by Various
Yeller knocked over his chair gettin’ up. The man reached in his pants and pulled out a .44. Whether he meant to shoot Yeller or slap it in his face I didn’t know, but I reached across and smashed my bottle ‘cross his hand. He dropped the gun on the table and I laid the broke bottle next to it, done with it.
But Yeller picked both of ‘em up.
He stuck the busted bottle in that man’s eye and broke it off. When the man commenced to howlin’, Yeller laid the pistol upside his head.
The gal started screamin’ when she seent her man hit the floor, and that got the rest of the womens doin’ the same. The mens took to runnin’ out the door and the bartender snatched the phone off the wall.
Yeller just turned to me, tucked the pistol in his pants, and slipped the bloody bottleneck over his finger. He held it up to me and said, “Look like I got my bottleneck now, Harp.”
I didn’t know what to do. When the big doorman come over, Yeller slapped the handle of the gun and the man stepped aside.
Then he took me by the arm and pulled me out.
Pretty soon, we was in my car, the gun in Yeller’s lap, passin’ my moon back and forth. We didn’t stop till we hit Maxwell Street. He bought us a couple of Polishes and a Jack with his tip money. Then he started in talkin’ ‘bout Robert Johnson.
“That’s how Son House woulda done it, Harp,” he told me. “Didn’t take no lip. Robert Johnson, too. You know that crossroads story?”
“Sure,” I said, slow. “Everybody do.” Truth tell, I knew it better than most.
“’Bout how he went down to them crossroads and made hisself a deal with the Devil,” Yeller said, like he hadn’t heard me. “You know where them crossroads is at? I heard they was where the Sixty-one and the Forty-nine cross.”
That was some bullshit somebody in Clarksdale come up with to sell t-shirts. I wished he hadn’t asked, and I wish more I hadn’t answered. Maybe things would’ve been different in the end.
“Naw,” I said. “It ain’t there. It’s over by Dockery Plantation outside of Ruleville.”
“Ruleville?” Yeller said.
“Yup.”
“Hey, we ought to go down there you and me, huh?”
“Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout, nigger?” I laughed.
But he was dead serious. I seent it in them honey eyes.
“I mean it, man. The police goin’ be lookin’ for this car. You got to get outta town anyhow. You ain’t got no money for gas back down to Quinto—”
“Quito.”
He took out a fat wad of cash from his pants pocket.
“I gots me some saved up. Was goin’ to buy me a bus ticket and head down to them crossroads myself.”
“Nigger, you crazy.”
“Harp,” he said, and took the whiskey from me, serious. “You tell me now. Whatchoo think of my playin’?”
“You sang pretty good,” I said.
“Didn’t ask ‘bout my singin’, asked ‘bout my guitar playin’.”
“I told you, you be better with that bottleneck.”
“Nigger, my own momma wouldn’t sugar coat it, you just tell it.”
I shrugged. “It ain’t so good.”
I seent right off he was hurt, but shit, he had asked.
“I know it,” he said. “I ought to be better. I cut my fingers practicin’, but it don’t help. Wolf keeps me around on account of my uncle, but he only let me on when everybody’s good and drunk. How I’m s’posed to get better that way? You tell me.”
“You just got to keep practicin,’ man. You’s a good singer.”
“Sheeit,” he said, and passed the whiskey back. “Singer need a band, Harp. I gots to be able to play this here guitar. Even if I get good, it ain’t goin’ be enough. I gots to be great, man. I gots to be the best, like Robert Johnson.”
He took a long pull of whiskey and passed it back, but he didn’t let go when I tried to take it. He looked me in the eye.
“You show me them crossroads, Harp.”
He wasn’t askin’ so much as tellin’.
“That shit is just stories, Yeller,” I said, though I knew they wasn’t.
“Stories…I’m nineteen years old, man. I’m black. I’m poor. I’m just a step outta Joliet. They goin’ send me to Vietnam. I ain’t got the money for no school. I’m goin’ die over there if I go, I know it. I gots to get to them crossroads. Got to make that deal. Ain’t gonna get rich no other way. Even if a story’s my only chance, shit, man! I’ll take it.”
They was somethin’ ‘bout what he said, ‘bout Vietnam and bein’ cold in hand. I guess that’s why I told him I’d take him.
***
We talked the whole way down south. He told me he’d grown up in Gary, Indiana, where his daddy had worked for U.S. Steel till he got pulled under a roller at the mill, got his feet crushed so bad they cut ‘em off. His daddy got to be a mean drunk in a chair after that, and one night when they shut the ‘lectricity off, he kilt hisself with a shotgun. The kick sent his chair ‘cross the kitchen and rollin’ down the basement steps. That was where Yeller had found him, callin’ and feelin’ for him in the dark till he put his hand in the mess where his daddy’s face used to be.
“Tell me ‘bout them crossroads,” he said. “What’s so special ‘bout ‘em? How come you can’t make the deal in any ol’ crossroads?”
I didn’t know that, but I told him what I did know. My uncle, Luke, used to play guitar in my daddy’s congregation (Daddy was a preacher) till he switched to The Celestial Providence Church in Boyer, then he dropped religion altogether to play the blues. He went down to them crossroads and made hisself a deal. He told me ‘bout it, drunk one night. He said he’d gone at midnight and twisted the head off a black rooster and let the blood pour out, and that a shadow man come up out the ground and tapped him on the shoulder.
“The devil,” Yeller said.
“He never said it was the devil.”
“Who else would it be?”
I shrugged. Uncle Luke told me the shadow man made him promise somethin’ (I ‘spect it was his soul) and then took his guitar and taught him some songs.
“Was he better after that?” Yeller asked.
“I’s just a boy,” I said. “I ‘member him bein’ pretty good in church, but that’s all.”
“What happened to him?”
“Got his throat cut at his breakfast table. Never found out who done it.”
Yeller turned towards the window and didn’t say nothin’.
My daddy told me he’d been kilt over a woman. I’d told him ‘bout Uncle Luke’s deal and he looked real sad. He drove me to see them crossroads (though not at midnight) and he told me my soul wasn’t nothin’ I should try’n lay my hands on and give over to nobody, and that nobody that come askin’ for it had my good in mind. He told me not to think ‘bout Uncle Luke no more.
I never went to them ‘ol dirt crossroads again, though they stayed in my mind over the years. My daddy always told me you got to render unto Caesar what’s his, and render unto God what’s His, but sometime you get to a place where you can’t afford to render unto Caesar when he come knockin’. Then renderin’ unto God seems like a bill that’s goin’ be a long time comin’ due. I guess that’s where Yeller was. Maybe I wanted to go down there as much as he did, but I don’t know just why. I sure didn’t want to be no bluesman. His talk of buyin’ his way outta Vietnam sounded pretty good to me, though.
It was open season on black folks in Mississippi in them days, and the rednecks didn’t let us forget. We wasn’t ten minutes in town when we seent this beat-up blue Chevy pickup with a couple sun burnt elbows stickin’ out the windows cruisin’ real slow up and down South Oak in Ruleville where we stopped to eat a couple pig’s ear sandwiches and wait out the day.
Yeller wanted to see Greasy Street, where Wolf had told him he used to play for tips, so we went over. We spotted a boy playin’ slide with a nearly bald ol’ blind woman beatin’ on a tamborine. They was wailin’ Oh Death to a crowd
of folks. Yeller set up with his National outside a corner grocery ‘cross the street and tried cutting heads with the kid, but it was four-thirty on a Thursday and wasn’t no drunks around to forgive him his playin’. I seent a couple folks wave they hands at him, and a little boy in overalls even laughed. I felt bad and joined in on my harp. Couple folks come over then, but most stayed by the boy and the ol’ woman.
Then I seent that blue pickup again, and an ugly white face with oily hair come out the shade of the cab and squinted at our car, then faded back inside. The pickup went down the street.
After we got us some cash, we headed in from the sun and got a couple beers.
“You see that truck fulla crackers?” I asked Yeller.
He hadn’t.
We was full of beer and big dreams when we headed outta Ruleville. I kept on lookin’ for that pickup in the rearview, but I didn’t see it. I knew sometime the real bad whites cruised the black parts of town lookin’ for outta state tags. That meant what they called agitators, what they figured was uppity niggers come on down to stir up ‘good’ black folks.
I parked by Dockery in the shade and we napped till round ‘bout eleven, then I took Yeller out to the crossroads.
***
They was a row of power lines stretched out against the sky, and one of the old trees was gone, but them same cotton fields stretched way out across the dark land, and them dirt roads cuttin’ through ‘em was just the same. Them fuzzy white bolls was nearly ready and they was a warm night wind rustlin’ through ‘em, makin’ ‘em sway like church folks. The fields looked crowded with ghosts, which I guess they was, if you think ‘bout how many years all the black folks poured they blood and sweat into that crop. Probably they poor, dumb ghosts just go on draggin’ them long sacks through the rows, not knowin’ the season in that gray shadow land.
We walked out into the middle of the crossroads, and that’s when I slapped my leg.
“Goddammit.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Aww, we forgot to get us a pullet,” I said. The beer and pigmeat and that hot afternoon nap had drove it straight out my mind. “We ain’t got no blood to spill.”
Yeller looked at me and I could see the moon in his eyes.
“That ain’t so, Harp.” He moved closer to me.
That’s when the bright lights come on like we’d surprised the ol’ sun in his bed and he’d thrown back the sheet. Not one, but two shadow men stepped out.
“What say, boys?” said a voice, in that slow backwoods drawl that make a black man freeze.
I didn’t need to see the color of that truck behind them whose headlights was shinin’ on us to know it was a blue Chevy.
The .44 was in the glove box back in the Catalina. Maybe Yeller had his old pocketknife he’d been usin’ as a slide on the National, but I didn’t have nothin’ but my fists in my pockets. I got to feelin’ a cold sweat under my scalp and it run down my neck when I seent the long somethin’ each of ‘em had in they hands. Axe handles, maybe shotguns.
“What you boys doin’ out here so late?” the man asked.
“Nothin’, sir,” I said. “Just out walkin’.”
“You two sweethearts?”
“We ain’t the ones parked out by the side of the road in the dark,” said Yeller.
I hissed him quiet.
“Where you from, boy?” the man said to Yeller, the meanness fairly bubblin’ up in his throat.
“Chicago.”
“I told you he wasn’t one of our niggers, Boyd.”
“I had him pegged for a Kansas City pimp with them clown clothes he’s got on,” said Boyd.
“That a guitar, boy?” said the first man.
Yeller didn’t say nothing. It was plain what it was.
“Pick us out a song,” said the first man. Then he turned to me. The moon was shinin’ on his hair grease and the shotgun I seent in his hand. “And you, you gonna dance for us. No fancy nigger dance. Just let’s see an old time shuffle.”
Yeller put hands to his strings and began to strum out Dixie. I had been in this kinda situation before. They wasn’t nothin’ to do but pick up my knees like he said.
“You are murderin’ that song, ain’t you, boy?”
Boyd walked up next to his buddy and passed him a glass bottle of something that smelled like it ought to be in the Catalina’s tank.
“I told you a nigger can’t play Dixie,” said Boyd.
“Well, he’s a bluesman. Ain’t that right? Ain’t that why you’re out here? Come to the crossroads to make your deal?” said the first man. “I guess niggers in the north is just as spooky as they are down here. Listen here, boy. Only devil you’re gonna find tonight’s right here in front of you.”
He was steppin’ closer to Yeller while he said this, and he poked Yeller’s National with the end of a shotgun.
Yeller nearly dropped the guitar, and when he stooped to catch it up, he all of a sudden let out a crazy yell and brought it up fast by the neck. The steel body caught that white boy full on the jaw and put him on his back. Yeller didn’t waste no time, but put his foot on the shotgun and fell to beatin’ that cracker’s head in. Every hit made that National twang and echo. It was the sweetest music I ever heard.
Boyd went to help out his buddy, but I threw my fist into his gut, heard the wind come outta him in one big hush. He dropped what he had in his hand, just a baseball bat. I kicked him in the balls and started stompin’ on his back.
He cried and called to Jesus and said he couldn’t breathe. I felt his ribs cave in. I knew we was goin’ wind up lynched for it, but it felt good.
Yeller come up next to me and in the light of them headlights I seent his National was dented up bad and covered in blood. The chords was sprung and curled all over like a madwoman’s hair. He had blood on his shirt and his hands.
His eyes was dead serious and he kicked Boyd over on his back. I could see his chest swellin’ and fallin’. He was the one I seent look out of the truck cab earlier that day.
“Whatchoo waitin’ on, Harp? Finish this bitch off.”
I backed away, my limbs all shakin’.
“You ain’t never kill nobody?”
“Naw.”
“S’awright, brother,” he said, patting my shoulder. “I got this.”
Boyd was moanin’ and whinin’ like a kid.
I backed away. Yeller lifted up the guitar over his head in both hands like a caveman and he brang it down on Boyd’s face.
That same second, the headlights went out. I guess the battery had died on the Chevy. I heard what happened to Boyd though, felt it, wet on my shoes.
It was dark out in that road. The moon had got behind a black cloud, and lookin’ up at the sky, I couldn’t see the stars. Now that is peculiar on a Delta night.
We heard this pipin’ in the night, like a flute playin’, or maybe it was just the wind blowin’ through some reeds in the ditch.
They was somethin’ else standin’ in the road. I seent it, or the shape of it, behind Yeller, and I give out a yell, ‘cause what I seen didn’t make no sense. It was like a bush had sprung up in the road, but it moved, and not random, like a blowin’ bush will do. Every part of it breathed and twisted on its own, like droopin’ willow branches if they was to come alive, or a nest of black snakes. They was a shine among all that mess, too, like teeth, or eyes, or both.
In that minute Yeller spun, all them movin’ shadows sort of snapped into place like a shape out the corner of your eye, and a thin, dark man stood there. You couldn’t see his face, or his clothes, just his outline.
“Hit ‘im, Yeller!” I shrieked.
Yeller pulled back to swing, but then he lowered his busted guitar and shook his head.
“You him, ain’t you?” Yeller whispered.
The shadow man dipped his chin.
Yeller giggled like a kid at Christmas and looked back at me, eyes bugging.
“Goddamn! You wasn’t lyin’, Harp!” he said. “This the man hi
sself!”
He turned back to the shadow man, and I looked around for that shotgun. But it was no use. It was too powerful dark in the road.
“Well, Mr. Nick, I’s here. King Yeller’s what they call me,” he said, slappin’ his chest, “and I done paid your price double. I ‘spect that ought to cover my friend here.” He looked back at me, and even though I couldn’t see ‘em, I could feel that shadow man’s eyes on me over Yeller’s shoulder.
I nearly fell over Boyd’s body backin’ away.
“Nossir, I didn’t take no hand in this. It wouldn’t be right.”
Yeller looked disappointed, maybe a little scared. “Well, your loss, cuz.”
He turned back to the shadow man.
“Awright, Scratch. Whatchoo say? You give me credit? Double the ante, double the pot.”
The shadow man didn’t say a word.
“I’m gonna need a new guitar,” Yeller said, holdin’ up his bloody National.
The shadow man reached out and took the guitar from Yeller. He run his black fingers up and down the neck, and pretty soon a sound come out of it, a crazy, distorted rift, like a hunnerd guitars playin’ at once–not the kinda sound you could tickle out no busted guitar.
“Tha’s a swell trick,” said Yeller. His voice was crackin’. He took out a shaky Kool and lit one, and in that minute I seent the shadow man’s face in fire. He wasn’t white, but he wasn’t no black man neither. All I got a good look at was his bald head and them big black eyes, sort of foreign lookin’. My daddy thought the picture show was godless, but one time when I was eleven, he took me to the Walthall in Greenwood to see The Ten Commandments. The shadow man’s eyes was just like the pharaoh’s in that movie.
The shadow man turned and walked off the road with Yeller’s guitar, crankin’ out them weird, lonesome sounds.
Yeller looked back at me.
“Don’t go with him, Yeller,” I just ‘bout begged.
“Be right back,” he promised, tiltin’ his hat over his eyes, grinnin’.
He went off with the shadow man. They went down the ditch and off into the cotton. That music echoed all up and down that black road and put a harrow in my heart. It made me feel like the dark sky was a mouth comin’ to close on the earth, like we was all ‘bout to be chewed up and swallowed into some cold, deep place worse than hell, some place even the angels wouldn’t go.