Dirty South

46

Dogsliked beer. I had just cracked opened a Dixie when Annie craned her neck in the slot between the driver and passenger seats and tried to get a good gulp. I gently pushed her into the backseat of my truck with the flat of my hand and pulled out a po’boy from Johnnie’s for Alias. He grabbed it and unwrapped the fried oyster sandwich, eating while we waited for the rain to quit pelting the Quarter. I soon learned that ole Polk Salad liked po’boys better than beer. I had to push her back about a dozen times.

The sky turned a deep bluish green and black and the little wooden signs under the crooked wrought-iron balconies swung in the wind. A stripper, bathed in red light, smoked a cigarette by an open door, her black silk robe open to show a pasty white belly.

“You mind if I start calling you Tavarius?”

“Na, that’s cool. But if you holla at me, you know, with my people, call me Alias.”

“You think that stripper would like a beer?”

“Man, I wouldn’t let that woman lick the rims on my Mercedes.”

“I see what you mean.” I flicked the switch for my windshield blades on my truck to clear the view. “Good God.”

We laughed for a while. Tavarius worked on his sandwich and I stared across the little street. I felt my breath change. “You want to tell me about what happened in Clarksdale?”

“Ain’t nothin’ to tell.”

“That’s not the way I heard it.”

“All y’all think I’m a thief.”

“You didn’t take JoJo’s money?”

“I got a mansion, two Mercedeses, a four-wheeler with chrome rims, and a Sea-Do. What do I need with an old man’s two bits?”

I finished the beer, the rain still hitting the hood, and tucked the trash back in the sack. I reached into my glove compartment and pulled out the Polaroid I’d found of Bloom and Dahlia at the piano bar.

“You recognize them?”

Tavarius took the picture from my hand, bit his lower lip, and started to nod. “Yeah. Yeah.”

“Her name is Dahlia.”

“That’s the man too,” he said. “That’s them. See that fucked-up ear?”

“Never can be too sure.”

“What you gonna do now?”

“I’m workin’ on some things,” I said. “Don’t want to scare anyone off yet.”

“What these jokers got to do with Teddy’s white boy?”

I shook my head. “That’s the question, man.”

He nodded. I grabbed my toolbox from the rear hatch and Alias and I ran for the doors. Annie stayed in the truck with the uneaten portion of my crawfish-and-Crystal po’boy.

In the little cove by the door, a curtain of rain fell close to my shoulder while I turned the key in the lock. The air in the bar popped inside from the vacuum.

Alias pulled at his shirt and loose water fell on his jeans and oversized jean jacket. “Shit.”

The bar smelled of fresh paint and Sheetrock. I held open the door while Alias wandered inside. I followed, hearing my feet under me sound hollow and unfamiliar. Looking around. Confused. Our voices echoing from the emptiness of the place. I could almost hear the bass and rhythm guitar shaking the old bar despite the black walls and velvet drapes.

Whoever had owned the place had covered up the brick walls and dropped a ceiling from the new rafters. The mahogany bar, seasoned over years with whiskey and gin, had been completely destroyed in the fire and replaced with something black and plastic looking. A lot of mirrors and chrome.

I set the toolbox on the floor, found a light switch, and handed Alias a crowbar.

“Ready.”

“For what?”

“C’mon,” I said. “Let’s tear it all out.”

“All of it?”

I looked the bar up and down.

“All of it.”

“Why you got a problem with it?”

“Because it makes me sick to think about this bar disgraced another second.”

“You got a problem with things ain’t to your likin’?”

“Yeah.”

“Hard way to be.”

I began to rip the Sheetrock away from the high walls. My shoulders ached and stretched and my breath labored. Rain fell outside, thunder cracked. About seven o’clock, I walked outside, where the rain had stopped and heat rose from the broken streets like a hundred phantoms. A greenish-yellow light leaked down from the Mississippi and all the air seemed darkly blue as if I wore tinted glasses.

The air smelled of ozone, cooked fish, and boiling meat from Lucky Dog carts ready to start the night. Friday night in the Quarter was about to begin. I checked on Annie as Alias carried out some of our mess to a Dumpster behind the bar.

I watched the street for JoJo.

I drank a warm beer while Annie did her business on some discarded handbills from the House of Blues and gave Alias five bucks to run down to the corner store to grab a Gatorade.

JoJo didn’t come.

I was sitting on the stoop with Annie, the Manhattan sign broken at my feet, when Felix walked by. My friend and the greatest bartender in the Quarter ambled up to the steps and peered into the cave where I worked. “What’s up, Nick?”

His bald head shone like a black bowling ball in the hard outside light.

He sniffed inside, wearing his white tuxedo shirt and tie, the Indian headdress in his hand. I got up, rubbed my blisters on my jeans, and followed.

Felix walked in the bar and looked down at the floors covered in broken Sheetrock. He ran his fingers over the old brick that had been blackened in the fire. “Y’all can’t get this stuff off.”

I nodded.

“We ain’t gonna get arrested, are we?” Felix asked, suddenly pulling his hand back as if the walls were hot. “JoJo sold this place.”

“I got it back.”

He nodded with understanding and stood in the back of the room. “Too bad ole Rolande ain’t around. He could wire the stage back up in about two seconds.”

His words hung in the air, the thought of old Rolande and his scrunched Jack Daniel’s hat. I kicked some of the Sheetrock into a pile and added my completed Dixie.

“I need some music in here while I work.”

“I seen a jukebox for sale over at some place on Esplanade. Look like that ole one we had, only it loaded with stuff I never heard.”

“I can replace the music.”

Felix stood framed by the doorway, a wide swath of light from outside against his head. He stared up at the ceiling. “JoJo had a lot of friends might want to help.”

“He’s in New Orleans,” I said. “But he doesn’t want any part of this.”

Felix looked at his watch and then added the Indian headdress to the trash heap. “Some little Italian man with one of those cell phones been tellin’ me I work too slow. Pour the drinks too hard.”

I smiled.

“You put me back on?”

I nodded. He didn’t ask about his salary.

“I’ll see you Monday morning,” Felix said, and walked back into the street.

I found a cardboard box behind the bar and borrowed a pen from the dude at the used bookstore. I wrote in huge cap letters. JOJO’S BLUES BAR IS BACK. THE ORIGINAL WILL REOPEN SOON.

I hung the sign in the window and stood in the street admiring the work, my boots stuck in a big puddle of storm water. I even crudely drew some musical notes on each side of JoJo’s name.

I smiled and stood back.

The rain began to fall again when I saw him. Just a blur of brown about a block away. His face just a blackened oval in some sort of hood. The night turned the sky purple and gray. A hard wind ripped down Conti smelling of the Mississippi River.

I walked toward the corner.

He turned.

Rain ran down his coat, sluicing from his body, as if made from oil. The man who’d broken into my warehouse.

He buried his head deep into the folds of the wet brown coat as if it made him invisible. He turned a corner.

I followed.