Dirty South

20

I examined a smudge of blue welts along my rib cage as I stepped out of the shower and got more pissed off. I hurt. I could smell the sour-milk body odor of that one thug and see flashes of the fire. I looked down at the remnants of my old book and rubbed Annie’s head, checking her over. She seemed fine. A little wired and confused, but fine.

I needed to call Teddy and tell him about Cash. He’d want to know about the deal for ALIAS, although he wouldn’t take it. Everything was about the kid. His money and his talents.

As I was about to pick up the phone, I kicked my toe at the copy of Catcher in the Rye that I’d found in my mother’s things when I was fifteen. It was scorched, the dust jacket destroyed, but some of the pages remained intact.

The book had been my only insight into a woman who’d killed herself the day she’d turned thirty-two.

She left me with my father, an alcoholic high-school football coach, who let our farm in Alabama become overgrown in high grass and filled with rotting fences and barns.

I brushed off the blackened edges of the book, flipped through the pages that weren’t fused. I checked the cover page, as I often did.

To Alice,

H.C.’s alter ego – accept this humble offering (condition, etc.) but I wasn’t sure if you had a hardbound copy.

For myself, the chief in “laughing man” is easy to identify with. It’s in Nine Stories (find included).

Hope you enjoy (if you haven’t already read it) and accept these from,

Your secret admirer

I stood for a few minutes trying to catch my breath and slipped into a pair of 501s, a King Biscuit Festival T from 1991, and my boots. I thought about the Chief and wondered who he’d been to my mother and sometimes got mad at him for not trying to save her.

I called Pinky’s Bar. Fred wasn’t there and I hung up.

The phone rang in my hand.

“What you got?” Teddy asked.

“Who’s Nae Nae?”

“Nick, man, I told you to stay out of Malcolm’s business.”

“Who is Nae Nae?”

“Bitch he got pregnant last year,” he said. “What she tellin’ you about Malcolm? Ain’t nothin’ but lies, man. Did you know she even set up a goddamned Web site about her havin’ Malcolm’s baby and him not giving her any money. Ain’t that some shit? A Web site, man. Somethin’ like malcolmsbaby-dot-com. Shit.”

“Cash said he wants to trade ALIAS for your life.”

“No way.”

“Where does Nae Nae live?”

“Nick,” he said. “Come on.”

Thirty minutes later, I pulled into a short driveway off Elysian Fields with Teddy and Polk Salad Annie by my side. Teddy was in his silk bathrobe and working cell phone calls trying to borrow the money Cash wanted, while Annie chewed on a bone I’d brought.

“Does that animal fart?” Teddy asked. “Or was that you, Nick?”

“She’s a lady.”

“So it was you?”

“It was the dog.”

Teddy snapped shut the cell phone and tucked it into his pocket. He wore a black fedora on his head and had an unlit cigar in his mouth. A dry wind kicked up some elephant ears and palm trees. Across the street, I heard a child screaming.

“You feelin’ better?” I asked.

“I ain’t leavin’ town,” he said.

“Cash just wants the kid.”

“Cash will do what he says,” he said. “That’s his way.”

“I know his way,” I said, feeling the bruise beginning to form beneath my eye. I opened the door from my truck and stepped out onto the gravel and into the darkness. “Don’t tell me about Cash’s way.”

Nae Nae’s house was painted pink with green trim and had children’s toys scattered across her weedy lot. I saw the strobelike flashes of a television coming from the inside. It was almost 2 A.M.

Teddy knocked on the door and relit his cigar.

Nothing.

He knocked some more.

A woman in her early twenties opened up with a kitchen knife in her hand. She wore an old Saints T-shirt of Ricky Williams and her long braids whipped across her face as she jabbed the knife near Teddy’s heart.

“What the fuck are you doin’ at this time of night?” she asked in a high-pitched whisper. “Don’t you know my baby still asleep in here? Your goddamned nephew and all you got to say is nothin’, standin’ there with your white hoodlum friends tryin’ to get me up to get yourself some of that ass that you always wantin’. Well, you ain’t gettin’ shit from this girl, and you tell that greasy-ass brother of yours that I ain’t satisfied for shit.”

She dropped the name of a local attorney who was known throughout the black neighborhoods as “Pitbull” Sammy. I’d seen the billboards and they were good.

“Hey, Nae Nae,” Teddy said, taking off his hat and moving the knife down at her side. “Good to see you.”

“What he want?” She pointed at me with the knife.

“He’s my driver,” Teddy said. “Listen, did Malcolm give you something this week?”

She pulled at the frayed bottom of her Saints T-shirt and tucked the knife into the elastic band of her panties. “Maybe.”

“Nae Nae?”

“You try and take that away,” she said, shaking her little fist at Teddy. “And I’ll kill you dead.”

“Get in line,” Teddy said. He slipped the hat back on his head and motioned for me to wait back at the truck with Annie. I did. Teddy knew what I wanted. I let him take the lead.

They talked for a good fifteen minutes in the yellow light of the porch. Bugs flitting about their heads. She eventually moved up under the bridge of Teddy’s arm and looked up at him, laughing. Teddy picked her up off her feet right before he left and swung her back down to the ground.

He’d turned a knife-wielding woman into a friend. I couldn’t believe how good Teddy could be.

“Son of a bitch,” I said, my voice sounding hollow from inside the truck. Annie moved, her head between the two front passenger seats with the bone stuck between her molars, curious about my musings.

Teddy slid back in and kept puffing on the cigar. I reached over him and rolled down the window.

Teddy rubbed the back of his neck, the seats cracking under his weight. “All right.”

“All right, what?”

“Let’s go see him.”

“You sure?”

“My brother givin’ away fifty-thousand-dollar cars on the week Cash is about to take my ass out,” Teddy said, gritting his teeth and slamming his fists into the dash. His breath came in jumpy spurts.

I started the truck and we drove north toward Lake Pontchartrain where Malcolm kept his house across the street from his brother.

We didn’t talk the whole way. Teddy just kind of leaned into the wind as we rode, puffing on his cigar and searching for answers in his mind.