Dirty South

31

Trey found Teddy sitting on the steps of his brother’s tomb smoking up a fat one and telling old stories about when they were kids. Trey wiped off the edge of the marble and sat down, just kind of listening, and trying to find out if the big man had finally lost it. Teddy took a hit off the joint and passed it over to Trey. He took a hit too and stared around him at the little cemetery wedged between a bright red shotgun shack and a tiny white church. He’d heard from someone that Fats Domino lived around here. Trey couldn’t name a single song that dude wrote but his father talked about the man like he was freakin’ God. Trey always wondered why a man who made so much money would still live in a shit-hole like the Ninth Ward. All those little shacks shoved together about ten feet apart. Crappy junk cars parked out front and a bunch of restless blacks just trying to make it day to day. Paycheck to paycheck.

“What’s up?” Teddy asked.

“You haven’t called me back.”

“Been busy.”

“I’m sorry, man.”

Teddy smoked down the joint and tucked a carton of Newports on the tomb. He wiped away the pigeon shit from the steps and stood. “I ever tell you about when Malcolm findin’ sound for his records?”

“No.”

“He was always lookin’ for that perfect cut,” Teddy said. “That right guitar or beat. He find this weird shit off these old records. He’d mix some album about science projects and shit and some Tito Puente. Malcolm could keep people movin’ with the beats and breaks.”

Trey nodded. He watched an old woman shuffling down the sidewalk in her curlers and nightgown. Her hand was on her hip, black skin slunking off of her like a Shar-Pei.

“Hey, Miss Davis,” Teddy yelled.

“Hey, Teddy. You seen Kenny?”

“No, ma’am.”

Teddy lowered his voice and kept talking, hands in his black pants pocket, Hawaiian shirt untucked and flowing over his belt. Sandals. Straw hat.

“I used to take him to this record store called Elysian Fields,” Teddy said. “They had some right shit upstairs, you know? Rap, blues. Even some country. But downstairs is where all good records went to die. You know? Real humbling lookin’ down in that basement among all those leaky pipes and shit and seeing thousands, no, man, I’m talkin’ millions, of records down for the count.”

Trey pulled the joint from Teddy’s fingers and smoked it down to the edge. “You want to go get drunk?”

“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.”