by Hari Kunzru
—My brother feels guilty for being a rich boy. That’s why his heroes are always poor or black. I told him, it’s not like you’re helping anyone by listening to music. No one cares if you like black people.
—He respects the music.
—That doesn’t make them like you any better. It’s theirs. They’d rather you left it to them. Even if you did something, I don’t know, really selfless. Black lives matter or whatever. They still wouldn’t like you.
Then it is night. Leonie navigates the car slowly down a twinkling strip of lights, semis high-beaming us as we dawdle in the slow lane. She passes the usual fast-food restaurants, doubling back after a couple of miles to crawl the other side of the highway. Finally we find a low-roofed bar sitting like an island in a darkened lot, a place with a beer sign in the window and scarred wooden booths that hide the world in a comforting way. We flip over laminated cards and give our order to a weary middle-aged waitress. When the food comes, neither of us are hungry for the baskets heaped with chicken and okra and dessert-sweet slaw.
Leonie rubs her hands over her face, trying to wake herself up.
—I don’t know what I’m doing here. I can’t even remember why I said yes. I think I want to go home.
—Really? What about Carter?
—What about him? You told me this crazy story and it made sense. It made sense at the time. Now I don’t know. If you need to stay down here I’ll drop you somewhere, an airport or a hotel. But I’m driving back tomorrow. At a certain point it’s just self-care to turn back when something isn’t really working out, right?
—You’re just going to give up? Just like that?
—Don’t take that tone with me, Seth. He’s my brother, not yours. I was feeling like shit, and you told me all this stuff about debt, how we had to go and face up to the past. It seemed wrong that I could just walk around all day, getting coffee, doing stuff, without thinking of him. I liked that you had a plan. But now we’re here, it doesn’t make sense. My whole creative life literally depends on me being contemporary. This whole scene, this dead musician, this record. It isn’t what I should be focused on.
She carries on, talking mostly to herself. She’s been taking pictures of Carter, she says. More shots of the two of them together in the ICU. She ought to do something with them. They might become a show.
My silence must convey to her that I’m hurt, because she reaches forward and squeezes my hand.
—It’s not that I don’t think this is real. I do. But maybe it’s more real for you. It’s something you had to do for him, not me.
We drive back down the strip, looking for a motel. A string of No Vacancy signs. The lights come to an end. The night closes around us. Leonie squints blearily into the darkness, then suddenly she gasps and hits the brakes. I’m thrown forward in my seat, my face almost hitting the windshield.
—My God. Did you see that?
—What? I didn’t see anything.
—There was something in front of us, something in the road.
—What?
—I don’t know. A cat maybe. A big black cat.
—I didn’t see anything.
—Fuck. That was so scary.
—You want me to drive?
—Yeah. Yes, you drive. Please. I’m too tired.
We push through the humid night past the epic lights of a chemical plant, a magic castle glowing over the trees. We are far from any city, crossing a river that we see only as a darkness through the steel truss of the bridge. Leonie reclines the passenger seat and closes her eyes. I have the sense that I am no longer in charge of my life. I know that none of what I am doing can touch me, not at my core. My memory is a mystical conspiracy of connections. Everything has already happened. I am merely a man, sitting in a chair, listening to a recording made long ago. The needle is traveling in a predetermined track. Eventually, sooner or later, it will hit the run-out groove at the end.
THE PATROLMAN STOPPED US as we were leaving Clarksdale, pulling out of a turning behind us and sounding his siren. We stopped and waited for him to complete a leisurely inspection of our taillights. Then he leaned into the window and inspected us. I saw broad shoulders, a square face mostly obscured by sunglasses and a broad-brimmed hat. I told myself to be cool.
—License and registration.
I handed over my documents. Chester was staring straight ahead, looking, to my mind, not cool. Looking weird and strung-out and suspicious.
—What’s your business in this county?
—We’re buying records, sir.
—Records.
—Old records. Race records.
Ten seconds in and I’d blown it. The patrolman held up my New York State driver’s license like something he’d fished out of a gutter.
—Ask you a question, son. You a believer in equal rights?
Chester leaned across me.
—Absolutely not, officer. I am a private researcher, a musicologist. This is my assistant.
—Musicologist? That New York for musician?
—No, I collect music. Old Negro folk music. I am associated with the New York Public Library.
He took out his wallet and handed the man a card. To my horror, it was just a library card, the kind you’d use to take out a book. I had one in my own wallet. As the cop examined it, I fixed my eyes on the steering wheel.
—“Professor C. Bly.” That you?
—Yes.
—And you down here collecting nigger music.
—That is correct.
—OK Professor, I’ll tell you something for free. This is a peaceful county.
—I quite understand, officer. Let me assure you, I’m a proud American.
—Well that’s good to hear, but I warn you, don’t go on anyone’s land, and don’t go talking to their boys less you clear it first.
—As I said. Proud American. I stand with the white man, one hundred percent.
I stared over at Chester. The patrolman stared at him too. A pause. He straightened up and slapped the roof of the car.
—Y’all can be on your way. But stay out of neighborhoods like this. It ain’t safe.
He handed back our documents. Chester pocketed his library card with an air of satisfaction.
—Drive on, he said.
I don’t think Chester meant a word of it. No one could have loved that music so much and harbored a speck of racial prejudice. All the same I felt ashamed. It seemed wrong to have said what he said. For a moment I wished I really had driven along those bumpy roads to register people to vote, to tell them they ought to be free. Then Chester said something about a barrelhouse pianist I was interested in, name of Cow Cow Davenport, and the feeling slipped away.
WRONG SIDE OF THE TRACKS. Overgrown tracks, a branch of the railroad that was abandoned years ago, but the geography persists, the line of convention. The river is invisible behind the steep slope of the levee, but you can sense it muttering and shrugging on the far side, looking for a way to spill over and spread itself out across the land. We ought to be on the road, finding somewhere to stay the night. Instead we’re in a juke, no more than a shack with crates of Schlitz beer and Double Cola behind the bar. We have brought a dead hush to the place, not busy at this early hour.
They have electricity, a bright bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. According to Chester, electricity has been their undoing. Gleaming in the corner is what in these parts they call a Seabird, a Seeburg jukebox, decorated with Cadillac fins and crammed with little plastic 45’s, a monster machine that seems to have landed here from the future. The Seabird is Chester’s enemy. It has “killed music.” We are the only white people to have walked in here since the last time it was raided by the police and now he’s giving the assembly a lecture about the evil of the Seabird.
—“Select-o-matic.” What is that? Why do you people even have this thing in here? Goddamn Sam Cooke.
—Come on, Chester.
—You are being corrupted, you know that? Do you know what you are throw
ing away?
—Chester. Let’s go.
—Forget this plastic trash. Pick up a fife! A fiddle! Blow over a damn jug!
The barman, who is perhaps also the owner, nervously smokes a cigarette. The other patrons, two or three old men, are staring at Chester, without staring at him. Everyone in here knows that trick. In this place, in all the places where we knock on doors, they know it. I always have the sensation of being stared at, but I never meet anyone’s eye.
AS WE MADE OUR CALLS, I found out that Chester was chasing information as well as records. Leads, details of the biographies of certain musicians. If someone had no records, but was willing to talk, he would run down a list. You heard of a guitar picker, singer, fellow used to play piano at a barrelhouse off of Sixty-one? Live round here? Played at dances or picnics? Went to the Mount Zion church? The names would change, depending on where we were. Kid Bailey. Joe Reynolds. Willie Brown. Charley Taylor. Calvary, First Baptist, Lamb of God. Up by the river around Friars Point, he started asking about Charlie Shaw.
It was the first time I ever heard the name.
Twilight. A few more calls, Chester said. Just one or two. We were driving on an old rural road. We passed a cabin and stopped to talk to a man outside working on a truck. When we asked him about records he said he had none. Chester ran his list of names. Garfield Akers, Robert Johnson, Charlie Shaw.
—Charlie Shaw, you say?
—Played guitar.
—From around here?
—Would have been about thirty years ago.
—Go on up the road. Ask Miss Alberta, maybe she help you.
He gave us directions, told us to look out for a white porch and a roof that was all cedar shakes, no tin. The light was failing as we found the cabin, which was set back from the road under a huge cottonwood. I switched off the engine and suddenly the night was full of information, the susurrus of insects closing over me in a great wave. On the porch burned a kerosene lamp. A little boy, maybe six or seven years old, scraped a bottleneck along a piece of wire nailed to one of the uprights. Up and down, a melancholy twang like a Jew’s harp.
—Evening, son. My name’s Bly. Is your mother home?
The boy just stared at us and carried on playing. Then I saw there was someone else on the porch, an ancient woman in a rocking chair. She was made of shadows. I can’t tell you how I knew, because I do not understand, but shadows were woven into the flowers on her cotton dress, the scoop of her eye sockets, her toothless jaw. I saw her and I lost the power of speech. Chester did not seem to see what I saw, or hear what I heard. That terrible insect war cry, that scraping.
—Good evening, ma’am. My name is Bly. We’re buying up old gramophone records. I’ll pay you a dime apiece for any we take.
—Ain’t got nothing for sale.
Her voice was like rustling paper, fugitive, near to silence. Chester put a foot up on the porch and smiled.
—You sure you don’t have anything just hidden away?
—Not interested.
—All right then. I won’t take up more of your valuable time. Just one last question, please indulge me. Man down the road said you might know something about Charlie Shaw.
Her silence lasted forever.
—Charlie.
Chester seemed unsure of her meaning. He leaned in.
—Charlie Shaw, a guitar player, from somewhere round here. I heard he came from along the river, between Rosedale and Friars Point.
Above his head, insects battered themselves to death against the glass chimney of the kerosene lamp.
—Boy was a rounder. Always traveling here and there.
Insect static. The crackle and hiss.
—You knew Charlie Shaw?
—Have mercy. He never came back from Jackson.
—Ma’am, I’m interested in all the blues players from round here. It sounds to me like you knew Charlie Shaw. Did you ever hear him play?
—Of course I heard him play.
—Where?
—Right here, on this porch. He was my only brother.
Chester’s face in the firelight, transfixed. Chester’s avaricious eyes.
Maybe I dropped off, just for a moment, or maybe I kept dropping off. My memory is full of holes. From here on there is no logic. The scenes are out of order. I don’t know how we got inside, whether she invited us or Chester just wedged his foot in the door. I don’t know what words were used. Chester was talking all the time, spinning stories, doing his pastor act. In my memory it’s a series of still frames. I’m at the car, then I’m on the porch, then I’m inside sitting on a stool, watching the dust dance in the lamplight. The small room is full of darkness. It is dense with darkness, stuffed with it like cotton wool. I scuff my feet on the rough boards and listen to the old woman talk about her brother Charlie, who went to Jackson and never came back. Chester has no interest in Jackson. He has a little leather-bound notebook. He is scribbling with a pencil, asking questions. What about his repertoire? What songs did he know? Who taught him to play? Miss Alberta remembers a man called Tommy or Copperhead, who used to come around. Man who worked the river. Charlie used to sit with him.
—Do you remember what songs he taught Charlie? Any in particular you can remember?
—Some. I suppose you want to hear him.
—Hear him?
Oh yes, Chester wants to hear him. The sequence is hard to untangle. We go inside. I’m sitting on a stool, watching the dust dance in the lamplight. The small room is dense with darkness. I am on the porch, under the screaming insects. I am out by the car.
I go inside.
ANOTHER NIGHT. In another motel, indistinguishable from the last, we lie on a bed looking at our phones. The TV in the room seems like an old model. Rounded tube, wooden housing, a rabbit-ear antenna sitting on top. It is showing a musical. Men in blackface makeup are singing on a riverboat. In spats and tail coats they twirl around. By the bed is a slot which takes quarters. You put in a coin and the mattress vibrates.
You put in a coin now. Long ago, you put in a coin. We shared a joint in the bathroom, blowing the smoke into the air vent.
—So in the morning, you’re turning back.
—Maybe. I don’t know. Is that what I did before? I don’t know what’s waiting for me in the city. I walk around and there’s always some guy with one hand on his junk yelling at me like he literally owns the sidewalk I am walking on and because I won’t talk to him I’m a bitch and a whore. These guys watching me. And it’s not just guys. I mean, they could be young or old, male, female. But they’re all the same. They—none of them—shit, it’s not easy to talk about this. What I’m saying is it’s never white people.
She exhaled deeply.
—I’m not a racist, Seth. I swear I’m not.
—Of course not. Racists aren’t like—I mean, I know you’re cool. You know you’re cool.
For a while she talked about healing, a medical NGO she’d volunteered with in Africa. The people were so poor. The little children sang a song to her outside their tin-roofed school. The truth, she said, was that no one knew how to fix anything. People had all kinds of theories but in the end that’s all they were.
—But it’s as if they’re in communication. The, uh, non-whites. I know how that sounds. I don’t mean that. It’s hard to explain. It’s like they all have the same information about me. Like they’ve formed some kind of opinion and I can’t do anything to change their minds.
—You feel judged.
—Right. And I resent that. It’s grotesque, actually. They don’t know me. They don’t know what I’ve been through. I don’t want to feel like this, Seth. Six months ago I was alive. I can’t even remember what that was like, to be honest with you. Every day I feel less and less connected.
—What are we going to do?
—About what?
—All of it. Us.
She looked around sadly.
—You’re too timid to even ask me why we’re renting a double room in a shitty place
like this, but you’re all like “us” as if me and you are a thing?
She went outside for a cigarette, closing the door to show that I was not invited to follow. I sat on the edge of the bed, my knees grazing the bulky air conditioner under the window. I felt shriveled, shrunken into myself.
She came back in and sat down on the bed.
—I can’t sleep in places like this unless someone’s in the room. That’s all. You seemed pretty harmless so I thought it was OK. But you turned out to be a very tense person. You are not relaxing to be around.
She came back in. She sat down beside me. She had always been coming back in, sitting down, again and again, forever coming back in and sitting down. She spoke to me and it was as if she spoke in my voice. She said she knew what I wanted. She said she’d seen how I looked at her. I don’t want you, she said, but it’s the quickest way to end it. Sometimes you’re with a guy and you know you’re the only door he’ll leave through.
—Do you understand, Seth?
I squinted at the TV screen, pretending I hadn’t heard.
—Take what you want.
She sat down on the bed beside me, again and again, and she leaned over and kissed me and we began to kiss deeper and suddenly everything happened always and forever and I was hearing Leonie Wallace gasp, licking Leonie Wallace’s nipples, the areolae of Leonie Wallace’s nipples, which turned out to be wide and brown, and I was brushing my face against a down of hair, smelling Leonie Wallace’s smell, my cheeks slick against Leonie Wallace’s wet thighs, seeing Leonie Wallace looking up, looking me straight in the eye as she sucked me. Choose a picture on your hard drive. Jerk off to Leonie Wallace, jerk off to me and Leonie Wallace.
We were doing it with Carter, of course. He was in there with us, in us. Inside our movements, in the angles between our bodies. Afterwards Leonie took a shower, locking herself in the bathroom for over half an hour. When she came out, she was dressed in sweat pants and a flannel shirt. She fussed with her luggage, then got in to bed, slipped on an eye-mask and switched off her bedside light. During all this routine, she never once looked at me. I was left there, naked in the reek of her, my body bathed in the major glow of the TV and the minor glow of my phone, a rhombus of light on the bed illuminating a snail trail of semen that ran down my thigh. I was thinking, did that happen? That may not have happened.