Uptown Bennie Brown's

It was my birthday, so Kemp told me we were going to eat at Uptown Bennie Brown’s over in Jonestown, a few miles outside of Clarksdale.  Makes Clarksdale look…well…developed.  Fifty-two percent of the population is below the poverty line.  The per capita annual income for the town was $8,528.00 in 2000.  Sheriff’s deputies don’t go alone at night.  No white people live there.  I don’t know if they ever did.  But Kemp said it was worth the fifteen minute drive to eat at Uptown’s.  Claimed I’d have the best fried pork chop I’d ever eaten.  So we went. 

            For the majority of Mississippi’s history, there were certain places where black folks couldn’t go.  Everyone knows that.  We learn it in school.  We’re reminded every February.  And there were some places I guess that were considered in-between, that is, blacks were allowed to be there, so long as a white person was at least present or accompanying them somehow.  Kind of like a chaperone or someone who could vouch for them or something. The unspoken “don’t worry, he’s not going to steal anything or hurt you.  He’s with me." But even then, the poor guy would get looks, like “What the hell does this black guy think he’s doing here?”  And people would make him feel as unwelcome as possible, so he would never want to come back, and the separate worlds would remain.  Still happens to this day. 

Well, Jonestown is the same way in reverse.  Kemp and I didn’t go without our chaperones, Chilean and Samson. Two of Kemp’s co-workers, nice guys, funny as hell, and, most importantly, they had the requisite blackness for us to enter Jonestown.  Yep, requisite blackness.  Street credit if you will. Chilean and Samson understood the rule.  We never talked about why.  

Since I started in the DA’s office I had heard about Jonestown, specifically not to pick a juror from there because they were always going to side with the defendant, who in this circuit court district was almost always black, or, more often than not, jurors from Jonestown were related somehow to the defendant we were trying.  Extended relationships which I didn’t understand.  Extended relationships they never revealed upon voir dire questioning.  Stereotype or not, it’s just one of those considerations you have to make. Even my DA, who was a black female, would tell me that.

But I had never been to the town itself.  Kemp said his co-worker, Fred, one of the few Jewish guys left in Clarksdale, found the place awhile back because he and a buddy were out dove hunting one afternoon and had run out of beer. Despite the seriousness of the no-beer situation, and balancing safety issues, Fred elected not to get on the highway but rather amble on in to Jonestown to get another case.  Uptown Bennie’s was the only place that sold beer and food.  Fred tried the food, liked it, and the hospitality was great.

This general store is the first thing you see in downtown, paint faded on the west side by years of the summer Delta sun beating on it.  Has an old mural of what purports to be the Jonestown skyline, paint flecking off in leaded confetti.  According to the mural, there were several skyscrapers in Jonestown.  Clearly I had missed its heyday.

 We pulled up to the side in Kemp’s F-250, nose out so we couldn’t get blocked in or needed to scat ass.  Just in case.  Hell, Chilean and Samson recommended it.  Newest truck on the lot by far.  As the dust settled around us and I got out, a man with no legs zipped on past in his powerchair, orange flag coming out of the top.  He didn’t look at us.  Just kept on pimpin by.

To my left, the lone Jonestown police officer had what appeared to be a ten year old kid pinned up against his patrol car zeroed in on him with a can of pepper spray.  I mean, getting in his face and really hollering at him.  I couldn’t hear the conversation, but I knew I wanted no part of it.  What was going on? Drugs? Burglary? Bennie told me later the kid had been skipping school. 

            We walked up on the sagging front porch, my leather boots resonating on the wood planks.  Clomp.  A broken old fellah man eyed us suspiciously as he leaned up against the side of the boarded-up building next door, then he spit on the ground.  I just nodded, grabbed for Bennie’s screen door, and walked in. 

“Alright now.”

“Alright.”

Bennie’s was busting at the seams with absolutely everything, from watermelons to school uniforms to imitation cologne and pirated CDs.  The seating area was the back where the food was served.  Like a Wal-Mart in the Congo.  Bennie greeted us with a big smile, wiping his hands on a dishrag.  Chilean was the first to speak.

            “Hey now Mr. Bennie.  What you know good?”

            “Man, ever thang’s workin.  Who you got with you today?”

Kemp explained to me later that he always ask that question, because he’s got some illegal video poker upstairs that makes this place happening on Friday and Saturday nights.  Knowing the routine, Chilean just passed me off as on of their co-workers.  I don’t know if I would have gotten served otherwise.

“Ya’ll got any pork chops?

            “Fried about a half hour ago.”

            “Gimme one of them, some greens and some mac and cheese pleasesir.”

            “You want a side of cornbread?  Got butter beans in the back.”

            “Cornbread be fine.  No beans though. Got any peach cobbler today?”

            “Not today.”

            “Alright then.  That’d be fine.”

And Uptown went through the routine with each of us, all us wanting cornbread, none so big on the butterbeans.

            He slapped the food in a styrofoam go plate, with the pork chop taking up the top end and the greens and mac taking up the other side.  Dine in only in a take out box.  I had to carry it face open with both hands.  I went and got an RC out of the cooler next to the sweating High Life tall-boys. 

            When you’re a minority in a place like this, which for some reason gives you the feeling of invitation only, you’ve got to be conscious of how you sit.  You can’t sit segregated, you’ll look like you’re uppity or uncomfortable or flat don’t like black people.  So I sat with Chilean and Kemp sat with Samford.  The booths there in the dining area had been taken out of an old Pizza Inn or somewhere like that, maybe a McDonalds from back in the 1980’s – with burnt orange plastic seats bolted down to a metal frame which was supposed to be bolted to a concrete floor.  Uptown had oiled wood planks, with no bolts.  You had to be careful not to lean too hard one way or your food would slide clear on to the floor.

            The Louisiana hot sauce was passed around.  I doused my pork chop and dug in, grease running down the back of my hand making my fingers shiny.  No napkins.  Plastic forks.

            “Morning gentlemen!”

            I had my back to the door, which I generally try not to do anywhere since I was a prosecutor in this county.  Hell, last week I’d prosecuted an armed robber from here.  But with the somewhat authoritative voice, I thought the police had come in there after spraying down the ten year old.  So I turned.  A fellah had walked in, in a wife beater with suspenders and a sweat encrusted old bowler hat covering his jerry curls running down the back of his neck.  Not wanting to stare, or even look him in the eye, I looked down at my food but kept track of his feet.  He came in, skin so dark that when he smiled his head looked like a black dot with a strip of white-out splashed across the front of his face. Big as you please, but you could tell Bennie, up there by the cash register wiping his hands on his stained apron, wasn’t going to give him the same greeting he gave us. 

            “Hey Smurf.  How bout it?”

            “Aw doing good.  It’s all good.  Hey Miss Inez, howyoudoin?”

            And he reached forward to shake her hand, and when she held hers out, he grabbed it and kissed the top of it.  Like a chivalrous gentlemen from times of old.  She snatched it back.

            “Don’t be comin in here ‘Miss Inezing’ me! What you want Smurf?”

            “I just gettin’ one of these cold beers.  Ain’t nothing to it.”

White out smile again.

            “Yeah, well you better get one and be on your way.”

            “Aight I’m going I’m going”

            So he reached in and got a High Life, and he paid with quarters.  I looked down at my foot again as he strutted back past.  Miss Inez was hot.

            “Damn black ass think he can come in here and kiss me on the hand.  I’m gonna slap that stupid ass smile off his face one of these days.  Beat him down to the white meat.”

            “Stay cool Sha Baby.  He was just playin.”

            “Playin hell.  He was meddlin.”

            “Well, just let him go on and be.”

We didn’t say a thing except to compliment the foot.  Finished up, crunched up all the Styrofoam and threw it in the trash, thanked Bennie, no we don’t need any sunglasses or mosquito spray, and we hit the front door.

            “You boys are welcome back anytime.”

            He didn’t specify who he was talking to.

            “Appreciate it Mr. Benny.  We’ll holler at you later.  Good as usual.”

Stepped out on to the front porch, tried to avoid Smurf sitting down the other end, swinging his feet off the front, with his big ass smile, and asking if he could hold a dollar, and we went to the truck and headed back to the pavement.

In the side view mirror, a little orange flag poked out of the top of our dust trail.