Dark End of the Street

But a weird thing happened when we started talking about Clyde James and my work as a tracker. It was all Abby could talk about. She asked me about a million questions on the drive down and even had me play some of his music that I’d burned onto a CD.

“So this is what you do, look for these singers.”

“Yep.”

“And he was known? Famous?” she asked over my noisy muffler.

“Number-one hit in ‘sixty-six. Then, he just dropped out.”

Abby sat silent for a moment as we rounded the curve by The Grove and headed to Farley. She pulled her hair into a ponytail and sank it back through the loop in her Ole Miss hat. She wore the sweatpants and T-shirt like some kind of uniform.

“Can I help?”

“I think we just need to get you settled,” I said.

“I want to help,” she said, and nodded as if just making up her mind right there. The shadows from the oaks played over her face as we darted in and out of the sun. We parked on the street and went inside.

The university housed the Blues Archive in the old law library, a space a good size larger than where I worked at Tulane. At Tulane, we only had a small cluttered room for studying separated from the actual library, mostly dedicated to jazz. At Ole Miss it was almost all blues. Two floors that included more than 20,000 photographs (some the only ones in existence), 7,000 records donated by B. B. King himself, and even the financial documents of the old Trumpet Record Label. Posters, memorabilia, back issues of Living Blues, and old newspaper clippings.

As soon as we walked in the door, I saw a table by the staircase already loaded with magazines and manila files. A black woman in a dashiki nodded to me as she talked on the phone.

I recognized the familiar logo of Bluff City 45s with its fanned hand of aces, jacks, and jokers. A can of Community Coffee sat on top of the folders. It would be empty. Always Ed’s price for help. A Post-It note said he had to catch a plane to a conference in New York and call him if I needed anything else.

Abby sat down at the table and waited for me to pass her a file.

“Hold on, don’t you need to try your cousin again?”

“I used to help my dad with his cases. I’d go through depositions to find out any inconsistencies. He said I was better than any of his paralegals.”

“Well, this isn’t exactly like that. Really, it’s not too complicated. I’m just going to read through some articles and make notes of people Clyde worked with.”

“Why not ask people you already know?”

“Better to know everything for yourself.”

“They lie?”

“They do. And they forget.”

“Then what?”

“Then, after I get you settled, I’ll go back to Memphis and start my search again.”

“You really believe he’s alive?”

“Yep.”

Must’ve been about thirty seconds after I sat back down, after grabbing a couple of Cokes from a vending machine in the hall, that I sorted out the gold from the mud. Two articles on the Eddie Porter/Mary James murder investigation sent from the Memphis paper. A couple of shorts. The first dated March 1969. It quoted the police director, guy named Wagner, as knowing what happened to Porter and James but that he couldn’t press charges because “the south Memphis community wouldn’t cooperate.” There was no indication as to what the hell that meant. The second had more:

Memphis – The Shelby County District Attorney’s Office said it will not bring charges against a local singer in the deaths of two Negroes killed last year.

Detectives had targeted Clyde James in their early investigation. His past criminal record includes burglary.

James worked in a musical group that also featured victim Edward Porter. The other victim was James’ wife. A spokesman for the district attorney’s office said although James was at home at the time of the shootings, several people were questioned about the murder.

The case remains active, he said.

I wondered how this small detail passed by Loretta. Shit. And no wonder Cook didn’t want to talk if he was close to Clyde. I put on headphones and placed a 45 on the turntable. “Pouring Water on a Drowning Man.”

Abby read through the clip, made a few notes on a legal pad she’d borrowed from the librarian, and waited for me to pass the headphones. I did.

“Like it?” I wrote on the legal pad.

She nodded and closed her eyes.

I continued to read through the bios on Clyde. Still the same. The early days with the Zion Ramblers, the crossover to secular music, and the first releases for Bluff City. Found a nice press release about Clyde, his relation to Loretta, and his early days as a bricklayer in south Memphis. Writer tried to tie in the manual labor with laying the groundwork for success.

I began searching through another pile and found a publicity shot of Clyde. He was smiling and wearing a sharp leather jacket. But the smile showed just a trace of an upright curve and the eyes seemed hazy and out of focus, like he’d been caught at an awkward moment. Like someone had intruded on his sadness.

I took off the headphones and looked back through a few magazines. Nothing. Small profiles. A few record reviews.