“Fat Albert’s!”
“You mean that old shack in the woods?”
“There’s only one.” He smiled at me and it was clear he was inviting me to go over there with him. “It’ll cheer you up.”
“Oh, I can’t do that.” I looked at my watch. It was going on 10 p.m. “Evan’s home by now. He’s got to be waiting for me. And I have to teach in the morning.”
“It’s early,” he said. “And we won’t stay long. Just a little while.”
“But I need to go. I have work to do and—”
“You need to get out to hear some music.” He cut me off. “You need to be close to the art, so you can create it.”
“Art at Fat Albert’s?” I looked at him cross.
“Look, I’m trying to sell this to you,” he said jokingly. “I just want you to come. Be out with me. Aren’t you having a good time?” He groaned. “Ain’t nothing really going on over there right now anyway.”
I looked at my watch again. I probably should’ve called home, but I knew if I did, Evan would just insist on my not going. It was still a little early. I could listen to some music and be home by 11. I lied to myself.
Fat Albert’s was in the back of the forests surrounding Black Warrior River. It was an old, windowless, rickety shack that somebody should’ve forgotten about in 1930 or something, but people still managed to tiptoe through at night or during the earliest hours of the morning to rub shoulders. And getting there did require some tiptoeing. Either that or a pickup truck, which we weren’t at a shortage of in Alabama. The place had actually been built by a black bootlegger named Albert during prohibition in the early twenties. I heard people say he built it so far back in the forest so the police couldn’t get their cars there to bust up the party. But my grandfather said no one who wasn’t rich really had cars back then and the police had only one car which was always broken. So someone was wrong.
Either way, the place’s out-of-the-way location made it a magnet for drunkards and hot-and-heavy adults for decades. It had been a part of the old chittlin’ circuit and any black singer or band who wanted to make it in the Deep South had to pass through Fat Albert’s. And after all that time, while lots of popular clubs downtown had come and gone, Fat Albert’s with its cheap liquor, loose women, and looser rules seemed to be here to stay.
I’d learned all of this listening to other people’s conversations. Justin whispering with his buddies when they slipped back in after slipping out after bedtime, my grandfather remembering when so-and-so got cut for speaking to so-and-so’s woman, and even my parents, giggling and slapping each other on the hand as they told short, short stories about what they did there before they got saved.
All this, but I’d never actually been inside the place. Billie and I had tried once. It was right after college graduation and I was tired of everybody expecting me to be good and ordering me not to go places I shouldn’t be seen. Feeling grown, we climbed into Billie’s car because we were going to get down and dirty at Fat Albert’s! We drove out there and parked the car and trekked down a winding dirt trail, etched out through the woods until we got to the front door. Billie handed the woman at the front door, who looked like she’d had a bit too much of the grain liquor already, our two dollars to get in and just as we were about to walk inside, another woman, with balding temples and cornrows that started at the back of her head, ran up and said, “Das de passtas doughta.”
“Who?” the drunk woman asked as the one with the cornrows pointed to me. “Oh, you can’t come in here. Albert, Jr will beat my ass for sure.”
I sucked my teeth and looked at Billie, who clearly wanted to go inside. “Why can’t I?” I asked the woman.
“Chile, it’s Friday night,” she said. “Half your deacon board’s supposed to be in here. Ain’t nobody gonna be able to party right knowing the pastor’s daughter’s right here.”
“Fine,” Billie said, reaching for her money.
“Oh, no, girls. No refunds. We take tithes, too!”
We heard them laughing as we followed the little dirt trail back to the car. That was the last I ever saw of Fat Albert’s. It wasn’t the kind of place where Evan was gambling to be seen.
Dame’s big blue pickup truck was hopping through the forest like a rabbit. In the front seat next to Dame, I was holding on to the dashboard, the door, and seat, and sometimes Dame’s arm to stay in the car. Dame just laughed and pushed on the gas, following a circus of colorful lights ahead.
“You’re a country girl. You can take a ride in a pickup truck,” he said after we made the clearing into the small lot in front of Fat Albert’s. I could already hear the bass of loud music booming through the walls.
“I’m not that country. I thought the truck was gonna just split in two if we hit one more bump,” I said, fixing my hair as he parked.
“Don’t fix it,” he said.
“What?”
“Your hair.” Dame took a soft hold of my hand with his and pulled it down from my head.
“But it’s all messed up.” I could feel it falling down toward my shoulders, out of the twisted bun I’d made with one bobby pin. The middle was curling up and crinkling from the sweat on my scalp.
“You have beautiful hair. Why do you always hide it in those buns now? You should wear it down. It looks sexy.”
“Sexy? I don’t think you’re supposed to tell your old
teacher she looks sexy.”