Petrogypsies

by Rory Harper

  “Well, folks, the band’s passing through Aggietown on our way to someplace else again. Figured we’d stop off and play y’all some Chicago blues this week. Always real happy to make a showing for Jon-Tim and Cathy. We gonna start this set off with So Glad I’m Living.”

  He hit a chord, the rest of the band kicked in with a long piano, guitar, and screaming harmonica introduction, and they proceeded with the howlingest blues I ever heard.

  He sang with a voice like whiskey that had rattlesnake heads soaking in it:

  My baby’s long and tall …

  Shaped like a cannon ball …

  And every time she love me …

  Oh, you can hear me squall …

  I cry Ummmm …

  I believe I change my mind.

  She said – I’m so glad I’m living.

  I cry, ummmm, baby – I’m so glad you’re mine.

  About halfway through the song, he stepped back and surveyed the crowded room while the piano player burned down the place.

  His froggy, glowing eyes widened, and he smiled in our direction. I looked over and saw Doc smiling back at him and nodding while he rocked in his chair and tapped time with his foot.

  When the song finished, we clapped for a goodly while. They were damn good musicians, every one of them. The song almost sounded like something I had heard in the chief’s collection, but I couldn’t quite place it. The blues was maybe the only good thing I had brought away from the chief.

  “Well, well, well, yessir,” the fella with the guitar said. “I just seen one of my bad ol’ friends slouchin’ in the dark there, trying to hide in the crowd. He plays the piano all right for oilfield trash. Come on up here, Doc. You ain’t gonna get off tonight without workin’ some. People, give the man a hand—Doc Miller!”

  I looked at Doc in amazement. He showed me his teeth and stood up. His hand rested on my shoulder.

  He nodded to the crowd, which was clapping and whistling.

  When they quieted down, he shouted up to the band leader, “Hey, Muddy, I got a boy here wants to learn the blues. Think you and Willie can teach him some?”

  Muddy laughed. “Hell, Doc, if we can teach you the blues, we can teach ’em to anybody. Get him on up here.”

  “Come on, Henry Lee.” He started to pull me out of my seat.

  “What? Me? Are you out of your mind?”

  “You been runnin’ off at the mouth about how much you love the blues. You ain’t never gonna find anybody better to play with than Muddy and Willie.” He nodded at the squat man who was holding onto an upright bass. Willie grinned back. I got the feeling he was lookin’ forward to the execution.

  “Come on, Henry Lee. Time to fish or cut bait, son.” The fellas at the table started shouting, “Henry Lee! Henry Lee!” and pretty soon the rest of the club took it up. I looked at Star; she just rolled her eyes and laughed at me. There wasn’t no graceful way out of it.

  Once I got to the bandstand, Muddy handed me his back-up ax. It was identical to the one he was using, except for the gleaming black paint job. While I was strapping it on and hooking into the sound system and digging my best tortoise-shell pick out of my pocket, I watched Doc replace Otis, the fella at the piano, and run his fingers over the keys. I turned down the volume on the guitar and joined him in a couple of scale exercises for a minute. If looks could have killed, his hands would have got very sick. Instead, he just grinned and casually rolled a couple of rapid bass and treble walking riffs past me.

  It helped that the guitar’s fretboard was the fastest one I’d ever touched. It practically begged me to play thirty-secondth and sixty-fourth notes on it. I examined the guitar more closely. It was light, but solid, and felt alive in my hands. On the headstock was the word Fender in script and in smaller block letters underneath, Stratocaster. I’d played through a Fender Twin Reverb amp a couple times in a camp near Manvel, but the guitar was news to me. I already wanted one. It made my Epiphone feel like a boat oar with strings on it.

  “You boys warmed up?” Muddy asked, after much too short a time.

  “I am,” Doc said. “You think you can handle the pressure, Henry Lee?”

  “I’ll fix your wagon for this one day, Doc. Fix it good!”

  “We got a song that Willie wrote for me,” Muddy said. “I believe you know it, Doc. It ain’t too hard. We play it in ‘G’ this month. Called I’m Your Hootchie Cootchie Man.” The crowd started to whooping and clapping again. I realized exactly who Muddy and Willie were, and I got even more petrified than I already had been.

  “You ever heard the song, Henry Lee?” Muddy asked.

  “Yes, sir, I sure have!” Muddy and Willie and Doc all grinned evil-like at me.

  I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of watching me fall apart. I’d never played the song with anybody, since I couldn’t find anybody on the crew, lying bastards that they all were, that would admit to knowing about the blues, but I’d heard it on the chief’s phonograph enough to fake it. I hoped.

  I looked up to the rim of the club and saw Sprocket. He winked at me.

  That night I played the best I had ever played in my life. It was sheer desperation. I started out just trying to keep in tempo with the band, doing the simple five-note response that was required when Muddy finished his call, at the end of each measure. They took it easy on me for awhile, I think. And the basic song itself ain’t all that technically difficult.

  Then they took off. Not that it got faster. Merely a whole lot nastier. Them fellas knew how to do it. And some of it vibrated its way into me somehow. I started bending and sliding my notes meaner, sneaking in a triplet run here and there, slurring my lead line against the dirty shuffle beat that Doc and Willie and the drummer laid down, moving up to work the high part of the neck around the fifteenth fret, making that Fender music machine scream and sing, slash and sting.

  Long about the fifth verse, Doc started howling like a deranged wolf while he pounded out on the ivories a long involved riff that I somehow managed to echo a fourth higher on my ax. Muddy whipped out a harmonica and jumped aboard. We got going, the three of us, challenging each other, twining and swirling blue, blue notes around and into the smoky air while the rest of the band laid down the groove we careened through.

  I got high enough to see the tops of the clouds in the sky above Aggie Station.

  * * *

  Forever later, when the last ringing note of the last song of the set died away, we stood for a minute and let the clapping and whistling wash over us. Muddy came over and hugged Doc and shook my hand. “Whoo, man, you two ain’t bad for a couple of white boys,” he said. “Not bad at all.”

  I gave him back his ax and floated down the steps of the stage. I waved to the folks at our table and without breaking stride, headed straight to the stairway next to Sprocket. Suddenly, I felt like I was gonna explode, probably because that had been a couple of real bowel-clenched minutes up there until I had got into the groove. Not to mention the three pitchers of beer that a waitress had handed up during the set.

  The restrooms were located on the surface in a small concrete building set a few yards behind and to the left of Sprocket’s rear end. I made room for another pitcher while I read the wall literature. You can always tell whether a joint is any good by the quality of the writing. Jon-Tim’s was a great joint.

  When I came back out, about halfway back to my table, I almost stumbled over a leg that shot out in the aisle in front of me. A smiling Stevie Goolsby, seated alone at a table against the wall, was attached to the other end of the leg.

  “Hey, Henry Lee. You were pretty hot on that guitar.”

  “Yeah, I was, wasn’t I?” I said modestly. I sat down and blew out a big breath. “I was also on the edge of complete mental destruction for a while, too.”

  He laughed and motioned a waitress over and ordered us a couple of beers. We tal
ked for a minute about how great I had been and were the dactyls all right. When the beers arrived, I picked mine up and invited him to sit in over at our table.

  My chair was taken by a disgustingly handsome Joe College-type guy who was talking real friendly at Star. She was smiling at whatever he was saying.

  Beside me, Stevie muttered, “Uh-oh. I knew I was having too much fun for it to last.”

  “Beg pardon?” I said, looking around for an empty chair, not finding one right off hand.

  “That guy, talking to the cutie with the long hair.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He’s the captain of the varsity football team. Unbelievable pussy-hound. Obsessed. Gets more than any other four guys on campus. Fucks ’em and forgets ’em. A real nickel-plated asshole. Also the Stone Magnolia’s favorite nephew.”

  The fella leaned forward and casually put his hand on Star’s knee while he made some particularly important point. They both broke out laughing.

  “Great. What’s his name?”

  “Billy Bob Dartmouth.”

  A couple of guys vacated the table next to us, and I scooped up their chairs and wedged them in between Star and Billy Bob.

  “Howdy, folks.” I said. “Sorry about being gone so long, Star.”

  “That’s all right, Henry Lee. I was just talking with—”

  I stuck out my hand and he reflexively shook it. “Yes. You’re Billy Bob Dartmouth. Captain of the football team. Heard all about you. My friend here, Professor Stevie Goolsby, I believe y’all know each other, Billy Bob. Stevie, this is Star, Star, this is Stevie.” I grinned at him with every single tooth in my mouth and squeezed on his hand a little less than I figured would take to crunch a couple of bones. He just smiled back. And squeezed back.

  “Delighted to meet you, Henry Lee,” he said. We both smiled and squeezed some more. “I was admiring your guitar playing earlier.” He glanced down between us. “Must make for strong hands, staying in practice on that thing.”

  “Why, thank you, Billy Bob. You got a firm grip yourself.”

  “Appreciate you sayin’ so, Henry Lee. I’m a quarterback. Lots of quarterbacks got delicate hands, but I never had that problem. Not even a little bit.”

  We both bore down a bit harder, our hands still pumping up and down a couple of inches.

  “So. You been hanging out with the Herring, huh?” Billy Bob said.

  “The Herring?

  He nodded at Stevie, who blushed furiously. “My biology lab professor there. Known as the Red Herring of Romance around the campus.” He smiled maliciously. “Way he got the name is—”

  Stevie was squirming in his chair, looking miserable. So I quit taking it easy on Billy Bob and gave his hand a medium strangulation.

  Sweat broke out on his forehead and he went pale.

  Star’s hand overlaid both ours and stopped the up and down motion. “Looks like you boys ought to have introduced yourselves enough by now.” I gave Billy Bob one last squeeze, along with my best lazy smile, then let go.

  “Well, Star, it sure was a pleasure chatting with you,” he said. He scraped back his chair and stood up. “I need to get back to the dorm. The team’s workout starts at six in the morning. We got the big exhibition game against TU next weekend, and Coach is taking it serious.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you on campus sometime soon.”

  “I’d like that a lot. ‘Bye.”

  We watched him pick up a couple of friends from a table near the south-side stairway and leave with them.

  Star quit smiling and turned on me, furious. “Goddammit, Henry Lee, don’t you ever—”

  “Aww, Star. I was only—”

  “I know what you was only! You ain’t about to start choosing for me who I talk with. Or do anything else with, for that matter!”

  “Okay! I’m sorry.”

  “Fine.” She stood up. “I got a headache. I believe I’ll go lie down in my room. See you tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Pleasure meeting you, Professor Goolsby.” Some kind of invisible signal passed between her and Sabrina, who was snuggled up against Doc on the other side of the table. Sabrina unhooked herself from Doc, gave him a peck on the cheek, and followed Star away.

  Doc saluted me with his beer bottle. “Way to go, Slick. You have definitely got the magic touch.” He took a sip and burped contentedly.

  * * *

  I woke up alone in my room the next morning to the smell of bacon and eggs frying on an open fire.

  About the time I finished buttering my biscuit, Star came out of Lady Jane’s mouth, marched over, and plomped down on the bench beside me. Doc and Sabrina and Razer made a big obnoxious deal out of quietly getting up and moving away so’s as to give us a little privacy, twitching their eyebrows and nudging and whispering at each other and making comments that I couldn’t quite hear.

  Star got her own breakfast, without saying a word, stealing a piece of bacon off my plate in the process. That encouraged me. Finally, I got up the nerve, just as I was using my last piece of biscuit to finish sopping up the egg yellow left on the plate.

  “I’m just sorry as hell, Star,” I said. I had figured that the smartest thing was unconditional surrender. “I was completely wrong. I won’t never do it again. Even if I see you talkin’ with Jack the Ripper, I’m gonna stay outa your business.”

  “Actually, it was kind of sweet of you, Henry Lee.” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

  It seemed like a natural thing for me to turn over my plate then and start banging it against my forehead. Star didn’t seem to mind. She patted my knee and kept on eating.

  * * *

  We rode Sprocket over to the Vet Building and parked him for more tests by Hillary and her assistants. Lady Jane followed into the slot next to him to get a general check-up. Both crews bailed out and headed a couple of blocks over to the administration building to register for the fall semester at P&A.

  Doc had had me send off for a copy of my school transcript from Hemphill, but it hadn’t arrived yet at P&A administration.

  Star sat next to me and helped me fill out the application forms, of which there seemed to be a plenitude. Her own paperwork, and that of most of Sprocket’s and Lady Jane’s crews, consisted of one form, since they already had a record there. They merely needed to officially apply to continue their schooling, rather than having to start up completely new like me.

  The forms generally made me feel stupid, since I couldn’t answer half the questions. What was a SAT, anyway? And I didn’t have a SS number that I knew of. I didn’t even know what address I lived at.

  We got to the section about educational background and began to fill in what I could remember without the transcript. I was embarrassed to let her see that I had only finished tenth grade, although I had thought it was pretty damn good at the time. When you work a farm, you take school when you can, and don’t when you can’t.

  “Don’t you worry about that, Henry Lee,” Star said. “We’re gonna enroll you in GED classes in the evening. You’ll have your high school diploma in a couple of months.”

  “Hold it. How can I go to college before I got a high school degree?”

  “Trust me.”

  “I don’t want no special favors.”

  “Don’t worry about it. This is all part of a deal P&A cut with the API. They ain’t doin’ you no favors. They just recognize that gypsies ain’t exactly the normal type of college student. Half of us have bounced around the country all our lives.” She looked at the clock on the wall and began to gather up the papers. “Let’s finish this later. We can’t really complete it until we get your transcript from the school in Hemphill. We need to get next door for our exams.” Part of the application process included getting a clean bill of health from the school’s clinic.

  “What’s your degree gonna
be in, anyway?” I said when we were back out on the sidewalk. “You never have told me.” I never even knew until a couple of days before that a segundo needed a degree. I figured it was all vocational training, and it turned out I was right for regular hands on the crew. But Doc had explained to me that I was going to have to learn everything from accounting to reservoir engineering to moderately advanced physics if I planned to keep my new job. I was beginning to wonder if I could hack it. I hadn’t mentioned to anybody that the reason I never got past the tenth grade was I failed the eleventh. Papa said it looked like I had reached about as far as I should try. I was just as glad that the transcript hadn’t arrived yet. I wouldn’t have wanted Star to see about me failing.

  “I was going for Chemical Engineering, like Sabrina’s degree. It’s a good one for somebody on a Casing Critter. But I’m thinking of switching to being a music major. She’s been pushing me to pursue the violin more seriously. Wouldn’t mind getting a Composition degree like Doc.”

  “Composition degree?”

  “Sure. Didn’t you know?”

  “I’m beginning to believe that nobody ever tells me anything. I just seem to find out stuff accidentally.”

  “Well, he has a Doctorate in Classical Composition. Sabrina says he’ll be on visiting faculty while we’re here this year, teach a couple of small-group seminars and participate as a student in a couple of others.”

  I felt my IQ drop a couple of more points.

  * * *

  At the front desk of the clinic, we handed over the papers that the admissions clerk had given us to authorize the physicals and were asked to seat ourselves in the medium-crowded waiting room down the hall, which we did.

  A few minutes after Star’s name got called and she went off with a nurse through a swinging door, Stevie Goolsby stuck his head in through the entrance to the waiting room and looked around like he was trying to find somebody.