Uncle Reggie did not live in the twenty-first century. Paige had threatened to quit if he didn’t buy a laptop for her to run the business. Last night at the Cove, I used her Apple to find Mutt’s Bar, the place noted on my uncle’s calendar for a week ago. The bar wasn’t listed in any phone book. My Internet search came up with one hit in the city, but not because Mutt’s had a listing anywhere. Someone had gotten stabbed on the sidewalk in front of the place last month.
The East Bay exit off Highway Seventeen looped through Charleston’s depressed area. Across from a dilapidated brown building with a neon-lit beer advertisement in the window, I found a parking spot. The outside temperature according to the gauge in my car showed one hundred, so I checked out the scene from the driver’s seat with the AC blowing hard.
Formosan termites had decorated the outer face of the structure with their elaborate tunnels, like veins, entwined in what was left of the wood. The neon flickered against years of soot caked on the window. Next to it hung a rusty screen door. I’d been in places like this before, but not without an automatic weapon.
The hands on my watch pointed to noon. I got out of my car with the newspaper I’d bought at the pier and pressed the alarm remote. It acknowledged me with a quick blow of the horn.
The street was a different world. Black kids played on the cracked and broken sidewalks. Clothes hung on lines strung across the front porches of shotgun homes, most of which leaned to one side or the other. Daylight, I truly believed, was the one thing keeping me from becoming a missing person file. This same scene twelve hours later would be bad news.
Sour bar-wash and stale cigarette smoke permeated the air escaping through the rusty screen door. I grabbed the handle and pressed the old latch. The door’s corroded springs squealed like Ned Beatty in Deliverance as I pulled it open. While my eyes adjusted to the dark room, I heard B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone” blaring from somewhere. A bar stretching the width of the room came into focus. Several men sat on mismatched stools, elbows riding the worn wood of the bar. A window unit protruding from the wall failed to condition what passed for air. A ribbon tied to the vent on the front of it fluttered in the tepid breeze. My eyes spotted an old Wurlitzer jukebox straight out of the fifties, its neon lights fighting to shine through decades of grime. I walked past two men posturing at a pool table with ripped green felt. At the bar, I eased out a stool two spots down from the other guys and sat.
The barkeep held a dirty towel. “You lookin’ for directions?”
I gave him my best smile. “This Mutt’s place?”
“Yep.”
“Then I don’t need directions. How about a Coke?” I placed both hands on the bar and nodded at the men seated next to me. “How you guys doing?”
Their manners weren’t available, apparently. Much like my Coke. The bartender hadn’t moved.
He put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. “What you want, Opie?”
His boxed afro and lamb-chop sideburns were a few decades off but I didn’t feel like offering any styling tips. He was taller than me, and I counted six others in the room who most likely wouldn’t end up on my side if a fight broke out.
“I’m looking for Mutt,” I said. “And a Coke.” I pulled folded bills from my front pocket, peeled away a five, and set it on the bar.
The bartender blew out a stream of smoke in my direction. “Just ’cause Lincoln freed the slaves don’t mean he’s that popular here.”
“Huh?” I was genuinely puzzled.
He pointed to the face of the bill.
I felt a bunch of eyes on me so I held up a twenty.
“Jackson’s more like it,” he said.
I dropped it on the five and the bartender scooped up both bills. He went to a rusty cooler, reached in through the ice, and pulled out my drink. With an opener tied to a long leather strap around his neck, he popped the top and placed the bottle in front of me.
I said, “You Mutt?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Jackson.” I wasn’t about to give him anything.
He wiped the bar with his grungy towel. “Mutt’s on break. What can I help you wit?”
A Muddy Waters tune started and the bartender straightened up, cocked his head, and snapped his fingers. “How!” He forgot about wiping the bar and danced around.
I sat there watching him groove.
Chuckles came from somewhere in the room. The tension in the air felt like a hot landing zone, and I was unarmed. I opened the paper and pointed to the picture of my uncle. It was a good one Patricia must have taken a few years ago. His hair was tied back in a ponytail, his beard neatly trimmed, and the black patch covered his left eye.
The bartender stopped moving, picked it up, and looked at it for a long time. His dark face lightened a few shades.
He said, “What about it?”
I didn’t know what to say next.
He laid the paper on the bar. “I asked you a question, boy.”
A voice came from behind me. “You want us to take this cracker out back, Mutt?”
Sweat dripped down my back from the heat.
Mutt took a long drag from his Kool as if to ponder the offer and exhaled a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. “Naw.”
I realized my hands had the Coke bottle in a white-knuckled death grip.
The creaking of the screen door broke the tension.
A big voice boomed, “Everything okay up in here?”
The bartender looked past me to the doorway and nodded. “Brother.”
After a moment, a man pulled out the stool beside me and sat. “Got any root beer, Mutt?” His minister’s collar complimented a black suit hanging on a large frame. He was dark-skinned like the others and didn’t seem uncomfortable being in a bar. A large belly strained the buttons of a black shirt and hid his belt buckle. His gray-speckled hair and mustache were neatly trimmed.
He turned toward me. “How you doing?”
“It’s been one of those days,” I said.
The bartender went to the cooler while the minister picked up the newspaper from the bar and looked at it. His eyes turned to me and he held out his hand. “Reverend Thomas Brown. People around here call me Brother Thomas. It mean Brother-in-Christ, mm-hmm.”
I tried to match his meaty hold. “Brack Pelton.”
Mutt sat the bottle of root beer in front of Brother Thomas and leaned on the bar. “This is all nice and cozy-like. I just got a few questions for the white boy, here.”
Brother Thomas held up a hand. “No disrespect, Mutt, but I’d like to give Brother Brack a tour of our community.” He looked at me. “How about it?”
What could I say to an offer like that? No thanks, I’d rather stay here and take my chances? “I’d appreciate it.”
We pushed our stools back from the bar, took our soft drinks, and turned toward the exit. One of the patrons, a bald man with a gray beard, held the door open when we approached.
“Thank you, Clovis,” Brother Thomas said. “I sure hope to see you in church next Sunday.”
The man grinned. “I’ll sure try, Brother. I’ll sure try.” Clovis’s stained shirt had a “City Garage” patch over the pocket. Once Brother Thomas and I reached the sidewalk, Clovis waved at us with a cigarette and eased the squealing door closed.
Down the block, Brother Thomas stopped and turned to me.
“What you did back there was either brave or stupid. I can’t tell which.”
I forced a smile.
“I seen you drive by,” he said. “The whole street seen you. A white man like you parks his nice new car up in here and walks into that bar? Oh, Lord.”
He walked. I kept up.
His mouth formed a grin and he shook his head. “Heh-heh. It’ll keep that bunch back there busy talkin’ for a while, mm-hmm.”
I looked at the leaning houses we passed wondering if a pattern accounted for their off-centeredness. “You knew the man on the front page of the paper, didn’t you?”
“I did. He was a good man.”
“He was my uncle and I wanna know why Mutt’s Bar was written in his calendar.”
“I guess you’ll have to ask Mutt,” Brother Thomas said.
“You know my uncle was murdered, right?”
He nodded.
I said, “Anything you can tell me about him?”
“Not much you don’t already know yourself.”
“I’m having a hard time seeing a connection. My uncle owned a rundown bar on the Isle of Palms and sold overpriced drinks and shrimp cocktails to tourists. As far as I knew, he didn’t attend church and wasn’t the volunteering type. The only thing he enjoyed doing was wreaking havoc with the town council.”
Brother Thomas gave me an “mm-hmm,” but nothing else.
After a few moments of silence, I said, “I guess I’m wasting your time, Brother Thomas. I’m sorry to have bothered you and your community. Please extend my apologies to Mutt and everyone else.”
I held out my hand.
The large preacher took it. “No bother. Come any time. Church service is at ten every Sunday morning. Sometimes Wednesday nights, too.”
I carried a Swiss Army knife that had every tool imaginable including a small pen. With it, I wrote my cell number on the back of an old receipt and handed it to Brother Thomas. “If you think of anything I can add to the obituary, please give me a call.”
He took the number. “Thank you, young man. I surely will.”
I left him there and headed back the two blocks alone, thinking this was a big waste of my time, if not his. At the Mustang, I pressed the alarm remote and reached for the door handle. Someone grabbed my shoulder. On instinct, I dropped my keys to free my hands. Something stiff pressed against the back of my head.
Mutt’s voice was low and serious. “You better tell me why you here axing questions before I blow your brains all over this shiny ride.”
“Mutt!” Brother Thomas yelled from a distance. “Don’t do it!”
“Stay outta this, Brother,” Mutt shot back.
I kept calm and formulated a plan.
“It’s . . . not . . .” Brother Thomas huffed from a closer distance, “what you . . . think.” He must have been running.
Mutt moved closer to my ear. His breath felt like a bad fog. Spittle sprayed the side of my face when he spoke. “I smoked a lot of camel jockeys in Desert Storm. One white boy ain’t gonna make a big splash on the list.”
He tried to spin me around and I decided his one chance at me was over. I jammed an elbow in his face. The blow caught him off guard and he staggered backwards a step. I followed with a fast uppercut. My fist made solid contact with the underside of his chin. His head jerked back like a Pez dispenser followed by the rest of him. When he landed on the ground, the gun dropped from his hand. I picked up the pistol and my keys and scanned the area. A small crowd had gathered. Brother Thomas stood facing me, stooped over with hands on his beefy thighs and gasping from his run. Mutt was out cold.
In Afghanistan, I’d been assigned to Recon and volunteered for point every chance I got. With my wife gone, getting blown up seemed like a good idea. The commanding officers mistook my suicidal tendencies for leadership ability and promoted me. The problem with my military plan turned out to be quick reflexes—real quick reflexes. The kind that won car races. And fights.
“Brother Thomas,” I said, “you wanna revise your story?”