morning at the Riverwalk, found a battered gym to get the blood flowing in his tired shoulders, and picked up a class to teach in the fall.

  So there he was, feeling a nice buzz, his gloved hands wrapped around a beer, when Virginia walked in. She wore an old blue jean jacket and had her guitar and duffel bag with her. Nick turned back to his drink as she punched up "Walkin' After Midnight" in the jukebox.

  She sat down and Nick could smell her freshly shampooed hair. Honeysuckle. She touched her palm to Nick's face.

  "Time to head on back down that lonesome blues highway," she said. "I've stayed too long. Got a gig in Austin next week."

  "I never asked you to leave," Nick said, still looking down at his Dixie beer.

  She touched her fingers to his mouth and pursed her lips. Her arms wrapped around his neck, and she leaned forward and kissed him deeply.

  She smiled and kissed him again. Nick looked into her sky blue eyes and kissed her once on the forehead and then on a dimpled cheek. She pulled up her duffel bag and was gone.