Dark End of the Street

BACK IN THE DAY, Clarksdale was the capital of the Delta’s cotton kingdom and the central hub for Mississippi’s blacks leaving the South during the Great Migration. They could head out of the fields up to Memphis or purchase that big ticket to Chicago where they could reinvent themselves, as Muddy Waters did in ‘forty-three. The town pulsed with energy back then. Down on Issaquena Avenue, you could sell your cotton, rent a woman, buy a bottle of whiskey, or just a sack of cornmeal for your family. Now most of the black downtown was covered in spray-painted plywood and was wavering after a recent crack epidemic. Most folks who could get out went on to Memphis to find higher paying jobs, away from working crops or as maids in the half-dozen motels. But recently, the city had been trying damned hard to turn Clarksdale into a tourist site.

The old underbelly of society, blues, was now the main focus of a town once overrun by white landowners. There was a damned good museum housed in the old train station and a few local businessmen had opened a juke with a Hollywood actor who was born around here.

But the old circuit I remembered from ten years ago was gone. Sunflower Avenue was pretty much vacant and old Wade Walton, who used to cut my hair – telling stories of doing the same for Muddy Waters, Ike Turner, and Sonny Boy Williamson – was dead. His store just an empty cinder block shell down by the museum that sat in the shadow of hulking grain elevators.

It was Monday afternoon and gray and cold. Fat black clouds floated by as if they were in a dirty river. No thunder or rain. Tornado weather. An electric hum in the air and complete silence around the downtown.

I had a lot of friends at the museum. Most of them pretty up-to-date on politics; one was a former raging hippie who knew exactly where to find Jude Russell’s place. It was on Highway 61 running down toward a little town called Alligator.

Abby waited in the car while I used a pay phone to call Loretta. I knew she’d been appreciating the updates and I was glad to give them. It made me feel a connection to home that I always needed while I was on the road. It was almost as if I wanted someone to remind me who I was.

The phone rang on a rough connection to New Orleans, wind blowing paper cups and clinking aluminum cans across the street. The phone kept on ringing and I looked at my watch, a warning siren howling in the distance.

Inside my truck, Abby was reading liner notes on some CDs and playing with her hair. Two more rings. Ever since we’d met I had this overwhelming feeling that I needed to protect her. It felt like she was family. The way I imagined a big brother would look out for a younger sister. Like if some boy went too far with her, you’d feel the need to put his head through a wall. It was like that. I wanted to put someone’s head through a wall for Abby. Being with her in Oxford at her house and meeting Maggie only made that more intense.

I waved. She waved back.

The phone kept on ringing. Nothing.

The hunting lodge wasn’t hard to find at all. It was just hard getting into. My buddy at the Delta Blues Museum had told me I’d have no problem finding it because of the wall around it. I asked him to describe it and he simply said, “You’ll see.”

And I did. A log fence surrounded the property, probably about fifteen feet tall, with pointed edges on the top like the old cavalry forts, or the gate in Jurassic Park. There was a dirt road that followed the wall for about a half mile until a break where I saw the outline for a retractable door. An intercom with a keypad looped from a metal post and I drove next to it.

I thought about pushing some buttons and asking for a Whopper with fries but that kind of shit usually made people mad while I laughed at my own joke. Maybe I could do a different voice.

“Do you think they’d like me to do an impression?”

“Who?”

“Usual stuff. Sean Connery. Angry Chinese man. Scooby Doo’s country cousin.”

“Scooby Doo’s country cousin.”

“Really?”

“No.”

I punched a few buttons and for a while nothing happened. Just a few fat drops of rain intermittently began to pound the hood. Finally, the intercom crackled to life.

“I’d like a Whopper with fries. No, make that onion rings.”

“This is private property,” the voice said. Sounded like a woman.

“I’m here to see Jude,” I said, you know, using the whole first name thing. They’d think we played golf together, drank Heineken, and slapped each other’s butts in the shower.

“Sir, security has been called.”

“Everything’s under control. Situation normal. We had a slight weapons malfunction.”