She watched me from the other side of the room and sent me another beer. I nodded at her, careful not to get too close. She looked like she wanted to keep me as a pet.

All around me, people were passing about bottles of Canadian whiskey, screw-topped bottles of champagne, and more quarts of beer. They sweated into plastic hotel ice buckets, hooted with laughter, and unwound from the hard week.

Besides the rhythm guitar player, I was the only white boy in the house.

I took a sip of warm beer and watched the man work his guitar. He was skinny and kept the kind of beard you’d expect to find on a character from the New Testament. Wore a T-shirt advertising Atlanta blues mecca Blind Willie’s, Wranglers faded almost white, and Birkenstocks.

Man’s name was Cleve Mack and thirty years ago he’d created the nerve center for some of the greatest soul music ever recorded. Always worked that way. Didn’t matter if it was Stax, Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, or Bluff City. The greatest soul music was a blend of white and black artists, a pure Memphis melting pot of country, gospel, and blues.

I pushed away the skeletal remains of the wings and the last of the amber beer in my glass. My thin notebook was in my back pocket and I was ready to get some leads. That big woman had worn my ass out. No more hip shakin’ tonight.

I found Cleve out back behind the strip mall smoking a joint beside a rusting Dumpster that smelled of sulfur and shit. His face wrinkled like old parchment around his blue eyes. His body so thin, he looked as if he were sick or on a hunger strike.

I walked over, introduced myself, and told him about Loretta and her desire to find her brother. Cleve sucked on the joint and kicked at a paper basket of wings. He toed at it for a few moments but wouldn’t knock the messy bones on the asphalt.

“Man, ole Clyde James, best there ever was,” Cleve said in a drawl crossed between a black from south Memphis and a white Delta farmer. “Too bad that poor motherfucker is deader than a choked chicken.”