Authors: Ace Atkins
“Kid’s workin’ our crank, ain’t he?”
“Looks that way.”
“Goddamn. Goddamn.”
The sky twisted into dark patterns forming a black-and-peach quilt over the lake. I couldn’t see the shore on the other side. Pontchartrain seemed to be an endless sea.
IT WAS NIGHT now and I drove for about an hour, down to the bar, then back home, where I called JoJo. I finally found him and Bronco at the Spotted Cat in the Marigny watching a guy I knew named Washboard Chaz and some twenty-year-old Italian kid who I’d heard could play Robert Johnson note for note. They were drinking Dixies and laughing with Chaz, his beaten washboard propped in his hands, when I walked into the dark little bar off Frenchman. The place was a narrow shot of bar with a small wood stage by the door and a grouping of mismatched chairs by a plate-glass window. Candles in glass bowls flickered from small tables and on top of the bar.
I bought a Dixie from the bartender, said hello to Chaz while exchanging places with him, and took a seat.
“Think he’d do nicely for a Wednesday night,” JoJo said.
“How’s the kid?”
“Note for note,” JoJo said.
“No shit?”
“No, sir,” he said. “And Eye-talian to boot. How ’bout that?”
Bronco clicked open his stainless Zippo and lit a Kool. He nodded at me, his cheekbones and red-black face something out of a history book. Men clearing the Delta with mules.
I walked outside where I’d left Annie next to a hitching post and let her drink the last few sips of my beer. I went back in and settled back in my seat so I could see where she was tied.
“You still gonna do a red-beans-and-rice on Monday?”
“Be a fool not to,” I said.
“When did that stop you?” JoJo said, his eyes watching mine. No grin forming on his face.
“Where’s the kid?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Left with some hoodlums in some kind of pimped-out truck.”
“How long?”
“Couple hours,” he said. “I ain’t got time.”
“Bronco?” I asked. He turned. “You enjoyin’ the sights?”
He turned to watch a young girl in a red silk dress make herself thin, sliding through the crowd at the bar. He nodded, smoke coming out his nose. “Mighty fine.”
I FOUND ALIAS alone at his mansion. The door was open, the rooms cavernous without any furniture. I followed the lights and ended up out on his back patio, where he lay reclined in a lounger staring up at the night sky. He had a forty by his side and his tan lug-soled boots crossed at the ankles. He looked over at me and then looked back up at the stars.
“What’s up?”
Annie trotted over to him and started licking his mouth.
“Damn, dog,” he said, kind of laughing like he was twelve.
I looked away. “I talked to Teddy,” I said.
“He say anything about givin’ me my damned dogs back?”
“He told me about you taking his credit cards last year.”
He didn’t turn, pushing Annie away with the back of his hand.
“No one likes to be lied to,” I said.
“What you talking about?” he said. “I never said shit about that.”
“So you admit taking his cards,” I said.
“We was just funnin’.”
“That’s called theft.”
“Man, get that pole out your ass,” he said. “Teddy spends more money on toilet paper.”
“Stand up,” I said.
He mumbled something.
“Stand up,” I repeated. The sound of my voice made Annie’s ears wilt. She walked away.
ALIAS slid his feet to the ground, stood in his sloppy Saints jersey, and groggily looked up at me. The black sky and stars seemed like a dome above our heads. The moon huge and split in half like a paper prop on a small stage.
“I know about Dahlia,” I said. “Don’t much blame you; she has plenty of heat.”
“That bitch? Man, you trippin’. What’s wrong with you, Nick?”
“You told Teddy I wanted to keep half the money I find.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’ve known Teddy for twelve years,” I said. “I’ve known you two weeks.”
I looked away from him at the hard concrete surrounding his pool. Stray boxes and packing tape littered on the ground. I could feel the summer beginning to move in, ready to harden, before that final heat of August when it leaves us.
The sudden thought made me think of family trips to the beach and the way everything faded.
“Go, then,” he said. “Ain’t got time for you.”
“I let you in,” I said. “JoJo and Loretta took you in like they did for me.”
“Go!” he yelled. “Get out of here.”
“You’ve lost it.”
“What?”
“My trust.”
“Fuck you, man. Fuck you and your trust and your goddamn ways.”
I turned with Annie, feeling her wet snout against my hand as I walked back through the empty white rooms.
In my rearview, I saw him watch me as I drove away, the red glow of my taillights cast over his face.
GHOSTS WAKE YOU SOMETIMES.
You seen your mamma at the end of your bed once, smokin’ a cigarette and cryin’. Tears made out of blood. You seen your kid friend, Touchee, lyin’ on his bloody stomach like when y’all was at the block party and he walked through glass. You close your eyes tight and don’t like to cut off the light in your closet. Even when it’s empty like tonight. All your clothes, CDs, DVDs, and stereos taken over to Teddy’s place. Man tellin’ you he got to cut back till that next record out. You lay awake tonight in your old kingdom, watching that bare bulb in your closet. Nothin’ but miles of empty shoeboxes.
You cross your arm over your eyes, hear the wind cut off the lake. Tomorrow you got to be out. Tomorrow you got to come up with more rhymes. Aggression. Repression. Depression.
Yeah, you know all those words. They seem to come right out of the air into your head. Almost seem like you got someone whisperin’ things you don’t know into your ear. You tell Teddy about that one time, right when he got you out of Calliope, and he say it ain’t nothin’ but inspiration.
You wonder where that been lately.
Eyes shut tight, you sleep. Seem like hours before you feel the hot breath in your ear and feel cold fingers wrap your face.
“Open your mouth, my l’il nigga, and you get cut,” man says.
You wide awake. You breathe hard through your nose. Sheets wet from sweatin’ all night without no AC.
“You betta calm the fuck down, boy,” the voice say. “You hear me? Ain’t no secrets. Ain’t nobody rip your ass off. You ain’t nothin’ but a liar. Lie to yourself. Lie in your mind.”
The hand ease off. You bite at the fingers but they gone like air.
You get tangled in the sheets and fight — seemin’ like with yourself — until you fall hard on the floor. You can feel. Not see. It’s 3. It’s 4. Ain’t no dawn in sight.
“Whay you at? Come on.” You swing into blindness, black night.
You still smell that funk-ass breath. You feel heat and sourness in your face.
The closet door still cracked to keep out those monsters and ghosts and shit like when you was a kid.
A flash of platinum. Your symbol. Your Superman
S
on the ground.
You kneel down in that long yellow sliver of closet light that cuts real narrow when it crosses your hands. You holdin’ the platinum.
“That’s mine, kid,” the voice say. “It too heavy for your neck.”
And into the cut of light, you see him.
You can’t breathe. You feel suspended in water, like when you in a pool and you don’t weigh nothin’. Your fingers and legs tingle. You got to hold yourself ’cause you feel you about to piss.
It’s the face from the bus. It’s God.
“Yeah, you right, my nigga,” he say. “Dio back.”
Your hand stretches from you, like you ain’t got no control, and offers that piece of jewelry to Dio, chain twisted up in your fingers. You just want him to go, take what’s his. He’s dead.
Sweat runs cold ’cross your neck.
“Malcolm kept pushin’ too,” Dio say. “Don’t be a hero.”
You close your eyes tight and open them to nothin’.
You hear footsteps runnin’ down that wide marble staircase. Hard feet.
You run to the top, look down, moon flowin’ like spilled milk onto your floors black and white and onto the bald head of a dead man.
Another man waitin’ for Dio.
He got a brown coat that seems to rot off him. Gray skin and yellow eyes.
You can’t move.
Your legs give out. Breath all tight, hands on the cold marble ground. You fight for that cool air, trying to find it. Needing that bubble.
When you get to your feet, they’re gone.
You wonder if you right in the head.
But that funk smell stays.
A KNOCK ON THE WAREHOUSE DOOR before 10
A.M
. better mean something important. People have their summer rituals and for me it was about 9, a big bowl of Cap’n Crunch, and then maybe a
Josie and the Pussycats
marathon or some reruns of the
Banana Splits
. I knew someone had to be kidding by breaking the sacred tradition. I yawned, punched the intercom at the street, and politely asked, “It’s cartoon time. What?”
“Old School, let me up.”
I held the button there for a moment, trying to think of something to say and not coming up with shit. I buzzed him up anyway and flicked on the bank of industrial switches lighting up the warehouse.
The power brought to life my stereo, caught on WWOZ, and some late-morning zydeco. Good ole Boozoo Chavis.
Annie padded her way into the kitchen and bit at my hand.
She yawned, thrusting out her long boxer legs and her butt in the air. I scratched her ears and tugged my way into some 501s and a white T.
ALIAS bounded into the warehouse, holding a box of Krispy Kreme donuts and a gallon of milk. “Come on,” he said. “Eat up. We got work to do.”
I started to make coffee, doubling the dose of chicory into the old blue speckled pot and laying it onto the burner.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “What’s that?”
“Had a visitor last night.”
I yawned.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“That man you chased down from JoJo’s bar.”
Big fat ceramic Christmas lights burned red, green, and blue over a little tin overhang that ran from my far wall over my stove and old GE refrigerator. The warehouse felt safe and solid.
“You never saw him.”
“Ain’t that many people with yellow eyes. Had that raggedy-ass brown coat too. Just like you said.”
The coffee began to hiss a little, still not perking. I reached under the sink and pulled out a bag of trash, tying it tight. I hooked Annie on her leash with one hand and grabbed the trash in the other, making my way down to the street.
I left the trash on my stoop and kept on walking barefoot down Julia Street.
ALIAS followed. Annie sniffed the ground.
I heard him still talking behind me.
The morning light was clean and bright. A light blue sky, small wispy clouds. I thought about heading down to the restaurant supply place with JoJo. And we needed a new neon sign. We needed that bad before we opened. Blue cursive letters.
“Ain’t you listenin’, jackass?”
I turned. Annie squatted on moss growing on some old bricks.
I stared at him.
He smiled a gold smile. I kept staring.
“He wasn’t alone, neither,” he said.
“Fred Flintstone was riding shotgun.”
“Hey, man. Fuck you.”
I shook my head. “I don’t have time for this.”
I walked Annie across the road, fishing into my jeans for a pack of cigarettes and lit one, walking slow back to the warehouse. Some asshole had smashed a blue bottle of vodka on the street and I wished I’d worn shoes.
He stood by my small blue door. His hands crossed over his chest while he leaned back into the old red brick. A red baseball hat with a Japanese character for an insignia. The streetcar clanged way down on St. Charles. I looked at my watch.
ALIAS’s eyes narrowed, his face falling into the shadow of the street. He would not look me in the eye.
“Come get your donuts,” I said. “I’ll take you back. How’d you get here anyway?”
Annie tugged at my leash and I let her run on through the door and up the steps.
“Took a cab,” he said. “You eat ’em, Travers.”
“Hey, you don’t have to be like that.”
“Do what you like.”
He turned away.
I smiled at the ground. “Who was it?”
He got maybe ten yards down the street and turned back, staring into the sun. His feet pigeon-toed. “What?”
“Who was with freak?”
His mouth grew crooked. “Does it matter?”
“Who?”
“Dio.”
“He’s dead, you know.”
He nodded, still squinting at me. “Yeah.”
“Go home, ALIAS,” I said.
JOJO AND FELIX MOVED small tables around the hardwood floor trying to arrange the place like it used to be. They were doing a pretty good job, because for a second when I walked in, I was a little startled that maybe the bar never closed at all. The front door was open, four iron ceiling fans working hard with a straight shot to the rear exit. JoJo had scrounged up some old juke posters from Magic Bus Records Shop and that company from Slidell had finally delivered the jukebox. She wasn’t as pretty as that old sixties classic that had melted in the fire, but she was thick and chrome and stocked with all the great old blues. Bobby Blue to Z. Z. Hill.
“I got this old cooler from that zydeco bar on Bourbon,” JoJo said, pointing to a long refrigerator with a Jax Beer logo on the side. He slid open a top door to show the galvanized steel interior loaded down with Dixies. Regulars, Blackened Voodoo, and the Crimson Ale. “Don’t be a dumb-ass like that man. Keep it simple. Buy from places shuttin’ down.”
“How much I owe you?” I asked.
“A million dollars,” JoJo said.
Felix dropped a mop into a sudsy bucket filled with hot water and Murphy’s Oil Soap and began to wash down the wooden plank floors. I missed the old scarred hardwoods but these were thick and long and would soon become as beaten as an Old West saloon.