I watched Loretta’s face fill with light from the street lamps and over at the skinheads playing tag with the puppy. The puppy licked their faces and rolled over on his back. He barked a couple times and the skinheads hooted with laughter.

“Well, yesterday two men come to see me at the bar about Clyde. Scared me so bad I ain’t been back down there since tonight. I didn’t even tell JoJo about it. ’Cause JoJo and I don’t discuss my brother. Not after he’d tried so many times to help. You know?”

I nodded. I had an uncle who’d been a moonshine runner turned preacher and used to ask my dad for donations for his “church” every Christmas.

“They were asking me all about Clyde,” Loretta said, reaching into her small jeweled pocketbook for a change purse. It killed me the way she could sing such nasty blues and then be such a proper old Southern woman. “They wanted to know when I seen him last and where they could find him. I tole them I ain’t seen him for fifteen years, but they didn’t believe me. They started breaking bottles and turning over tables. One of them even put his hand over my face and said he’d kill me if I didn’t help ’em find Clyde. JoJo’d gone down to the A amp;P on Royal to get me some milk and coffee.”

I could feel my cheeks flush with anger. “Did you tell them Clyde was dead?”

“They called me a liar. Said they seen him in Memphis two weeks back. Why would a man say something like that to me?”

I pulled out a Marlboro from a hard pack and lit it. I took a deep breath of smoke and settled back into the bench reaching my arm around Loretta.

“First off, I think you need to tell JoJo. And I can walk you guys home after the shows. That’s no problem.”

She looked back up at the slow-moving clock and then down at her hands. She unfolded them and reached into her change purse pulling out a wad of hundred-dollar bills. She crushed the money into my palm.

“When you headed up to Mississippi?” she asked.