Leavin' Trunk Blues (8 page)

When they made it big, she and Fannie could live like that. They’d find a little white bread town to settle down in. Maybe she’d buy an ice-cream truck. Fannie could find a rich man and be just like Veronica. They’d meet their Archie and Reggie. No Moose, please. Moose was such a fuckin’ idiot. Who the hell walked around saying duh all the time? They needed to lock that retard in some kind of insane asylum.

“Sheesh,” Annie said, popping her bubble gum and playing footsie with herself.

“What is it, baby?” Fannie said, dotting her pinky toenail with the polish, pulling her long feet to her mouth and blowing.

“Moose is just so damned stupid. Just kind of pisses me off.”

“Yes, baby. You told me.”

‘You think we’ll ever be like that? Livin’ like Betty and Veronica or those rich women in
Cosmo
. All worried about the kind of shoes we wear or if our belts clash with our panties?”

“Don’t be talkin’ about
Cosmo
, girl. I just saw a cashmere turtleneck and a pair of silk taffeta pants that I’d kill my grandmama for. Hey, let me show you somethin’, Miss Gemini. Almost forgot.”

Fannie put her feet to the ground, extending her toes to the sky. She reached under the bed and pulled out the latest issue of the magazine. Its cover read:
Is his orgasm really important
?

Fannie licked her lips: “ ‘A creative door opens. Say yes to a new interesting project and don’t be afraid to take risks.’ “

“What the hell does that mean?” Annie asked.

“It means we in the same ole rut. Stagger Lee said last night he wanted us to go back to the South Side and work in some of his jerk shacks. I don’t ever want to do that. Me and you sitting in them shitty old buildings waiting for some old man to come in and want to get his rocks off. I don’t even like to blow my nose in Kleenex anymore.”

“We’ll run before we do that again.”

“He’ll find us,” Fannie said. “So you best put that out of your mind.”

Annie rolled over on her bed, the waves beating against her spine, and looked at her ceiling filled with miniposters of teen heartthrobs and pages from her favorite Archie books. Didn’t matter if she was in her twenties, she’d never give up her friends. When she lay awake at night, some old man’s scent still on her, she’d stare up there at all those smooth-chested guys and friends from Riverdale laughing away.

“You know, baby, clothes make you feel good,” Fannie said, pulling off her sweatshirt and rubbing lotion down her chest and arms. “Sometimes I feel like I could take on the world when I got a sack of clothes with me. And I saw somethin’ yesterday at the thrift shop that would make you shine like a bright penny in the sun. So beautiful. Sky blue leather skirt and top. Rabbit fur trim around the neck.”

“Too girly,” Annie said, blowing out her cheeks with air.

“Too girly?” Fannie rolled her eyes. “That ain’t even the best part. Hey, throw me some Bubblicious.”

Fannie caught the open pack and unwrapped a juicy piece. “Also found a pair of closed-toe platform shoes that felt sooo soft in my hands. Little wooden crisscrosses on the heel. They must’ve belonged to the same person.”

Annie’s cell phone rang beneath her pillow. Fannie brushed the dark hair from her eyes and started to massage her face with oil. She hated dry skin.

Annie picked up the phone and rocked her knees over her head.

“Hello?”

“I need to talk to Stagger Lee.”

“Who’s Stagger Lee?”

“Don’t whisper bullshit in my ear, woman. It’s Peetie.”

Annie groaned and tossed the phone to Fannie. Fannie wiped the grease from her knuckles and daintily picked up the phone.

“Yesss.”

Annie tossed her legs back over her head and rolled to her side. She halfway listened to Fannie gab with the man until she switched off the phone. “Well?” she asked.

“Well what?”

“What was that about?”

“A creative door has just opened,” Fannie said, laughing.

Chicago rammed into your soul like a fist. Made you feel tougher, bigger. The city was gray concrete, red brick, and silver-mirrored windows. A meeting of the decades in a mishmash of architecture that loomed over the avenues like walls of a canyon. Heat rose from sidewalk vents. White Christmas lights burned from bare trees and red bows wrapped green iron streetlamps. The smell of garbage drifted from back alleys.

The city noises bleated in Nick’s ears after he parked just off the Magnificent Mile and fed the meter. He adjusted his watch cap over his ears and searched for Doyle Brennan’s place among the monoliths looming overhead. If there were some old King Snake folks about town, Doyle would know where to find them.

Besides having probably the largest jazz and blues music store in the country, Doyle had his own indie label and was a tracker of sorts. He knew more about the golden age of blues than most professors Nick knew combined. Doyle was an old buddy of his instructor at Ole Miss and one of the first white guys to frequent black clubs in the late fifties and early sixties. A frustrated musician, like Nick, who turned to another profession so he could stay around the music.

Nick followed a back alley toward the river as a speckle of snow drifted across the asphalt.

The record store sat on the bottom level of a glass and concrete building and smelled of incense and plastic. Old blues promo posters lined the walls: hot pinks, sky blues, and electric greens spelling out such incredible shows as Little Walter Live or a Muddy Waters doubleheader with Sonny Boy Williamson. Days when the blues pounded the soul and shaped the identity of Chicago. The posters were curled at the edges, a few water- stained.

A teenage kid in a black Stones T-shirt with a diamond nose ring smoked an herbal cigarette behind the cash register. Nick asked if Doyle was around and the kid nodded to a back door where the man had kept his office for the past fifteen years. Nick turned the knob and walked into chaos.

Among the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and file cabinets, papers were tacked on cabinets, taped on doors, and strewn across his desk. Styrofoam cups, several overturned coffee mugs, and piles of blues and jazz magazines lay on the floor.

Doyle sat with his head down, a cigarette burning in a black ashtray on his desk, and a fluorescent banker’s lamp warming a book. A Memphis Slim record spun on a turntable behind him.

Doyle was a thick-bodied man with shoulder-length gray hair, a bushy beard, and the fleshy reddened cheeks of an Irish farmer. Nick knew he’d once possessed a heated desire to change the world. He’d walked with Martin Luther King Jr. in Chicago, helped register voters in Mississippi, and for years tried to help bluesmen recover their royalties.

Nick coughed. Doyle looked up and smiled. He awkwardly raised from his desk and offered his thick hand. He turned behind him and took the needle from the Memphis Slim record.

“Mr. Travers,” he said, coughing into his hand. “A little late for the blues festival.”

Doyle slumped back into his seat and kicked a wobbling office chair over to Nick. He pulled the chair back and took a seat. Shards of sunlight cut through the books, magazines, and records behind Doyle.

“Let me guess.” Doyle studied his face. “You want something.”

Nick lit a Marlboro and smiled. “I want to hang out with you. Maybe go to the zoo. Buy a hotdog on the street. Skip through Lincoln Park.”

“You smoking dope again?”

“I wish,” Nick said. “No. Actually, I need to pick your nose. I mean brain.”

Doyle opened a small refrigerator next to his desk and grabbed a couple of Harps. He popped the tops and slid one over to Nick.

“You got it,” Doyle said, putting the beer to his mouth like it was a bottle. “Man, last time I saw you was in Holly Springs at Kimbrough’s. Remember that woman who was all heated-up and drunk.”

“My date?”

“Yeah, that woman you picked up. Ain’t never seen a woman get all sexy with a door. She was gyrating and going crazy on that old thing. If I were a door knob …”

“All right, all right.”

“So what’s up?” Doyle asked.

“King Snake Records, Billy Lyons, and Ruby Walker,” Nick said and took a sip. ‘Take your pick.”

“New project?”

Nick nodded.

“Who’ve you talked to?”

“The Sweet Black Angel.”

“Ruby talked to you?” Doyle asked before raising the bottle to his lips again.

“Yeah.”

“I’m impressed,” he said. “I once asked her to cut a record in prison and she told me to go fuck myself.”

“You’d throw your back out.”

“That woman could sing, man,” Doyle said, ignoring him. “There weren’t many women like her. I’d put her in the same class as Memphis Minnie or Bessie Smith. But her career probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer than it did. She sang old-style blues like Minnie. Probably would have hit the revival circuit in the sixties. But I don’t think she could’ve adapted to the times like Koko or Etta. Wonder if she still sings?”

Nick shrugged.

“Who else you looking for?”

“Just met a man named Peetie Wheatstraw. I guess this would be Peetie number two. He was new to me.”

“I know Peetie Wheatstraw,” Doyle said, sneering. “Only his name’s not Wheatstraw. It’s Jerome Tompkins. He didn’t have a fucking thing to do with King Snake and don’t let him tell you any different. He’s a bottom feeder.”

“Owns a place called the Soul Train.”

“Only seen him on Maxwell Street.” Doyle pointed his finger at Nick’s chest. “But I wouldn’t write down a word that idiot tells you. He’s sucked a half-dozen players dry. Got no talent, although he says he plays piano. Shit, he plays a fucking Casio down at the new Maxwell Street Market. He has about as much business sense as my fat, hairy ass.”

“Your ass is pretty smart, Doyle.”

“Yeah, why don’t you kiss it?”

“Don’t want to get a razor burn,” Nick said. “Hey, man, I could use some direction.”

“Shoot.”

‘You and Moses Jordan still tight?”

“Yeah, yeah. Good thinkin’, man. Moses Jordan and Billy Lyons were buddies from way back. Let’s see,” Doyle said, fiddling with the cigarette in his hand. “Jordan had switched over to King Snake from Diamond. He was pissed off about not getting his fair share and I’m sure he was right. Anyway, I think he was pissed when Diamond wouldn’t sign Elmore King. He thought King was damned near the second coming but the brothers at Diamond weren’t impressed. King became one of Jordan’s first projects with Lyons.”

“King won’t return my calls.” Nick took a huge sip. He could feel the travel nerves wash away.

“He can be a moody asshole,” Doyle said. “King’s been babied too much. When you get your ass kissed everyday, you think you don’t have to act human anymore. He’s been wiping his ass with friends for the last ten years. You hear that last album? What a pile a shit. He gets a bunch of coke-sniffing Hollywood producers to give him a pile of cash and a hand job and he turns out something that sounds like twelve-bar hip-hop.”

Nick laughed.

“But Jordan is still real tight with King, so don’t make any jokes,” Doyle said. “He treats King like he was his son. And believe me, King treats Jordan like he was the shit. I don’t know this, but I’ve heard Jordan still gets a fifty-fifty cut on everything. One of those Elvis-Colonel arrangements.”

“You know where King lives?”

“Bought a big-ass farm out in Woodstock. Man, it looks like the Delta out there. Has a big red barn, cattle, all kinds of shit. But he’s in Europe … I can find out when he’s supposed to be back.”

Nick dumped his cigarette and started a fresh one. Somehow Doyle’s office made him feel like he needed to constantly keep a cigarette burning. Smelled like the inside of a Vienna cafe.

“You remember that shitty VW van you used to have?”

“Yeah,” Doyle said, giving Nick the finger. “It’s parked outside.”

Doyle lowered his eyes and blew smoke to the ceiling. Never knew he was so damned in love with his van. Maybe because he used to live in the thing in the early seventies.

“If you’re looking for session players, good luck,” Doyle said, finishing the beer in a gulp and dumping the bottle in the trash. “You remember Franky Dawkins?”

“Bass player?”

“Dead for years. I think he was robbed or something … And what about Leroy Williams?”

“Don’t know him.”

“Barrelhouse piano man. Man couldn’t read music, but man, could he bang them keys. Listen to that old King Snake stuff— Ruby’s songs—and I promise you’ll hear his genius.”

“Dead?”

“With a capital D. Heard he was manic depressive. So, when the music scene started to bottom out in the early sixties, he took a swim in the Chicago River.” Doyle made a diving motion with his free hand. “Shit, you’re the historian, look it up. Be nice to get Leroy’s name back out there. He was a beautiful player. So, what else can I do for you? Want to hit the titty bars? Know this place where this woman makes her puppies into a hat.”

“I want to talk to Jordan,” Nick said. “Figured you’d be my best intro.”