Dark End of the Street

“Lord, look at you. Ulysses, you do this to my boy? I told y’all, you ain’t young men anymore. Fightin’ like kids.”

“I was in an accident.”

She touched my head and then patted my face. “You’ll be fine. And JoJo ain’t here. I took the train myself this afternoon. He had the damned nerve to ask me how he was supposed to eat. I told him to serve himself some of that “jump up” breakfast. He asked what it was and tole him that was the kind where he jump up off his ass to make it.”

U laughed. My head kept throbbing so I didn’t try.

“And who is this?” she asked, looking over at Abby.

I introduced her to Loretta, and for a moment – knowing every one of her facial expressions – she thought I was scamming on one of my students. Abby was in her twenties, but I was well aware she looked about fifteen. She was polite to Loretta, even offered her hand while looking at the ground.

Loretta just reached over and held Abby to her fattened bosom. Loretta always had the ability to find people who were in pain. Sometimes in her show, she’d spot some poor bastard who truly was living the blues and start making him laugh. It was beautiful. It was a gift.

U said, “Good to see you, Loretta. You got him now?”

She smiled and wrapped her other thick arm around my waist.

“Hey, man,” U said. “Come on with me for a second.”

I got untangled from the family hug, Loretta already seated with Abby and plying her with questions, and followed U back out to his Expedition parked in the Peabody’s mammoth parking garage.

“You sleep,” he said. “I’ll watch.”

“Go home. I’m fine.”

“Woman got your gun?”

I nodded.

He laughed again. Maybe even harder than when he found out that I’d driven the Gray Ghost into a hole. He punched a button on his keychain, the truck chirped, and locks clicked in his doors.

“What were you packin’ anyway?”

“Browning nine.”

“What the fuck did you have that for?”

“Worked great for me.”

“How’d you keep that under your coat? I mean, you got to holster the damn thing and you can’t move and anyone with any sense can see it. This ain’t the Wild, Wild West, man. Get in.”

I got in the passenger side. The parking lot bare and quiet.

He opened his glove compartment and pulled out a Glock 9mm. Smaller than the ones I’d seen. Must’ve been a new model.

“Stick this in your coat. Don’t know where you found it. Understand? Has a hell of a history I’m sure. Took it off that peckerwood from the other night.” He widened his eyes. “Holds seventeen motherfuckin’ rounds. Take both clips.”

I did.

“Be careful, brother.”

Loretta had already gotten a suite for us. I always knew Loretta and JoJo made a nice living but they usually lived pretty simply except when Loretta traveled. When we played the Chicago Blues Festival last year she’d rented out a hell of a room at the Palmer House. She said life was too short to stay in those “Holidaze” Inns.

I agreed. It was nice to be in the big sprawling room filled with heavy wood furniture and gilded lamps. Big-ass bathtub where I took a thirty-minute shower cleaning dirt from every inch of my skin. Loretta had ordered me a couple beers and a sandwich from room service.

I thanked her, but the thought of food made me sick as hell.

I exchanged places with Abby and a quick silence fell between me and Loretta. Her face had been in such a tight grin since she’d met Abby that it took it a few seconds to fall. She had her long coat draped over her chair and had propped open a window listening to the sounds of the city where she’d made her name.

“You want to tell me why you’re really here?” I asked.

“You need help.”

“Shit.”

“Watch your language, boy.” Her face didn’t break, just kept on listening to those city sounds like it was music.

“Bluff City was a long, long time ago. All of us in that same neighborhood. Stax. Hi. Called it Soulsville.”

I watched her as I took off my boots. Then I stretched out on a rollaway that had already been laid out, smelling of the bleach in the sheets. I closed my eyes still listening to her stories.

“Why are you here?” I asked in a groggy voice. “I can handle it.”

“You need me, boy. They ain’t talkin’ to you. Are they? Tomorrow we’ll find Clyde. All right? Tomorrow let’s go get my brother.”

Chapter 38

MEMPHIS MUSIC IS not dead. Although it’s pretty damned hard to get away from the past. The droves of Elvites to Graceland, the well-known mantra of Sam Phillips’s contributions to rock and roll, and even the B. B. King imitators playing covers in nameless, soulless bars along Beale. But beyond the history, the tributes, and even the fiction, there is a real, breathing music scene at little clubs in Midtown with singer-songwriters who’ve come to the city as if it were Mecca, hoping just to soak up a little bit of what has inspired musicians for generations. Knowing that the name Memphis attached to you somehow makes you more interesting, more soulful, more real.