“You got Luella,” Willie said.
Jackwash nodded, or at least Willie thought he did, and turned to his bedroom down the hall.
• • • • •
By the fourth month, Willie saw signs that he’d overstayed his welcome. Luella still cared for him without a complaint, but she’d begun to laugh a little too loud at his jokes, and when they talked, the conversations were serious. She told him how she learned to sing from her grandmother. He heard about the first man to touch her—a nasty old cracker who owned the shack she’d grown up in. And he suffered through the story of her first true love—a boy who lived across the meadow. Willie hated meadow-boy just on principle. On more than one occasion, Willie and Luella stayed up talking until Jackwash came home from doing business, and lately, there was a look in his eyes that said Willie might need to move on to his next situation before long.
No storm or radio drama before he left. He planned two speeches, one for Jackwash and one for Luella. The latter consumed him. He imagined an intro that led into a poetic, melodic soliloquy, and perhaps an outro that ended with a kiss. In the end, he gave her a sheepish thanks and waved off the hug, shaking his head. She looked sad, but who could tell what that meant? Luella was a mystery.
That lost chance made his goodbye to Jackwash a little easier to face, but no easier to deliver. He found his friend on a street corner, standing under a lamppost with two other colored men. Jackwash towered over both, and it was clear they deferred to him by the way they shuffled and laughed, hands jammed into their pockets. That changed when Willie approached. Smiles turned sullen, eyes narrowed, and the hands came out of pockets, loose and jangling. “Jackwash,” Willie called, but there was no welcome in his friend’s eyes.
“What do you need, Jeff?” he asked.
“Name’s Willie. You might have forgotten the last twenty years.” He looked over at Jackwash’s friends. “You remember their names?”
“Trouble and Mo.”
“Mo?”
Jackwash smirked. “Mo Trouble.”
Willie nodded and looked away. “I’m heading out.”
For a moment, his friend’s face softened. He grabbed Willie by the elbow and moved him away from the lamppost. “Where you goin’?”
“Home,” Willie said.
“Mississippi?”
“Yeah. I think I wore out my welcome here.”
“Nah, man, you always welcome—”
“In the clubs, I mean. I was tapped out before I got cut. I’m a little too white for this town.” He glanced at the two men leaning on the lamppost. “A little too white for your friends, too.”
Jackwash snorted. “Employees, you mean. Those boys help me move a little T.” He stood up a little straighter, his chin jutting out. “Things are lookin’ up for me here. I’m makin’ a name for myself.”
“Reefer’s fine. You aren’t moving H are you?”
“Don’t like needles.”
Willie shifted from one foot to the other. “Good. Stay away from that shit.”
“You my daddy now?”
“No. I’m your friend.” He stepped closer, arms spread out, but Jackwash backed away. Willie froze. Jackwash glanced back at the two men behind him and then back at Willie, his eyes wide with apology. He rolled his shoulders and asked, “You hear the news?”
“What news?” Willie’s voice was flat.
“There’s a kid on every corner, calling it out. Where you been? The stock market crashed.” His voice became louder, clearer. “All those rich, white motherfuckers are jumping off rooftops. ’Bout time they find out about life on the down low. Serve ’em all right.”
“Stock market crashed?”
“Wiped ’em all out. The worm turned.” He grinned, glancing back at his companions. Then he stepped closer, voice soft again. “Speaking of money, you need some?”
“Nah. Figured I’d hobo home.”
Jackwash pulled a small roll of bills from his pocket and shoved it in Willie’s hand. “Take it,” he said. When Willie started to protest, Jackwash pushed him away—the money still in Willie’s hand. “You keep that hidden. You can’t afford to have any more of your big white ass sliced off.”
Willie looked at the money and then glanced at Jackwash’s friends. “Okay,” he said, tucking the roll into his pocket. Not as good as a hug, but better than nothing. “Thanks,” he said, his voice practically a whisper. “I’ll probably need this when the stock market thing spreads.”
“What do you mean, spreads?”
“Shit rolls downhill,” Willie said.
• • • • •
1969
Fort Collins, Colorado
Kennedy concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other without tripping on a rock or tangling his foot in a clump of weeds. Walking in the dark was a hazardous business.
Rather than taxi home, Willie wanted to walk partway to town. A quarter mile up the road, they crossed over to the other side. There were no streetlights, and Kennedy was a little nervous about the traffic. Dark as it was, and fast as cars were going, no one would be able to spot them before knocking them fifty yards into a ditch. Willie chided him for his worry, but in the end, the old man was more vulnerable than he. Kennedy was used to ducking and running, and Willie moved like caterpillar across the asphalt. When they arrived at the other side of the divided highway, still alive and well, Kennedy breathed a sigh of relief.
“That’s where we’re going,” he said. “Lorenzo’s Pizza.”
“Are you serious? We just had dinner.”
“They sell beer by the pitcher. And they have a piano player name of Terry that I like to watch. Mostly does ragtime, but he’ll play blues if I ask him to. Does a great version of Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” He slapped Kennedy’s shoulder. “Hey? I played with him once. My guitar and his piano. Sounded good.”
“So, you really do still play? Gigs, I mean.” Kennedy asked.
“I played for you tonight.” Willie seemed momentarily angered, and Kennedy flinched in the dark. Anxious to change the subject, he settled on a question from earlier in the evening. “Remember when you said you left Chicago to ‘hobo home’? What’s that mean?”
Willie stopped dead. There was no sidewalk here—just fields and a ditch, and weeds as tall as their knees. He swayed a little and then shook his head. “You don’t know nothin’, do you?”
“I know enough to ask when I don’t know something.”
Willie swallowed a laugh as if it had snuck up on him and tried to escape without his permission. He coughed a few times and then started walking again. Kennedy watched him go at first and then ran to catch up. “Well? Are you going to tell me?”
“I made it from Chicago to New Orleans riding the rails.”
“Trains?” he asked, knowing the answer.
Willie continued, ignoring the question. “Took my time, too. I figured my heart was broken, so I was going to pout my way south. Didn’t take long to decide that I was never going back to Cruger, Mississippi. Too many memories. Instead, I went to New Orleans to see what I could learn from them delta boys and take my guitar playing up a notch.”
“Long way to go on a train,” Kennedy said, remembering his bus trip to Colorado. “Did they have food cars back then?”
Willie stopped again. “Food cars?” He burst out laughing. “I’m talking freight trains, young fella.”
“Less expensive?” Kennedy guessed.
“I didn’t buy no tickets. I’d wait outside a train yard for something to come by and run alongside, looking for an open boxcar. When I found one, I’d hoist myself u
p, trying not to fall under the wheels.”
Kennedy whistled. “That sounds dangerous.”
“It was. I saw folks lose their legs on two different occasions.”
By then, they’d reached the pizza place. Inside, Willie seated himself, motioning for Kennedy to follow. They took a table close to a small, elevated platform with a piano on top. The place was empty. The piano player sat at a corner table with a beer and a slice. When he saw Willie, he waved.
“What was that like?” Kennedy asked.
“What was what like?”
“Watching somebody’s legs get cut off?”
“Well, you’re all full of curiosity about certain topics, aren’t you?” Willie paused in his reminiscence to order a pitcher and two glasses. Again, the waitress didn’t ask for Kennedy’s I.D. “We’re still outside of town by about a half a block, if I remember right. Anyway, don’t look a gift beer in the mouth.”
“I won’t. But what about the train wheels? Did the person’s legs stop the train?”
“No,” Willie said. “A train is a heavy piece of machinery. Those wheels cut through legbone like a knife through pie. Poor soul looks down, and whereas a second earlier, he had two legs, now he’s got two stumps and he’s bleeding to death.”
Kennedy considered this.
“Why didn’t you just get on the train in the train yard?”
“Dangerous as boarding a moving train is, the train yard was worse. Railroads didn’t want a bunch of freeloaders, so they’d hire bulls to guard the train.”
“Bulls? Like male cows?”
Willie waited to answer while the waitress delivered the beer. Kennedy tried to imagine a train yard full of freight cars, with a herd of bulls wandering the tracks. Didn’t seem like the most efficient method of keeping the trains free of riders. When the waitress left, he asked again, “Bulls?”
“Not the hooved variety of bull. The railroads hired guards to keep hobos off the trains. Brutal, cruel men. Hobos called them bulls, ’cause if they caught a hobo, they’d stomp him to a pulp. Or kill him.”
“Why?”
“Keep hobos—men like me—off the trains.”
“Were there a lot of hobos?”
Willie nodded. “Longer the Depression went on, the more of them there were. Most of them just wanted work, and the trains were the only real way to get to where the work was. For others, hoboing was a choice. A way of life. Some folks still make that choice, though it’s getting harder to get on a train.” He emptied his glass. Some of the beer had trickled onto his chin, though he didn’t seem to notice. “My hip was still a mess, and I had the guitar Jackwash gave me, so getting into a boxcar was a problem. But an open door usually meant someone was already in the boxcar, which meant that I’d get a helping hand.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t steal your guitar and push you back out.”
“No,” Willie said. “It wasn’t like that. Folks took care of each other back then. There wasn’t much crime to speak of. Everyone was hurting, so nobody wanted to make things worse for anyone else. People respected each other’s property.”
“How long did it take you to get to New Orleans?”
“Don’t recall. But I rode the rails for a few years, all told. I’d play here and there, and when folks got tired of me, I’d move on.”
“Sounds like a hard life.”
Willie waved him off. “Nah. Always had a little food ’cause people shared. And there were always hobo jungles, so you’d have a place to sleep.”
“Hobo jungle?”
“What do they teach you in school?” Willie said, his face screwed up in dismay. “What did they tell you about the Depression?”
“Started with the stock market crash, lasted for years until Franklin Delano Roosevelt saved the country with work programs.”
“Okay,” Willie said. “Now that’s the stupidest thing you’ve said tonight. The new stupidest thing.”
The piano player, who’d climbed up to start his next set, pointed at Willie and began to play a blues tune. He wore a white ruffled shirt, tight red vest and red bow tie in keeping with the wait staff and the general décor of the restaurant, which was stuffed with old time mementos and bric-a-brac. The piano, a bit out of tune, had a bright, tinny sound that filled the empty room. Kennedy shook his head. “That doesn’t sound good—”
“Shut it,” Willie said. “The man is playing.”
• • • • •
Mercifully, Willie did not want to walk home. Kennedy dozed in the cab and was ready to go straight to bed when they reached Willie’s house, but the old man grabbed his guitar. Watching the piano player had evidently put an itch in his fingers. Kennedy settled onto the couch and listened.
Willie played a few blues standards before grabbing a bottle from the kitchen. He returned, swaying, and sat down to play again. They’d both had far too much to drink already. Kennedy’s head swam as he watched Willie swallow something amber, straight from the bottle.
“I play this one for you yet?” he asked, launching into Safe Haven again.
“Yeah, I heard that one already. It’s good. Really good.” Kennedy tried to stand up, but he was unsteady, and the couch seemed to have swallowed the lower half of his body.
“This, then.” Willie began to play, and Kennedy froze.
The song wasn’t blues—not really—though it had some blue notes. Jazz? He couldn’t tell. Jazz never seemed to have a strong enough melody, but this song had one. A sad, winding melody that rolled downward, settling and seeping into his bones. Kennedy sat back, his eyes closed, tears forming at the corners of his eyes.
When it was silent again, he looked at Willie. “You didn’t sing.”
“No words.”
“What’s that called?”
“Sins in Blue.”
“Beautiful song. Saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Willie nodded and took another drink.
“What’s it about?”
Willie started to speak but took still another sip from the bottle instead. Finally, he said, “It’s in the title. It’s about sin.”
“Your sins?”
Willie nodded, his eyes hard and dark.
“Was it something you did in the war?”
“No. I already told you. I don’t have any stories for you about killing some Nazi, or a squad of Nazis.”
“What then?” Kennedy pressed. “What’s a sin, anyway? I know what my father would say. He thinks not going to church is a sin.”
Willie eyed him like he was a snake.
“Willie?”
Willie tried to set down the bottle, and it tipped over. He snatched it up and wiped the spill with his stocking feet, smearing the liquor over the carpet. “When I was a boy,” he said, “my pap said it was a sin to spill good liquor.”
Kennedy laughed.
“Of course, down at the Washing the Disciple’s Feet Resurrection Ministries, the church ladies were happy to tell me that the blues was a sin.”
“Did you believe them?”
“Part of me did. The part that wanted to raise hell.”
“Do you think it’s a sin now?”
“No, of course not.” Wille looked down, openmouthed, as if he’d just realized he still had his guitar in his lap. He stood and put the guitar in the corner with exaggerated caution as if he were stacking plate glass against the wall. Kennedy was sure he’d forgotten the conversation when Willie picked up where he’d left off. “No, sin is something much uglier.” His voice was old and wet. He coughed.
Kennedy shivere
d. “What did you do?”
“I killed someone. I killed someone I loved.” He paused. “Now, that’s a sin.”
CHAPTER NINE: THE SUGAR CANE TWELVE
“Even the angels dance with the devil/
Tryin’ to keep warm in this cold, cold town.”
~Willie Johnson, Chicago Blues
1969
Fort Collins, Colorado
Kennedy spent the night on the couch. His back hurt from sleeping wrong, and it took him nearly an hour to get moving. An angry fly, alternating between the windowpane and Kennedy’s face, finally convinced him to stand and scratch. He checked Willie’s bedroom and found the bed empty. Had he gone to work? Kennedy sang to himself as he headed for the bathroom.
Woke up this mornin’, and my Willie Johnson was gone.
Standing over the toilet, Kennedy glanced down. “Only one of you, little fella,” he said. “Not two. One will have to do.” When he laughed, his head throbbed like someone had just used a two-by-four on him in anger.
How in hell did that old man drink like he did without keeling over?
Then Kennedy remembered Willie’s late-night confession. Had he really killed someone? Who had he killed? He said he’d killed someone he loved.
Time for chores. Pushing a washcloth across the kitchen counter as if to clean, Kennedy decided that Willie must have killed Jackwash. He didn’t know all the story yet, but those two had been on a collision course. Two men loving the same woman was enough to blow up any friendship. There were a hundred blues songs written about that very thing. But murder? Damn!
Of course, Willie hadn’t said anything about murder. He said he’d killed someone. Maybe it was self-defense.
More flies buzzed against the window over the kitchen sink. Kennedy rolled a dish towel and began swatting the insects, missing them for the most part. One swing caught the small cactus plant in a clay pot that Willie had put on the sill, sending it crashing into the sink. Kennedy stared at the pot shards and spilled dirt, wondering how to undo the mess. He scooped everything up with the dish towel and dumped it into the trash can. Willie knows I’m a clumsy kid. He won’t be surprised. The thought made him smile. Willie wouldn’t hold the damage against him. It was just a half-dead looking cactus anyway. Kennedy’s dad would have gone ballistic over his clumsiness. He’d have given him the old speech about accidents: “You don’t swing your arms around at the kitchen table and then tell me the spilled milk was an accident.”
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