A Lonely and Curious Country (34 page)

              It was the first meeting of his course on Medieval Metaphysics, a dead course he had decided had best be revived. He was beginning to set the scene historically and culturally. Then a voice interrupted him. It was one of the new religion majors, and he was loaded for bear.

              “It is only fair to serve notice, Professor, that if at least half the course is not devoted to the thinking of Muslim savants, I will be informing your superiors and perhaps even bringing suit against the school for betraying its much-vaunted ‘ecumenical’ policy.”

              Oldstone shook his head. “Here we go again.”

Down By the Highway Side

Paul R. McNamee

Jeb
Barksdale waited outside the terminal, stoically ignoring the sweltering Mississippi heat. The wide brim of his Stetson hat kept his neck shaded but he still needed sunglasses to deal with the early afternoon glare. His feet sweltered in their tight, polished cowboy boots. His hand moved to his throat, loosened his bolo tie, and undid the button at his throat. Too damn hot, after all.

The bus rolled in with a stink of diesel and asthmatic brakes, wheezing and squealing to a stop. A faded, mildew spotted sign on the side of the bus advertised "Thrills in Vegas!" A few travelers staggered off the bus, blinking in the sunlight. They all looked rumpled and groggy. One or two lit cigarettes and greedily smoked.

Barksdale remembered those days. They were not far behind him. Cold turkey on the plane, on the bus, in the smoke-free hotel rooms. Nearly leaping out of his skin to get outside where he could smoke. Or hide in a bathroom stall where he could do worse.

Barksdale continued to remember it as worse, not better. He shook his head and turned his attention elsewhere before any craving started. His body was clean now. They kept telling him it was all in his head, now. His behavior and his choices would be his own.

He started humming a Hank Williams tune, and then thought about how Williams had died drunk in the backseat of a car, so he hummed something by Johnny Cash instead. At least Johnny had conquered his demons well enough in the end.

The driver, a short and stocky Hispanic man, finished unloading the bags, took some tips in a callused hand. The arrivals walked off into the Jackson afternoon, muttering about cold drinks, lunches, and their plans for the afternoon and the evening.

The driver eyed Barksdale and his one small suitcase.

"You it?"

Barksdale looked around. He hadn't really noticed. No other passengers milled outside and no one emerged from the air-conditioned building. No one else had arrived to share his lonely vigil. Looking up at the windows of the bus, he saw no remaining faces in the vehicle. No holdovers would be continuing on from Jackson.

"It appears I am," Barksdale said.

"I'll take your bag, sir."

"Much obliged."

Barksdale handed over his ticket. The driver stuffed it in his oversized pocket. He looped a paper luggage tag through the handle, ripped off the claim number and gave it to Barksdale.

Barksdale took it with a small laugh.

"Expecting a crowd?"

The driver shrugged.

"Policy. Besides, Memphis is a popular destination. Never can tell."

Barksdale boarded the empty bus. He chose a window seat in the middle of the bus for no particular reason, other than to watch the countryside roll by. The seat felt cushy for his posterior but with his lanky frame no bus seat would ever be comfortable. When traveling, Barksdale only found comfort in first-class airplane seats, and those days were long gone.

Barksdale gazed out the window, saw a tall man standing outside the terminal door. The thin, tanned-skinned man stood straight as a pine tree. His bus line livery fitted him as royal attire. He regarded the bus with a baleful stare. Then the regal man turned and entered the terminal. Barksdale thought the man must be a bus line official of some sort. Manager of the terminal, perhaps.

The driver shuffled up the stairs. His brown eyes regarded Barksdale in the hanging mirror. Then the engine coughed to life, and the bus rumbled out of the Jackson terminal.

A
normal drive up 55 to Canton, Mississippi would have taken a mere thirty minutes. But buses took their time, and summer road construction added to the travel time. Barksdale fidgeted in his seat. He scolded himself, told himself he just needed to get through today. When the fidgeting continued, he told himself he only needed to get to Memphis in a few hours and then he could take it from there. Finally, he reminded himself beyond Memphis there would be money, and whether he wanted sobriety or he wanted substances, either way he had no money for it now. The stint at the Copper House in Jackson had run his last savings account dry.

He tried to bring songs and lyrics to mind. That always helped for distraction, too. Outside the window, old flat rural roads still crossed each other. They had been the major roads before the interstates had arrived. One particular cross road grabbed his attention. Bare and desolate, marked only by one of the largest, fattest girthed tree Barksdale might ever had seen. The gnarled tree threw strange patterns of shade and sunlight on its rough-barked surface. Barksdale almost saw faces in the bark of the trunk. Tortured faces and evil countenances.

Barksdale had been a country singer all his life. He had made a life of it, as ragged as that life might have become. But now a song from his youth came unbidden to his mind. A blues song. He had heard plenty of blues, too, along with everything else growing up in the hill country of Mississippi.

Standin' at the cross road, believe I'm sinkin' down

Peculiar that song should jump in his head after all those years. Barksdale supposed the imagery triggered the memory of the song, but it disturbed him nonetheless. He sure had sunk down. Oh, he had sobriety but nothing else. Was sobriety a great thing when there was nothing else? No more hiding from his mistakes and failures. At least in a haze of booze and drugs he had pretended otherwise.

Bad thinking. Dangerous thinking.

Barksdale's hand reached into his pocket, and his fingers rested on the square metal shape of his cigarette lighter. Damn fool for that, he thought. A smoke wouldn't be far off and after that? He
cursed himself for holding on to it after rehab. But, like his pocket knife, he'd owned the lighter since his teenage years. They'd been through so much together. If it wasn't in his pocket next to his knife he got jumpy, felt wrong. Even rehab hadn't erased the sensation.

He swore to himself he'd pawn it off in Memphis, if he had time.

His mind scrambled for other songs, he couldn't find any. His brain had stage fright.

"Hey, driver, sir!" Barksdale raised his voice over the street rumble but did his best not to be too loud. "You got a radio on this bus?"

"Yes, sir."

Barksdale requested a Jackson country music station, and cringed when some pop singer came on and pretended she knew about trucks and twangy guitars. Eventually a few more tolerable songs came into the mix, but most of the songs were still too far from country roots for Barksdale's liking. Still, the songs were perky and proud and almost enough to shake off the dark blues.

Standin' at the cross road, dark gon' catch me here

Almost enough.

The
bus turned off 55 into Canton and pulled into a local motel parking lot which served for the terminal. Stops away from the bigger cities and towns lacked dedicated terminal buildings. A few people waited to board the bus.

Barksdale stared out the window, and one passenger caught his attention. A young black man, dapperly dressed in a suit coat and tie, banded fedora on his head, guitar case in his hand. The other passengers lined up their baggage, got their claim tickets and boarded the bus. The man in the fancy hat waited until everything had been loaded and then he talked with the driver. The driver paused, considered, nodded and shrugged.

The driver wrapped the baggage claim ticket around the handle of the guitar case, tore off the stub and gave it to the man separately and left the guitar case with the man. The man stuffed the stub into the lefthand pocket of his suit coat and passed some amount of cash bills into the driver's hand. He tipped the fedora to the driver in appreciation, and boarded the bus with guitar case in hand.

The man shuffled to the empty row of seats in front of Barksdale. He put the guitar case on the aisle seat, and took the window seat for himself.

"That must be one special guitar," Barksdale said.

The young man smiled. "Oh, yes. I never let it out of my sight if I don't have to."

"But I saw the driver hand you a stub," Barksdale said. Suspicion flashed in the young man's eyes. "Sorry. Just saw it out the window. People watching, not spying."

The young man's countenance brightened again. "Yes, well. I do that just in case I need to stow the guitar after all. I will if I need to, but I don't like to. Could be too crowded by the time we get to Memphis. Though, I think we'll be okay today." He glanced around the still nearly empty bus to make his point.

"Will you get your money back of the guitar goes with the rest of the luggage?"

"Reckon not. A little bit of a gamble, but would I be a bluesman if I didn't gamble?"

"Ah, the blues." Barksdale nodded. "Have you been out on the road long?"

"Playing my way up to Memphis," the man said. "Are you a musician?"

"Have you ever heard of Jeb Barksdale?"

The young man thought about the name. "Country music singer, right?"

"Right," Barksdale smiled. Country music fans barely remembered him, never mind some young blues player. He had faded years ago and stayed out of sight and out of mind thanks to his addictions. "I am Jeb Barksdale."

"Well, ain't that something. Mister Barksdale," Thompson began to say.

"You can just call me Jeb," Barksdale said.

"Fine. And you can call me Lonnie." The young man proffered a hand to shake. "Name's Lonnie Thompson."

They shook hands as the bus rolled back onto 55.

"
Is
there a gig waiting for you in Memphis, or are you going to try busking on the street to drum up interest?"

"Oh, both," Thompson said. "Gotta promote the gigs and if I get extra money in the hat during the day, it's all good!"

"When will you find time to sleep?"

"Ah, coffee and what-not."

"I'll give you some free advice, son. Stay away from the what-not," Barksdale said. "It didn't do me a lick of good in the long run."

Thompson nodded.

"I mean that. You're heading to Memphis to play and you've got a career ahead of you. Me? I'm heading to Memphis because I'm on my way through and maybe on my way out. Now, maybe I'd be on my way out anyway. But the bad stuff's got a strong way of hurrying the process."

"I do understand," Thompson said. "You say you're just going through Memphis, though? Headed to Nashville?"

"Nashville?" Barksdale barked a bitter laugh. "Nashville is a young man's game. Or maybe it could be an old man's game. But a burnout's game? Not really. I'm headed to Branson."

Branson. Barksdale could barely admit it. The place where performers go to die. Well, maybe not die. The place performers went to fade away even more than they already had.

Barksdale saw pity in Thompson's eyes. Anger must have flashed across Barksdale's face, because Thompson dropped the pity and looked away out the window.

Barksdale sighed.

"Yup, it's Branson for me." Barksdale spoke quietly, forcing the anger to go away. "Washed out."

"Does calling it 'the Oldies circuit' make it better?"

"No, no it doesn't."

"I didn't think it would." Thompson gave Barksdale another friendly smile, and Barksdale grinned, too.

"Lots of tribute bands, too. I guess I'll be my own tribute band, until someone comes along who is better at singing me than me."

"If it gets you on your feet and gets you paid, it can't be all bad," Thompson said.

Barksdale thought about that. He had drummed up the gig himself. No agent. No manager. It might have been the hardest work he'd done since he walked away from his father's leather trade and tried his hand at singing for a living. He felt a touch of pride.

"Enough about my fading star," Barksdale said. "Tell me about your blues. What style?"

"Style?"

"Jump blues, Texas blues, Jimmy Reed shuffles, Piedmont, Delta?"

"For a country fellow, you know something about the blues. I'm impressed."

"Now, don't you confuse country boy for country singer. Country singer might or might not know about some blues. But I am a country boy from Mississippi, too. I heard plenty of blues growing up. Not just the records. I watched old men wail out blues on their porches, too."