Bill Fitzhugh - Fender Benders (8 page)

The sheriff folded his arms and looked to the ground for a
moment.
 
“Well, like I said, I was
thinking it looked like an open-shut murder case right up until we found some
clippings from a magazine in the trash can, then we found the magazine with
letters cut out of it, you know, like a ransom note situation?
 
Once we figured out what letters were
missing, we pieced ‘em together and came up with some options, but do you know
the only one that made any sense was the word ‘depressed’?
 
That’s what got me thinking about suicide.”

“Is that right?”

“Henry, I know it’s happened before in your family and I
just want you to know that I’m not saying it was suicide because, well, like I
said, this one ain’t on all fours.
 
I
don’t wanna be calling it something’s it’s not, especially if it’s gonna hurt
your family.”

“I appreciate that.”

“So I’m trying to figure out why an intruder would cut out a
bunch of letters from a magazine to spell the word ‘depressed’ but then not do
anything with it.
 
Know what I mean?
 
On the other hand, if Tammy cut out the
letters for a suicide note and then killed herself, where’s the note and
where’s the gun?
 
I suppose an intruder
could have stumbled into the house after she killed herself, if that’s what
happened, and he’da taken the gun, but why take the note, assuming there was a
note, you know?”
 
The sheriff shook his
head.
 
“Like I said, it’s got me
stumped.”

“That’s a mess all right.
 
Just don’t make much sense any way you look at it.”

“No.
 
It
don’t
.”
 
The sheriff
turned to go back inside.
 
“I’ll let you
know soon as we find anything out.”
 
He
stopped and put his hand on Mr. Teasdale’s shoulder.
 
“Henry, I’m real sorry about all this.
 
Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

Henry nodded, said thanks, and went back inside.

A few hours later, when most of the mourners were either
gone or drunk, Eddie and Henry were off to the side of the living room having a
heart-to-heart.
 
“Son, I’m hurting pretty
bad,” Henry said, “and I suspect you feel the same or worse.
 
I wish there was something I could say, but I
can’t improve on anything the preacher said and he didn’t do much to make me
feel any better.”

“I appreciate that, Mr. Teasdale.
 
I’m real sorry I was gone.
 
Maybe if I’da been here, none of this
would’ve happened.”

Henry put his arm around Eddie.
 
“Don’t do that to yourself, son.
 
If you’da been here, you might be dead
too.”
 
In truth he was thinking that if
Eddie had been here, then whoever it was Tammy had been sleeping with might be
the one who was dead, but Henry wasn’t going to tell Eddie about what the
sheriff had said in that regard.
 
Henry
reckoned Eddie’d been hurt enough.

Across the room, Carl’s wife was offering her condolences to
Mrs. Teasdale.
 
Carl had finally stopped
crying but he was clinging like a vine to the fear that he would be exposed at
any minute.
 
He stood at his wife’s side
with puffy red eyes and a nervous twitch.

Eddie looked at the floor, then at his father-in-law.
 
“Mr. Teasdale, I’ve been giving it some
thought and I decided I can’t stay here.”
 
Henry looked like he might have expected this.
 
“I appreciate your job offer but you know
I’ve been wanting to get my music career going and, well, maybe this is God’s
way of telling me it’s time to move to Nashville and get serious about it.”

Mr. Teasdale nodded.
 
“Maybe you’re right, son.
 
Maybe
you’re right.”

11.

Blacks were to Nashville
what Charley Pride and Stoney Edwards were to country music — rare, but there
was no sense denying they existed.
 
The
geographic center for Nashville’s
relatively modest black population revolved around a series of presidentially
named roads — Van Buren, Garfield, Monroe, and Harrison.
 
And, as was the case in many southern cities,
one of Nashville’s favorite
restaurants was located in this area, on a rough cut of asphalt just off

The sign out front said ‘Estella’s Shrimp Joint’ but to hear
the locals say it, you’d have thought it was ‘Estella’s Swimp Jernt.’
 
Estella’s had been open for thirty years,
serving the best fried shrimp plate in the state of Tennessee,
mostly after
midnight
.
 
Estella’s was the place to go in Nashville
when everybody else stopped serving.
 
It
was a beacon in the darkness for the city’s night crawlers — black and white
alike — and for everybody who worked the late shift and who wanted a drink
after the statutes said it was illegal to get one.
 
In fact, after hours on any given night of
the week you were likely to find at least one state legislator washing down his
fried shrimp with a pint of bourbon.

Estella’s was two deluxe mobile homes pushed together side
by side on a raised foundation.
 
The
dimly lit interior was worn and friendly with red Naugahyde booths, four-top
tables, and a long service counter with soda-shop seats.
 
The floor was tired tan linoleum flecked with
red.
 
Pale blue shag carpet covered the
lower half of the walls.
 
Above that was
a sort of brown fabric-corded wallpaper which gave the place terrific
acoustics.
 
In the corner by the door was
a jukebox with an old hand-lettered sign reading, ‘three selections for fity
cent.’
 
Estella’s was the only place in
town where you were liable to hear the likes of La Vern Baker, Ivory Joe
Hunter, Solomon Burke, or King Curtis.
 
The place was an R&B clearing in a pedal steel jungle.

Otis and Estella Frazier were the sole proprietors.
 
Estella was somewhere in her sixties; she
wouldn’t say exactly where.
 
She had
mostly gray hair and was a little short for her hundred and eighty pounds.
 
A few years ago Estella had a heart attack,
“but it was jes a small one,” she said.
 
They ran her through a battery of tests.
 
When it was all over her doctor told her she had to stop smoking, stop
eating fried food three times a day, and start getting some sort of
exercise.
 
Estella swore she would change
her ways, but soon decided the doctor was overreacting.

Estella had long known she’d never be rich, so she decided she’d
be comfortable instead.
 
She wore loose
fitting blue jeans and a baggy old pullover shirt with long sleeves, always
topped with a knee-length white apron.
 
A
pair of reading glasses dangled from a string around her neck, but she used
them only while at the cash register.
 
Estella took orders, ran the register, and went table-to-table chatting
up the clientele no matter if they wore corn-rows or cowboy hats.
 
Everybody loved Estella.

Otis was a couple of years older than Estella and built just
the opposite.
 
He was a scant little guy
with brown eyes that understood your problems.
 
He had a silvery mustache streaked with black that curled sweetly at the
corners of his mouth.
 
A wispy tuft of
gray sprouted just under his lower lip.
 
He wore a black leather beret and open collared shirts, and his
expression — a sort of suppressed smile — made it look like he was waiting
for you to get the joke.
 
But Otis’s calm
and amiable face belied a troubled past.

12.

It was two-thirty on a Saturday morning and the place was
about three quarters full.
 
Estella
snapped a scrap of paper into one of the clothes pins hanging in the window
between the service counter and the kitchen.
 
“Three swimp plates and a cheeseburger,” she said, ringing the little
bell.

Otis looked up from the deep fryer to glance at the
order.
 
“Three swimps
and a cheese.”
 
He tossed a meat
patty on the grill,
then
pulled the shrimp from the
fridge where they were soaking in milk and paprika.
 
He drained half a pound and began to dredge
them in the flour.

“Otis,” Estella said with a gesture.
 
“Who’s that sittin’ over at fourteen?”
 
Otis couldn’t see table fourteen through the
little service window so he went to the kitchen door and looked out.
 
Estella met him there, wiping her hands on
her apron.
 
“He’s steady been actin’
funny since I carried him that gin,” she said.

Otis shook his head a little, shrugged.
 
“Never seen him.”
 
He went back to the kitchen knowing that if
the guy was up to no good, Estella was the better one to deal with it.
 
Otis lowered the basket of shrimp into the
deep fat fryer.
 
Greasy steam escaped
into the vent.

Otis came from Clarksdale, Mississippi.
 
He had discovered early that he had a
gift.
 
At nine, he was soloist in his
gospel choir and, by the time he was in his late teens, he had a popular,
late-night radio show where he played ‘race’ records and occasionally sang a
song or two, accompanying himself on the guitar.
 
His show ended at two in the morning when the
station went off the air.
 
After that
Otis and some friends used the production room as a recording studio.
 
Otis sent some of the tapes to a
Memphis-based record label and eventually signed a recording contract and got a
manager by the name of Bill Herron.

Otis’s first record, ‘Lookin’ for Ruby’ was on the R&B
charts for twenty-two weeks, peaking at #16.
 
It also crossed over to the pop charts hitting #39.
 
His second record, ‘Don’t Let Me Go’ soared
to #2 R&B, crossing over to become a #12 pop hit.
 
Otis looked to be on his way to the top.
 
But, as Otis was quick to point out, things
ain’t always what they appear to be.

Over the next couple of years, what Otis considered a great
deal of money passed through his hands on its way to buying cars, whiskey, and
women.
 
Money problems
followed, as they tend to, and Otis was soon in need of another hit if he was
going to maintain his lifestyle.
 
But his
next two records stiffed and his manager dumped him and stiffed him on a fair
amount of royalties.
 
Forced out of the
spotlight, Otis started drinking and soon ran afoul of the law.
 
But all of that was a long time ago and Otis
chose not to dwell on it.

Still, Otis was thinking back on that night in Memphis
when, suddenly, there was a commotion out in the main room.
 
He heard a table overturn, plates and
flatware crashing onto linoleum.
 
Otis
craned his head out the service window just as Estella yelled, “somebody better
call
a
amalance!”
 
It sounded more like a threat than a plea for help.
 
Otis watched Estella charge out the door with
the small cast iron skillet she kept behind the cash register.
 
She was quick for her size.

Otis shook his head as several customers gave chase.
 
Otis just went back to his deep fryer.
 
No point in letting the swimps burn.
 
Besides, he knew better than to go outside
and tempt fate.
 
It always happened like
this.
 
Somebody would try to skip out on
their tab, Estella would chase ‘em down, several customers would pull Estella
off the customer before she did too much damage with her little skillet.
 
She’d get the money she was owed and they’d
all go back inside laughing while Estella carried on about how that fool was
lucky they pulled her off before she got a good swing at him.

Tonight, Estella had a man pinned against his car.
 
She had the skillet raised over her head when
a young black man and an older white guy in a cowboy hat caught up with
them.
 
The cowboy hat restrained Estella
while the young black man kept the gin drinker from going anywhere.
 
Estella was hollering, “Lemme go!
 
He’s stealin’ from me and he’s got it
comin’!”
 
The cowboy hat was
snickering.
 
He told Estella to calm
down.
 
“Calm down nothin’!
 
This nigga’s gonna find out what it means
to—”

“Hey, Estella,” a man called out from behind the crowd.
 
“How you doin’?”
 
The man asked it like he was passing her on
the sidewalk on a Sunday afternoon.
 
The
crowd parted as a tall man in a tuxedo walked to the center of attention.
 
Franklin Peavy was a white man, but a dark
one.
 
With his chestnut complexion and
his black-dyed-hair done up in a militant bouffant style, Franklin
looked like the demon child of Conway Twitty and Johnny Mathis.

Estella knew who it was before she saw him.
 
“I’m good Mr. Peavy, how’re you?

“I’m fine, Estella.”
 
Franklin
reached up and removed his clip-on bow tie.

“You sure looking fine,” she said.
 
“Where
you been
all
dressed up, another one of them awards ceremonies?”

“Yeah, the Big Pick Awards were tonight.
 
One of my clients was nominated.
 
Didn’t win though.”

“Thass too bad,” Estella said.
 
“Maybe next time.”

“That’s right, there’s always next time,” Franklin
said.
 
“So.
 
What’s going on here?”

Estella struggled against the man holding her.
 
“This fool tried to run out on his bill,” she
said, nodding at the fool in question.

The gin drinker shook his head, wide-eyed as a
stereotype.
 
“I was fixin’ to get my
wallet out of my ride,” he said, gesturing at the old Chrysler.
 
“I was gonna pay.”

Estella pulled away from the cowboy hat and lunged at the
gin drinker.
 
“You
lyin’!”
 
She landed her skillet
against the man’s ribs.
 
Everybody heard
the cracking sound.
 
The cowboy hat,
struggled to keep from laughing as he grabbed Estella and pulled her back.

“Estella, you’re gonna end up like Otis, you’re not
careful,” Franklin said.

“
We’s
both justified.”
 
Estella couldn’t have looked any angrier.