by Sarah Black
That suspicion was strengthened when Deke walked into the newsroom and saw Elroy in Bruce Charters’ office. Bruce met his eyes through the glass and waved him in. Deke walked into the office, leaned up against the wall. Elroy wasn't getting very far with Bruce, and it sounded to Deke like he was trying for his shot at breaking into hard news. “That white boy started this ball rolling down the hill, Bruce, when he took a bullwhip to the Imperial Wizard of the Klan. Everybody knows he's responsible. And now the Klan has killed a girl and tried to frame one of the grand old men of the blues for the crime! We can break the story, tell the truth about the conspiracy..."
"Elroy, the last thing Blind Pete Watson ever heard before he died was that bullshit review you wrote about his music, and about Rafe. Now you've uncovered a secret Klan plot to disrespect him?"
"You don't know about it? You too busy sucking white cock to do your job. How's he taste? That boy's thang nice and sweet, Deacon?"
Deke had Elroy by the throat before he realized what he was doing, squeezing his neck and lifting him to his toes. Bruce shoved him in the chest. “Deke, for God's sake! Let him go."
Deke shoved Elroy back, and he fell over a chair and sprawled on the floor. Deke stood over him, and Elroy glared up at him with hate-filled eyes. “You stay away from Rafe and you stay away from this story. You want to print some soap-opera bullshit about the evil Klan and the good, gentle, poor old black men their victims? Over my dead body. The truth matters, you ignorant asshole. Why don't you go watch some white singer dance and make fun of him? You know how to do that."
Bruce had him by the arm, pulled him across the office. “Stop it! What's wrong with you?"
Elroy pulled himself up and pointed a shaking finger in Deke's face. “What do you think the Klan's gonna do to you and your little boyfriend? You got a nice tree picked out? I'm sure they got plenty of rope..."
"That's enough! Elroy, you need something besides a hunch to publish a story at this newspaper. You bring your proof in here, then we'll see."
When he was gone, Deke slumped into a chair and Bruce went around to his desk, sat down and finger-combed his hair. “Can I ask you if you've gone insane?"
"Blind Pete's dead."
"I know, Deke.” Bruce's voice was gentle. “Are you feeling upset?"
"I found out when I was with the cops. I was telling them that Pete was Leona's killer."
"What did they say?"
Deke shook his head. “Whatever they were thinking, they weren't letting on to me."
"So what's got you so upset?"
"I'm not upset, Bruce. It's just that I've got to write it, and I don't think ... Rafe isn't going to understand. He's got this loyalty thing that's stronger than the truth for him. I mean, I can't fucking believe it! Those old men, and Mississippi, they have worked him over good. He doesn't even know the difference between what's right and what's the truth. And he doesn't care. He thinks, who's gonna get hurt, and everything goes from there."
"That's his mama's influence, and the old men. And, yeah, Mississippi. You figured him pretty good. That's just who he is, Deke. It's where he comes from. Blind Pete did Leona?"
Deke nodded. “Yeah, he did. I'm sure of it. And now he's dead and it'll be like saying President Kennedy was a murderer."
"It may be true, but nobody wants to hear it?"
"Yeah.” Deke was thinking hard. “Listen, Bruce. I think we need to tell the story about what happened in Hattiesburg, too. It's not doing anyone any good, keeping it hidden. Maybe if it's out in the open, the old men will be safe. Rafe will be safe."
"Get busy then.” Bruce's voice was gruff. “You make your choices, Deke. You're a reporter. I know it's important to you to do this job right. You'll always choose the story. You just understand there's a cost. This is who you are. But Rafe is who he is, too, and you might ... lose him."
Deke picked up the phone, called the Blues Angel. “Mrs. Johnson, this is Deacon Davis."
"Hello, Deacon. Call me Sally-Rose, baby. Rafe keep dragging you around here, I guess we better get on first names."
"Thank you. I'd be pleased to call you Sally-Rose, but my daddy taught me to speak respectful, so you don't mind if I call you Mrs. Johnson. Ma'am, I need to speak to Mr. James Hurt."
"I'll give him the phone, baby."
"This is James Hurt.” Deke thought his voice sounded a little shaky over the phone, and he remembered suddenly how old James was. But tough news reporters did not allow guilt over a little strong-arm to get in the way of digging the truth out of a story.
"Mr. Hurt, I'd like to come over and finish our interview. About Rafe, and Mississippi, and the blues. Is now a good time? I can be there is ten minutes."
"I don't know I got anything else to say to you. This has not worked out at all like I thought it would."
"Sir, I can write the story without your input, you understand? Or you can tell me the way you see things. Tell me about Rafe, where he comes from. Where the blues comes from. And tell me about that girl, how she ended up shot dead in Mrs. Johnson's club."
"So you just going to write the story no matter what people get hurt?"
"Yes, I am. Is now a good time for us to finish our interview?"
"I guess it have to be.” And he put the phone down.
Bruce was shaking his head. “I would give good money to see you squaring off against Mr. James Hurt. Just don't forget he's about fifty years smarter than you are."
Sally Rose was cutting pieces of cherry cake and pouring the coffee and listening to James grumble when Deke came in the kitchen. He sat down at the kitchen table, opened his notebook, and took out a pen. Sally-Rose put his coffee cup next to his elbow and gave him a wink behind James’ back. “Thank you for seeing me. Mr. Hurt, can I ask you how old you are, and how long you've been playing the blues?"
"I'm eighty this year. And I would say, what, fifty or sixty years, I guess. Or more. Of course, blues have changed. It used to be home music. You know what I mean by that?” Deke shook his head. “Music you played alone, quiet-like, when you couldn't keep it in any longer. It was something secret that the men did, when it was still dangerous to gather all together. So we played at home, late, after the children were asleep."
"When you couldn't keep it in?"
"Well, things happen. And say you see something bad happen, and you start thinking about it, and then you feel a song and when you sing about it, it makes some of the hurt not so strong."
Deke shook his head. “I don't understand."
"One of the first blues I ever wrote was about Porter James. You remember him, Sally-Rose?"
She nodded. “From when I was a little girl."
"Porter took off about 1918, 19, riding the trains. He went out to California, and when he came back in 1924, he had learned how to read and write. He was always a smart man, good with how to say things. So people started coming to see him to get him to help write their letters. And he would write out what people wanted to say, and sometimes he would help people say it a better way. One of the lawyers in town got a letter about some pigs had been butchered and not paid for. Once it was in writing like that, the lawyer made the man pay up, and it was a white man, too, had to pay the black man the money he owed him. Soon people was having Porter write up letters to go to the police and the lawyers."
"Everybody knows what happened next. Porter wrote a letter to the police complaining about this white man who had been bothering this black girl. The girl run off with her boyfriend and got married, and the white man, he gathered him up a bunch of friends and they burned her mama's house down, and when her brothers came running to help put out the fire, the white boys, they just started shooting. Four brothers killed, and the white boys, they hung the bodies up in a tree. Porter sent the letter off to the police for the mama of these four boys. But he was real disturbed by this lady, and what she told him happened, so he made copies of the letter and he sent one to the judge in the county, and he sent one to the newspaper."
"The
newspaper didn't print the letter, but somehow word about it got out, and next thing Porter got a visit during the night. He lived alone in this little shed behind his aunt's house, and they took him quiet. They whipped him and hung him from a tree, and then they pinned all these pieces of paper to his clothes. It was his writing paper they took out his room, and they pinned that paper all over his body, let everybody know. Let everybody know.” James was nodding his head now, almost in that rhythm they'd played last night. “So the blues, it got to tell that story. It got to let those feelings out or people go crazy, go howling off into the night. But that's why for a long time, we kept our songs quiet. We was telling stories about the truth of things, and we didn't want anybody come visit us in the night."
Deke felt the horror of it hollow out his belly, and his legs felt so shaky he wasn't sure he could stand up. James just looked at him, his eyes calm. But he wasn't calm, Deke realized. He'd just learned to keep it inside. And when it got to be too much, he wrote the blues.
"So when did you start playing the blues for money?"
"It was never about money. Back in 1936, me and Blind Pete went up to Chicago and played at this club. These men were there, had us record some of our songs. We didn't get much money, but it was the way they treated us, so different from home. Like we was special, like we had a great talent. A talent for more than just sharecropping. Man, we just ate that up. I think now, after being around a lot of those record men, that they always act like that, all this praise and sweet talking, cause they get away with not paying people very much money. Cause some people been put down forever, they just so happy somebody nice to them, saying nice things about them, they would play for free. And I think those men take advantage like that."
"Blind Pete figured that one out early on, and he'd ask for contracts and the money up front, very professional. Those records men didn't like it, said they could get a million poor black guitar players be happy to come up from Mississippi. Pete said good, you go get them. So he had something of a reputation that way, and he was a man who held a grudge, you know what I'm saying? Pete never forgot the names of the men he thought tried to cheat him. I thought the record men were probably right—there were a million bluesmen who would come play for a nice word and their food. But you can't do anything about talent like Blind Pete's. It like a beacon in the dark, man. You understand? You listen to him play, it touch something inside. It changes you. Rafe is the same way. They put their heart into it."
"Rafe plays the slide like Blind Pete?"
"Yeah, Rafe his boy. Blind Pete showed Rafe his sweet side, cause Rafe listened to him. He would pay attention, and listen, and Pete could tell the respect was real. But I'm more like his grandpa."
"Deke, baby, you hungry? Want me to fry you up some liver and onions? Won't take me but a minute."
"Oh, no, thank you. That would put me to sleep and I've got so much work to still do tonight."
Sally-Rose looked at James. “Tell him about Rafe's granddaddy."
James was grinning. “Oh, man, we called him Bull. He was a lawyer, a big man, looked just like Rafe, only tall, over six foot, and he had this voice—when he start yelling his face turned bright red and everybody start running for cover. He owned most of southern Miss'ippi. Everybody called him Bull cause when he was a young man, he saw this bunch of children had got into the pasture with the bull, and he climbed in there to fetch them out. The bull was ignoring the children, who were picking some berries growing along the fence, but he started pawing the ground and stamping his foot when he saw Rafe's granddaddy. That bull had balls the size of melons. He was a mean thing. So Rafe's granddaddy, he started running, waving his arms around, and the bull started chasing him, and he's yelling for the children to get out the fence. They all climbed out except this one little girl got hung up in the brambles, and Bull, he goes tearing around the pasture, runs straight at her with the bull right behind him, and she starts screaming, and he scoops her up and flat jumps that fence, looked like Jesse Owen. The bull got his horns tangled up in the wire, and Rafe's granddaddy, he turns around and punches the bull in the face, right through the fence. After that, the children took to following him around, pretending they was little bulls, and they'd snort and paw the ground. Every so often he'd turn and let out this roar and chase them down the street. The children loved that old man. It was my little girl, Annie, who got caught up in the brambles."
"Now, Jacob, that's Rafe's daddy, he wasn't like Bull. That old man had deep roots in Miss'ippi, like he had black dirt running through his veins. He understood about family.” Sally-Rose put another piece of cherry cake at his elbow. “Jacob was always looking at the sky, wondering how fast and far he could get away."
"He wanted to fly. He was crazy for flying since he was a little boy. He used to set off these balloons with a little fire, make them lift up. You remember, Sally?"
"I remember he burned up his mama's Christmas scarf. Bull got it from Paris, they said, and Jacob made a balloon out of it and it floated as high as the barn. Then it caught on fire. She came running out of the house, yelling she was gonna get a switch. I don't think Jacob ever felt a switch, not once in his young life. But his mama was out trying to cut one off her honeysuckle bushes, and Jacob hightailed it down to Blue Otis’ house, hid under the porch with the dogs. He fell asleep under there, scared everybody half to death. Blue Otis knew he was there, but he wasn't telling."
"Jacob just wanted to get away. Bull nearly had a stroke when he said he wasn't going to Ole Miss, but was going up there to Charlottesville, to University of Virginia. But he brought back Miss Anne. Jacob was busy looking at the sky, but Anne, she looked around and rolled up her sleeves and got busy. Best thing he could have done was brought Miss Anne to us. Bull loved her, too, but he couldn't hardly look at her without turning red, she was so pretty and fine. She still is."
"Then things really started getting bad. Jacob was killed in the war, and he never got to see Rafael. Bull was heart-broken, and he died a couple of years later, when Rafe was still in leading strings. Miss Anne kept things going, though, best she could. She had that dignity, that Virginia reserve. Not a man in Miss'ippi has ever dared to disrespect her. And when Rafe was a little older, he started stepping up, taking on his responsibilities. Hurt is an old and respected name. And Rafe, he understood it came with responsibility."
"How do you mean, Mr. Hurt?"
"Blue Otis got out of prison in ‘51, I think. He came home and his children had been living with his sisters, some of them since they was little. So he let the children stay where they was and he went to work up in the sawmill. He'd come home every two weeks or so and take care of his place. Blue Otis would never have been sent to prison if Bull hadn't been so sick—he died during the trial. Anyway, Blue Otis was in Vernon Dahmer's store, buying some food to take out to his sisters for the children, and he wanted to get some candies out of the jar. He'd just started counting out those penny candies when one of the deputies comes in. Now, the man Blue Otis killed, he was a deputy, and the law still took every chance they could get to poke him a bit. So the deputy, he brushes those candies on the floor. Tells Blue Otis to pick them up, they was still good enough for the children. Blue Otis wasn't going to start nothing, he reaches down for the candies, and the deputy stomps on them with his boot. Now, Vernon had a woman working there who wouldn't put up with any nonsense. She told the deputy he owed her five cents for the candies. He spit on the floor and walked out.
"I don't know how Rafe found out about it. But he went down to the police station, demanded to see the sheriff. Said he was filing charges against the deputy for theft and harassment. Told all the deputies sitting around that if they didn't leave Blue Otis alone, he was going to hire a lawyer and start suing them, and keep suing them until he finished law school himself, then he'd keep suing them until the day they died. And if that didn't work, he was going to get Bull's old horsewhip out of the barn and whip ‘em. The sheriff just looked at him, Rafe maybe ten, and he didn't
blink, didn't move. The sheriff said, ‘I believe you mean it, boy. You sure look like your granddaddy standing there.’ And that was that. The cops let Blue Otis alone, and Rafe stood up from then on. Stood up like he was supposed to do, to protect the people didn't have anybody else to protect them. Rafe always done what he had to do, Deacon. What was expected of him."
Deke couldn't think of a thing to say. He put his forehead down on the table. Sally-Rose put her warm hand on the back of his neck. “Miss'ippi hard for everybody, Deke."
James left to have his afternoon lay-down, and Sally-Rose started frying up the liver and onions. “Deacon, I know you must be feeling like we're all being real cruel about Leona. I mean, here that young girl has been killed, and we all acting like we don't care. We do care, Deacon, but ... You just can't imagine the trouble..."
"What was it about her? Seems like nobody liked her very much."
"Well, that's the truth of it. Miss Anne, she always tried to keep an eye on the girls who didn't have mamas. Leona's mama died when she was born and she went off to live with her aunt and uncle. Far as anybody knows, they took care of her, but Leona grew up to be an unlikable child. She told lies, and stole things, little things that didn't matter. Miss Anne always said she was just trying to collect love around her. I think that was a bit generous. The child was just sneaky, and she liked eavesdropping on other people, then saying things like she knew some secret about you."
Sally Rose started chopping onions, but Deke suspected they weren't totally to blame for the tears running down her cheeks. “I know I'm not a good Christian, the way I always felt about that child, and the way I felt about her when she was grown up. But now she just seems pathetic to me, Deke. Like she never had a bit of attention before, and she was just so grateful for these sorry men to be paying her some mind, she'd do anything to get a little more. Maybe if she'd had a few more women being a little nicer to her, showing her the way women ought to behave ... Miss Anne was right to believe in her. But none of the rest of us did, and I think Leona knew it.” She shook her head, wiped at the tears with her sleeve. “These onions right strong."