Fear & Loathing in Mississippi (part 5)

Late Saturday night

On to Tricia’s Italian Restaurant, the name being more of a goal than a reality. At the moment it’s a gutted storefront with bright overhead lighting, a few card tables, and some folding chairs. Tricia is selling home made pies up front and hoping to get the full restaurant open soon.

Somehow it’s the perfect venue to hear L.C. Ulmer, who is nearly 80, and gets more sound out of a guitar than most trios. He is fast and wild. We can’t tell if the music is from the earliest days of the Delta, or avant guard and innovative -- we’re lost in an acoustic tornado. I love it. We share a piece of “jess pie” on the way out. McRik says his first wife made jess pie. Buzzard said his second wife made hash brownies until the sheriff raided his apartment in Pittsburgh.

The momentum of the Crown-soaked evening and the Devil’s music inevitably drives us back across the Sunflower River to the black side of town. We are in no mood to be around the suburbanites at this point, and most of them stay on the white side of the river, especially at night. We hit Messenger’s Pool Hall and catch a little of Big T. and the Family, then RL Boyce at the Club 2000, where I am transfixed by a dancing woman I think is about 30, but could be 50. Her 90 pound body and complete lack of teeth make it hard to tell, but she is a perpetual motion machine. She wears out one partner after another. I am tempted, but I think she might be a friend of the Devil, and I am too afraid of her to get that close.

It’s getting late. There’s just one place left to go -- back to Annie Bell’s, where Junebug Jefferson plays a unique style of blues suited perfectly for this crowd; kind of Muddy Waters meets James Brown. I cant explain it, but I can dance to it. Some of our new friends from last night are there. Again, we are the only whities in the joint. It’s fun, festive, and friendly; like a good wedding reception between two families that don’t really know each other, but aren’t going to let that get in the way of a good time.

And to make a good wedding reception, the food has to be right. Tacked on to the side of Annie Bell’s is a small room big enough for a grill, a counter and maybe three customers. A hand-painted sign out front identifies it as “WOP’s” – home of the WOP burger. (above on left end)Open from 5 pm to 5 am. daily. We get three and take them across the highway. We stand next to the Imperial, using the hood for a table. The WOP most closely mimics a Big Mac, but the meat is broiled, the bread is fresher, and WOP’s secret super soul sauce is unique.

This may be the most delicious thing I ever ate. We are tired, drunk, excited, hungry. The night is perfect, warm, breezy, clear, fragrant. The setting is lean, stripped of all hype, a parking lot, a highway, a car, some pals. We eat in silence for a while, savoring the best meal of the trip. And then we see her. She isn’t exactly dancing, but it is more than a walk. Her gaunt body and toothless, sunken mouth are unmistakable from a 100 yards. It is the Devil’s mistress from Club 2000 -- and she is headed our way.

She dips and sways in time to some unheard rhythm. Is it emotional expressionism, or just corn liquor messing with her nervous system? We stand and stare. I can’t resume chewing until she passes us by, 10 feet away without so much as looking up, down State Street toward the crossroads. Relief rolls over me. Are we lucky, or do you have to engage the Devil and suggest a wager before he speaks to you?