Dirty South

45

Four Memories Of Malcolm played in my head. I didn’t like to remember him. I didn’t want to keep making myself sad and sick over something I had nothing to do with. But these were so personal and old that I was glad this was what my brain had selected. It was the kid, not the man, that stayed. Malcolm remained fifteen in my head: catching balls at the old Saints camp on Airways, hustling players for money the moment we’d step off the plane, smiling on his sixteenth birthday when his brother bought him a Mercedes, and watching him steal the dance floor the night we’d made the play-offs for the first time in years.

He was not hard or scarred. He was unbearded and smiling. He wasn’t left swinging in a tree like a tattered photo from a nineteenth-century lynching.

I drove into my garage and bounded up the steps to the second floor of the warehouse. I heard the laughing. Voices rebounded off my high ceilings and into the metal stairwell like an echoing funnel. I was soaked with water and grew cold on the landing.

I was too tired for another round with Cash or any other random freak who’d broken into my house. I crept back to my truck and grabbed my Glock.

When I returned to the landing, I slid back my metal door, ready to face whatever shit I’d been handed.

“Goddamn, boy,” a voice said. “Look like someone shit in your Cap’n Crunch.”

JoJo, Alias, and some friend of JoJo’s I’d met years ago sat at my kitchen table playing cards and feeding Annie leftovers from a Burger King bag. I slowly tucked the gun back into my belt.

“Made some coffee,” JoJo said. “Left it warmin’ on your stove. Why don’t you get some Community Coffee? This cheap shit taste like mud.”

I found a towel in my kitchen and dried my hair, offering my fist to Alias.

He gave me a pound but kept his gaze down at the table. I noticed he didn’t have any cards. He leaned his head into his hands.

I shook JoJo’s friend’s hand.

“You remember Bronco?” JoJo asked.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “We met a long time ago.”

“Back when Pinetop come back,” Bronco said. “It has been a while.”

Bronco was about JoJo’s age and black, but with green eyes and high cheekbones. A strong Native American face.

“Bronco rode down with me to help me get some things for Lo,” JoJo said. “You know we sold our place on Royal? Need to clean out by end of the month.”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

I took off my jean jacket and hung it on a peg by the door.

“You helpin’ out?” I asked Alias.

Alias shook his head, dug his sneaker heels into my floor, and pushed back his chair. He stomped off to the bathroom and slammed the door.

“Okay, no help from the kid.”

“Kid’s upset,” JoJo said.

“This I see.”

Bronco sipped on some coffee and rearranged the cards in his hand. “He forgot his head in my home.”

“And?”

“He took two hundred-dollar bills from my wallet.”

I blew out my breath. “Fantastic.”

“I gave him two days to come to Jesus Christ,” JoJo said. “But he wouldn’t. He’s back with you. I can’t do nothin’ with a kid that steal from me. You know my rule.”

I did. Any employee even suspected of stealing was gone. I knew a waitress who once pocketed maybe five bucks from a table. She was let go on the busiest of nights. It was a reputation that had only grown since JoJo opened the bar in ’65.

“Okay,” I said. “I got him now.”

“Me and Bronco goin’ down to Anchor to get dinner,” he said. “You wanna come?”

“Can I bring the kid?”

“Why not?” JoJo said. “He’s yours.”

I looked at the floor for a few moments before walking over to the old gas stove and pouring the coffee JoJo had made. It had been sitting on the burner a long time and seemed slow to pour from my old speckled pot.

“I got the bar,” I said.

JoJo nodded.

Bronco laid down a hand. Three queens and two tens.

JoJo said, “Shit.” He tossed his cards facedown into a pile of matchsticks on the table. Annie followed me from the kitchen.

“I’m gonna ride down to the bar and check things out.”

“Thought you said it was some high-dollar place now.”

“It is,” I said. “It was.”

JoJo looked at me strangely.

“Teddy gave it to me,” I said. “But it’s yours. It’s your bar.”

JoJo laughed. “Bronco, did I not say this was gonna happen?”

“Yes, sir, you did,” Bronco said, shuffling his cards into each hand and keeping his eyes trained on me and JoJo at the same time.

“You want to go check it out?” I said. “See what we can do.”

“You.”

“What?”

“What you can do.”

I nodded, lowered my head, and sipped the coffee.

“We’ll come by after we eat.”

“Fair deal.”

“Last fair deal gone down.”

“On this Gulfport island road,” I said, completing the Robert Johnson lyrics.

Alias walked back from the bathroom and took a seat at my sofa. “Y’all give me a phone. I’ll have my people come for me.”

“No,” I said.

“What you mean, ‘no’?”

“I mean, you’re comin’ with me.”

“Where?”

“Help with some things.”

“Fuck that, man,” Alias said, leaning forward, his Superman symbol dangling off his chest.

“Thanks,” I said. “Come on. Let’s go.”

The kid followed, shoulders slumped and hat down far into his eyes.

I said to the men: “We’ll see you at the bar.”

JoJo winked.

I grabbed a clean shirt, a toolbox, and a flashlight.

At the bottom of the landing and on into the garage,Alias turned to me and said, “Man, fuck all this. That man call me a thief.”

“Is that not true?”

“Shit, no.”

“That old man only deals in respect.”

“You got to give it to get it.”

I climbed in and started my truck. We backed out onto Julia Street.

“You know Trey Brill?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. He shook his head and made a wry smile.

“Don’t like him,” I said.

“He’s like this white dude that’s always tryin’ to be down and shit. Calls me dog and tries out words he’s heard on BET. He’s just some white boy on the lake tryin’ to call on me. Come on, man.”

“You know a friend of his named Christian Chase?”

Alias laughed. “Na, man. Don’t know no dudes named Christian.”

“Was Trey tight with Malcolm?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Malcolm and him rolled.”

“Where?”

“You know, clubs and shit.”

“He ever talk to you about money?”

“Na,” he said. “What’s up?”

“Just askin’.”

“You think he played me?”

“I think he played a lot of folks,” I said.

“Why he do that?” he said. “Boy gets a cut of Teddy’s money all the way.”

“People like that you can’t figure out,” I said. “Their souls are polluted.”

“What about you?” ALIAS said. “Teddy bought you a bar. Ain’t nobody in it for nothin’ else but themselves.”

“That’s a cold attitude.”

“Cold keeps your ass alive,” he said, sliding down deep into the seat, watching the gray buildings and neon weather the rain.