Crawlin' Chaos Blues

by Edward M. Erdelac

  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.

  “God-damn! You wasn’t lyin’, Harp!” he said. “This the man hisself!”

  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.

  It got so bad I fell down on my knees and pressed my hands hard to my ears. I cried there, real, gushin’ tears. I felt so lonely, like that patch of dirt road beneath me was the only piece of land there was left, and I was fallin’ down a deep hole with no walls or bottom to be seent. I couldn’t summon no prayers.

  I don’t know how long I knelt there, but all of a sudden the pickup’s headlights come back on, bright. I brushed my eyes and stood up, blind, still afraid.

  Yeller was standin’ at the edge of the light. The stars was out again and the moon was bright over his head, as if they’d all been hidin’ from the shadow man. The moonlight was gleamin’ kinda green on the face of Yeller’s National.

  Yeller’s eyes was half closed and he was shinin’ all over with sweat. He looked like a horse addict. That rascal light was gone from him.

  “Let’s get outta here, Harp,” he said, and he went to where the Catalina was.

  “What ‘bout these…,” I started to say ‘peckerwoods,’ but when I looked, they wasn’t no bodies in the road, just a couple butter yellow and black burn marks. They was a smell in the air like to make me sick, like a open sewer stuffed with dead dogs. I followed him to the car.

  * * * *

  Yeller’s fingers wouldn’t leave his National alone the whole ride back. The sounds comin’ out of it was like slippery chain lightnin’. I never heard nobody play a guitar like he did the ride back to Ruleville. The shadow man had made him natural born. He didn’t say a word, just stared at the white line of the road as the car sucked it outta the dark ahead.

  I noticed they was somethin’ different ‘bout his guitar, too. The tunin’ knobs had been chewed by mice, he told me, but they looked brand new now. They wasn’t a mark of rust or tarnish now either, and the steel felt strange. It was warm to the touch, and they was trace marks all over the backside, so faint you could only see ‘em close. They was shapes, or pictures, but of what I couldn’t say. Animals, or fish maybe, but none I could place. I didn’t like ‘em.

  * * * *

  We stayed at a flophouse, and the next mornin’, and every mornin’ for the next week, Yeller went out to Greasy Street and cut heads. This time wasn’t nobody in sight that didn’t come over to hear him play, and some even come down outta the shops and the houses to listen. It got to be so’s nobody else played when Yeller was on the scene.

  At night, we went from juke to juke. Yeller brought ‘em in like the Pied Piper. He played the Flowerin’ Fountain, Po Monkey’s, Red’s, JJ’s…we drove all over the Delta, and folks lined up outside to see him. He really lit them up, too. The belly rubbin’, the howlin’, it was on whenever Yeller played. Some said Robert Johnson had beat the devil and come back. They was a fight without fail anytime he played. Sometimes it would get real bad. I seent a man cut up his woman’s face with a razor at one show. Once, two men shot each other dead, right in the street out front.

  Yeller never said nothin’ ‘bout this. They wasn’t no joy in him no more. He hardly ever smiled, an’ never sang out to no girls, though they did they best to get him to notice. He drank a lot, and when his set was up, all he wanted to do was hit the road.

  His songs got strange too. Space Dog Blues, House Underwater, Black Goat Blues, they was all ‘bout darkness and dyin’ alone. Sometimes I didn’t even know what they was ‘bout, he jumbled up his words so bad. Nobody cared. It was that sound they loved.

  I ‘member he did one called Cut Through You Sleepin’. I think it was ‘bout a man killin’ his woman in bed. The only words I could make out was:

  What ain’t dead can keep a’layin’ – yas,

  And come the judgment day even death might pass.

  He’d always finish it with this sound, halfway between a sneeze and one of them Cuban big band shouts. F’uagh, or f’tagh.

  Yeller hardly talked. After shows, he’d just set on the edge of his bed with a whiskey and drink, starin’ out the window till he passed out. He slept all day and I had to tell him to eat.

  Then white men started showin’ up to his shows. They’d ask him if he never thought ‘bout recordin’. I know that’s what he wanted, but weeks went by of that and he always said no.

  He might’ve been the biggest they ever was. Might’ve even saved the blues from them damn Beatles, ‘cept for The Crawlin’ Chaos Blues.

  * * * *

  One Friday night outside of Clarkesdale, I asked him when he planned on layin’ tracks, and did he want to go back to Chicago, maybe see if he could get a deal with Chess Records.

  He looked at me with them spacey, scarecrow eyes, and he said, “How come you never asked me ‘bout the shadow man, Harp?”

  I told him I didn’t want to talk ‘bout that. I didn’t like to remember it.

  “You can see what he done for me, can’t you?” said Yeller. “You ain’t never asked me what I paid him.”

  “I know what you paid,” I said, meanin’ the two white boys.

  “No, you don’t,” he said.

  “He ask for your soul?”

  “My soul…I wish I had one. He ain’t the devil, Harp. Maybe they ain’t no devil. He showed me things. Things ain’t nobody got no business knowin’. You know, I wanted this so bad, I was goin’ to kill you that night. I thought I wanted more than chicken blood woulda got me, you know?”

  I didn’t know what to say to that.

  He was quiet, and he drank, then he said, “He took somethin’ from me I can’t never get back. He gimme what I need to be great, but I can’t.”

  “Whatchoo mean?”

  “Say a man build you a house, but he leave the roof off, and he tell you if you put one up yourself, the whole thing goin’ fall down on your head while you sleepin’. Whatchoo got, then? When the rain come, whatchoo got?”

  I still didn’t know what he was talkin’ ‘bout, and he could see.

  “Look. The shadow man put all these songs in my head, but then he gimme one song,” and he closed his eyes and smiled just a little, like he was thi
nkin’ of somethin’ sweet, “the best song anybody ever heard.” Then he opened his eyes, and that dead look come back, like happiness had excused hisself and got off at the last stop and misery just sat back down. “He tell me I ever play it, I’m goin’ lose everythin’. That song’s curled up in the back of my head like a snake, all the time. Even when I’m up there playin’ and singin’, that song’s what I’m thinkin’ of. Everythin’ else just sounds like shit.”

  Tears come out his eyes then and he started tremblin’ all over.

  “I can’t never be happy, Harp!” he wailed. “I can’t find no peace! I just wants to die! Don’t nothin’ mean nothin’ for me no more!”

  I took the .44 out the glove box that night and kept it with me from then on.

  * * * *

  Next day, I took him to play at Sink City on Route 49 between Drew and Jaquith. We stopped at a drug store in Dwiggins and I bought me a pair of clay earplugs. Don’t know what made me do it.

  Sink City was one of them deep country jukes, not much more than a shack, tin roof, spray painted sign, and grass for parkin’. It was situated in a field so’s the farmers could walk to it and ventilate after a long week. They wasn’t nothin’ around. In them last days, seemed like Yeller would pick the most backwoods place he could find, like he didn’t want nobody to hear him. Word traveled fast, and they didn’t meet him there, they beat him there. The field was full of cars, and seemed like the sides of the juke was swellin’ from all the folks packed inside.

  The place had blue walls, I ‘member, painted with big tittied black mermaids, squids, and starfish. The ceilin’ was hung with Christmas lights, and it sagged real bad.

  They was a smell of fryin’ catfish from the kitchen, and an old rawboned woman dished out greasy sandwiches till Yeller got to the stage. Ever’body slapped his back and whistled him up. He was a million miles from Silvio’s.

  He sat down on the little stool and commenced to playin’ without a word, let the piano man and the drummer catch up. He played the old songs till people got to yellin’ for some of his own. Then he did that song I’d heard him do at Silvio’s, Damn Fool Woman, but some drunk fool yelled for Cut Through You Sleepin’ through most of it, and Yeller finally went into it. That got the place really sweatin’ and beatin’ on the tables.