Tip-Top looked at JoJo. “I know you,” he said.

“I know.” JoJo walked off the porch and began to play fetch with a few of the dogs. I asked the man if he would mind sitting on the porch and letting me record him for a project I was working on about Sonny Boy. I told him I was a professor at Tulane University and was working with the University of Mississippi about the great harp player.

“Sonny Boy was a motherfucker who stole my whiskey and my women and once took a piss in my boot. I spent half my life tryin’ to forget about the Goat. Now you leave me be. Got work to do.”

He slammed his door and I heard the canned laughter of Love Boat.

JoJo kept playing with the dogs. He kept his eyes on one in particular, rubbing the dog’s head. She was of questionable breeding, somewhere a German shepherd in the mix, with long drooping ears and a curved tail.

“Look at her,” he said. “She ain’t no more than a pup. Smart. Look at her watchin’ me.”

JoJo walked back to the truck and grabbed some chicken from the sandwich he hadn’t finished. He fed the dog. “I don’t like people who don’t take care of their dogs. Show they’re evil. I know you tryin’ to find this man ’cause he got some stories about Sonny Boy. But he evil if he let a fine dog like this get all skin and bones.”

I heard a screen door slam behind the old shotgun house. I followed a dusty trail behind it and saw Tip-Top working a planer on top of a casket. A life-size dummy – some kind of stuffed black suit with a face made out of wood – watched from a lounge chair nearby.

I walked over to Tip-Top, moving my hand to the back of the dummy’s head. I wanted to do Senor Wences or even the Parkay margarine ad. “Friend of Charlie McCarthy?”

“Don’t know no Charlie.”

“Listen, man,” I said. “Give me twenty minutes. Heard you were with Sonny Boy at his last gig in Tutwiler. Something happened with a bottle of gin.”