He played “Hangman’s Blues” and “Momma’s New Shoes.” He played those songs without singing a word. It wasn’t until the second song that he stomped his tambourine foot. It wasn’t until the third one that he blew his harmonica.
People came around the booth nodding their heads and tapping their toes. The sun was beating down hard, but Randy put up a big yellow parasol that colored the air around Soupspoon’s eyes.
Hare showed up. He wore the same weathered clothes, and he had an umbrella too. It was broken on one side but he held the good half over a large buxom woman who wore tight denim overalls. She had a good deal of facial hair and very little practice smiling as far as Soupspoon could see. He did see why no man could take away her trestle house. SallySue was the size of a football player. And it wasn’t soft fat that she was made of either.
Hare had a brown paper bag in his hand that had molded itself into the shape of the bottle it carried. He offered the bottle to his date but she declined.
“Hey, Mr. Wise!” Hare shouted.
“Hey, Hare. How you doin’?”
“It’s Saturday. I told you I was comin’ t’see ya!”
“You sure did.”
Soupspoon was a black visage against white T-shirts. A spectacle and a witness all in one. He saw the little children with their snow cones and their mothers in halter tops and shorts. He saw the swaggering men who found the rhythm of their bluster in his songs. He saw the way people walked with music in their step even when they didn’t stop to listen, and he saw the clouds pass by, ignorant and grand. When the music got good, and he closed his eyes to feel it right, he saw the backside of his life — the people who he’d walked with and left behind.
The women who raised him because he just showed up one day and asked if they knew his mother. They didn’t, but they made him wash up and eat grits at their table. They bathed him and saved him and shared their love for eight years.
He went out on the road at fourteen and never looked back for them again.
There was JoDaddy Parker, who taught him to play guitar in the whorehouses where white men came to meet Negro women. He learned to live on tips from JoDaddy, who was gray-haired and wide-eyed from the time he was a boy.
He remembered grim-faced Bannon and the apples and the burglaries; the days and days of talk padded with history, hatred, and love.
He remembered meeting Mavis in Pariah, Texas. She was shattered and sad and on the way to drinking herself to death. She was distraught and lonely over a boy she lost in a flash flood. Soupspoon tried to comfort her, and then one day he found that she had spent a night with Robert Johnson. He made love to her that very night with a passion that surprised them both and then wanted to marry her, to save her. He tried.
Everything was already set. He remembered decades between notes. He had everything right there in his heart. Every time he stomped his belled foot, pain traveled up his leg. When the pain got bad he began to sing.
Randy sold fewer T-shirts than usual but he put out a Tupperware plastic bowl and people were putting down their money for Soupspoon’s pain.
Thousands of people passed by, hundreds stopped to listen to the blues. Almost every black man and woman stopped and cocked their ears. They heard something in Soupspoon’s notes. Something that some people call Africa. Soupspoon would have told them that he didn’t know a thing about modern Africa except that “them po’ people sure got a hold on some blues. From starvin’ to slavery they sure done paid the tax.”
Rudy came by in black jeans and a cream silk T-shirt. Sonó was with him, followed by a small girl that she had by the hand and by a teenager who carried a baby in her arms. Cholo and Billy Slick came behind them. The men looked out of place in the daylight. They kept looking around from behind black-lensed sunglasses. They walked in a cloud of smoke that came from their own cigarettes and cigars.
But Sono took off her shades when she first heard Soupspoon play. The teenager didn’t even have sunglasses. She leaned up on Randy’s table like she wanted to rub her face in Soupspoon’s music.
Harry came by. He had a new boyfriend, another young blond. They stood back and listened, holding hands and whispering back and forth. He said hello to Soupspoon with a nod and a smile.
Kiki came around noon, already drinking, already drunk.
Soupspoon’s music was for everybody and everything. He saw the plastic bucket fill up with quarters and dollar bills. He felt the pain and saw it too. He played his guitar until he knew he’d have to stop, but he kept on for one more song, and another. Every now and then he’d wink at the young girl who came with Sono — the girl with the baby on her hip. He liked it when the baby and the young girl smiled.
When Soupspoon finally broke down and took a rest the people put their hands together for him. Rudy came up after the music was over. But the young girl, with a baby girl in hand, walked up first.
“You from Arkansas, uncle?”
“Mississippi, mighty damn close. What’s your name?”
“Chevette,” she said. “I know you must be from somewhere close, ’cause you play the music like the old men used to when I was a baby.”
“Well, you know when I play I always kinda direct my music t’somebody out in the crowd. I musta known you was from down home because’a how you looked.”
“You was playin’ for me?”
“Prettiest thing out here.”
Chevette didn’t smile, didn’t show pleasure at this compliment. The closest thing to an emotion on her face was hunger. The little yellow girl she had by the hand could feel it. She stared up at Chevette and then she smiled at Soupspoon.
“You gonna play some more?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Sono came up then with the baby on her hip. Soupspoon could tell that it was Sono who was the children’s mother.
“Sono, this is, is... What’s your name, uncle?” Chevette asked.
“I know who he is, Chevette. I’m the one brought us here. But you know it’s gettin’ too hot for George and Hamela. We got to get outta this sun,” she said. “Hi, Mr. Wise. You played real nice. I knew you would.”
“Yeah,” Chevette said. “Real good.”
“Could we go now?” Sono said. “I’m hungry.” The baby was struggling in her arms and crying on and off.
“You gonna be here awhile?” Chevette asked.
“Prob’ly till they break down. I’m here with my friends.”
“We come back when they eat.”
Soupspoon was sure that the girls would be back. He’d been a musician long enough to tell. He nodded at them as Rudy and his entourage came up from behind.