“Nothin’ but the world,” I said, grabbing her hand. “What’s on your mind?”

“I just been thinkin’ while we were walking ’bout all the things you do for folks. Like when you kicked the butt of that man who dress like Jesus. You know the one who took Fats’s money? And what you did for sweet Ruby Walker in Chicago last year? Nick, you ’bout got yourself killed to get that ole woman out of jail. I don’t want to be no burden.”

I squeezed Loretta’s plump fingers and smiled. “You remember you and JoJo taking me in when I lost everything? You remember cooking for me and taking me to church and sewing my ratty Levis? Loretta, you’re my family. I helped those people ’cause I wanted to. Because it’s what I do. But with you, it’s not even something I’d think about.”

Loretta peered up at the three spires of the cathedral. She seemed to concentrate a long time on the middle spire topped with a hollow cross. On the cathedral’s clock, the long hand swept forward and bells chimed for 3:00 A.M.

I rubbed my unshaven face and asked, “Loretta, tell me what’s bothering you.”

“You remember me telling you about my brother?”

“Hell yeah, I know all about your brother. He’s a legend. You kidding me?”

Clyde James started his career singing in a gospel trio back in the ‘fifties with Loretta and their sister, whose name I couldn’t remember after a few Dixies. Clyde went on to be a big crossover star in the ‘sixties with a small soul label called Bluff City. He was kind of a mix of Otis Redding and Percy Sledge.

Even though Loretta rarely spoke of him, I had most of his records. Mainly scratchy 45s with their dusty grooves filled with songs about longing, heartache, and all-around woman pain. Many a night they’d exorcised the latest shit I’d been going through with a woman I’d known for the last decade, Kate Archer.