Dirty South

29

You don’t like to get fucked wit’. But the ole man and Nick did it to you every damned day. They get you up when it’s still dark and make you shovel shit out of some nasty-ass dirt yard – light comin’ from some little lantern – where some goats have crapped or somethin’. Nick make you jog with him before breakfast, right when the sun runnin’ down some dirt road and you can’t even keep up a mile. But on that sixth day, man, you keep up. You run strong by his side. He tell you that you fast and you like that when you eatin’ bacon and sweet-potato pancakes on that ole porch and that old woman warm you with a hand on your back.

You like the taste of the pancakes. The way the hot syrup is warm and flows right through them.

When you there for ten days, you ask him about that dream you been havin’ since you was a kid, to play pro. Nick say that you got to get back in school and the ole man ask how long you been out.

You tell him a few years.

That ole man shake his head and walk back into the red barn where he’s tearin’ out planks of wood that’s rotten with termites and making a heap to burn. He like tearin’ out all that old shit and puttin’ something right back to replace it. Good wood, he say, make it strong.

Sometimes y’all ride into Clarksdale inside JoJo’s old truck. That ride old as hell, smell like rust and funk, and JoJo make you listen to some station out of Memphis about Soul Classics and he think there’s something wrong with you ’cause you don’t know some singer named Al Green.

That’s when church start. And man, that church shit don’t let up. Wednesday too. Even Nick go to this country-ass thing by the highway where some fat-belly preacher start talkin’ for about four hours while your stomach gets all rumblin’ and you lookin’ at the bulletin. Bored as hell. Ain’t nothin’ goin’ on in town. Even the girls – and they do know you – ain’t that ripe.

They wear these lace gloves and hats and can’t look you in the eye when y’all talkin’ at the picnic after the service.

“I seen you on TV,” one of them says. But she smell like onions or some shit and has a little black mustache over her lip. Maybe she be all right she shave that thing off.

Nick take you down to some movies at some drive-ins a few nights those first two weeks. Some nights y’all roll into the Sonic, where y’all get burgers, chicken fingers, and Cherry Cokes.

Y’all keep cleanin’ up JoJo’s world. You run with Nick.

Sometimes he talk to you. Sometimes he just stare outside at all the people movin’ by him.

That makes you wonder ’bout him.

Something just ain’t settin’ right in his head.

“You all right, man?”

He look at you like you the one who’s crazy.

“Just tryin’ to figure out some thoughts.”