Smashed, Squashed, Splattered, Chewed, Chunked and Spewed

by Lance Carbuncle

  “Why’s he play that guitar nonstop?” Not that it matters. It’s just that his playing is so sweet it makes a grown man want to cry.

  “That’s a long story, Jack. But we have a long drive. This would be a long drive for someone with nothing to talk about, I guess. Sit back and I’ll tell you the story of old Clubfoot Jasper Moberly.”

  “One night, sitting in a candle-lit piano bar in New Orleans, Old Clubfoot Jasper back there told me his story.” Fat Elvis’s voice goes down a notch in volume to make me listen closer, to draw me in. Behind me the guitar playing stops. I turn back to check on Clubfoot Jasper and see him with the rounded end of the butter knife digging into his nostril. Clubfoot Jasper pulls out the knife and studies a flat, dry booger stuck on the end. As if he doesn’t care that I’m watching, he lifts the floor mat to the seat beside him, wipes the nose candy on the floor, and then resumes his guitar playing. Meanwhile, Fat Elvis continues with the tale of Clubfoot Jasper.

  “We were sitting right at the piano and some white-bread couple requested What a Wonderful World. That piano man played a transcendent version that so warmed the crowd’s cockles. The atmosphere was optimal for soul baring. The white-bread couple beside us were getting inebriated and chummy with the saltiest looking sea-dog you ever met. I mean, this old boy had dried up bird doo-doo on his shoulders. He should have had an eyepatch and a parrot. The man was ordering up drinks and talking loudly about his new pirate friend Dale. The lady looked like she had special sensations in her nether-regions for Dale. I wouldn’t be surprised if that couple didn’t take that crusty old man back in some alley and share sweet loving with him. I mean, there was a feeling in the air. And Old Jasper was feeling it too.”

  “A-yow,” agrees Jasper.

  “Jasper looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘look, I’ve gotta talk to you, man.’ I mean, he started speaking clear as day. I understood every word he said. We moved away from the piano and sat down at a table to talk. And the stuff Clubfoot Jasper told me, well, it made me shudder, gave me the heebie-jeebies, man.” And so, to the musical accompaniment of a three-string slide guitar I learned Clubfoot Jasper’s story.

  • • •

  Fat Elvis said that he didn’t believe all of Jasper’s tale, but enough of it to matter. According to Clubfoot Jasper, he was born somewhere in Mississippi, in 1904. And from the look of the deep dusty lines on his face, it just may be true. Clubfoot Jasper was born William Cleveland Roosevelt Marfan. His mother died during the birth and the father, a transient, was nowhere to be found by the time Little Bill Marfan entered this world. Baby Bill was long and light and spindly. As a child he was passed about between his many aunts and uncles, never really feeling like a part of any permanent family. The only constant in his existence was a beat up acoustic guitar given to him by his Uncle Jefferson Lincoln Washington Marfan. Little Bill was a natural on the guitar and took it with him from house to house, always clinging to it like a security blanket.

  Early on in his teen years, tired of being shuffled from place to place, tired of never having a bed or a room of his own, and getting restless for something more than just plying a mule and scraping by, Bill took off and started riding the rails. Just Bill and his beat up old guitar seeing what this country had to offer a tall lanky black boy with no training or education. He picked up odd jobs along the way, slaughterhouses, dishwashing, shoveling manure, whatever could put some change in his pockets and a meal in his belly.

  Bill meandered around the Mississippi Delta, from town to town, hitchhiking, riding buses, hopping trains. Along the way, he started playing his guitar on street corners for money. He played in juke joints and fish fries for free hooch and all of the women that his talent could draw. Fat Elvis tells me that “Clubfoot Jasper ain’t never been pretty, but his guitar playing could make Mother Teresa brew a fondue in her panties. That old boy has had more dirty women than most men ever had.”

  Bill started hanging out with other guitar players in the region. He was often seen jamming on a street corner with his buddies Johnny and Robert. Around that time, Bill found the love of his life, a fifteen-year-old girl named Cleophus. Bill Marfan loved Cleo more than even his guitar. But his constant traveling left her unfulfilled. Once, upon returning to visit Cleo, Bill discovered her in an intimate entanglement with another young man. Bill shot Cleo dead on the spot, right between the eyes. A row ensued between Bill Marfan and the interloper. Bill came out of it with a badly damaged left hand. The interloper’s life leaked out of the bullet hole in his chest.

  As a result of Cleophus’s death, Bill Marfan did a five-year stint in the Mississippi Big House. The prison doctors ignored his injured hand until it became rotten with infection. Only at that point was any treatment given, just in time to salvage the thumb, index, and middle fingers. The compulsion to play his guitar was undeniable. Bill gripped a butter knife in his mangled hand and changed his style, incorporating elements of blues picking for his healthy right hand and slide guitar for his mangled left hand. While in prison Bill wrote the first and original blues song about shooting down a cheating woman. One day, while playing his guitar in the exercise yard, Bill Marfan received a visitor, a genial white man from Texas who wanted to record his music. With nothing better to do and nowhere to go, Bill gave an impromptu performance with his blues-picking-butter-knife-slide-guitar and partially incoherent vocals about shooting down the mean-mistreatin’, one time cheatin’, woman he loved, the woman he killed.

  Upon release from the penitentiary, Bill Marfan located his musician friend Robert. Robert told old Bankrupt Bill that he was “makin’ music, rakin’ money, and drawing in the honeys.” One night, Robert sent Bill out into the country to meet a man who could help him make the most of his music career. The man, Mr. Eshu, helped Robert and could do the same for Bill.

  Late that night, Bill went to the crossroads outside of Clarksdale and met up with Mr. Eshu. The man asked him what he wanted. I want to be rich and famous and happy, Bill replied. Eshu told him, I will make you famous, but there are things I expect in return. Assuming that Eshu meant he wanted a cut of his profits, Bill agreed. Eshu took Bill’s guitar and tuned it for him. He then placed the tip of his pointer finger between Bill’s eyes and began chanting, over and over, Shama, Lama, Ding, Dong, Ewww, Mow, Mow, A-A-A-Ohhhh. Jasper’s vision clouded, his right foot cramped and contorted painfully. From now on, said Eshu, you will be known as Clubfoot Jasper Moberly. And you will be famous, as long as you keep playing that guitar.

  I don’ like it. Why Clubfoot Jasper Moberly? Bill asked Eshu. Eshu said that Clubfoot Jasper Moberly was a good blues name, whether Bill liked it or not. That’s fine, said Clubfoot Jasper, as long as I will be rich and famous and happy. Eshu corrected Jasper, I only agreed to make you famous.

  The next day, Clubfoot Jasper heard his songs on the radio, the songs that were recorded by that nice white man at the prison. Clubfoot Jasper was literally an overnight sensation. He began appearing on the King Biscuit Radio Show, recording records, playing shows in clubs. Everywhere he went, people wanted to hear his music.

  Late one night, Robert approached Clubfoot Jasper. Robert was trembling and pale and shedding whiskey tears. That Mr. Eshu, said Robert, done me wrong. I’s famous, but I’s got his hellhounds on my trail. I cain’t get me no peace. That man must be the devil comin’ to take my soul. He be af’er you next, Jasper. Don’t stop movin’ and don’t stop playing that sweet guitar and maybe you be alright.

  Clubfoot Jasper never saw his friend Robert again. But he did start seeing the dogs, the hellhounds, as Robert called them. He saw them in his sleep. He saw them lurking behind trees and sensed them behind fences. Their faces, horrible. Lips turned up to bare pointy teeth. Long, droopy ears. Their bodies, long, thick and muscular, resting on disproportionately short legs. Clubfoot Jasper also sometimes spied a figure in the distance behind him, a presence like that of Mr. Eshu. The guitar playing never stopped. The more Clubfoot Jasper played, the less likely he was to s
ee the hellhounds or Mr. Eshu. From the time of Robert’s mysterious disappearance, Clubfoot Jasper kept his dobro with him, playing it in his sleep, on the toilet[26], and anywhere else he would go.

  Throughout the years, Clubfoot Jasper found himself having to gun down his cheating women. Throughout the years Jasper also found himself serving time at Parchman Farm, the Mississippi Big House, for his misdeeds. Each time, he would receive a visit from that nice white man with the recording equipment. Each recording session would be a smash hit. Every time he was released from prison, Clubfoot Jasper would start touring the Chitlin’ Circuit, playing major venues like the Apollo, the Cotton Club, the Fox Theater, and the Victory Grill. The hits kept coming and the crowds loved him. But Clubfoot Jasper was always looking behind him. Always seeing Mr. Eshu trying to come and collect on their deal. Always smelling those hellhounds on his trail. Eternal damnation following him like a piece of toilet paper stuck to his shoe.

  • • •

  “That’s the gist of it,” says Fat Elvis. “I don’t know if that old boy is 102 years old. I don’t know if that Mr. Eshu is the devil incarnate. But I do know this—I’ve seen those hounds myself, slobbering, frothing, champing at the bit to get at Jasper. And intermittently, I will see a man behind us, maybe in a car, maybe walking, but he stands out, a tall man in a big yellow hat. Always in the distance. But I’ve seen that man all over the country. I never know where he’s going to turn up. But he does. He never approaches us, but he watches. So I been hanging with Old Clubfoot Jasper now for decades. We are on the road. And that old boy, he don’t stop playing that guitar for fear that if he does, well, Mr. Mephistopheles, or whoever he is, will come and put Old Jasper’s soul in an empty whiskey bottle and lock it up in the devil’s liquor cabinet. So Jasper keeps playing his guitar, and Mr. Eshu and his dogs keep their distance. Ain’t that right, Clubfoot Jasper?”

  “A-yoww.”

  Clubfoot Jasper’s story is hard to top. We stop talking and listen as Jasper plays the guitar, providing the soundtrack to our trip north. We pass an old Cadillac and I notice that the driver is sporting a large yellow hat. The Cadillac fades into the distance behind us. Clubfoot Jasper’s playing becomes more frenetic, a crazy flamenco-tinged slide guitar kind of blues. Just barely audible, I think I hear the howling of dogs.

  Fat Elvis and Clubfoot Jasper are scheduled to play the lounge of The Paradise Inn for the next three weeks. The owner of the inn, Salvatore, is a blues aficionado. He managed to track down Fat Elvis and convinced him and Clubfoot Jasper to be the lounge band. Free food, free rooms and free booze are the perks. And Clubfoot Jasper and Fat Elvis can keep half of the door receipts. To clinch the deal, Jasper made Sal throw in free adult movies on the hotel television.

  The Stutz Blackhawk shimmies and shudders. Fat Elvis pushes it faster, talking incessantly as we whizz past the other cars on the road. I kind of like that he talks so much, it makes it easier for me. I just smile, laugh and nod my head appropriately; he does all of the work. Behind me, Clubfoot Jasper continues to play the guitar. Sometimes he sings, sometimes he just plays. He plays a song called Assfull of Whiskey about having such a high tolerance to alcohol that he has to give himself whiskey enemas to get drunk. Then a little number he calls something like The Gris Gris Mojo Bag Boogie-Woogie Blues. Next comes a song called Dust My Broom. I tell Clubfoot Jasper that that’s the best version of a ZZ top song I’ve ever heard. For some reason, Fat Elvis smacks me in the back of the head and calls me a “Blasphemer.”

  Road signs, mile markers, and southern cities fade away behind us . . . Valdosta . . . Clubfoot Jasper plays his guitar . . . Tifton . . . Fat Elvis belts out a song called Death Letter Blues . . . Cordele . . . I tell the guys that I know how to play a little guitar. Clubfoot Jasper hands me his instrument and I kick out the opening riff to Smoke on the Water.[27] That’s all I know is the opening riff. Fat Elvis and Clubfoot Jasper look at me expectantly so I play the beginning of Stairway to Heaven. All I know is the beginning. I only took a couple of guitar lessons and never really practiced. Mom told me she wasn’t wasting money on lessons if I wasn’t going to practice. Clubfoot Jasper bursts out in gravelly laughter, incoherent muttering that has a tone of mockery, and a healthy dose of A-yows. I hand the guitar back to Clubfoot Jasper and let him continue with his amazing songs . . . Macon . . . Fat Elvis continues to blabber. He tells me he once was in a relationship with a woman where they agreed to be completely honest with each other about any thoughts that came into their minds. True and utter frankness. No white lies, no shading the truth. Does my butt look big in these pants? Answer: Hell yes, like two watermelons dancing under a blanket. Just blatant, bald-faced, unmitigated candor. At first, said Elvis, it was refreshing and liberating to just speak his mind completely and have his significant other do the same. But she asked far too many risky questions. The refreshing liberation lasted for three days and culminated in a red hand-mark on Fat Elvis’s face and the consequent defenestration of his lady friend. Behind us Clubfoot Jasper is rocking to a song that is either called Defenestration Blues or Deep Penetration Blues, it’s hard to tell . . . Smarr . . . Fat Elvis jabbers on. I am not good at conversing. One night in my basement, Idjit and I sat and watched a show on one of the travel channels about the death of native languages. There was an aboriginal guy in Australia who was one of the last two speakers of his language. Only one other speaker of his language in the entire world. That other person was his sister. And due to tribal customs or religious belief or something, the brother and sister were not allowed to speak with each other. I feel like that funny little pot bellied aborigine. Only Idjit and me really understand each other, and we’re not together. When others talk, I just don’t know what to say back. When I try to make a point, there is no meaty reply, no pithy retort, no reciprocation. I wish I could hold that old flea-bag on my lap and talk with him. He would understand . . . Jackson . . . Old Clubfoot Jasper taps me on the shoulder and says something about gree-gree. Fat Elvis explains that Clubfoot Jasper is going to make me a mojo bag, whatever that is. Jasper needs something from my person that is most important to me. I give him the little turd that I got from Bernice. He needs something from my backpack, I tell him to dig through it and help himself. He forages through the pack that Arnette and Pervis gave me, grunting to himself, pulling things out and sniffing them, putting them back, and then says that he has to add something personal to him. I watch as Clubfoot Jasper scrapes a thimble full of dried boogers from beneath his floor mat and dumps it into a little red flannel bag along with the turd and something he pulled from the backpack, I think maybe a small scrap of gator-jerky or maybe some Florida Swamp Weed. Jasper ties a little string on the sack and sniffs it. Whoo-eee, a-yow, he says. Jasper sets the bag in his lap and lets his guitar scream out frenetic acoustic mayhem. Clubfoot Jasper passes the bag to me and says something about wee-wee or gree gree or something. I look at Fat Elvis and he says, Clubfoot Jasper’s just telling you to feed the mojo with a drop of urine once in a while. I look at Fat Elvis, incredulous, you mean he hands me a bagful of boogers, dooty, and gator meat, wants me to pee on it, and you don’t think that’s strange? Clubfoot Jasper moans out A-yow. Fat Elvis nods in agreement. I’m supposed to keep the bag in my pocket and not let anybody else touch it or know about it. Okay, I say, what have I got to lose? I tuck the bag full of nasties in my pocket. There is something comforting about it. Small, almost imperceptible resonations . . . Atlanta . . . we pass on through and on the north side of the city Fat Elvis exits the highway, makes some right turns, some left turns, goes straight for a little bit here and there, and then parks his car in the handicapped spot in front of Sal’s Paradise Inn.

  • • •

  Salvatore introduces himself to us as Salvatore, not Sal as his sign suggests. He sets us all up with rooms. Fat Elvis tells Sal (for that is what we called him and shall henceforth refer to him as) that I am the road manager.

  It is always uncomfortable when a new person introduces himse
lf with his full name. You never know from then on if you are offending him by being familiar. Oh, I am sorry James, please don’t get upset if I just called you Jimmy. I don’t take offense when you refer to me by my familiar name. I would rather call a David Dave. Robert should be Bob. Richard is Rich (and sometimes a Dick, depending on the particular Richard). And if you’re a Theodore, please, just be Ted, or I will have to kick in your pecker-sucking face on principle. And Salvatore, well, he’s Sal.

  I am sorry if I seem testy. It’s just that I am coming off of an extended drug binge, I now am fully sober and sore, most of my body has cuts, contusions, and cerebral hemorrhaging, I am wrapped up in bandages like a fucking mummy, I leak fluids that probably have some useful purpose for my continued livelihood, and I miss my dog. I really miss him and need to see him.

  And we are at Sal’s Paradise Inn. Sal is actually a pretty nice guy. He has a crooked smile and winks at us too much, probably is not trustworthy, but maybe I’m paranoid. When Sal leaves the front desk to check on our rooms, Fat Elvis says to me that Sal is “swarthy” and “unctuous.” Although I don’t have a dictionary with me, I would have to guess that these are good descriptions. Sal returns and takes us to our rooms.

  Sal has set aside four rooms for us that are all connected by interior doors. It is disconcerting that the locks on our hotel doors are padlocks. The doors don’t even have doorknobs. Just a latch on each one that is held shut by some generic padlock, probably bought at a flea market. Sal hands us little padlock keys and tells us to put them on our key chains. When inside the rooms, we are supposed to use the padlocks on the latches on the inside part of the door. He hands us another envelope full of little keys for the padlocks on the interior connecting doors in case we want to have a party. Clubfoot Jasper tucks the keys in his front pants pocket and gives a grunt/smile toward Salvatore.