FRIDAY, 2:47 A.M.

_Friday morning finds you exhausted as you cross the Hernando de Soto Bridge into Memphis. The air conditioner in your truck died at the halfway point, so you drive the last three and a half hours from Indy with your windows down. Familiar river and city funk invades your cabin and your nostrils. TENNESSEE THE VOLUNTEER STATE WELCOMES YOU. The welcoming feels like it’s against your will.

“Your father’s not well.” Mama’s voice was calm, even after seven missed calls. “You should come home.”

She knows the only way you would return to the city that had raised and reaped so many of your kinfolk is by her summons. Memories unspool as you study the ancient, dark river, reminiscing on humid summer nights spent hiding alone on the rocks near the water. You were all of thirteen years old, smoking loose Kool 100’s you’d stolen from your Aunt J’s purse, Makaveli cursing in your headphones.

The river park had changed. The city had installed bright new green railings, fresh asphalt, a new paint job, bike lanes and all. But some things are still the same: tonight is hot and sticky as a pot of neckbones, and the same big ass mosquitoes threaten to carry you away. Even still, the bloodsuckers are better than all the drunken, stupid shit your kinfolk got going. Fighting and snorting and failing. The memories sour on your tongue.

Bicycle brakes squeal nearby. An older guy pulls up on a lime green mountain bike, Playa Fly spitting fire from his handlebar-mounted speaker:

And dyin’ won’t stop me
In the ground I be rockin’
Collide in place causin’ quakes
and plenty twisters we droppin’

“What up, OG?” you greet him. “It’s been a minute since I heard some Fly.”

His high cheekbones and the uncombed naps peeking out from his blue Grizzlies fitted seem familiar. You shake loose a cigarette—American Spirit instead of Kool 100’s—and offer him one.

“Appreciate that.” He lights it, pulls hard, studies you. His scrutiny doesn’t bother you. Maybe it should.

“I can tell the city ain’t seen you in a minute,” he says. “River call y’all when you make it back home, huh?”

“Just feels right. Stopping here before I even go see my mama.”

“Let me put you on game, nephew. River’s calling you because you need to get that darkness off. Can’t you feel it? It’s riding you hard.”

“Unc, the only devil that’s riding me is brown liquor.”

He sucks his teeth as if to say, niggas never learn. “Don’t believe me, then. But you better remember where you came from and where you wanna go. Get back in them dreams and wash yaself clean, know what I mean? Mess around and wake up dead, then it’s just you and the Devil.”

“Mane, let my dad tell it, my granny used to warn my uncles and auntie about the same thing.” A weight settles on you. You nod. “Aight, I’m listening. Break it down for me.”

“So, Memphis, you feel me? Memphis used to be in Africa, in, in Egypt, right? Men-nefer. Then there’s this Memphis, where we at. Then there’s a Memphis we ain’t met yet. Everybody there, you, me, my mama, ya grandmama in all these Memphises all talk to each other,” he says as he slaps your arm. “And you gotta get in that conversation. That’s the dreamstate.”

“You must have put some extra shit in that square.” You inspect your own cigarette, just to be sure.

“I’m serious, nephew. I let my dreams in and afterward I could remember everything from the time I was three years old. Before, I couldn’t remember my mother’s voice. I bullshit you not.”

“Aight, Unc, you talkin’ ya shit. How do I ‘let my dreams in’?”

He motions you toward the tall grass and dark water.

“The river got the answers,” he says, sitting on the rocks. “Listen to it. Let it get you in tune.”

FRIDAY, 9:40 P.M.

_“Cord, get in the back,” Dad says, Mama illuminated in his headlights as she watches you run to his Cadillac, her jaw set and arms folded. Otis Redding pleads from the radio.

Bring yourself home to me
You’ve got my mind
Messed up and shattered
I’m at the point
Where don’t nothin’ matter

As soon as you’re safe in the car, Mama shuts her front door. Dad switches the radio off when he gets in.

“You hungry?” he asks. “We gotta make a stop first.”

You fidget in the backseat from a combination of Dr Pepper and the excitement of being up past nine. Dad’s car swoops into a familiar driveway. He smokes his cigarette halfway down before Uncle Ronnie pops out of the house, his easygoing smile making you grin.

“Sorry, your sister Jocelyn had me on the phone for two fuckin’ hours.” He notices you in the backseat and daps you up. “My man Cord, Master of the Sword. I ain’t expect to see you tonight.”

Dad frowns. “You know Sheryl back in school now. And doing the overnight shift at FedEx.”

“Nephew, close ya ears.”

You stick your fingers in your ears, but only partway.

“Reggie, boy, you need to tell ya lawyer to hang Sheryl up by them long ass ankles in court,” Uncle Ronnie says, muffled. “You bringing ya seed tonight? On the night we supposed to be parlaying?”

“He gone be out the way.”

“Gotta stop carrying him along everywhere with you,” Uncle Ronnie grunts. “He too chubby to move quick.”

“I don’t bring him, he don’t learn how to move at all. See what happened to Marion when we lost Preston Lee. Cord not gonna end up like that.”

“You’d still be pickin’ cotton if it wasn’t for me,” Uncle Ronnie says and sucks his teeth. “Man not gone pass us the package with no baby hanging around.”

“He gone be out the way, Ronald!” Dad snaps. You tense. “Shit! Goddamn! You sound like Mama when you get to bitching like that.”

Uncle Ronnie plays a tape to fill the new silence. Wake me up before you go-go, the speakers croon. Don’t leave me hanging on like a yo-yo…

Soon, Dad slows down. You hear gravel beneath the tires. Bright light fills the backseat. You sound out the words on the sign: WHISKEY SHOOTER’S BAR AND GRILL.

“Come on,” Dad says, opening your door. “I can hear your stomach.”

“I’m straight,” you protest. Uncle Ronnie slams the trunk. “I ate at Mama house before we left.”

“You know you hungry,” Uncle Ronnie pokes your arm. A sour feeling creeps through you, but his smile lessens the jab.

Whiskey Shooter’s has more white people than you’ve ever seen outside of school, many wearing cowboy boots. Loud country music wails from the jukebox—Women, whiskey, and miles of travelin’ is all I understand—and sawdust covers the floor. One side of the club has a long bar, the other a wide dance floor with rainbow lights flashing above. A few couples dance, a few others sit in booths. In the rear are three pool tables. You know both Dad and Uncle Ronnie love pool—Uncle Ronnie doesn’t have a couch at his house, but he has a pool table. Dad lifts you up on a barstool. A white woman with bright red hair comes over.

“You again?” the woman asks. “He yours?”

“Somebody left him on my porch,” Dad chuckles. “Set him up with a sandwich?”

“You like turkey, little man?” You nod. Her eyes are a shade of green you’ve never seen before.

One jukebox song ends and another begins. You recognize the beating drum intro and the galloping guitar from a dance song one of your teachers plays in class. Everyone jumps to their feet, boots clomping in the sawdust as they step and twirl in unison.

Dad whistles, whee ooh wee. “Would you look at this shit?”

“You ain’t seen Mister Charlie ’nem get down before?” Uncle Ronnie says. “Some of ’em can step a little too. Look at baby girl over there.”

“Shut up, fool,” Dad snaps, nodding over at you.

“Shit, Cord watchin’ ass too,” Uncle Ronnie says, and then perks up, noticing a stocky, mustached man in a black shirt. “There our boy go.”

The redheaded woman slides a plate heaping with french fries in front of you and glares at Dad. “I brought you some fries and a Coke too.”

“Appreciate you,” Dad says. Uncle Ronnie eats one of your fries and winks at you, then heads over alone to meet the man.

“Cord, listen up. I want you stay with this nice lady and finish ya sandwich. Me and your uncle gonna be over there talking with those guys. Now what I say about talking to people you don’t know?”

“Tell ’em, ‘my daddy said I can’t talk to you!’”

“I know that’s right! Now come here,” Dad grabs you off the stool like you weigh nothing, pulls you close, and twirls you around and around right there in front of the bar. You shut your eyes and hug him tight, embracing orbit.

FRIDAY, 10:16 P.M.

_Mufasa, a.k.a. Marion, b.k.a. your Uncle Preston Lee’s favorite baby boy and your big cousin, reclines in his royal purple 1985 Buick Regal Grand National, cradling his pistol in his lap. Since it’s your birthday you get to ride shotgun while his homies sit in back. Shank & Chrome’s “Country Down South Boys” knocks out the eighteen-inch subwoofer in his trunk.

“You brought the good shit, cuz,” Mufasa grins, gold teeth aglow. “Let the drums announce me and my kinfolk like the kings we are.”

“I appreciate you letting me roll with y’all tonight,” you say.

“Turning eighteen is a big deal for motherfuckers like us,” Mufasa responds, nodding. “We gone do this studio thang right quick, then we taking you to the D.”

“They not gone let me in Denim and Diamonds,” you say in slow motion. “I’m just eighteen.”

Mufasa tugs your ear. “I got my ways, lil cuz. Trust in me.”

“I just hope them jookin’ niggas be there,” Neil, one of the homies, says.

When you release the sour diesel smoke from your lungs, your apprehensions go with it. The red Solo cup of MD 20/20 between your knees plus the blunt has your head feeling like it’s full of helium.

You’re parked outside “the studio,” which is really a converted third-floor apartment outfitted with audio engineering equipment and a small recording booth.

“That nigga Lil Wyte bumpin’.” Neil nods to the beat. “I see how he got signed.”

“They said he sold a hunnit thousand out the trunk.” This is Mufasa’s other homie, Woot. “Aye, Mufasa, you remember that white nigga from the Bay we used to hoop with? James, Jericho, something, shit!”

“Damn! What was his name? Bruh was cold as fuck. Like that fool White Chocolate we just got for the Grizzlies.” Mufasa checked the scene. “Y’all ready? The more I think about hitting the club the more ready I am to be in that motherfucker.”

“Let’s move then,” Woot says, rubbing his hands together. “Maybe they’ll have them dancers up there tonight.”

“Look how big this nigga eyes got,” Neil says and points at you. “You be up on campus chasing all the lil college junts, don’t it?”

“Naw, naw.” You leave the car. “Ain’t nobody studying these girls, bruh. Chemistry hard enough. All I do is stack and go to class, on my mama.”

“Leave Aunt Sheryl outta this, cuz.” Mufasa smiled, probably downloading a memory from the ghost of Preston Lee. “This nigga not chasing nothing but them books. Preston Lee would be mad as hell hearing you swear on your mama name. You know he was in love with her first.”

“Stop playing,” you say, hoping he doesn’t. This is new information.

“Yeah, mane, back when they was Manassas Tigers,” he says. “She was in them books, but Preston Lee wanted her to have his baby. By the time she started liking him back, he was already running wild. That’s why I can’t find a good girl now. Too much of that motherfucker in me.”

“You a uglass nigga, that’s why,” Woot teases, nudging Neil, who is focused in the direction of the studio.

“Aye, look,” Neil warns.

Up ahead, a lanky man with long braids exits the apartment lobby, his Polo boots crunching on gravel. Mufasa’s hand twitches toward his gun, but he pauses. By now, the man leaving the studio has stopped.

His loping stride and cheekbones help you recognize him as your other cousin, Carlos. Your Aunt J’s son, born a couple days before her eighteenth birthday. Carlos, a full decade and a half older than you, is missing from your family reunion electric slide memories because he was in the army when you and Mufasa were kids. Carlos looks at the four of you like he is choosing his victims.

“Is that my little cousin Marion?” Carlos calls. “Boy, it’s been a month of Sundays since I seen your ass.”

“I ain’t your fuckin’ boy, dog nuts,” Mufasa double-times to Carlos, but still doesn’t draw heat. “You thought you was just gone ease on down the road with my money?”

You position yourself between the two. Neil and Woot bristle behind Mufasa. Carlos laughs.

“Fuck is y’all, Goku, Vegeta, and Piccolo?” Carlos teases. You glare at him. “And Cord must be Krillin. I told you I got you when my baby mama get her taxes, Marion.”

Mufasa nearly explodes. You hold him in place. Strength neither of you knew you had.

“Chill on that shit,” you scold both of your cousins in the same calm voice you use on your father. “Chill! We all cousins.”

“Fuck family! Tell that shit to ’Los. He a thieving ass nigga, mane.”

“Listen, bruh,” Carlos says. “Cord a know-it-all like his fuckin’ mama, but he got a point. Don’t let ya mouth write that check, ya understand me?”

“You wrong, Carlos,” you say, emboldened by bum wine. “You wrong as fuck and crooked as hell. Don’t do family dirty. Especially on my fuckin’ eighteenth birthday. Squash this shit! If Aunt J knew y’all was fighting it’d break her heart.”

Carlos looks at you like he’s only now realizing who you are. “Oh you grown now, huh? Fine, mane, it’s squashed, Marion. Imma see you tomorrow, and we gone set this shit straight.”

“I better see ya ass tomorrow, ’Los.” Mufasa pushes past you and up on Carlos. “Or we gone have problems. I put that shit on my daddy.”

“Aight, mane, damn. You ain’t gotta call Preston Lee up in here! Imma see you tomorrow. Mufasa and Pride Rock. Y’all niggas wild.”

You all let Carlos pass, and the night stops vibrating. Mufasa shrugs. “My bad, I almost ruined ya day. It’s just, mane…that nigga owe me ten. I couldn’t let that slide.”

Your jaw drops. “Bruh, you almost got me killed over ten dollars?”

“Naw, fool. Ten thousand.”

“Shit,” Neil hisses.

“How the fuck he lose that much?” Woot asks.

“We was racing! I told ’Los I’d dust his ass on foot, and I did! Right up there on Breedlove. You can go ask them ladies at the church. They was cheering for me!”

A moment of silence balloons before you burst it by laughing. Neil follows, then Woot with his hacking chuckle. Finally, Mufasa lets his frown fall and joins you, shaking his head.

FRIDAY, 11:52 A.M.

_Praise the Lord, you’ve finally arrived at something or other Missionary Baptist Church, located so deep in South Memphis the air smells like Mississippi. That scent mingles with the scent of cigarette smoke, gasoline, and greasy goodness courtesy of Aunt J’s three pans of fried chicken. She’s adorable in her bedazzled jean jacket, bouffant, and red lips, looking like a younger version of your grandmother.

“Hurry up now,” she fusses. “The picnic start at one-thirty.”

“Chill out, Auntie. If you wanted to fireball out here you should have drove yourself.”

Aunt J shakes her fist at you. “Oh, so you get some hair on your face and you think you can talk to your auntie any old kind way, huh? Keep on and Imma dot your eye.”

Standing in front of Aunt J looking down at her five-foot-two-inch self calls you back to the time an implied threat from her would make you check your draws. Before finding God, Aunt J was a dice-shooting, quick-drawing blueswoman who ran her own hole-in-the-wall, J’s Blue Note Blues Lounge, in North Memphis for twenty-five years.

“Aunt J, you know I’m nonviolent. Like Martin Luther the King, Junior.”

“Boy!” She laughs. “Come ’round here and bring this chicken in the kitchen.”

You carry the still-steaming bird behind the church to a newly built kitchen. The rear lawn is lush, green, and treated against gnats. Congregants are busy building vendor tents and wiring a stage for sound.

“Damn, Aunt J. Oh, uh, I’m sorry. But y’all doing it big.” They have drums. A keyboard. Even risers for the praise singers. “Your church got money.”

“We got Jesus.” You see a little of the old Aunt J in her frown. “Go on now.”

Once you drop off the chicken, you step back outside where the music ministry is doing sound check. A lanky keyboard player taps a couple of keys and the drummer, a bald older man dressed in a bright turquoise suit and cowboy boots, fiddles with the hi-hat on his drums. The lead guitar is a white kid, and the bassist, a heavyset man with curly black hair and dark glasses, walks his fingers along his strings.

“Sounds good, fellas,” keyboard says. “Okay, let’s do ‘I Know’ real quick, see if we in business. One…two…you know what to do.”

Drums kick up, keyboard jams, and guitars run ahead. In front of the stage, a skinny light-skinned man claps his hands and sings along.

I know it was the blood
I know it was the blood
I know it was the blood
For me
One day when I was lost
He died upon the cross…

The praise song roots you to the spot, draws back to a time you’d forgotten. A time when your family was whole, your mom smashing Vaseline on your face to fight the ash, sister so-and-so passing you dimes and quarters to give for tithe and offering, those tight ass church pants that stifled your breathing. You feel part of something big and full, a feeling that spreads through your entire chest.

“Okay, Cord, I’ll see you later,” Aunt J instructs, tapping your arm. “But be back by five or Imma—Boy, is you crying? You always so damn emotional.”

“I got touched by the spirit,” you say. “Who is that on bass?”

“That’s alright, nephew. Let Him use you,” Aunt J says, genuinely pleased. “And that’s just Silky. He used to play my club back in the day. We fooled around a little bit too, but he started fuckin’ with my money—ooh, dang it, Cord! Anyway, I had to cut him off.”

“Aunt J, what made you do…this?”

“Give my life over to God?”

“Yeah. You like the blues and dancing and shooting guns. Jesus don’t like none of that.”

“My mother is gone. Nobody even found Preston Lee body. My baby Carlos in the streets. Both my brothers lost the only women who would put up with them for longer than five minutes. This life hard, but you gotta find some strength to hold on to it, and the whole time the devil trying to take it from you. God give you the strength to hold on, and to keep going. I ain’t know that before, but I know it now.” She shrugs. “I don’t know if that answer your question, but it’s how I feel.”

“The Church life look like it’s going good for you.”

“I give all praises to God on that one, nephew. But do these questions mean Imma see you around here Sunday? Pastor can answer you better than me. He a nice man.”

“I think I’ll stay for the picnic. If that’s cool with you.”

“Yeah, boy! Gone over there and sit down, you know that’s my section over there. Just tell them ladies you my nephew. Don’t eat up all that chicken, neither.”

FRIDAY, 3:05 A.M.

_Your heart is doing a buck gangsta beat. You feel the breeze off the river, smell the earthy, swampy goodness. The river rocks press against your backside. “Nobody Needs Nobody” is paused, the speaker silent. You look at the bike, the speaker, laugh again. Memphis, always on some bullshit.

The bike’s owner sits on the rocks next to you, head slumped, breathing so shallow he barely moves.

“Unc,” you shake him, hard. “You good? Lord don’t tell me this motherfucker done died on me!”

He snaps awake, recognition in his red eyes. “I was gone there for a minute, boy. Caught in them dreams. Glad I made it back. You can get lost if you not careful.”

“Lost? I don’t feel lost. I feel…exposed.”

“That’s good!” He scratches his beard. “You got called back here because it’s time to stop being in the past and start making ya future. It’s time to be here.”

You behold the river, listening to the city’s natural rhythm: Cicadas and crickets singing in the tall grass. Sirens in the distance. Trains announcing themselves with long, bellowing horns. Shots slapping nearby, a chorus of dogs barking in response. Night-passing boats sloshing in the murky water. Drinking the chords of the city deep and exhaling as something soft and familiar inside you replenishes itself from the music.

“I’m here,” you respond. “I’m back. What up, Memphis. Oh, shit, you gotta tell me your name, man. Let me run you where you trying to go. You can put your bike in my truck.”

“Naw, young’un. You got somewhere to be.” He grabs his bike. Playa Fly kicks back out the speakers, resuming right where it had left off. “You get back in them dreams, you’ll find me. If you feeling kind, though, you can pass me a couple more of them squares.”

“Sure you don’t want nothing else?” You toss him the box. “I got $20. You can get a two-piece dark from Pirtle’s.”

“No need, nephew. I’m full enough from sitting here with you.” He climbs on his bike. “Nobody Needs Nobody” starts again, from the top. “Just pour a little out for me when you get home.”

“Say no more,” you promise as he swoops off into the morning. “Appreciate ya, Unc.”