Leavin' Trunk Blues (3 page)

“University will pay my expenses?” Nick asked.

“Yeah, but no lap dances this time.”

“Palmer House?”

“Motel Six.”

“What if I make up the difference?”

“Fine with me,” Randy said shrugging. “If you stay, you’ll just get drunk and sing sappy Christmas songs to yourself. Or listen to those Alan Watts tapes.”

“Still can’t find Elmore King,” Nick said. “He’s the one who gave me the idea in the first place.”

“He’s avoiding you?”

“Making me feel like a leper at a singles bar.”

“Maybe you can grab him in Chicago,” Randy said. “Why do you think Ruby changed her mind?”

“Loneliness. Her letters seemed, I don’t know . . . sad.”

“No shit, she’s in jail. What do you expect? Joy?”

Nick picked up the photos Ruby had sent. The pair of black-and-white images were of a young light-skinned black woman and a sharp-dressed black man.

The woman wore a flowered Japanese-style dress and a pillbox hat tipped at a jaunty angle. Behind her stood a false background of a forest surrounded by a stone fence made of paper. She stared straight into the camera as if she possessed some knowledge of the grimness of her future.

The man wore a snug overcoat with his hand stuck in a Napoleonic pose. He had a pencil-thin mustache and wide-set, serious eyes. Behind him was a backdrop of a tropical sunset. Crooked palm trees and a manhole-size paper sun. A water-stained rip spread at his feet in the photograph like an earthquake’s fault.

For some reason, the song “Frankie and Johnny” came to mind:
“He was her man and he was doin’ her wrong.”
Nick refilled his mug to warm a cold, cold feeling.

Abandoned Creole townhomes and empty red brick warehouses sat stagnant on Julia Street like ships from a forgotten armada. The heart of the Warehouse District was stuck in a transition. A collection of restaurants, art galleries, and antique shops were mixed with the occasional wino flophouse and skid row bar. Coffee shops, crack houses, and a Zen monastery nestled side by side.

Years ago, Nick had restored a 1922 lumber storage into a loft apartment with a garage on the first level. A small blue door led to his second story, sealed with square, industrial windows blurred with time. Thick blankets hung from a tattered laundry line to keep away the winter chill.

He parked his 1970 gunmetal gray Bronco in the parking garage below and bounded up the metal steps. At the top of the landing, the sliding metal door was partially open. He heard his speckled coffee pot gurgling on the stove and saw JoJo seated at an old table by the windows reading the Picayune.

“Brought you a po’boy from Johnnie’s,” JoJo said. He wore a red cardigan over a white shirt with tiny blue and black checks. He tucked a pair of glasses in his shirt pocket and looked up from the paper. His wingtips were replaced by cheap, white sneakers.

‘You ever hear of Billy Lyons?” Nick asked, pouring JoJo some coffee into a chipped mug. “Owned King Snake Records in Chicago.”

“Heard of King Snake, but don’t know nothin’ “bout Lyons,” JoJo said. “Why?”

“Headin’ up to Chi-town,” Nick said, placing the mug in front of JoJo. “Woman convicted of killing him agreed to an interview. Remember the Sweet Black Angel?”

“Yeah, ‘Lonesome Blues Highway’. . . that thing Elmore was talkin’ “bout.”

“Yep.”

“Lots of real nice things in Chicago,” JoJo said, smiling a wicked grin. “When you leavin’?”

“A train leaves in two hours, but I’ve got about thirty finals to grade,” Nick said, pulling a tattered army duffel bag from under his bed. He threw in a few pairs of blue jeans, thick socks, thermal underwear, threadbare flannel shirts, a heavy black wool overcoat, a watch cap, and his Tom Mix boot knife.

He could almost hear the pleading guitar, rattling maracas, and urgent drumbeat of Bo Diddley in his head. The big city called.

“I’ll drive you to the station,” JoJo said, blowing steam off his coffee. “Take them papers and send ‘em back in the mail. Randy ain’t gonna care. For a woman like Kate, I’d quit my job and walk buck naked in the street durin’ Mardi Gras.”

“Who said anything about Kate?” Nick asked, tossing a travel kit into the huge bag. “Did I say a damned thing about Kate?”

“Kid, don’t twist my dick in a knot,” JoJo said, removing the wax paper from his sandwich and taking a bite. “I’ve known you too long.”

Nick opened and closed desk drawers searching for pens, notebooks, and his cassette recorder. He stuffed a pack of unopened tapes and a carton of Marlboros into the duffel bag and zipped it closed.

“What’s the story about the Sweet Black Angel?” JoJo asked.

Nick told him the little he knew about Ruby Walker.

“I always thought Loretta would kill me too, but you never let your right hand know what your left hand doin’. What you gonna do when you get there?”

“Hook up with some old contacts on the blues scene. Get her history recorded.”

“Chicago.” JoJo sighed. “Man. Always felt I was missin’ something by not moving up there. Damn, there was a time when it seemed like the whole state of Mississippi was hoppin’ the Illinois Central.”

“The Great Migration.”

“Who could blame em?” JoJo said with a wad of sandwich in his cheek. “When you were from Mississippi and played the blues, it was like bein’ black twice.”

Nick sat down and unwrapped his po’boy and ripped open a pack of Zapp’s crawtaters. JoJo leaned back in his chair and narrowed his eyes as he worked on his sandwich. He crossed his arms in front of him.

“So Elmore said she got a raw deal?”

“Yeah, but he might have been talking to the rabbit sittin’ beside me,” Nick said with his mouth full. Nothing better than a fried shrimp po’boy with plenty of sauce picante. The red sauce oozed through his fingers and onto the wooden table.

Last January, Elmore King was in town to play the Super Bowl halftime in one of those tributes to New Orleans music that doesn’t make any sense. King, the master of the Chicago West Side guitar sound, was surrounded by the spinning umbrellas of an old jazz procession. It was like putting Yo Yo Ma in a conga line. But King didn’t seem to care. He had his check and a room at the Hilton. Didn’t even stay for the whole game; he surprised JoJo down at the bar by sitting in a set with Fats and the house band. King kept his turquoise-studded cowboy hat down over his eyes as he worked his Stratocaster like an evil woman. He played through a torrent of emotions bubbling from his guitar as if there was an electric hookup to his soul. He was really making that thing scream as he shook his oily locks.

When King walked off stage, Nick felt JoJo’s Blues Bar was about to tip over onto Conti with the boiling energy. King just tipped his hat after a song where he licked the strings with his tongue. He joined Nick and JoJo in a back corner table and Nick asked him if he wanted a beer.

King said he wanted a Crown Royal. A bottle of Crown Royal.

Nick gladly paid, and the men sat in the deep darkness of JoJo’s trying to embalm their brains. The conversation shifted from women to the old circuit, to friends long gone, then back to women. But during Fats’s last break, King started talking about the early days in Chicago. He said he was damned hungry when he stepped off a Greyhound bus but couldn’t even afford a stick of gum. As the amber level fell in the Crown bottle and JoJo left to close up, King talked about being discovered by songwriter Moses Jordan and cutting records at King Snake.

It was the beginning of the West Side sound as the South Side/Mississippi masters like Muddy and Wolf were reaching their zenith.

You remember Ruby Walker?
Nick had asked.

Then an ashen look swept across King’s face like rain clouds across Pontchartrain. It was as if a deep sadness floated to the surface and tears rimmed his eyes. He shook his head, downed the last of the Royal, and said,
That woman got caught in a tornado of shit she never understood. She rottin’ away while we drink. Ain’t that a waste?

King’s whole being was seemingly wounded by the thought of the past. He stared into a deep corner as a midnight winter rain scattered outside the open doors. The rain released musty closet smells into the French Quarter as King tipped his sweat-ringed black cowboy hat again and politely excused himself. He never returned to JoJo’s and Nick hadn’t talked to him since.

JoJo wadded up the po’boy’s wax paper, breaking Nick from his reverie.

“You think her story’s worth you freezin’ yore ass off?” JoJo said, fingering away some shrimp from his back teeth.

“I need to hear it.”

JoJo nodded. “Be careful. All right? Don’t want you comin’ back home in pieces.”

JoJo stood and motioned for Nick to follow him to Julia Street where he had parked his 1963 Cadillac El Dorado. He opened the long passenger door and pulled out Nick’s Browning 9 mm. Nick slid the gun from the leather holster, checked the side release, and ran a thumb over the walnut handle. It felt good and thick as he ejected the clip and placed it inside his corduroy jacket.

“Thought you might want her back,” JoJo said, crawling out from the old car and locking his doors. “Them shitheads ain’t hangin’ out on Royal anymore. Guys were nothin’ but a bunch of gay bikers, man. Thought they was in a gang or somethin’ ‘cause of the way they dressed in all black and shit and givin’ me a mean eye when I was parkin’. But shiiit, last night I seen one of ‘em kissin’ another fella like he was suckin’ on an egg, and thought they don’t want nothin’ from this old man.”

“ ‘Cept your ass.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” JoJo said. “ ‘Cept my ass . . . fuck you.”

A homeless man wheeled his shopping cart off St. Charles and began to search through a Dumpster. He wore a black-and-red hunting cap and Sun Records T-shirt. Nick had seen him before down at the St. Charles Laundromat. He started to yell to him but the man turned in another direction.

“Say hello to Kate,” JoJo said. “Not many men get second chances.”

“Come on.”

“Remember what I tole ya,” JoJo said.

“Is this the thing about shitting in one hand and wishing in the other?”

“No.”

“Not criticizing a piano-playing dog?”

“Would you please shut the fuck up,” JoJo said. “What I was about to say is just when you think everythin’ ain’t workin’ out for you, when you think that ain’t nothin’ goin’ right and the world or God’s against you . . . you got to realize everythin’ happenin’ jes the way it’s supposed to be.”

The tenements buckled with new folks from Mississippi in late 1956. I wanted to complain about the dirty streets to my sister, but she was so proud of her new home. She washed each dish as if it was a jewel and hung her ragged laundry as if it were spun from gold. I remember the late evenings when I sat on those old crooked steps to smoke my daily cigarette and find some peace from her complainin’, her husband’s yellin’, and kids’ cryin’. The sound of the neighborhood’s laundry, hung from cords and stretched between buildings like a collection of flags, cooled my mind.

By the end of the month, I was on the street. The husband kept comin’ on to me and my sister imagined it was my fault. So I took my paper suitcase, my ten dollars in my shoe, and left. I walked the rain-slicked streets at night and slept durin’ the day in vacant buildings. I felt like some kind of dog trottin’ around without direction.

When I found Dirty Jimmy on Maxwell Street, I hadn’t eaten for three days. After the third song, he disappeared and bought me a plate of greens and cornbread. I almost choked tryin’ to rush it into my body. Jimmy played harp like an angel, I’m tellin’ you, and we became friends. Half the bucket of cash we made was mine.

But I continued to walk. I found work at a laundry where I got blisters on my fingers as long as snap peas. But it was work and it was more money than I had ever known.

I lived at a paper-walled rooming house till Billy Lyons walked
over to me and Jimmy one day at the market. His suit was creased within an inch of his life and his shoes shined like a silver dollar.

He told me I sang like a man. I laughed at him, my eyes lookin’ at the ground, but two weeks later I’m in his bed. He poured champagne over my brown body and blistered hands. He made love to me and left flowers by my mouth as I slept.

The music surrounded me as if I were swimmin’ in blood-red wine. I was drunk with it.

I sang at Pepper’s, The Purple Cat.

I was at parties at Muddy’s house. I remember he was all twisted up in a fine suit. He told me I got somethin’. He told me he sees somethin’ in me like Broonzy saw in him. Spann was there, playin a piano in the corner. Drunk. A sombrero cocked on his head, as he pounded out his heart.

The whiskey flowed with the blues. I couldn’t get enough. Blackness. Swimmin’. Blackness, back in the sea. Billy and I fightin. He’s out whorin’. I’m out workin’.

The world spun and I fell through it. The lipstick on my face was a jagged curve as I tripped off the stage in the middle of the first set. I blacked out. Felt myself swimmin’ in Billy’s blood. So thick I couldn’t reach the surface.