Crawlin' Chaos Blues (3 page)

I don’t know how long I knelt there, but all of a sudden the pickup’s headlights come back on, bright. I brushed my eyes and stood up, blind, still afraid.

Yeller was standin’ at the edge of the light. The stars was out again and the moon was bright over his head, as if they’d all been hidin’ from the shadow man. The moonlight was gleamin’ kinda green on the face of Yeller’s National.

Yeller’s eyes was half closed and he was shinin’ all over with sweat. He looked like a horse addict. That rascal light was gone from him.

“Let’s get outta here, Harp,” he said, and he went to where the Catalina was.

“What ‘bout these…,” I started to say ‘peckerwoods,’ but when I looked, they wasn’t no bodies in the road, just a couple butter yellow and black burn marks. They was a smell in the air like to make me sick, like a open sewer stuffed with dead dogs. I followed him to the car.

* * * *

Yeller’s fingers wouldn’t leave his National alone the whole ride back. The sounds comin’ out of it was like slippery chain lightnin’. I never heard nobody play a guitar like he did the ride back to Ruleville. The shadow man had made him natural born. He didn’t say a word, just stared at the white line of the road as the car sucked it outta the dark ahead.

I noticed they was somethin’ different ‘bout his guitar, too. The tunin’ knobs had been chewed by mice, he told me, but they looked brand new now. They wasn’t a mark of rust or tarnish now either, and the steel felt strange. It was warm to the touch, and they was trace marks all over the backside, so faint you could only see ‘em close. They was shapes, or pictures, but of what I couldn’t say. Animals, or fish maybe, but none I could place. I didn’t like ‘em.

* * * *

We stayed at a flophouse, and the next mornin’, and every mornin’ for the next week, Yeller went out to Greasy Street and cut heads. This time wasn’t nobody in sight that didn’t come over to hear him play, and some even come down outta the shops and the houses to listen. It got to be so’s nobody else played when Yeller was on the scene.

At night, we went from juke to juke. Yeller brought ‘em in like the Pied Piper. He played the Flowerin’ Fountain, Po Monkey’s, Red’s, JJ’s…we drove all over the Delta, and folks lined up outside to see him. He really lit them up, too. The belly rubbin’, the howlin’, it was on whenever Yeller played. Some said Robert Johnson had beat the devil and come back. They was a fight without fail anytime he played. Sometimes it would get real bad. I seent a man cut up his woman’s face with a razor at one show. Once, two men shot each other dead, right in the street out front.

Yeller never said nothin’ ‘bout this. They wasn’t no joy in him no more. He hardly ever smiled, an’ never sang out to no girls, though they did they best to get him to notice. He drank a lot, and when his set was up, all he wanted to do was hit the road.

His songs got strange too. Space Dog Blues, House Underwater, Black Goat Blues, they was all ‘bout darkness and dyin’ alone. Sometimes I didn’t even know what they was ‘bout, he jumbled up his words so bad. Nobody cared. It was that sound they loved.

I ‘member he did one called Cut Through You Sleepin’. I think it was ‘bout a man killin’ his woman in bed. The only words I could make out was:

What ain’t dead can keep a’layin’ – yas,

And come the judgment day even death might pass.

He’d always finish it with this sound, halfway between a sneeze and one of them Cuban big band shouts. F’uagh, or f’tagh.

Yeller hardly talked. After shows, he’d just set on the edge of his bed with a whiskey and drink, starin’ out the window till he passed out. He slept all day and I had to tell him to eat.

Then white men started showin’ up to his shows. They’d ask him if he never thought ‘bout recordin’. I know that’s what he wanted, but weeks went by of that and he always said no.

He might’ve been the biggest they ever was. Might’ve even saved the blues from them damn Beatles, ‘cept for The Crawlin’ Chaos Blues.

* * * *

One Friday night outside of Clarkesdale, I asked him when he planned on layin’ tracks, and did he want to go back to Chicago, maybe see if he could get a deal with Chess Records.

He looked at me with them spacey, scarecrow eyes, and he said, “How come you never asked me ‘bout the shadow man, Harp?”

I told him I didn’t want to talk ‘bout that. I didn’t like to remember it.

“You can see what he done for me, can’t you?” said Yeller. “You ain’t never asked me what I paid him.”

“I know what you paid,” I said, meanin’ the two white boys.

“No, you don’t,” he said.

“He ask for your soul?”

“My soul…I wish I had one. He ain’t the devil, Harp. Maybe they ain’t no devil. He showed me things. Things ain’t nobody got no business knowin’. You know, I wanted this so bad, I was goin’ to kill you that night. I thought I wanted more than chicken blood woulda got me, you know?”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

He was quiet, and he drank, then he said, “He took somethin’ from me I can’t never get back. He gimme what I need to be great, but I can’t.”

“Whatchoo mean?”

“Say a man build you a house, but he leave the roof off, and he tell you if you put one up yourself, the whole thing goin’ fall down on your head while you sleepin’. Whatchoo got, then? When the rain come, whatchoo got?”

I still didn’t know what he was talkin’ ‘bout, and he could see.

“Look. The shadow man put all these songs in my head, but then he gimme one song,” and he closed his eyes and smiled just a little, like he was thinkin’ of somethin’ sweet, “the best song anybody ever heard.” Then he opened his eyes, and that dead look come back, like happiness had excused hisself and got off at the last stop and misery just sat back down. “He tell me I ever play it, I’m goin’ lose everythin’. That song’s curled up in the back of my head like a snake, all the time. Even when I’m up there playin’ and singin’, that song’s what I’m thinkin’ of. Everythin’ else just sounds like shit.”

Tears come out his eyes then and he started tremblin’ all over.

“I can’t never be happy, Harp!” he wailed. “I can’t find no peace! I just wants to die! Don’t nothin’ mean nothin’ for me no more!”

I took the .44 out the glove box that night and kept it with me from then on.

* * * *

Next day, I took him to play at Sink City on Route 49 between Drew and Jaquith. We stopped at a drug store in Dwiggins and I bought me a pair of clay earplugs. Don’t know what made me do it.

Sink City was one of them deep country jukes, not much more than a shack, tin roof, spray painted sign, and grass for parkin’. It was situated in a field so’s the farmers could walk to it and ventilate after a long week. They wasn’t nothin’ around. In them last days, seemed like Yeller would pick the most backwoods place he could find, like he didn’t want nobody to hear him. Word traveled fast, and they didn’t meet him there, they beat him there. The field was full of cars, and seemed like the sides of the juke was swellin’ from all the folks packed inside.

The place had blue walls, I ‘member, painted with big tittied black mermaids, squids, and starfish. The ceilin’ was hung with Christmas lights, and it sagged real bad.

They was a smell of fryin’ catfish from the kitchen, and an old rawboned woman dished out greasy sandwiches till Yeller got to the stage. Ever’body slapped his back and whistled him up. He was a million miles from Silvio’s.

He sat down on the little stool and commenced to playin’ without a word, let the piano man and the drummer catch up. He played the old songs till people got to yellin’ for some of his own. Then he did that song I’d heard him do at Silvio’s, Damn Fool Woman, but some drunk fool yelled for Cut Through You Sleepin’ through most of it, and Yeller finally went into it. That got the place really sweatin’ and beatin’ on the tables.

They was somethin’ ‘bout them songs that got under your skin. They made the mens holler and the womens shake, got the couples slow draggin’ till they was fit to do the deed right there on the floor. I dunno what it was. I done said already how a fight always broke out.

When he’d played ‘em all, they hollered for more.

Yeller sat there listenin’ to them, his face just as dead as could be. I dunno what he was thinkin’. Then his eyes found mine in the crowd and he nodded at me and said into the mic, “Y’all wanna hear somethin’ you ain’t never heard before?”

The crowd hooted and shouted that they did.

I got a cold sweat and I shoved them clay plugs in my ears just as far as they would go.

The last thing I heard him say was, “This hear’s The Crawlin’ Chaos Blues.”

It was the tune he told me ‘bout, I knew. Maybe it was the one I heard the shadow man playin’ when he led Yeller out into the cotton field. Whatever it was, the people stopped still as Catholics when he started. I know they was words, ‘cause I seent his mouth movin’. He didn’t look out at ‘em whilst he sang, just stared at the floor. His fingers was a blur on the National and I could feel them deep chords in my chest, see his foot stompin’.

Then all hell broke loose.

The people on the floor commenced to dancin’, but wasn’t nothin’ held back. The mens tore they womens’ dresses to the skin, and the womens did the same to the mens’. Folks at the tables fell on each other in the same way. I had to push a big old girl offa me and shove my way to the front door. Time I got there, my shirt was rags. People was rollin’ on the floor and on the bar top like honeymooners. It was crazy.

I seent women clawin’ at the shoulders and backs of they mens, ploughin’ red lines all in they flesh with they fingernails. I heard a couple of loud pops then, made me jump near out my skin, and then I seent what they was. A woman took a pistol out her man’s waistband, even as he was givin’ her the business. She put the barrel in between his teeth and blew the back of his head wide open. I seent the blood splash all over her chest. He was dead, but his body kept movin’ between her legs like a prayin’ mantis. She put the gun up under her own chin then and drove her brains up on the ceilin’. Nobody took no notice.

They was busy doin’ they own things. Things I can’t hardly think on. If hell ever been on earth, if anybody ever laid eyes on pure, unnatural sin, it was there and it was me. I seent a man stranglin’ his woman whilst she tore his eyebrow off with her teeth. They was both of ‘em grinnin’ and laughin’. The owner held the old woman’s head down in the bubblin’ fryer grease whilst he hiked up her skirt, his eyes buggin’ out of his head and mad dog foam runnin’ all down his chin. His throat was cut and they was a bloody razor in the old woman’s hand. Another man charged at the bar like a bull, rammed his head into it, got back up, did it again. Blood was drippin’ down his nose. A gal near me tore her own hair out in clumps.

They was blood ever’where. The whole crowd was rippin’ and tearin’ into each other, limbs twistin’, heads flung back, wailin’ and grinnin’, teeth bloody. I seent a beatin’ heart go floppin’ across the stage, leavin’ spots of blood behind where it bounced.

Yeller just kept on lookin’ into nothin’ and singin’ that song from hell. The drummer had the piano player against the ivories; he was pushin’ his drumsticks in his eyes. The National was gleamin’ green and gold, and for a minute I swear I seent the shadow man’s snaky octopus arms curlin’ ‘round Yeller’s body, ‘round his neck and his ankles, drankin’ him in, drankin’ all of it in, like the sawdust on the floor was drankin’ up the blood. I seent the grinnin’ shadow man hisself risin’ up behind him, them Pharaoh eyes lookin’ across all that tearin’ flesh right into my soul.

I threw open the door to run, but they wasn’t nowhere to go. Instead of the field of cars and old Route 49, I swear they was nothin’ out there – nothin’ but a swirlin’ tornado blackness. If I’d a stepped outside, I felt I would’ve fallen forever.

I had the .44 and I pulled it. I don’t know for sure if I aimed for him or not, but I didn’t stop squeezin’ that trigger. I seent men and women go down from my bullets. They blowed a path to the stage, and when I had shot six, Yeller was lyin’ on his back with the National across his chest and the shadow man was gone. The liquor caught fire behind the bar, I don’t know how. But the way that little juke was built I knew it was goin’ up. When I looked back outside, the field and the cars was there again, so I run.

I found the Catalina and I got inside and got it movin’. I smashed into parked cars left and right tearin’ outta there. I didn’t care. Some people come runnin’ out, some of ‘em on fire. I seent ‘em in my mirrors, but I was like Lot. I didn’t stop till I left that dirt road behind and hit 49.

I drove till that burnin’ juke wasn’t nothin’ but a speck of starlight in the Mississippi black behind me. Then I couldn’t see it no more.

The highway patrol caught me doin’ ninety-five through Clarksdale, and finally knocked me offa DeSoto Ave, sent the Catalina rollin’ into a ditch. It was the only way they could’ve got me to stop. I couldn’t even hear the sirens with the earplugs. I was laughin’ when they pulled me out.

When I got out the hospital, I stood trial, but didn’t nobody bring up Sink City. On account of I had hauled ass through a white part of town and wrecked a couple of old money cars, I got the choice of goin’ to the pen or Vietnam. Three years later, I lost my leg to a different kinda Mister Charlie at Dak To.

I get to thinkin’ how things played out, and I think on Yeller and Uncle Luke, and even Robert Johnson, how they all made the deal and how they all was murdered short of gettin’ big. I wonder ‘bout how folks is moved and played like checkers by powers maybe we ain’t s’posed to see, and I wonder if Daddy and I maybe played the same part. Maybe Uncle Luke didn’t get his throat cut over no woman and maybe it wasn’t no accident I brang the .44 and them earplugs into the Sink City that night.