Delta Blues Read online

  “Mr. Thoreau once said, “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”

  “I don’t feel too wealthy, brother,’’ I said.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the shirtless man stare at the clock over the bar. Toward the front of the commissary, the big door blew open and another man, just as scrawny as the other, but this one wearing a long black trenchcoat, wandered in and nervously looked all around, everywhere but at the man by the stove. Same mud all over him, same bad teeth and hollow face with stubble.

  “I admire you. No possessions. Nothing to hold you down.’’

  “God bless you,’’ I said.

  “May I buy you this round?’’

  “I won’t fight it.’’

  “What did you do before you ended up here?’’

  “I was a teacher.’’

  “No more?’’

  “Some things happened down there.’’

  “Like the man said, ‘However mean life is, meet it and live it.’’’

  INODDED, but the nod turned to a shrug. I rubbed my face and drank more. I watched the clock’s second hand. In the bar’s mirror, the two men finally met at the stove, drawn by the heat and muttering to each other like little insects working in their own secret language. One of the men nodded towards the bar and I saw that in his dirty little hand he held a shitty little revolver. “Something happened to you? Right? Please, I don’t mean to pry.’’ “You’re not prying.’’

  “But you just stay in that trailer. I didn’t even know you lived here til tonight.’’

  “It’s pretty goddamn cold tonight.’’

  “Did you want to get out?”

  “It’s goddamn cold.’’

  “From the trailer.’’

  “I wanted a drink.’’

  “Si.’’

  The man in the trench had ice in his hair and he ambled over to the bar, his teeth chattered hard, whirling some tale to James about his car breaking down. Broke down near the crossroads. As he spoke, the ice melted from his greasy hair and fell to the floor.

  Deer antlers held a twelve-gauge shotgun beautifully above the beer cooler. I glanced at it and then back at my new friend. “Are your people here?” he asked. “I know some.’’ “Where are your people?” “Mostly dead.’’

  “Si. Si. Well, that’s something that happens. But you have to live your life.’’

  “I’m not hiding.’’

  “I didn’t mean that, friend.’’

  “There was a—aw, hell.’’

  The man in the trench nodded to his friend and turned back to the bar. You could see all this in the mirror, the whole pirouette and shape of it.

  The minute hand on the clock turned.

  I looked at the whiskey, still feeling the cold.

  I looked at the gun.

  Another drink was laid down, James leaned in and whispered, “Phones are dead. I can’t get a signal on my cell.’’

  I met his eyes and then turned back to my drinking companion whose mouth formed an O, seeing it all come to shape.

  The man in the trench had started to pace, the gun loose in hand, more ice melting from his hair as he smoked a cigarette. He quashed it underfoot and then started another.

  The clock headed toward midnight.

  Muddy kept on. One more mile. One more mile.

  “It’s as hard to see one’s self as to look backwards without turning around,’’ said my drinking companion.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  The mirror was unreal. The second hand moved and the music filled the cold, timeless and still.

  The wiry fella drew the gun and yelled in a shaky voice for all of us to come to him and get down on our knees. “Who called the police? Who’s the goddamn bright boy that called ‘em?”

  I slid from the bar stool, hands up, and turned to him.

  “On your knees.’’

  My friends looked to me. I remained standing.

  “They’re coming for you,’’ I said.

  “Who called ‘em?” His gums purple, teeth blackened. “You?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “On your knees,’’ he screamed.

  I shook my head. No one moved.

  He thumbed back the hammer. The gun looked like it might break apart in his trembling, cold fingers. You could hear the wind outside, sliding across the curved metal roof; hollow whistling sounds came from the holes in the commissary attic.

  The man snarled and spit and came for me, gun outstretched, calling me a “dead brightboy sonofabitch” until my drinking companion moved between us and said, “Sit. Let’s drink. No one wants to go back out there.’’

  I stepped back toward the bar, feeling my weight against the length of it. The album had played out, the silent hiss of the stereo blending with that cold, lonely wind and the broken voices, nonsensical words coming from the men’s rotted mouths.

  I met James’ eyes and glanced up at the shotgun. He nodded and moved backward, slight and slow toward the antlers.

  “I said, ‘On your knees,’’’ the shirtless man said and shuffled toward us, his breath rancid as rotting fish. He swiped the Jack from the bar, taking a hit of booze, and tossing the rest to his buddy, who drained the bottle. “Hands behind your head.’’

  For a moment, the whole building felt as if it might blow away, leaving nothing but the frame—the haze of whisky and fear blending into a shaky, unreal film strip that comes at you with broken patterns of light, some unrecognizable, until it all clicks into place and the reel starts rolling again, with new images, some of them broken and jumpy but moving forward just the same.

  I waited. James stood under the gun.

  The second hand of the clock seemed to echo the pumping of my heart.

  I took a deep breath and nodded ever so slightly.

  One More Mile.

  4 Cuttin’ Heads

  Alice Jackson

  FAYE MAE WATCHED Daddy Ray’s callused fingers slide down the list of names and figures her granny kept behind the bar. His mouth chomped at the unlit stogy clamped between his gold teeth, warning her she was striding into deeper water.

  Considering her next move, Faye Mae turned to fiddle with the dials of the old tube radio Granny had set on the bar. A peckerwood voice blared from KFFA, across the river in Helena, Arkansas. She turned the sound louder, ensuring Granny wouldn’t hear her conversation with Daddy Ray. Granny loved listening to the blues on King Biscuit Time, mainly cause most of the ole blues singers and musicians had played right here at the Dew Drop at least once way back before some of the white places up in the big northern cities had begun hiring them.

  “That was J.D. Short and Son House, pounding out their latest single, “You Been Cheating Me.” Those men have a gift, a mighty gift, shore nuff, and remember, you hear the blues more right here on KFFA, 1360 on your dial,” the nasal deejay rambled.

  Faye Mae’s older brother Levon had confided to her that Granny had known Robert Johnson before he up and found himself down at the Crossroad, trading songs with the Boogey Man. Levon had told her the story last Halloween, and while she wasn’t certain of its truthfulness, she suspected it had some basis in fact. When she was five, Levon had told her all about her mama, how she used to sing the blues at the Dew Drop and how she’d been attracted to the men who arrived with battered guitars, hoping for a few dollars, food, whiskey and, most of all, attention.

  The summer of 1963 was blue blazing hot, and the afternoon Delta heat poured through the doorway Granny had opened in order to air out the Dew Drop. She did it every Friday, regular as clockwork, getting ready for the payday customers like they were relatives from far away. It was one of the many things Faye May loved about the Dew Drop. The sunlight brightened the pine floors scarred by years of dancing, loving, fighting and killing. Faye Mae had not seen it happen, but she knew the dark spot near where Daddy Ray’s old blue tick hound Rex now laid was the place of last repose of a no-good two-timer who
had stolen money from Granny.

  The bar had been Faye Mae’s home since her mama had dropped her off as a baby. Just up and left her with Granny, who’d kept her wrapped and warm in a wooden beer delivery box behind the bar while Granny waited on the payday customers. Faye May didn’t remember any of that, but she loved the stories Granny told, especially how the customers dropped extra coins into the tip jar to pay for her baby food. By the time she was in first grade, Faye Mae was permitted to open the co-colas, but only during the early hours of the evening. She’d even managed to intercept a few of the coins before they fell into Granny’s jar. Nowadays, Granny rarely let her come into the bar when customers were there. Granny was always mumbling stuff about how bad things happened to growing girls who found themselves in the wrong place. Granny was especially watchful to keep her away from the occasional musicians who still came to the Dew Drop to play the blues.

  “I learned my lesson with your mama about those men,” Granny said. “Those musicians ruined her sure as I’m telling this, and you ain’t gonna go like that.”

  Most of what Faye Mae knew about her mother, she heard from Levon. The rest she learned by keeping her ears open and pressed against closed doors when Granny and Daddy Ray thought they were all alone in the Dew Drop. That’s how she came to discover her mama was really Daddy Ray’s and Granny’s daughter, even though Daddy Ray was a white man with a white wife, white children and white grandchildren.

  He and his white family lived in a big house whiter than they were, set back among towering oak trees on one of the finest streets in Greenwood, Mississippi, practically the heart of the entire Delta. Just a few weeks ago, she’d seen Daddy Ray and his white granddaughter, Claire, walking down Main Street. Faye Mae recognized Claire—she’d once seen her modeling a pink Easter outfit in Bonner’s Department Store. Claire’s blond hair was almost as white as her skin. Faye Mae had wanted to talk to Claire, but when she got close enough to speak, Claire turned up her little white nose and spun around so fast her crinoline petticoat twirled in a circle before she stomped away in her white patent leather shoes.

  That day in Bonner’s Department Store had taught Faye Mae the real difference between white folk and people like her and Granny. Claire’s insult had hurt, but Faye Mae wasn’t going to always be ignored. A month earlier, civil rights activist Medgar Evers had been gunned down in front of his wife and children at their home in Jackson. That horror was causing white people from up north to slip into the Delta, encouraging black folks to register to vote. And Dr. Martin Luther King over in Alabama was shaking up all kinds of things. Even President Kennedy was helping him. When Dr. King had been jailed, President Kennedy had called, asking him if he needed anything. That’s when Granny got photos of both men and hung them in her living room at the back of the Dew Drop. “These men are gonna make your life different than mine was,” Granny had promised when she nailed the photos to the bare pine walls.

  That was exactly why Faye Mae wanted to talk to Daddy Ray. She was planning to change some things herself. In the long run, all she wanted was for him to give her a special birthday present.

  “Daddy Ray, I promise. It’ll take just a little while. No more than ten minutes. Please, Daddy Ray,” Faye Mae whined.

  Daddy Ray’s cigar froze. He yanked it from his mouth, then tossed it into one of the old soup cans Granny set along the bar for ash trays. The deep blue of his eyes sparked as he grabbed one of Faye Mae’s tiny brown arms, squeezing it hard enough to bruise.

  “Young’un, I swear you got only about half the brains your mama did!”

  Daddy Ray shook her like he did Rex when the old hound failed to do exactly as Daddy Ray wanted. “Didn’t your granny tell you why I can’t go shashaying up the main street of downtown Greenville with you?”

  Rex raised his head and groaned. Faye Mae squeezed her eyes shut, willing Rex to jump up and bite Daddy Ray. Not too hard, of course. She didn’t want Daddy Ray to be hurt so badly he couldn’t give her what she wanted for her birthday.

  “Daddy Ray, you’re hurting me!” Faye Mae screamed.

  “You hush now,” Daddy Ray hissed into her ear. “You’re going to rile up your granny.”

  Faye Mae screamed again, louder this time. Because of Granny, she never truly feared Daddy Ray. Levon had told her Granny kept a pistol somewhere in the Dew Drop, and although she’d never been able to find it, she believed him.

  Bent over from the waist, trying to wench away from Daddy Ray’s grasp, Faye Mae relaxed when she saw a slender shadow darken the Dew Drop’s doorway.

  “You let that girl go right this instant!”

  Daddy Ray released her and pushed her away. “Go on to your granny, you little whiner. You little baby.”

  Faye Mae ran and flung her arms around her grandmother’s waist, burying her head into the calico apron that covered her dress. Granny’s silence was deafening, scaring Faye Mae.

  “Ed Ray, don’t you ever again put your hand on this child!” Granny’s voice was so cold it sounded like someone Faye Mae didn’t know.

  Daddy Ray took a deep breath, exasperated. “You don’t know what that young’un just asked me to do.”

  “I don’t give a fartin’ damn what she asked you to do,” Granny replied. “I run this joint. I make the money you’re countin’ there. I take care of you. I take care of your high-falutin’ friends and their whores. You will never, ever touch this child like that again. Do you understand?”

  Granny grabbed Faye Mae and spun her towards the doorway. “Girl, you go on outside and git those chores done before dark falls.”

  Faye Mae skedaddled, the Dew Drop’s front door almost catching her as Granny slammed it shut.

  FAYE MAE STRAINED to lift Granny’s bottle opener off the nail behind the bar. She carefully opened four bottles of Dixie beer, then returned the opener to the nail. Faye Mae wanted everything to be just perfect since Granny had left her in charge. She placed each of the cold bottles on the oval tray, added a bowl of Granny’s salted peanuts and a handful of napkins. Watching every step, she headed to the table where Daddy Ray sat with Big Jim and his guests, who were from New Orleans. Faye Mae thought she had heard Big Jim call the older man Mr. Banner and the younger man Lee. No mister for him. Big Jim always brought men to the Dew Drop to talk politics. Daddy Ray said a U.S. Senator as important as Big Jim needed a private place to meet with people, and Daddy Ray was happy to provide the Dew Drop. Like most of Big Jim’s guests, Mr. Banner didn’t seem to step and fetch for Big Jim, but Lee was different. He was as jumpy as a country whore in church.

  “Ray, you know well as I do things are changing. That’s why it’s got to be done this way. Carlos is in total agreement, and his boys will help us.” Big Jim’s fat hands sliced the air as he talked. “Guy here will make all the arrangements. Let him be seen. Let a few people get to know him a little. At least enough to remember him when the time comes for it.”

  It wasn’t often Big Jim had to work hard to convince Daddy Ray of anything, and Faye Mae was determined to learn what they were up to. As she neared the table, Daddy Ray hushed the senator with a tilt of his head in Faye Mae’s direction.

  “Gal, I declare you are the spitting image of your Granny,” the senator said, turning to give Faye Mae room to slide her tray onto the table. He leaned down to her and whispered loud enough for Daddy Ray and the other man to hear, “Now, you pay attention to how your Granny kept her legs together. Don’t you go spreadin’ ‘em like your mama did!”

  Daddy Ray burst out laughing along with Big Jim and Mr. Banner, laughing at Granny, Faye Mae and her mama just like he always did when white visitors came to the Dew Drop. Only Lee looked embarrassed. Faye Mae knew if Granny had been serving them, Big Jim wouldn’t have said such a thing, but Granny refused to serve Big Jim anymore. Now days, Granny left the Dew Drop long before Big Jim and his friends arrived to talk business with Daddy Ray. Faye Mae didn’t really mind. Occasionally, Daddy Ray’s friends left her tips.

  “Do y
ou ride the streetcars in New Orleans, Mr. Banner?” Faye Mae blurted out to the older, gray-haired man. “I want to see New Orleans. My teacher last year, Miss Johnston, says it is one of the best places in the whole United States.”

  Clearly, Faye Mae’s comments upset the man, who sighed and looked to Big Jim in exasperation.

  “Shut up, young’un!” Daddy Ray yelled, slamming his fist on the table hard enough to rattle the Dixie bottles. “His name is not Banner. Do you hear me?”

  Daddy Ray had been bringing Big Jim and his friends to the Dew Drop as long as Faye Mae could remember. Most of them were from places that Faye Mae had only heard about. Places that she hoped to visit one day. This was the first time her questions had made Daddy Ray angry. Something was up!

  “I thought I heard you call him Mr. Banner …”

  “What in the hell did I just say to you, girl? His damned name is not Banner,” roared Daddy Ray.

  Before Faye Mae knew it, Daddy Ray had her arm in his grasp, shaking her so hard the blue barrettes on her pigtails jumped, his face as red as one of Granny’s June tomatoes.

  “I was jus wantin’—”

  “You don’t want nothing. Do you hear me? You don’t know this man. You have not seen this man. Do you understand?” His fingers bore into the skinniness of her forearm.

  Faye Mae nodded her head and tried to back up.

  “Ray, let the child go now.” Big Jim’s voice was smooth. “Let’s not make trouble that’ll be remembered further than today.”

  Daddy Ray nodded, keeping his eyes fixed on hers as he eased his grip.

  “Course, you’re right, Senator,” Daddy Ray said, easing back into his chair. “I just got carried away. You’re right, of course.”

  Big Jim reached into his pocket and brought out a shiny half-dollar that he held out to Faye Mae.

  “Look here, gal. I got this over to the U.S. Mint last week. Not many people can do that, but ole Big Jim’s got his ways.” He nodded reassuringly to Faye Mae when she hesitated.