Authors: Ace Atkins
“You going to?”
“Can you see me in L.A.?”
“He may need you to,” he said. “This ain’t over. You understand?”
“I do.”
“When you side with a man, you keep on.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If not, you ain’t no better than Teddy.”
I looked out at the trucks lining up to hit the interstate. On the side of a trailer, someone had painted the image of three cowboys running cattle in a wide open prairie. The fall sun struck the painting as it turned and elevated up on the high road heading north.
“What made him sick in the mind?” JoJo asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You’re mad at yourself, but you always knew it,” he said.
I nodded. We ate the chicken-fried steak and drank coffee, talking more about ALIAS, two new hands JoJo had hired on the farm, the team I helped coach at JFK, and the possibility of getting Buddy Guy to play a small show during Jazzfest.
“Meet you back here in ten days,” he said. “Same time.”
I nodded.
“You quit teaching,” he said. “Didn’t you?”
“Tulane hired a Harvard professor to replace Randy,” I said. “He wanted me to expand upon theories of the blues and intercultural dimensions of the framework of the South.”
“That’s a lot of thought about blues.”
“Tell me about it,” I said. “I can do what I do on my own. And the bar is working right now.”
JoJo laughed. “Blues ain’t nothin’ but a botheration on your mind.”
“I’ve heard that.”
We shook hands and I watched his old truck stop before heading south to New Orleans. I thought I heard some pounding bass work and bounce coming from his cab. I tried to listen harder but JoJo pulled out onto the road and the music followed.
I shook my head.
I drove as far as Batesville. If I turned west, I’d head to Clarksdale, where Willie T. Dean wanted to meet. He said he had the most unbelievable lead on the best bluesman I never heard of. True Willie T. Always the next adventure.
I stopped at Highway 6 and instead headed east. The sun sank down behind me, swallowing the road and disappearing into the Delta.
I took a shortcut off 6 and wound down through a cypress swamp where men in small boats drank beer and fished with cane poles, the misty blue-and-yellow light filling the cab of my truck, where Annie slept on the rear seat. A bone tucked under her paw.
The fall sky was slate blue and gray when I arrived at the dented silver mailbox and turned along a long gravel road. The small white clapboard house waited, draped in big ceramic Christmas lights. Maggie’s truck parked sideways by a propane tank. Her cotton shirts, faded blue jeans, and her son’s jerseys riffled in the wind.
I parked alongside of her truck. The red, green, and yellow lights warming up the chill.
Annie and I followed a stone path as the door opened, an old screen door slamming shut from a rusted spring.
Maggie tucked her hands into her jeans and shrugged her shoulders in a tight black T-shirt. The summer tan still coloring her face and long arms. Wind sifting her black hair across her eyes.
She reached down a hand and pulled me up onto the porch.
The crossroads were far behind me.
Thank you: Master P, Joseph L. Porter, BET’s
106th and Park,
Dashiell Hammett, Lil Wayne, Polk Salad Annie, John D. MacDonald, Mystikal, Blind Willie’s,
XXL,
Louis Armstrong, the late, great Hummingbird Grill, and the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society.
Special thanks to Keith Wehmeier, Debbi Eisenstadt, Tim Green, Jere Hoar, Laura Lippman, Ted O’Brien, Keith Spera, Tom Piazza, Kline Sack, and Randy Wayne White.
Carolyn, thank you for always being a friend to Nick, understanding the cooler parts of Southern culture, and making sure everything is the best it can be. And a big thanks to RP in NYC for being a terrific friend and reader and for taking care of his people.
An extra special thank you to Jan Humber Robertson for saving a story from disaster.
None of this would be possible without Angela — my muse, fellow barbecue connoisseur, and best friend.
ACE ATKINS
, an Alabama native, earned nominations for the Pulitzer Prize and the Livingston Award for his work covering crime at the
Tampa Tribune
. He now teaches at the University of Mississippi and lives on a century-old farm outside Oxford with a half-dozen faithful mutts, including Elvis and Polk Salad Annie. And yes, Ace is his real name.
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