Dirty South

41

Been a day. Been a year. You ain’t sure. All you know is that you left in some broke-ass town with two T-shirts to your name and an old man ridin’ you hard about work. You become just a slave to him. He’s about a hundred years old and old school as hell, the way he play records on this phonograph and sip beer out on his porch with his old lady. You like the old lady. She buy you some new clothes and cook you some food that’s ’bout the tastiest shit you ever put in your mouth. Chicken pie. Greens.

She respect you. She call you ALIAS.

Not the old man. That old man call you kid or Tavarius or just Stovall with a laugh. You ain’t nothin’ but a punk to him, puttin’ up fences till you have blisters, paintin’ some raggedy-ass barn till it get dark. Yesterday he take you fishin’ and think you a fool for not knowin’ how to work a hook.

He don’t know shit.

Tonight he brought you downtown and you think this gonna be all right. You down off another road called Martin Luther King. He tellin’ you all about when he was your age, like you give a shit, and all about whiskey and women – all the money that was floatin’ down these cracked asphalt streets.

But you can’t see it. Clarksdale had to be a broke-ass city from the start, man. The stores have sheets of wood in the windows, just like the places round Calliope, and boys work the corners with their rock just the same. The old man just shake his head at those fools and take you into this old brick building that look out onto the corner. A yellow light comin’ from the door like a candle glow in a skeleton’s mouth.

The corner is workin’ tonight. You can smell the funk sweat off the crackheads’ bodies and that lazy eye from the women in tight skirts. You don’t mess with that. You got your life.

Old man take you inside. The floor is concrete but worn smooth from dancin’ feet. There’s a pool table in the corner with some green felt burned by cigarettes and a small bar where they only serve beer and whiskey. Christmas lights – blue, green, and red – hang from the walls.

You order a forty and get one but the old man swipes it from you.

Two old men sit down with you. Just as old and black and gray as the man and you gettin’ tired. You walk over to the jukebox and check out the tunes while the old men start talkin’ about cotton and farming and some man named Sonny Boy.

Juke has some old-school joints. Run-D.M.C. like Malcolm used to play for you. Music made before you was born. Something called “It’s Like That and That’s the Way It Is.”

You kick it up. Even other punks noddin’ with the music, ’cept the old men.

In the dark bar, concrete cave over your head, you get the mean eye.

Just for playin’ music.

“Tavarius,” the old man call you. “This man is Bronco and his brother, Eddie Wilde. We went to school together here. We was you once.”

You look at his face and don’t see it, listenin’ to Run-D.M.C. and then flippin’ that song to “Rock Box.” You think about Malcolm and the way he died and you clench your jaw real hard. Sweat workin’ hard in this concrete room.

“You still got it?” JoJo ask.

The man he call Bronco, black with green eyes and a face like an Indian, show the back of his forearm and four scars runnin’ like tracks.

“What happen to you?” you ask.

“We had some women trouble.”

You smile, take a swig from JoJo’s beer. He don’t say nothin’, like he can’t see it.

“In fact,” Bronco say, “her name was T-R-O-U-B-L-E. And wadn’t worth the time.”

Eddie Wilde, thin and tall and in a black suit, shake his head. “Pussy make you do some dumb shit.”

“You right,” JoJo say. “Ever think about that? Everythin’ a man do is for pussy. His job, his clothes. Even drivin’ a silly-ass car. But he ain’t never believe it.”

“I remember when you wore your first suit to church,” Bronco say. “You just met Loretta, I do believe, and just about lose your mind.”

“Shit,” JoJo say, snatching the forty away from you and takin’ a sip.

Y’all sit like this a long time. You can hear the trucks and cars prowlin’ down MLK and hear the country thugs talkin’ shit outside. The air is so hot your T-shirt sticks to your skin and soon you start lookin’ at yourself in the mirror when JoJo send you to get beers. You look back at the old men and flex the muscles in your arm.

JoJo start playin’ blues on the jukebox and the old men come alive. Eddie Wilde dance with himself out on the smooth floor, waggin’ his old black-man finger. Bronco sing along with a song call “Feel Like Goin’ Home.”

You could swear that your old man’s eyes get heavy with that, his lips moving over the words. “Late in the evenin’,” he say. His mind forty years behind.

They all slammin’ beers and talkin’ shit when you see those young thugs walk into the joint. They little older than you, wearin’ black Ts with no sleeves and thick gold around their neck. They watch you from the end of the bar with their red eyes.

Under the table, you feel for the knife in your pocket.

While laughin’ at one of JoJo’s jokes, Bronco take the blade from you hand and starts cleanin’ his nails with it.

The country thugs come to you.

You kick the chair out. Ready to fight.

One of the boys smiles. “You right,” he say. “ALIAS, my man.”

Everybody slappin’ you on the back, pullin’ you away from the small corner where the old men drink.

They keep talkin’ but no one is listening.