Dirty South

2

Within the first twenty-four hours I’d known Teddy Paris, he’d stolen my Jeep, bruised my ribs in the ensuing fight, almost gotten me cut from the Saints, and become one of the best friends I’d ever known. I often wondered why he found it so funny to break into my Wrangler while we were at training camp that summer and disappear in it with a few buddies to blow their rookie paychecks on stereo equipment at a mall in Metairie.

I thought he was making a point because I was white and from Alabama and he hadn’t known I’d lived in New Orleans since I was eighteen. But I later learned, while we bonded over our mutual love for Johnnie Taylor ballads and a nice shot I’d given him in the jaw, that Teddy chose me, out of the dozens of players, because he thought I could take a joke.

Teddy and I had been friends even after our short-lived careers in the NFL ended, mine trailing into getting a doctorate and becoming a roots music field researcher, and his into a multimillion-dollar rap music partnership with his brother, Malcolm. His professional path came in a dream – he’ll tell you complete with a sound track – after opening five failed nightclubs and a pet photography studio.

Teddy was always into something.

I’d been back from the Delta for only two weeks and already missed JoJo, Loretta, and a woman I’d been seeing for the last few months in Oxford. It was early on Friday, about 10 A.M., and I’d just turned in my students’ grades for spring semester and was looking forward to heading back to Mississippi.

The day was crisp and blue with a warm white sun peeking through a few thin clouds. The air seemed clean, even for New Orleans, tinged with the tangy brackish smell of the Mississippi. Muddy Waters’s Folk Singer album with Willie Dixon slapping and plunking his big stand-up bass in stripped-down perfection played on an old cassette player.

I needed to finish up this job and pack, I thought as I pulled out the old water pump from my Bronco. I inspected its rusted blades and wiped the blackened oil and grime from my hands onto my jeans and prized Evel Knievel T-shirt. I thought about Maggie and her farm. And her legs and smile.

Polk Salad Annie trotted by, sniffed my leg, and then rummaged for a bone she’d hidden in a pile of old milk crates that held my CDs and field tapes. She chomped the bone, found a nice spot on an old pillow she’d grown to love, and then started to sniff the air.

My five-dollar dog.

I was already planning out the day’s drive when Teddy walked through the gaping mouth of my garage and called my name. I knew the voice and told him to hold on.

I heard the familiar click of his Stacey Adams shoes nearing on the concrete floor. “My woman so mean she shot me in the ass and run off with my dog,” Teddy sang, his voice booming in the small cavern. “Why you listen to that sad ole music?”

“The blues ain’t nothing but a botheration on your mind,” I said, speaking low.

“No wonder it makes me depressed.”

“What? You want me to ‘Shake That Ass’?” I asked, naming one of his New Orleans competitor’s top-ten hits. Asses, champagne, and platinum usually dominated his preferred style of music. Dirty South rap. I shook my butt a little while continuing to work under the hood of the truck before turning back around.

“Travers, you got to remember, I seen you dance,” Teddy said, straightening out the folds in his tent-sized black double-breasted suit. Teddy was 300 pounds plus with a deep insulated voice from all the fat around his neck. His words seemed to come from inside a well. “Ain’t pretty.”

As I leaned back into my thirty-year-old truck, I noticed his newest electric blue Bentley parked outside. Chrome rims shining like mirrors into the sun. I’d heard the inside was lined with blue rabbit fur. Real rabbits died for that.

One of those new Hummer SUVs painted gold with black trim pulled in behind the Bentley, shaking with electronic bass. Teddy’s brother, Malcolm, walked across Julia.

I grunted as I fit a pipe plug into the heater hose outlet of the new water pump. Malcolm wandered into the garage, decked out in hard dark denim, a tight stocking cap on his head and a platinum cross ticking across his chest. “What up?”

“Hey, brother,” I said, reaching back from the hood and giving him the pound. I liked Malcolm. Always streetwise and hard. Sometimes in and out of trouble but always himself.

“Came by to see if you want to have lunch at Commander’s,” Teddy said.

“I’d settle for fried chicken and greens at Dunbar’s.”

“Travers, you are the blackest white man I know.”

I cleaned my hands with a gasoline-soaked rag and ran my fingers over the sleeves of his suit. “Nice.”

Malcolm laughed.

You would’ve thought I was a leper, the way Teddy yanked his arm away. “Get yo’ greasy-ass monkey hands off me.”

Malcolm crossed his arms across his ghetto denim, a scowl on his face. “Teddy don’t want no one messin’ with his pimpin’ clothes.”

“Nick-” Teddy began.

Annie ambled on over and made a slow growling sound. I scratched her antenna ears. She smelled his crotch and trotted away.

“What in the hell is that?” Teddy asked.

“A hint,” I said. “She says arf.”

“Look like a goddamn hyena to me.”

“So?” I asked, cleaning grease and oil off the timing cover. I reached for a putty knife resting on my battery. Teddy strolled in front of my workbench and admired my calendar featuring Miss March 1991. Annie found her bone.

Sweat ringed around Teddy’s neck and he kept patting his brow with a soiled handkerchief. Malcolm lit a cigarette from a pack of Newports and leaned against my brick wall. He kept his eyes on his brother and shook his head slowly. His beard was neatly trimmed, his thick meaty hands cupped over the cigarette as he watched us.

“Y’all never asked me to lunch before.”

“Sure we have,” Teddy said.

“When you wanted to borrow $3,000 to start your own line of hair-care products.”

“Macadamia-nut oil. It would have worked.”

“Well?” I scraped away at the old sealant around the timing cover. I studied the crap caked over the cover after decades of use. At least the truck was running even after I ran it into a north Mississippi ditch last fall.

“You ever listen to the CDs I send you?” Teddy asked.

“Nope.”

“You know ALIAS, right? You ain’t that livin’ in 1957 that you ain’t seen him. BET, MTV, cover of XXL.”

“I don’t watch TV except cartoons. But, yeah, I know ALIAS. So what?”

“He got caught in some shit,” Teddy said. His voice shook and he wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. “Need some help.”

“I can’t rap,” I said. “But I can break-dance a little.”

“Not that kind of help,” Teddy said.

“Aw, man. Kind of wanted some of those Hammer pants. Need a long crotch.”

“Kind of help you give to them blues players,” he said, ignoring me. “Them jobs you do that JoJo always talkin’ ’bout.”

“Royalty recovery?”

Malcolm spoke up in a cloud of smoke: “Finding people.”

I began to remove the screws from the old pump and looked at Malcolm. I still remembered when he was a nappy-haired kid who shagged balls at training camp for our kickers. Now he was a hardened man. I noticed a bulge in the right side of his denim coat.

“Who do you need found?”

“A man who conned my boy out of 500 grand,” Teddy said. “Goddamn, it’s hot in here.”

“Sorry, man,” I said. “Sounds like you need more help than me.”

“You the best I got.”

“We’ll talk.”

“There ain’t time.”

“Why?”

Malcolm looked at his brother and put a hand on his shoulder before walking back to his Hummer with an exaggerated limp.

“Some Angola-hard punk gave me twenty-four, brother,” Teddy said. “I only got twenty-one hours of my life left.”