Juke Joint

The joints I used to hung out at, I ain’t never see no—um—what word can I use here, Negroes? Anyways, I ain’t never think much of it til I rode down cotton country and ended up on the wrong end of a old Black man’s sawed-off. 

Man it was hot that summer. Been hot for weeks. Hot on the job site puttin’ up walls and trusses out in the sun. Hot up the mountains. Hot on the bike at ninety mile an hour. Hot at thirty-two hundred feet where my old trailer was. Ain’t have no air conditioning and it was a fucking oven inside. So when that job wrapped up and they cut us loose I decided fuck this shit I’m gonna pack a bedroll and some smokes and ride down to Myrtle, go jump my ass in the ocean. 

So I been carving down out the mountains, getting into how the tires feel on the hot blacktop when I’m down in the curves, shifting my ass off the seat, knees damn near dragging the ground. To this day I ain’t never felt more goddamn alive than when I’m one little rock, one crack in the blacktop away from them tires cutting loose and smearing my ass across the road, over the high side to land fucking busted-up dead in a field somewheres. Somehow it ain’t never happen though. If I’d knowed I’d live this long, I reckon I’da took better care of myself. 

I’m on my old CB750, the one I used to call Baby, with the wide-open pipes and the racing air filters, carbs jetted sixteen over so’s it don’t run too lean and burn holes in the pistons. The raw gas makes that short little 4-into-1 pop like a gunfight when I roll off the throttle, but then when I power into the curves it braps out like a trombone playing some kinda rowdy-ass street jazz.

I come up out a curve and lay into a straightaway, throttle wide open, and I see this old juke joint up ahead on the left. At first it don’t look no more than a tractor shed by the cotton fields, built outta mismatched scraps of wood and sheet metal, two three different roofs stuck together, whole thing shimmering in the heat. But then maybe a thousand yard off, ninety a hundred mile an hour, I see it got a little lean-to porch facing the road, somebody walking in the front door, a old car pulling out the dirt lot with its back end squatted low like it got a trunk full of moonshine or some shit. That gets me curious. Some of the best joints is just local folks out middle of nowhere. 

I been tucked in on Baby four or five hour by this point, and a cold beer and some grub sounds damn good. I roll off the throttle and them pipes start popping all blappity while I’m raising up off the little racing handlebars to catch some wind, kicking it down through the gears, easing in on the brakes. 

That old lean-to porch got a patch of sandy gravel out front, room enough to get a couple cars clear of the road. I angle across the oncoming lane, find a good spot for my kickstand, unzip my leathers that’s already getting hot, and stretch my back while it’s idling down. That bike idles rough and rich, smells like a damn gas station, and I only idle it maybe half a minute, cause my pipe’s pointed right at the front door and that bike ain’t no kind of quiet. Besides, without a eighty mile an hour wind, with the engine heat, the hot and muggy weather, even unzipped, them leathers get sweaty in a hurry. I turn the key off and the engine tickety-ticks over the hissing in my ears, while I’m shutting off the petcock so’s it don’t flood again. The little half helmet I’m wearing ain’t really legal, but South Carolina ain’t got no helmet law no how. 

I step off the bike, light a smoke and pull my ponytail out the back of my leather. The oil tank under the seat’s at 185°F. On the hot side, but about right for the weather and the way I been riding. I painted it flat black with the same rattle can I used for the gas tank, stenciled バカ外人 on it so’s the Harley bikers can see it when I pass their ass. Rag on my old rice burner all you want, you’re still back there on your hog eating my smoke. 

Ain’t no kinda sign on the building. Up over the lean-to porch where you might expect a sign there’s just a old air conditioner stuck through the wall, half iced up, dripping on the tin roof with a little sound like pank-pank, pank. 

The storm door got one of them stick-on hardware-store signs says “PRIVATE” like up at Turtle’s joint, but I ain’t think nothing of it. He just got it on there to keep out the—um—folks he don’t want in there. The door clanks open on a stuffy dark room, and when I pull off my shades first thing I see’s a old Black man, real dark skin, and he either got weird buggy eyes or he ain’t real happy to see me there. He got one of them cheap plastic diner baskets with some wax paper and a little bag of chips front of him, good sign I might can get some grub. Ain’t but maybe half a dozen old wore-out Black guys in there, all of ’em a good thirty forty years older than me. They all shut up when I come in the door, and they all sitting there eyeballing me, no sound but the air conditioner rattling up behind me and a little boom box behind the bar. I guess they ain’t used to seeing no young white bikers round here. 

I step up to the near end of the bar. The old dried-up bartender looks at me sideways, but he don’t move. 

“Hey,” I say. “Could I get a—” 

“Ain’t nothing here for you,” he says. 

…the fuck? 

The bartender looks at me like so much garbage needs took out, while I’m looking at him thinking you mother fucker, I oughta come over that goddamn bar and…

But I look round all their faces, hard faces telling me I ain’t welcome, all of ’em ready for me to start some shit, every single one of ’em ready to jump at me. All these crusty old fuckers, I could probably take three or four of ’em. But still. I’m outnumbered and I’m on their turf, somebody’d get the drop on me. And the bar man’s reaching for something under the bar. “All right,” I say. “Fuck you then. Fuck all y’all! Buncha goddamn…”

The bartender comes up with a sawed-off pump-action twelve gauge, racks a round, and I swear he done growed a good two inches taller somehow. 

“Git on now,” he says with that shotgun at the ready, finger on the trigger guard and the sawed-off barrel pointed at the rafters above my shoulder. 

But even looking at that twelve gauge I’m still too goddamn stupid to just turn around and leave. I sweep a stack of bar coasters and a tinfoil ashtray off onto the floor, flick my smoke bouncing orange sparks off the bar at him, kick over the barstool beside me, and storm the fuck out. The aluminum door sounds like a gunshot when I kick it open, and just for a tiny sec I wonder if he really done did it. But nope, I’m still walking, still breathing, and that door’s still clanking shut behind me. 

Back on the bike, seat hot from the sun, ponytail still loose (gonna regret that later), I jam the key in the switch, twist the throttle and kick the starter. Hard. Baby’s engine’s still hot, roars like a pissed-off bobcat, and I chunk it into gear, dump the clutch, and spray gravel across the whole front of the joint spinning my way out onto the road. I don’t even check for traffic until I done ripped through three gears in the wrong lane, probably running eighty mile an hour. It splutters when I hit fourth, cause it’s starving, and that’s when I remember the petcock. Shit ain’t gonna run if it ain’t got no gas in the carbs.

But see, my old man growed up in a sundown town and was goddamn proud of it. Turtle’s place with all our bikes out front, to this goddamn day I ain’t never seen no Black nobody in there except working the griddle. The one Black driver at that motor parts job I used to had when I was too busted up to build forms and lay rebar no more, he run the Tazewell-Grundy route just one time, his first week there, come back saying he weren’t never running up them shops again, and he’d walk off the job first, cause he wun’t entirely sure he’d come back down outta there alive. And them old fuckers at that juke joint, they probably growed up right around there workin’ theyself to the bone, trying they damnedest to survive. Probably had ancestors was sharecroppers and slaves buried all around them cotton fields, they graves marked with rocks you and me’d step right over and never know it. Some of them bones probably folks stoled all the way from Africa, snatched right out they own lives and crammed in ships like a goddamn can of sardines. Thinking back on all that shit now I might kinda get it, why they ain’t want my cocky white ass strutting right in their front door, like I was flying my colors in their clubhouse or some kinda shit. 

Had that day to do over again I might just say, “Fair enough,” and walk out. 

Little late for that shit now.