“Pete Hollis was there that night.
“Pete was a big ole boy like to dance wild. I mean, he’d get all the way down to the floor, if you see what I mean. All the way down. You know he grabbed me the minute I come in an’ th’owed me around till all I could do was laugh an’ laugh.” Mavis was lost in the story now. Soupspoon could tell by the way she breathed. “An’ when the song stopped and another one started, Rafe grabbed me an’ spun me so hard that I couldn’t even see straight. The musicians would hardly take a break between songs and so they got the crowd hotter an’ hotter and I felt like the hottest momma there bein’ th’owed from Rafe to Pete Hollis. The floor cleared out around us for every dance and them boys got wilder an’ wilder tryin’ to outdo the steps the last one done.
“One time Rafe th’ow me so hard that I falls down an’ hurt my butt an’ tear my dress. You know that shit made me mad.” Mavis cut her eyes the way young women did in Soupspoon’s day. “Girl like a li’l rough handlin’ don’t mean she wanna get th’owed to the floor. So I go over to Pete an’ he smile all evil an’ we start shakin’ our shoulders an’ holdin’ hands. First he th’ow me down between his legs an’ then he pull me up so I go flyin’ an’ twirlin’ in the air. But he caught me. Ev’ry body was watchin’ us an’ cheerin’ us. I was wearin’ this big skirt that twirled open but I didn’t have no underwears on
“Number Seven come up right then an’ grab Pete. Before I could say ‘Hey!’ Rafe had me dancin’ again. But it really wasn’t like dancin’ at all. He had my wrist hard and was just th’owin’ me out and back again like a sack’a beans. He tried to th’ow me down between his legs but I dug in my heels so he couldn’t do it. Then he tried to twirl me in the air. I let my weight hang down, but Rafe was real strong, he got to hold’a me under the arms an’ th’ows me so that I hit up against a kerosene lantern on the wall.” Mavis opened her eyes in real fear. “Fire spread over the floor so quick that nobody could stop it in time. We was all runnin’ for the door. My hem had caught fire an’ I was runnin’ an’ yellin’ till somebody caught my arm an’ put me down in the mud to put out the flame.”
There was a loud thought in Soupspoon’s mind. He never knew that Mavis had met RL at Panther Burn; at the fire that marked the last time he was ever to see his friend. He felt a double loss. It seemed to him that RL had raised up out of his grave to steal his wife away. Mavis had never been his because she had never, even from the start, opened her whole heart to him.
The hard truth of his thoughts was reflected in Mavis’s cold stare.
She lit up another cigarette and gazed out of the dark window. After a while she got up and pulled the curtains closed. This had the effect of making the room even brighter.
When she came back to her chair Soupspoon was very quiet — afraid that the spell would be broken and he’d miss the story he wanted so bad. But when he saw the sneer that Mavis gave him he knew that she wouldn’t stop. He knew that she had to talk just as much as he needed to hear.
“The man who put out my dress,” she said, “helped me up and walked me back down to the wreck. The whole place burnt down in ten minutes flat. Musta been a dozen people ate smoke so bad that they was stretched out. Four’a them died, but not for a coupla days. I looked for Rafe and Number Seven but they was gone — run off wit’ Pete Hollis. The three’a them got scared an’ run down to a place called Mud Town. It wasn’t no real town then, just a place where colored people made their beds for a while.
“I was sick at how terrible it all was. My leg was hurtin’ from where I hit the wall and I was caked wit’ mud. But then the man who helped me touched my arm. He was a hush young man and I saw that he had a guitar. It was Bob Johnson. He took my arm and walked me away from the fire. Everybody was leavin’ because nobody wanted to be there when the law came. I took Bob on a path that led up to the mill. We was alone and he was quiet, just holdin’ my arm.
“It was too quiet for me, so I asked him, ‘You the one playin’ music tonight?’
“‘Yes, ma’am,’ he says as respectful and sure as a deacon. And then he turn t’me an’ says, ‘Could I come home wit’ you?’ Just like that.” Mavis was still amazed by the bluesman’s audacity. “I didn’t know him from Job but he askin’ me t’share my bed. And here I am puttin’ my filthy arm ’round his shoulders an’ hopin’ that Rafe wouldn’t be back that night.”
Mavis stubbed out her half cigarette, savoring the last drag. Soupspoon saw a small roach making its way along the base of the wall behind her. He tried not to stare at the insect for fear that Mavis would turn to see. Maybe she’d burn down this house if there was a bug in it.
“He made me to take off my dirty clothes out on the back porch. Then he filled up this bucket full’a cold water and soaked my dirty things in it while I washed the mud off. Then he find my room an’ come out with the prettiest dress I got. There I am, naked to the world, an’ here’s this pretty man holdin’ the dress up on my titties. I steps right into it an’ he done up the buttons. You know I started to shake for that boy the same way Rafe’d shake for me.
“He was sweet in bed too. Real different from Rafe. You know a man like Rafe squeeze till you don’t know where you stop and he start. But I knew where I was wit’ RL. When I come he jump up t’look me right in the eye like he was scared’a what he called up. An’ you know he had to be lookin’ me in the eye like that all night, just about. Mmm.” Mavis leaned her head back and brought the new cigarette down to her mouth with sensual pleasure. The smoke came out of her nose and drifted down her dark face in white rivulets.
“When I woke up it was still dark. I thought I mighta heard sumpin’ and I worried that it was Rafe comin’ in. So I jump outta bed and go out to the porch. We had mosquito netting out there and a couple’s old chairs. The whole mill was up on stilts above the river. The moon was shinin’ back there, half-faced and yellow. And the woods was a rough black color under it. Bob was naked an’ sittin’ on a empty five-gallon shine barrel. He was huggin’ on his guitar like it was a woman or a child.
“I asked him what was wrong an’ he says, ‘Nuthin’, momma,’ in this sweet li’l voice. He mighta been talkin’ to his own momma as well as me. The tears was comin’ down his face. He was so sad and beautiful out there naked to the moonlight. I was drawed to him. I took his guitar an’ put it down real soft next to the banister and then I pulls him down to the floor with me. All there was was a burlap sack there for us to lie on, but we didn’t mind. My chest was slick with his tears. And the bare breeze called up goose bumps.
“He told me all ’bout his girl down around Robinsonville. Just fifteen but she still died with their baby. He cried like chirren do, all lost and sad. I could see by the way he felt her death how he could play such strong music.
“He told me how everybody hated him. First his stepdaddy who beat him and then later all the folks who made fun’a him not workin’ in the fields. Even the musicians didn’t want him to play nuthin’ but mouth harp. They bad-talked him until he trained his-self to play right...”
“He tell you about how he sold his soul?” Soupspoon asked.
Mavis shook her head, still caught up in the memory. “He never said nuthin’ ’bout that to me. All he could say was how he had been pushed around. Everybody was jealous of him. They stole his music and blamed him for all kindsa things. Maybe they blamed him for sellin’ his soul.
“There I was layin’ back naked with a man, legs open for him to do whatever he please, but there wasn’t nuthin’ like that. When he turns t’me an’ ask, ‘Could I stay here with you?’ I almost told him yeah. I wanted to ask Rafe t’let me have that boy. I thought that if I took him in I could p’otect him.”