by Ace Atkins
I parked near Poplar and walked through the projects asking anyone I saw if they knew a woman named Wordie. Didn’t feel uncomfortable or uneasy. Most people in the projects were a hell of a lot friendlier than those you’d meet in those yuppie cracker box apartments that lined Metairie. Shit, this was a community. I knew I’d find Wordie within ten minutes. People here actually knew each other. Had to if they wanted to survive. About five minutes later, a little old black woman with enormous – almost Jackie O-sized – sunglasses carrying a walker pointed to the next street over. Said Wordie had a Santy Claus on her porch.
I thanked her, popped a couple of fresh pieces of Bazooka in my mouth, and walked up the winding hill where yellow, red, and brown leaves scattered over me like ticker tape.
I soon saw the plastic Santa Claus, black and carrying a fat sack, standing by a corner unit. A crushed Coke can and stray headless Barbie doll lay at the foot of the Santa like discarded presents. I knocked on the worn wood of the screen door.
At the top of the hill, a group of teens lingered by a convenience store pay phone waiting to sell crack to white kids from the suburbs. At the base of the hill, two black children dressed in starched school uniforms walked by my Bronco carrying backpacks heavy laden with books.
Just as I was about to look in the window, the door swung open revealing one of the largest women I’d ever seen. Even larger than the woman at Wild Bill’s. This woman could kick her ass. Her arms were the size of my thighs. Her thighs were as large as my waist. She wore a heavy scowl upon her lips as if she’d been waiting for me to show up all day so she could vent all her problems upon me.
“Hello, ma’am.”
She had on a tight black muscle T-shirt, black biker shorts, and pink Jelly shoes. Her hair had been woven and dyed into a mismatched pattern of yellow and red braids. I wanted to ask her where in the hell she got size-forty biker pants.
I didn’t. I was scared.
“You Wordie?”
“Maybe. Who the fuck is you?”
“A friend of Clyde’s.”
She crossed her arms over her massive breasts, the left one adorned with a tattoo of a red rose.
“His sister’s trying to find him.”
“Listen, I got to go,” she said, trying to close the door. I could hear the chatter of Oprah Winfrey inside.
“What’s Oprah talkin’ about today?”
Wordie gave me a frown. “Oh, I don’t know. Some woman givin’ advice to women whose got husbands that peckers don’t work.”
“You married?”
“Hell no,” she said, giving a little laugh, then catching herself and then trying to close the door again.
“His sister Loretta sent me.”
Wordie put her hands on her massive hips and said, “You know Loretta Jackson?”
“She’s family.”
“Hmm.”
“She’s like family.”
“Really?”
I nodded.
“C’mon in,” she said, leaving the wood door to batter the frame. I followed her inside to Oprah and the smell of smoked meat and greens.
The greens were great. Firm and salty, but with that smoky flavor that tasted like home and JoJo’s and everything I valued. I liked Wordie, and for the moment Wordie seemed to like me. Well, she acted like she liked me in between commercials and Oprah – which did truly feature stories about men whose peckers didn’t work – as she showed me old brown vinyl picture albums containing clippings on Clyde James that dated back to 1964 and his work in gospel.
“Do you think I could borrow this sometime?” I asked. “Would love to make copies of these articles.”
She looked at me, her face pinched tight, and then back at the television.
I turned back to the newspaper clippings that were yellowed and worn thin from constant reading. I flipped to a page with an article whose headline read WIFE OF NEGRO MUSICIAN EXECUTED. I slowly read the story, the page smelling like mothballs and silverfish:
MEMPHIS – Police discovered the bodies of two Negroes early Sunday morning in what detectives are calling an apparent execution.
The victims have been identified as Mary James, 29, and Eddie Porter, 33. James is the wife of Clyde James, a local singer. Porter played organ in James’ band, said Bobby Lee Cook, owner Bluff City Records.
According to Detective Ray Jenkins, Memphis Police Department, the bodies were found at the James’ home, 433 Rosewood Ave. about 10 a.m. Both had suffered gunshot wounds to the back of the head.
Jenkins would not say if the department had any suspects. No arrests have been made.
Cook said Clyde James has reached national success with a recent chart topper called “Lonely Street.” He said James was devastated when he learned of the death of his wife and friend. Cook said the singer is with family and members of the First Zion Church.
“Eddie Porter was one of the finest musicians I’ve ever known and will be greatly missed by everyone in the Memphis’s recording industry,” Cook said.
As a police siren wailed in the distance, I took a deep breath and looked at the mildewed walls of Wordie’s apartment. Behind her couch, there was a mosaic of album covers and framed publicity stills of Clyde James. News from Billboard and press releases from Bluff City. Clyde James with a palm pressed against his thoughtful face and Clyde James wearing a smile of confidence that betrayed the dark depression.
I felt Wordie walk behind me. I could hear her breathing in the worn room and knew she wasn’t staring at me but at her fallen hero. Sunlight broke into the room and covered my face with momentary warmth.
“I tried to get him help, mister. I tried.”
“He’s alive.”
She didn’t answer.
I didn’t turn to face her, afraid that seeing my eyes would only make her skittish.
“I need to find him,” I said.
“He doesn’t want help,” she said. “People always take him away from me. But he come back. He always come back. This is where he need to be. I know what Clyde needs. He needs love. That’s it.”
A new show blared from the television, this one about cheating wives and double-crossing and there was a lot of whoops and hollering. She picked up my bowl of greens and walked back to the kitchen.
She only had an old sofa covered in a faded flowered bedspread, one dinette set chair, and a coffee table made of concrete blocks and a piece of warped wood. In the center sat a milk crate that overflowed with envelopes. Must’ve been dozens of them. Most were marked URGENT in huge red letters.
Wordie waddled back and stood in front of the television and sighed.
“I usually don’t do this,” I said. “But the most I can give you is a hundred bucks.”
She looked back over her shoulder, smoothed the biker pants over her thighs, and licked her lips.
“I’ve got to find him,” I said.
Her face became a mixture of relief and apprehension.
“You say you know Loretta?”
“You can call her if you like,” I said.
She looked at the worn linoleum floor and shook her head. A pot in the kitchen rang every few seconds with leaking rainwater.
I reached into my wallet and pulled out five twenties, pretty much my budget for the next few days after treating myself to the Peabody.
I mashed the twenties into her waiting hand. It was oddly small but calloused and warm.
“Lots of folks been lookin’ for him,” she said. “Lots of folks don’t need to find him.”
“Like who?”
“People who don’t want to do him no good,” she said, tucking the money between the thick roll of fat on her waist and the tight pants. “I tole him about the men comin’ to see me a few weeks back. And he say he’s gone and ain’t seen him ’round since. You can go look for yourself, but ain’t gonna do you no good. He took off.”
“Was he living in that homeless camp ’round Piggly Wiggly?”
She nodded.
“Where else wou
ld he go?”
“Don’t know.”
I nodded at Wordie. Thoughtfully. Deliberately. You can trust me.
I asked, “Who was looking for him?”
“Big old dudes with muscles,” she said. “I git ’em if they come back.”
“How you going to do that?”
“I ain’t stupid,” she said. “When they was leavin’ I wrote down their damned tag number.”
Twenty minutes later, after waiting for a call back to a pay phone at a Popeye’s on Poplar, I got an answer. The car was a black Lincoln registered to a casino in Tunica, Mississippi, called the Magnolia Grand.
Just thirty miles south on Highway 61.
Chapter 12
UNTIL A FEW YEARS AGO, Tunica was known as the poorest city in the poorest county in the poorest state in the whole nation. Jesse Jackson once called it the Ethiopia of America. Now it’s the third largest gambling mecca behind Las Vegas and Atlantic City. A damned county whose only hope for the future was catfish and cotton now has marquees with tiny white lights advertising loose slots and off-Broadway shows.
The late evening sky seemed lower and harder here than in Memphis, I noticed as I drove south along Highway 61 listening to the North Mississippi All-Stars jamming their version of K. C. Jones, a mighty man dead and gone. The horizon burned a bright orange, yellow, and blue leaving the tin-roofed farmhouses bleeding with rust and kudzu-covered trees, growing brown, in broken shadows.
Farm supply stores soon gave way to pawnshops and liquor stores blazing with neon. Old diners turned to outlet malls. It was as if George Bailey’s nightmare of Pottersville had descended on the Mississippi Delta.
I could feel the needle pricks of a fall chill through the open windows of my Bronco and smell the burning rows of dead leaves outside battered trailers and prefab homes. Agriplanes sat parked outside small hangars while rusted Oldsmobiles and Buicks stood restless outside tired motels.
The horizon soon turned an inky purple and then black. I saw lights flash far from the highway in an image that reminded me of that huge UFO from Close Encounters. About a mile from the highway, purple, green, blue, and pink neon blinked and shined in the darkness.
I turned the truck onto a wide, circular drive, lit with staggered wrought-iron street lamps and drove toward a four-story monstrosity that ran the length of three football fields. Intermittent white lights wrapped this faux antebellum building like a Christmas package. A fountain the size of a decent bass pond stood before the casino with about a dozen water jets zapping ten feet into the air.
Magnolia Grand. When I went back to change my clothes at the Peabody, a woman at the desk told me the place boasted about six hundred rooms, eight restaurants, a championship golf course, a skeet shooting center, and a casino with a thousand slots. She said it was “Vegas quality.” As if Vegas was a measurement of quality.
The Grand looked like a carnival’s midway crossed with a convention center. About the silliest thing about these places was that Mississippi law said all casinos had to be on water. So in Tunica, developers dug a channel from the Mississippi River for each casino to have its own private moat.
Man, I hated these places. They were the opposite of everything I loved about the Delta. Dozens of casinos had been built on the same rich, brown earth worked by sharecroppers for generations. Hell, Robert Johnson grew up about ten miles away. But not much had changed. The people of this county were now as shackled to the casinos as generations before them had been to the land.
I continued driving past a couple of hotels, midget versions of the main casino, and into a large parking lot filled with pickup trucks and weathered sedans. The crickets and cicadas whooped it up in the endless cotton fields while a maroon harvest moon hung low over a clearing of mimosa trees.
Amid some lite crappy jazz that played from hidden speakers, I walked over the drawbridge and into the casino. I strolled over green carpet embroidered with gold magnolia leaves as the sound of falling coins and laughing women echoed around me.
Revolving gold signs read CARIBBEAN-STYLE POKER and SUPER BLACK-JACK.
I found a bar near the blackjack tables, sat down, and ordered a Dixie and a hamburger. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, except for the bit of greens, and my stomach had been talking to me since the Tennessee border. Wasn’t a bad place to sit and get familiar with the surroundings. Maybe rest a little before I tried to find who ran security. Ask him a few questions about why the casino would be looking for a homeless man who didn’t have a penny to gamble.
I watched an old black man in a flannel shirt, a dangling cigarette in hand, punch a plastic cup of quarters into a slot as if a week’s worth of groceries was a spin away. His ancient work boots were coated in blackened Mississippi mud.
The bartender was a wiry white woman with long cherry-red nails and tight permed hair. She was probably in her early forties but had the look like she’d been rode hard and put up wet plenty of nights.
I thanked her for the Dixie and listened to the casino action – a steady beat of applause and crestfallen groans from the roulette wheel, a pinging Casio keyboard-type music beeping from the slots. As I prayed for the hamburger and studied a new gash on the toe of my boot, a woman with an unnaturally large chest and a helmet of blond hair sat beside me.
She gave me one of those smiles when the tongue gets caught between the upper and lower teeth. Her body wasn’t bad, but her breasts were so obviously aftermarket that they almost made me laugh.
The woman tosseled her hair and sighed. Actually tosseled it. Amazing. Maybe she’d do the trick with the tongue over the teeth again.
“What’s your name, partner?” she asked, making her eyes go soft.
“Tom Mix.”
“Let me guess: You’re not here to play poker.”
I kept smiling and watched the woman, who had a hard time keeping a steady gaze as she rocked back and forth. Her breath smelled like a whiskey barrel.
“What do you play?” she asked.
“Mousetrap,” I said. “I’m a damned fine Mousetrap player. But I still have a hard time with that spindly bucket thing, always falls down when you least expect it.”
She rolled her eyes and cackled without a clue.
“So, Tom,” she said, running her hands over the worn knees of my 501s. “You need a date for the night?”
She had on some kind of lacey white bra, more than the Fruit of the Loom type. This contraption had a thick front buckle and little blue flowers on the cups. I coughed and looked away.
“Actually here on business,” I said.
“What room are you in?” she asked.
“Don’t have a room.”
“You have a car?” she said.
Ahh. Ain’t ego a funny thing? I thought I was so damned handsome in my black T-shirt and faded jeans that she couldn’t resist. I wondered how much she cost.
“Nope,” I said. “Just a moped. And it doesn’t even have a seat.”
She snorted out her nose. No laugh. She turned her head away and flipped back her hair. I looked at the worn bartender, shrugged, and then back at the blonde. She was smooth and pressed but in another five years she’d be just as hard, battered, and tired.
I pulled her hand from my knee as the bartender plunked down a soggy-looking hamburger and cold fries. The meat looked almost like cardboard. I glanced over at the blonde and gave her a wink.
“Want some fries?” I asked, shoving a couple into my mouth.
“Go fuck yourself,” she said and almost fell as she got off the barstool.
“Be cheaper,” I muttered as I hit the sweet spot on the Heinz bottle.
About ten seconds later, the bartender wandered over and settled her elbows down on the table. She watched the woman walk away with a gentle smile on her lips. The pinging from the slots grew louder in my ears.
“Who runs security around here?” I asked.
“You lookin’ for work?” she asked in a hard, north Mississippi accent.
“Maybe,�
� I said.
“Black fella named Humes,” she said. “Office is in the lobby.”
Abby’s ride lasted for about an hour, bumping and jostling her all over the oil-soaked rubber mats in the trunk. When the car finally stopped, a man stuck a pillowcase over her head and stabbed a gun into her ribs. She saw patterns of lights and shapes through the cloth as the man moved his calloused hands over her butt and breasts before throwing her onto some cold concrete and slamming the door.
She tore the pillowcase from her head and began beating on the door and screaming for help. She must’ve beaten on that door for a half hour before she dropped to the ground, wiped her face with her hands, and looked around.
The room was about ten by ten and filled with stacks of dusty blackjack tables and slot machines. A craps table and old roulette wheel sat by the door. Concrete walls and ceiling. She couldn’t hear a sound outside and it was hot as hell. No air-conditioning. Almost like a sauna, she thought, as she moved the hair from her face and tucked it behind her ears.
She felt the scrapes on her elbows and spit out a trail of blood from her broken lip onto the dirty floor. She thought about Ellie and that long stretch of woods behind the gas station while she hugged her knees to her chest and began to cry. She could imagine the men grabbing Ellie and shoving her into the molded leaves. They raped her. She could see them straddling Ellie and choking her. Abby tried to block the thoughts from her mind, knowing it was her fault whatever happened to Ellie.
She heard footsteps approach and closed her eyes as tight as she could. She was away from this place. She was back in Oxford and her parents were alive and Maggie was there.
A bolt slid back with a hard clack.
Two men entered the room. One was a thin white guy about her age with slick black hair and the other was an old black man with gray hair. Both carried guns and wore blue blazers and red ties. Radios squawked on their hips.