“There were tables and chairs around the room for nighttime when people came out to drink.
“Mary, who was a big woman, sat next to her cashbox behind the counter. She eyed every soul who came through the door. So when me and RL come in lookin’ like yesterday’s po’k chops she say, ‘What’s wrong wit’ you an’ yo’ friend, Soupspoon Wise?’
“I told her that Heck Wrightson had us in jail but she says, ‘I know that. What I mean is why do yo’ friend look so beat-up?’
“RL was lookin’ ’round the room like a man comin’ awake after a long afternoon nap. ‘You got music tonight, Mary Wade?’ he asked her. She said no. It was a weeknight and the juke joint wasn’t gonna have enough customers to pay musicians to play.
“But RL says that we’d play for a bottle’a whiskey and a hat on the table. ‘Yeah, momma, he said to Mary. ‘We play the house down for a quart bottle and a hat for some tips.’ And RL cracked a smile that woulda made a sweet girl’s photograph cry.
“He said, ‘You know we bluesmen, Mary Wade. Bluesmen born to trouble in a land Christendom never seed.’
“Mary was no saint. She loved the blues and the men and women who played it. She got all coy and toothy and said, ‘You and Soupspoon can play okay. I give ya a pint right now an’ if we get some people in here like you had outside then I’ll pass you over another pint.’
“We took our bottle and sat at a table in the corner. I told RL that I couldn’t play too well because of my shoulder. It was stiff from where Heck hit me. RL rubbed his swole chin an’ said, ‘You just strum on behind me, Soup. You just follow me an’ I show you how t’get there.’
“Booby and Linda got the word ‘bout us an’ come by t’help us drink our liquor.”
“Hmmph,” Kiki said. She got up from the table and walked, unevenly, over to the bed. The small tape recorder caught the sagging springs of her sitting down and the loud scratch of the match she used to light her cigarette.
“...When we finished our pint, RL came up with two bits for another one and then I scraped together my change for a third.
“Booby sat down next to me but her eyes were fixed on RL’s baby face. Linda was laughin’ an’ grabbin’ onto RL’s shoulder whenever anybody said the least funny thing.
“Lyle Cross come in and sits down on t’other side’a Linda, but she acts like he ain’t even there. You see, she was mad at him fo’runnin’ off when Heck was shootin’. For all I could tell, RL didn’t even know that Lyle was there. RL’d put his arm over Linda’s shoulders an’ laugh and make friendly just like they was onna date. I thought he shoulda showed a little more sense because, like I said, RL was a small man — and Lyle Cross was as big as a sharecropper comes.
“But nothin’ happened because Lyle was ashamed of the way he acted and because we were the musicians. Mary’s was gettin’ full about then and the people wanted to be entertained; they didn’t want no mess wit’ they music.
“We started playin’ Robert Johnson’s blues, naturally. I don’t remember him or me sayin’, ‘Let’s play, all it was we had our guitars in our hands and the music started.
“RL played music that told you how it was. He’d sing like a miserable hound yowling after a bitch in heat and here he cain’t get through the fence.
“Booby Redman and Linda was right near us. Linda’d give Bob a kiss now and then. Lyle moved back toward the door to show he didn’t care. And sixty or more other people danced and nodded, put their hands together and drank whiskey.
“You don’t understand how it was for us back then. You think all that drinkin’ and consortin’ an’ playin’ wit’ danger was too much an’ why didn’t we do sumpin’ else? But you don’t know our place back then. We was the bottom of the barrel. We were the lowest kinda godless riffraff. Migrants and roustabouts, we was bad from the day we was born. Blues is the devil’s music an’ we his chirren. RL was Satan’s favorite son. He made us all abandoned, and you know that was the only way we could bear the weight of those days.
“We played until early mornin’. Our hat had more than five dollars in it and we put a deep hole in Mary’s whiskey supply. Lyle shamed hisself by cryin’ over Linda and left Mary’s store.
“Later on, outside, RL told me that Linda took care’a her bedridden grandmother in a big house just outta town. This grandmother stayed upstairs and we could go on downstairs with the girls if we wanted. RL made it clear that was what he was gonna do.
“‘Ain’t she gonna hear us down there?’ I ast’im.
“He says, ‘Naw. She deaf ‘less you shout in her ear. An’ she all alone out there ‘cause they keep this wolf-dog called Lupe. Man be a fool to go in there wit’out Linda ’cause he’d have to shoot that wild dog an’ they ain’t mithin’ in that ole house worth the bullet.’
“Booby an’ Linda come up then an’ ast if we was ready. They walked us out the main street into the Mississippi moonlight. The dark clay road was hard as cobblestones under my shoes and the Delta spread out into the hot, heavy Mississippi night.
“For all that it was barren, the Delta was a beautiful land too. It was a hard land but true. It had the whippoorwill and the hoot owl and crickets for music. It had pale dead trees that stood out in the moonlight like the hands of dead men reaching out of the ground. And the Delta smelled of sweet earth and jasmine and magnolia.
“I remember our feet trudgin’ and the sound of nickels and those lovely girls laughin’ at mithin’ at all.
“When we came to the house the wolf-dog slavered and snapped but Linda took him and locked him in a room offa the porch. She lit a single kerosene lantern and Bob turned it down low. I had a quart of shine from Mary’s, so we drank for a while at first.
“Linda sits on RL’s lap feedin’im whiskey, laughin’ an’ stickin’ her tongue down his throat. Booby would watch them kiss for a while and then she’d kiss me. Once RL ran his long finger down Linda’s blouse an’ Booby shivered in my arms.
“Between hugs I just had to ask, ‘Where you learn t’play blues like you do?’ We was all settled on a big bed. The girls was draped on us an’ our hands was all in their clothes.
“‘Made a trade fo’it, Soup.’ That’s what he said! Give up his right eye to the blues. Made a blood sacrifice with a witch woman down Clarksdale. Soiled his hands in the blood of a animal, then goes out to the crossroads. He said that and then he jammed his hand under Linda’s skirt. Booby saw that and stuck her hand into my pocket. You know you add that to whiskey and the room will start to spin.
“But then all of a sudden somebody yells, ‘I kill ya!’ The lamp was turnt over. RL shouts out, ‘Hey!’ but then his voice is cut short like somebody grabbed his windpipe. I jump over to his side’a the bed an’ wraps my arms around a body I swear was carved from stone.
“‘Lemme go!’ the statue yell. And then there’s this flasha light from the lantern gettin’ set straight. I was huggin’ on Lyle Cross an’ he was killin’ RL. Lyle takes one hand from RL’s throat so he can th’ow me ‘cross the room. Booby was on the floor yellin’ at Lyle. Linda was nowhere to be seen.
“And then it was like everything in my life just stopped. I was on the floor next to my uncle’s guitar. RL was dyin’ on the other side of the room. And what I thought of was the music RL had played that day. Music I never even dreamed of until I heard it. But once I heard it, it seemed like I had always known it. Like Bob had found the truth somewhere and give it to me for a lark.
“And then I was moving again. I slammed the side of that dear instrument into Lyle’s flat nose. I hit him so hard that the strings snapped back at me. Blood was spoutin’ from the sharecropper’s face. Bannon turned to splinters in my hand.