Not the old man. That old man call you kid or Tavarius or just Stovall with a laugh. You ain’t nothin’ but a punk to him, puttin’ up fences till you have blisters, paintin’ some raggedy-ass barn till it get dark. Yesterday he take you fishin’ and think you a fool for not knowin’ how to work a hook.
He don’t know shit.
Tonight he brought you downtown and you think this gonna be all right. You down off another road called Martin Luther King. He tellin’ you all about when he was your age, like you give a shit, and all about whiskey and women – all the money that was floatin’ down these cracked asphalt streets.
But you can’t see it. Clarksdale had to be a broke-ass city from the start, man. The stores have sheets of wood in the windows, just like the places round Calliope, and boys work the corners with their rock just the same. The old man just shake his head at those fools and take you into this old brick building that look out onto the corner. A yellow light comin’ from the door like a candle glow in a skeleton’s mouth.
The corner is workin’ tonight. You can smell the funk sweat off the crackheads’ bodies and that lazy eye from the women in tight skirts. You don’t mess with that. You got your life.
Old man take you inside. The floor is concrete but worn smooth from dancin’ feet. There’s a pool table in the corner with some green felt burned by cigarettes and a small bar where they only serve beer and whiskey. Christmas lights – blue, green, and red – hang from the walls.
You order a forty and get one but the old man swipes it from you.
Two old men sit down with you. Just as old and black and gray as the man and you gettin’ tired. You walk over to the jukebox and check out the tunes while the old men start talkin’ about cotton and farming and some man named Sonny Boy.
Juke has some old-school joints. Run-D.M.C. like Malcolm used to play for you. Music made before you was born. Something called “It’s Like That and That’s the Way It Is.”
You kick it up. Even other punks noddin’ with the music, ’cept the old men.
In the dark bar, concrete cave over your head, you get the mean eye.
Just for playin’ music.
“Tavarius,” the old man call you. “This man is Bronco and his brother, Eddie Wilde. We went to school together here. We was you once.”
You look at his face and don’t see it, listenin’ to Run-D.M.C. and then flippin’ that song to “Rock Box.” You think about Malcolm and the way he died and you clench your jaw real hard. Sweat workin’ hard in this concrete room.
