NEXT STOP. JACKSON. Jackson, Mississippi, where this bus terminates. Jackson, the air like syrup. The driver throwing down the cases, sweating under his cap. A big laugh echoing through the bus station waiting room. Shuffle step, shuffle step. I couldn’t spot him, though I tried. However many sudden turns I made.
A downtown of brown concrete and squat modern blocks, eighties money frozen in smoked glass and olive stone cladding. Chemical freight, tank after tank, moving slow and heavy along tracks running over the roadway. I walked until I saw the Saint James Hotel, a stern brick building looming over the boarded-up shop fronts of Farish Street. Mounted on a scaffold on the roof, the single word HOTEL, illuminated at night. I was not ready to go there. Around it lay an obliterated grid, ruins and grassy intersections, weeds growing chest-high in vacant lots. One solitary store was open, selling hats and belts. The clerk didn’t think for a minute I would buy anything. In the distance was the new city. Parking lots, a couple of office buildings, a high-rise perimeter about a mile away. I climbed through glassless windows, found sleeping bags, plastic soda bottles of urine. I saw tags and throwups, many names and signs. Propped up against a wall was a board with a carefully painted picture of a pianist, the remnant of some community mural or children’s project, a smiling jazz man tagged by $eeWeed and $Murda on either side of his head. I had a camera. I do not know how I came to be carrying it. While I was taking a picture, my back to the street, I heard something behind me and turned to catch a glimpse of a man walking a large black dog. I had no distinct impression of him, but at the same time I knew who he was. Dark skin, a flash of a white tee shirt. He had been following me as I walked back to the motel where Leonie died. He had followed me at other times, in other places. Papa Charlie, guardian of the crossroads, where the two worlds meet. Excuse me, excuse me, as I step across the threshold…
When I went outside, the street was empty.
I took pictures in the old Palace Auditorium, a treacherous shell of rotting boards and missing joists. I photographed the Alamo cinema. I went back out onto the street, and wandered past vacant lots until I saw a lone building with glass in the windows, occupying one corner of an intersection. A sign in the front window said Closed, next to a sticker: Got soul? I was framing the little building amidst the emptiness, composing my shot.
—I saw you.
I had no idea where she came from.
—I saw you! Poking your nose in.
She was in her sixties, perhaps. A head wrap in red, black and green, heavy wooden earrings, her arms fiercely folded.
—Who told you you could take photographs?
I said something about the historic blues neighborhood. She rolled her eyes and turned away.
—Is this your business, ma’am?
—What if it is?
—Is it a music store?
—It is a community bookstore. And it’s closed. And it’s not for you.
—I’m just interested in local history. This was called the Black Mecca, did you know that?
—Local history. Have mercy. Only two reasons people like you come down here. The blues or taking pictures of ruins. We’re fascinating to you, long as we’re safely dead.
—Look, I had nothing to do with whatever happened to your neighborhood. I’m not the one to blame.
—You for real? Get the hell out of here. People live here.
—I just have some questions.
—I am not obliged to be your goddamn cultural tour guide.
I walked away hurriedly.
—That’s right. Go on. Hipster asshole!
I flinched. Not that she was telling the truth. I’d seen her eyes. Her empty eyes. No one lived there. She didn’t live there, among the ruins. She was no more alive than I was. And so I walked away from Farish Street, out of town, until the city streets became dusty rural roads running between cotton fields. Sometimes I carried a box of records. Sometimes I carried a guitar. Finally I came to the old wooden shack with the peeling pink paint and the barbecue pit in the yard and the line of expensive cars parked out front.
The smoking skillets of the women in the kitchen, the greasy bills changing hands. I was shown to a corner table covered in a red-checkered vinyl cloth. I ordered steak and eggs. Plotting was taking place all around me. Machinations. Allocation of funds. Though the surroundings were humble, even crude, I saw gold watches, handmade shoes scuffing the bare board floor. When my food came, I spooned on the hot sauce and examined the photos on the wall. Convivial scenes, said JumpJim, and so they were. Smiling fellows in aprons holding out cuts of meat, groups in sports and military uniforms. Then I found myself examining the faces of three old men, sitting, it appeared, in that very corner, sometime in the nineteen forties or fifties. Three men in their shirtsleeves, with wide silk ties and prosperous bellies and frosty glass tankards of beer. The caption: “Big” Jim Wallace, Judge Wilbur Wallace and Jack Wallace: still rolling along.