“Na, man,” he said. “Can you see it? Stacks and stacks of records as high as you is tall down in Elysian Fields, that ole record smell comin’ in your clothes and down into you lungs and you can hear people walkin’ upstairs in the store. Man, I didn’t want to have no part of it. Here I was makin’ all that money, wearin’ the Armani and drivin’ a Mercedes and tryin’ to get my family out of this.”
He waved his hand in the little cemetery. “You know? But all my brother wants to do is rescue sounds. He just want to save the soul of musicians who ain’t really never made it. A dead man’s voice. Maybe some weird-ass beat or guitar.”
“Come on,” Trey said, hand on Teddy’s back. “Let’s go. You smokin’ too much hyrdro.”
“No,” he said. “Make me see it all. I want to be back down in that little record shop and feel that energy that young nigga felt. Man, he’d carry them ole records in crates and boxes all over this city. All he wanted from me was to go down in that basement with him. Rescue records. Find beats.”
“Teddy, why don’t I get you a girl?”
Teddy’s red eyes turned on him and he spit on the ground. “Fuck that shit, man. I don’t go for that.”
“Fine,” Trey said. “I’m leavin’.”
“Those L.A. folks don’t want nothin’ from Nint’ Ward but-”
“Dio.”
“You right on that.”
Trey pulled out two discs from his suit pocket and handed them to Teddy. “Are we cool, dog?”
Teddy smiled.
“Make that deal,” Trey said. “We need to keep your brother’s dream alive.”
32
The next day, I could smell the dust boiling under the tires of JoJo’s tired white F-150 while we followed a long row of split-rail fence we’d built in the last five days. ALIAS sat in the back of the truck with Polk Salad Annie and sipped on a Coke as we rounded a turn and headed into some flat, strip-logged acres JoJo wanted to turn into some pastureland for his cows. I pushed the bill of my Tulane hat from my eyes and looked into the rearview at ALIAS. JoJo stopped abruptly, making me reach out and hold on to the cracked dash of his truck.
He bounded out of the truck and opened the stainless-steel toolbox, pulling out a Glock 9mm and an old. 38 he used to keep on him when he closed up the bar. My Glock was tucked under the driver’s seat in the Ghost. I wanted no part of this.
The dust gathered in the afternoon haze and I squinted into the light. I needed to get on the road to New Orleans but still had a favor to ask.
JoJo laid out some old blue medicine bottles on the side of a dirt mound and handed the kid his gun. “You show me how to shoot, then,” JoJo said. “You want to talk all tough, then back it up.”
The argument had started at Abe’s BBQ right off Highway 61 after we’d worked for three hours on a section of split-rail fences. The kid said he’d wanted the Glock back that JoJo had confiscated while I was over in Oxford. I hadn’t known ALIAS had brought a gun. I didn’t even know ALIAS had a gun. But I wasn’t surprised.
I tried to cool them down but then backed off when JoJo got a little hot. We didn’t even have time to eat the damned barbecue we bought. Instead, we rode in silence to get this thing finished. That was tough because Abe’s made very good barbecue.
“You first,” ALIAS said, taking off his basketball jersey and tucking it into the pocket of his jeans.
JoJo pulled the. 38 from his waistband, leveled it with one hand in a side stance, and cracked open three bottles in a row. He smiled and handed me the gun. The barrel felt hot and a slight haze of gunpowder hung biting in the air.
“Forget it,” ALIAS said, leaning back into the truck. “Let’s go, man. I need to get back to my crib. This place is a joke.”
I started to say something but JoJo held up a hand.
The kid pushed himself away from the car, ejected the magazine from the Glock, thumbing through the rounds. He leveled the gun at the targets.
In a one-two pop succession, he cracked open the shards of JoJo’s run, breaking some tiny blue pieces of glass into slivers. The shells from his 9mm bullets popped out in brassy confetti down at his feet. He missed only one of the six.
I smiled.
ALIAS dropped the gun at his side.
JoJo looked at me. “Good shot. But that don’t give him an even head.”
He pulled the gun from ALIAS’s hand and tossed it back in the truck. He grabbed the. 38 and arranged six more bottles in the same order as before.
“Make you a deal, kid,” he said.
ALIAS looked at him.
“You get more than me and you can keep the gun,” JoJo said.
“So?” he said. “I’ll keep it anyway.”
JoJo held up his hand. “But if I take them all out, then you have to follow through with something.”
ALIAS looked up at JoJo.
“You got to take some readin’ lessons with Loretta.”
“Who said I can’t read?”
“Them things you mouthin’ off the cereal boxes don’t make no sense,” he said. “That rappin’ ain’t gonna last long.”
“I got money.”
“We got a deal?”
ALIAS flashed a golden smile. “Whatever you say, old man.”
JoJo didn’t seem to like those final words as he took aim about five feet back from where ALIAS stood and blasted every single bottle into shards as if he’d tapped them with the electric finger of Zeus. JoJo smiled.
“Shit, can we eat lunch now?” I asked. “A growing boy needs that barbecue.”
“You that hungry, kid?” JoJo asked ALIAS.
“I was talking about me,” I said.
“When you headed back to New Orleans?” JoJo asked, his face covered in sweat.
“After I say good-bye to Loretta.”
JoJo nodded. “What about him?”
I looked over at ALIAS, who stood with his fists on his hips, grinning big and gold as he leapt back into the truck bed. Annie followed.
“You’re gonna like Clarksdale,” I said.
“Ah, man,” ALIAS said.
“JoJo, I’ll be back in a week,” I said.
JoJo eyed the boy. The sun was yellow and full. High beams on the back of our necks and forearms. Cicadas screamed their high-pitched sounds all around us in the distance of trees just starting to fully leaf.
“That okay with you, kid?” JoJo asked.
He shrugged.
“Could use some help painting the barn.”
“Shit, man.” ALIAS spoke up. “I ain’t no slave.”
JoJo walked over to the pile of broken glass and examined a sliver ALIAS had blown apart with his gun. The light refracted hard in my eyes. Multicolor prisms twisting and playing on the earth.
We piled into the truck.
In the grind of the truck’s engine and crunching of gravel and dirt under his old tires, JoJo asked: “Why do I think you’ve just brought me some kind of riddle I can’t figure out?”
33
When I drove back to New Orleans, I checked my messages. I’d received six since I’d been away, four from credit card companies, one from an old student working on her thesis, and one from Jay Medeaux. I didn’t even stop to unpack, only poured out a little Dog Chow for Annie and jumped right back into my truck and headed up Canal and down Basin to the Ninth Ward. Teddy and I needed to talk.
When I arrived at the studio, I felt I’d entered some type of medieval castle. A high chain-link fence surrounded the warehouse made of gold cinderblocks and a black tin roof. Saints colors. Young men in bandannas and stocking caps stood tough, their arms across their bodies, guns tucked into their fat belts. Wide-legged jeans down low. Some smoked cigarettes. None talked. They wore sunglasses, Secret Service-style, and held on to radios. Muscled and hard, they watched me as I parked the truck, my Creedence still playing loud, and walked up to the front of the building. They didn’t seem to appreciate John Fogerty the way I did.
A kid I didn’t recognize squashed a cigarette under his foot. He wore a thick platinum rope around his neck with the Ninth Ward “9W” symbol. The air was so hot outside it felt like radiation off the asphalt.