By Maria Padhila
After a couple summers spent chasing blues and roots music, I can tell the towns where they’ve still got some hope from the ones where everything is gone. In the downtowns formed by the cross of the essential streets called Main or Market or Court, there’s the old courthouse or city hall, restored or shuttered; the green is adorned with banners or a fountain, or it’s a bald patch and a few baking benches; there’s a strip of shops with fetching vintage wear, cute home goods, some struggling galleries, the smell of craft beer and good bread and fair trade coffee from open doorways. Or there are bare old shop windows and a social service agency.
But go as little as a block from the center and the gloves and hat are off. You see the bones: the bail bondsmen’s shops, the jail, the liquor and lottery windows. And the bus station.
I was not going to cry anymore, because a woman with scratched legs and unkempt hair standing next to a tough looking man in that part of town can manage to slink by if she’s well behaved. If she’s crying, the cops might take a second look, and I didn’t want to have to explain anything to anybody.
“No drama. There will be no drama,” I had told Chris before we got his overstuffed bags out of the car. He gave me his cigarette to hold and went inside the station to get his ticket processed. I stood outside and took a hit, and another, and another, too fast, filling my already aching head with smoke and chemicals.
A group of corner men had colonized a tiny, bricked-in patch of shade near where I waited, sitting and drinking discreetly by the dead bushes. They were talking about women and jobs. I tried to eavesdrop, because I could maybe learn something, but my ears were ringing too loud to hear anything much.