by Eyre Price
Turning back, however, was exactly what he decided to do. When the Kia started moving again, it was shooting gravel from its rear tires like the Union artillery at Vicksburg. He peeled out of the lot, and spinning rubber hit pavement with a banshee’s squeal as he went shooting off down the road, headed back the way he’d come.
By the time he approached the fabled crossroads for a second time, he’d managed to catch his breath and his heart had slowed to a more comfortable 4/4 backbeat, although he was far from calm. His grip on the wheel made his knuckles ache.
In the pit of his sour stomach there was a gnawing feeling—a certainty, really—that he should keep driving, just get as far away from that cursed spot as a Korean subcompact could take him. Deep inside that little voice was screaming, “For the love of God, just keep driving!” And for once in his life he was determined to listen.
It wasn’t until the very last minute, until he’d almost driven past it for a second time, that Daniel pulled the wheel hard to the right. The Kia left the highway too abruptly, hitting the dirt road far faster than the little car ever should have. The tires slid and the car began to drift to the right as he instinctively stomped on the brakes and tried to regain control. The mini-hatchback fishtailed and skidded and then came to a sudden stop.
Daniel sat panting behind the steering wheel as the dust he’d churned up settled back down to earth, illuminated in the headlights like drifting brown snowflakes. “Goddamn it!”
Through the dirt blizzard, Daniel’s eyes traced the road ahead as it crossed over a small one-lane bridge and then disappeared behind a number of blight-stricken pines. Not wanting to do the same, he decided the best thing to do was to turn around. He tried to convince himself retreating was simply the most reasonable reaction to his predicament, but the truth was that a growing uneasiness gnawing at his gut had become a panicked need to get out of there before it was too late. And a whispering voice inside his head teased that he’d already missed that train.
The road was too narrow to make a U-turn. (Daniel cursed himself for not having paid closer attention in his high school driver’s ed class thirty years earlier.) In his first pass of his “K” turn, the Kia’s grip on the dirt road gave just a little. With the second maneuver, the car swung around to point out toward the highway, but then slid a bit on the loose surface as it began to move forward. Already jittery and jumpy, Daniel panicked and tried to accelerate his way back into control.
The tires spun wildly on the loose surface and then, as they dug down to find some purchase, began flinging mud and gravel everywhere, spewing like an LSU coed at the end of a long game night. The Kia lurched forward once, but soon that throaty growl of tires clawing through dirt turned to the high-pitched whine of wheels spinning through mud but going nowhere: the unmistakable sound of stuck.
“Goddamn it!”
Out of pure frustration, Daniel stepped harder on the accelerator, no longer believing—or even caring—that it would set him free. The tachometer jumped up dangerously close to the red line as the car rocked and trembled but refused to move an inch.
“Goddamn it!”
He threw off his seat belt, exploded out of the car, and stomped around behind to see just exactly what the problem was. He was no automotive expert, but the difficulty was obvious enough: the right rear tire was buried clear up to the frame in deep, dark Delta mud. He wasn’t going anywhere.
“Goddamn it!”
The blasphemy was so loud it should have produced a clear echo, but the only return was the faintest of whispers, barely audible above the whistle of the winter wind in the tall grasses of the fallow fields. And while the word that came back was the same one he’d uttered, Daniel had an unsettling feeling the voice repeating it wasn’t his.
As far as he could tell, there was nothing around him in any direction except pitch black. He was absolutely alone. Not a soul. And yet he’d heard a voice. Or thought he had.
The possibility that the darkness in which he was entombed hid something with a voice left Daniel momentarily paralyzed. He just stood there behind his car, frozen in fear like an armadillo caught on a highway, unsure whether to go left or right, to stay or to run.
There was another sound. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Not loud, but distinct enough to break him from his trance. It resolved all indecision and he moved toward the Kia as quickly as he could.
Just as he reached it, something moved through the grass off to his right. The sound stopped him again, left him as motionless as one of the stone statutes of long-forgotten Confederate generals dotting the landscape of their defeat.
With the terrified concentration of a fawn in the brush, he listened as whatever it was bounded back and forth through the tall grasses, moving closer and then farther away. He wanted to believe it was just a dog from a nearby farm making a night for itself chasing raccoons or rats, but he knew it was moving too quickly for that—and then too slowly. It was so loud he could hear it clearly and then so soft he began to doubt whether there was anything to hear at all.
Alone. In the middle of nowhere. Drowning in darkness. Surrounded, but unsure by whom. Or by what. Daniel suddenly found that the antiquity of the earth beneath his feet was impossible to escape and his mind began to open to the possibilities it might contain: fantastical, nightmarish possibilities.
Perhaps there was truth in every legend, even if that kernel lay only at the point of its origin. Maybe there was a very good reason for the primal terror that lies in every human heart, a forgotten understanding that there are some things that cannot be explained or understood, and yet still deserve to be feared.
Science would scoff at the notion, but science needs a light in the darkness. It’s dependent upon some reasonable shelter and the safety found within four walls and a roof. Science needs the time and opportunity to think it all out. It’s easy to be brave in a classroom, and skepticism can flourish freely in a laboratory’s controlled environment. Alone in the darkness, however, every soul is reminded with certainty that “there is more of heaven and earth…”
And then it was quiet again. Quiet and still. Daniel took as deep a breath as he dared. He waited. Still nothing. Another deep breath and his senses slowly returned. Rationality began to lap over him like the tide at the foreshore. He chastised himself for panicking, for having surrendered so freely to a momentary free-fall into superstition’s fetid pool.
The night was just an effect of the regular rotation of the earth.
The lonely stretch of roadway where he was stranded was just another old farm road. If he could have seen it through the impenetrable dark, the landscape was probably quaint and picturesque in a G. Ruger Donoho kind of way.
The stories of young Robert Johnson trading his soul for complete command of the guitar were just stories. A way to entertain folks in the dark ages before radio or television. Or the Internet. There was only one path to mastery of the guitar: practice.
And even if Robert himself claimed he’d made such a deal—and he did—it was just a bluesman’s bravado, another way of promoting the act. Something Daniel knew only too well. Just a clever marketing angle. Nothing more.
Daniel told himself all of this, and yet he couldn’t help but imagine a young Robert Johnson standing just across the road from him now. He could almost make out the shadowy silhouette of the young man waiting there in the darkness, defeated and disgraced, driven to the most desperate of measures—exactly like Daniel was now.
He wondered if Robert Johnson had been frightened too. Had the young man’s imagination played tricks on him in the night? Had he wanted to go back to wherever he’d called home or had he simply been too determined to turn and run? Had he come to that crossroads doubting the legends, or had he believed in its powers and been willing to give up anything in order to get what he wanted most? Just like Daniel.
There was another sound. He wasn’t sure where it came from or what it was, but he was certain it was something. Out in the fields, there was quick movement through the tall
grasses. Could he hear paws on the ground? Or were they feet?
Something rustled in the bushes not twenty feet away. Was that a growl?
Yes. Yes, it was a growl. A large growl. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Robert Johnson died as a young man, just a few years after his meteoric rise to prominence. Musical historians have concluded he was poisoned by a vengeful man whom Robert had made a cuckold, but there were others—folks who knew the man personally—who insisted his death could not be so easily explained. And the dark legend that begins with a boy at the crossroads ends with a man dying on his hands and knees, barking like the hellhound he’d claimed had been chasing him since the night he’d made his pact.
Supposed pact, Daniel corrected himself.
It was just a legend. Just a legend. Daniel repeated it to himself over and over.
Legend or not, as Daniel reached for the Kia’s door handle his heart was beating faster than a Gabber bass line. He took one last look off into the darkness, trying to convince himself there wasn’t anything stalking him in it. Just a legend.
There was, however, something wet and sticky all over the door handle. Instinctively, Daniel recoiled at the feel of it. In the faint light of a thin sliver of moon, he could see the door was streaked with three lines of blood. He felt a sharp pain in his hand and realized it was his own. The festering wound consuming the stump of his severed digit had opened up yet again. “Goddamn it.”
He considered his maimed hand for a moment with a detached curiosity, as if the bloody mess were someone else’s. He watched with wide-eyed wonderment as a thick drop of his blood dripped from the wound and fell to the dark Delta mud at his feet.
“Well, I’m goin’ where the Southern cross the Dog,” a voice, rough and raspy, sang out in the darkness.
Daniel whirled around to face whoever had snuck up on him, but as soon as he’d turned, the voice’s point of origin seemed to change again.
“Goin’ where the Southern cross the Dog.”
Was it coming from behind him? From the road? From the fields?
Daniel could hear feet on the road now, each step keeping time in the cinder-sprinkled dirt with a steady tramp-tramp-tramp as the singer moved closer. “Goin’ where the Southern cross the Dog.”
Daniel couldn’t place the singer’s position in the night; the vocal was almost quadraphonic, as if it weren’t coming from any one place, but from everywhere all at once. The footsteps continued to fall in a steady rhythm. Tramp-tramp-tramp. Tramp-tramp-tramp.
Daniel turned back toward the Kia…and the man was just standing there.
“You lookin’ for me?” The voice was deeper than the darkness and rougher than the road he’d walked.
The shock of the man’s sudden appearance hit Daniel like the blast from a 32-20. “Oh my God!” He stumbled back, slipped on the mud, and fell to the ground.
“Not even close.” The man’s voice rolled into a deep belly laugh.
The passing clouds parted for a moment, letting just the slightest bit of moonlight through as if some celestial stage director had cued a baby spot to illuminate the man. He was taller than Daniel. Thinner too. The silver hair beneath his straw porkpie hat and the gray mustache and beard circling his smile were evidence he was older. The glint in his eyes suggested he knew something Daniel didn’t—and perhaps that he was crueler.
He looked down on Daniel. “How long you gonna lie there in the mud, son?”
Daniel tried to get to his feet, but they slipped out from beneath him.
“Maybe you just need a hand up.” The old man offered his. It was thin and bony, but thickly calloused and surprisingly strong. With little effort, he pulled Daniel to his feet.
Daniel wasn’t sure whether he should be grateful. Or frightened. “Who are you?”
“Who am I?” the man said with a laugh. “You gonna call me Atibon. Mister Atibon.”
The introduction did little to lessen Daniel’s confusion. “But, who are you?”
“I done told you, son. I’m Mr. Atibon. You gotta learn to listen, son.” The old man made it clear his patience was already exhausted. “You ain’t a dummy, is you? Can’t make a bargain with no dummy.”
Daniel answered, “No.” But he wasn’t so sure anymore.
The reply was enough to satisfy the old man, who seemed uninterested in anything but business. “So now the question is: Is you the one I’s lookin’ for or ain’t ya?”
“I don’t know—” Daniel fumbled.
“He say if I come all the ways out here, there’d be some fool come lookin’ for this.” The old man pulled a small manila envelope from inside his coat pocket. “You dat fool?”
Daniel reached for the envelope, but it disappeared right back into the old man’s coat. “He said you’d come lookin’ for it, but I didn’ say nuthin’ ’bout you gettin’ it.”
Even without the envelope, Daniel thought the mystery might still be solved with a single question. “Who told you I’d come?”
“That youngest Handy boy.” The old man stopped to consider just which one that was. “Willie, I think they call him.”
The name meant nothing to Daniel. “And he gave you that envelope? This Willie Handy?”
“Welllllll,” Mr. Atibon stretched out the word to buy him time and he stroked his beard as he thought up a response that wouldn’t answer the question. “Let’s jes’ say he’s the one I got it from.”
Daniel was undeterred. “And where did he get it from?”
“Didn’ say,” the old man confessed. “He was over the Po’ Monkey braggin’ how he gonna get paid big money for what he got here.” He pulled out the envelope again and then returned it just as quickly. “Well, I figure it’s better me gets that money than him. So I helped myself to this here,” he tapped his coat pocket, “while he was sleepin’ off his Saturday night.”
Nothing the old man said made any sense, but Daniel figured that only meant it dovetailed nicely with everything else that had happened to him. “All right. Well, here I am. I’m your fool.”
“Willie was sayin’ you was gonna pay him five hun—” The old man stopped mid-demand and took a long, hard look at Daniel, reappraising just what kind of sucker he’d snagged on his line. “A thousand dollars for what’s inside.”
“A thousand dollars?” It seemed a bit steep to Daniel. “What exactly is inside?”
“Somethin’ worth a thousand dollars,” Mr. Atibon snapped. “Didn’ I just say that?” He took a harder look at Daniel. “Just what’s wrong with you, son?”
“I’m trying to figure that out,” Daniel admitted as he pulled out his wallet. “It’s the middle of the night and I’m in East Goddamn-nowhere, counting out cash to buy something I don’t know from a man I’ve never met. Maybe I’m a dummy, after all.”
When he was done counting out the cash he’d planned on dropping in Vegas two nights ago, he offered the bills—and an admission. “All I have is eight hundred and—”
In the blink of an eye, the bills disappeared from Daniel’s hand and reappeared in the old man’s. “I’m gonna take this as a down payment.”
“It’s all I got,” Daniel tried to make clear. “And it’s all you’re getting.”
“I’m gonna take this,” Mr. Atibon held up the money, but not nearly close enough for Daniel to snatch it back. “And your good word on the balance.”
“No, you don’t understand.” After twenty-odd years in the music business, Daniel had become a sophisticated negotiator, and the time had come to deliver a graduate course in how a deal gets done. “I’m not going to pay you a thousand dollars.”
“Then I’m keepin’ this here for expenses.” The old man tucked the bills in the front pocket of his work pants.
“Wait a minute!” This was not on Daniel’s syllabus. “Eight hundred dollars for expenses?”
“And a penalty on bad faith,” the old man added indignantly before turning to go.
Daniel knew it was ridiculous to pay a thousand dollars for
the envelope. Just as ridiculous as it was to think a man could become a guitar virtuoso through anything but natural talent and hard work. And yet sometimes the ridiculous is exactly what happens. “All right, all right. Keep the money.”
It was no concession to the old man. “I already told ya I was gonna.”
“I’ll give you the rest as soon as the banks open.”
“Gas station out on sixty-one got one of them money machines.” Mr. Atibon pointed the way with a walking stick that was darker than the night and more gnarled than he was. “Open all night. No need to wait for nothin’.”
“All right. I’ll go get you your cash.” A couple hundred dollars was money well spent if it led him to his million. “But I want the envelope. Now.”
Mr. Atibon thought it over. “If’in I give it, you ain’t got no reason ta’ give me what’s I got comin’.”
That wasn’t entirely true. “Except I said I would.”
“And you think that’s enough, do ya’?” The old man cocked his head, like he was searching Daniel for the unspoken answer to his question.
Two years ago…two months…even two days ago, it wouldn’t have been. But things were different now. “Please, Mr. Atibon.”
“A man’s word ain’t no substitute for cash money, but I’ll take yours.” With a shaky hand, he offered Daniel the envelope—and a warning. “But I got a razor in my back pocket and I’ll slice your ass like a Sunday smoked ham if you tryin’ to trick me.”
Daniel took the eight-by-ten-inch envelope and looked it over, but in the intermittent moonlight, he couldn’t see it with any detail. He opened the car door and both men shielded their eyes from the awful glare of the dome light. Daniel slid into the driver’s seat.
“Where you think you’re going?” Mr. Atibon wanted to know.
“I thought I was going to that gas sta—”
“And so we are, but—”
“Do you want to follow me?” Daniel had asked the question before he’d recalled that he hadn’t heard a car approach, just feet.
“I’m like Big Mama Thornton, son.”
Daniel didn’t get the reference.