The Gutbucket Quest

by Piers Anthony

  “Papa” he said to Progress, shaking his hand vigorously. “What you come all de way out here fo’, eh?”

  “Came to talk to you about a thing,” Progress said.

  The man’s smile never wavered. “Me,” he said, “I got time for de talk. Welcome my home, you. Nadine,” he said. “Cherie, come in, and your fren’, too.”

  “This is Slim,” Nadine said. “Daddy’s new apprentice.”

  “Me, I tink he mo’ dan dat, eh?” Belizaire winked at her conspiratorially. “But come in de house. I knock de pain out dis mornin’, so me, I know dey no moonstroke, no sunstroke, so you come in now, yes?”

  They followed him into the house, into a room filled with chairs and tables and little else. They all sat down in places that looked comfortable to them.

  All but Belizaire. “Me,” he said, “I’m hongry, some. I gotta get dis. You maybe want someting to eat?”

  “Nope,” Progress said. “We just had a big breakfast. You go on ahead.”

  Belizaire walked out of the room. Progress lit a cigarette he had taken from a box on the table next to his chair, coughed, but seemed to enjoy the thing. Slim leaned over and whispered to Nadine.

  “Tell me again what we’re using this guy for?”

  “He’s a bass player,” she said. “He plays with Daddy sometimes. He used to anyway. Not so much anymore. A few years ago, he dropped out of sight and moved up here with his wife and kids. But Daddy wants him to back us up at the festival.”

  “Us?” Slim choked. “You mean me, too?”

  “Yes, you,” Nadine snapped. “Of course you. What did you think, that you weren’t a part of this? That Daddy just kept you around to talk to?”

  “Yeah, I mean, no. I didn’t think Progress would want me to play.”

  “Sure. You’re just a mass of quivering sensibilities, right? Look, I don’t care if you fart or blow a tin whistle, but you’re a part of this and you’re going to be right up there with us, so you get your shit together, you hear me. If you can’t do anything else, just act stupid and no one will know the difference.”

  Every time he thought he maybe had a farfetched chance to get somewhere with her, she set him back with something like this. “Why do you say stuff like that, Nadine? It isn’t fair.”

  “Hey,” she said. “The world isn’t fair.”

  “Yeah, I know, but why isn’t it ever unfair in my favor?”

  “Shut up, chillen,” Progress hissed. “This ain’t no time for none of that.”

  “Just like him to interrupt our repartee,” Slim said, grinning.

  Nadine smiled wickedly, her mood shifting. “Just when I had you wriggling in the crushing grip of reason, too,” she answered.

  “No.” Slim shook his head. “I was getting my second wind.”

  “And me without any antacid,” Nadine quipped. “Oh, well.”

  Slim and Nadine were laughing and holding hands when Belizaire walked back into the room chewing on a submarine sandwich that looked as big as his arm.

  “Tigalo, tigalo,” he said, through mouthfuls of sandwich. “I’m gonna axe you, me, what you do here?”

  Progress told Belizaire the story, stopping only occasionally to shush Slim or Nadine as they poked one another trying to make each other laugh. The man continued eating, but it was clear that he listened carefully as Progress brought him up to date, telling him, at the last, about Bonehack being gone and the second appearance of the Glory Hand.

  The man radiated power, even as he sat thinking and taking immense bites from the sandwich until it was gone and he had wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “But, papa,” he said. “De gris-gris, she’s fo’ heal. I don’ touch no Glory Hand. What I do in dis business?”

  “Well,” Progress said. “You could look on it as a healin’. Healin’ the blues. Maybe we can get rid of Pickens, too.”

  “Oh, him, he got nottin’ fo’ me. He not interes’ in me at all. But de blues. Me, I tink dat maybe important.” He turned to face Nadine. “What you tink, cherie?”

  Nadine looked back at him, shrugged. “Daddy wants you to play,” she said. “We’ve never had to go up against T-Bone before. I guess we can use all the help we can get.”

  Belizaire then looked at Slim. “What you tink?”

  Slim felt a push against him, felt the big man’s power turned onto him. But, at the same time, he could see goodness in the man’s eyes, and, as with Mother Phillips, he felt Belizaire was no threat. Still, he thought about his answer.

  “I’m not sure what to tell you,” he said. “I’m involved in this, but I’m not sure how. I love the blues, and it didn’t take long to learn to hate Pickens. Progress is teaching me about the blues and Nadine’s teaching me, well—”

  “Why you back away from her, you?”

  Belizaire’s eyes burnt into him. He could feel that Nadine was looking at him, too, waiting for an answer. Again, it felt to him like a test he had to pass, and he knew that this was a very deep question. One he would have to answer honestly, or not at all.

  “I tink I broke something,” Belizaire said after Slim’s silence. “Say de answer, you. I can see, me, dat you come from de other worl’. Don’t be ‘fraid, tell Belizaire what de problem.”

  It was something Slim hadn’t wanted to talk about, hadn’t wanted to think about. It was hard enough trying to love Nadine without a shame from his own world getting in the way. But, now, here it was, coming out in the open where he couldn’t avoid it.

  Did everyone in this world discuss their personal lives like this, he wondered, or were they just picking on him? He was being made to constantly feel as if the success or failure of all their plans depended directly on what he said and did, on answers to questions he was reluctant to even think about.

  “You see,” he said, slowly. “In my world, where I come from, black people and white people don’t get along very well. There’s a lot of them that hate and kill each other. I don’t like it or agree with it,” he was quick to state. “I honestly don’t even understand it. But when you grow up with something, you kinda get used to it. It gets to be a part of you without your even knowing it. You fall into it, into the patterns of it. You might hate it in yourself, but it’s still there no matter what you do. So now, with Nadine, there’s a distance, a fear. I kind of back away from her. And it isn’t her, it’s me. I can’t seem to get out of the habit of being afraid that she won’t take me seriously or she won’t like me, or we won’t get along because I’m white.”

  “Oh, Slim,” Nadine said, squeezing his hand. “I don’t take you seriously now, but it doesn’t have anything to do with your color.”

  Belizaire shook his head sadly. He looked piercingly at Progress, whose expression was one of surprise, then he looked back at Slim. “Sound to me,” he said, “like dat a powerfully unhappy worl’. You like it, being here mo’ better?”

  Slim held Nadine’s hand tightly and looked at her. She smiled. She probably meant it about not taking him seriously, but if that enabled her to be friendly, it helped. “Yeah,” he said. “Right now, there’s no place I’d rather be.”

  “Bon,” Belizaire sad, a smile once more lighting his face. “Me, I tink I help you out with dis problem of de blues.”

  Just then there was the roar of a motor being overworked. They all sprang up and rushed out the front door. A black car was topping the rise, spraying dirt, dust and gravel behind itself as it struggled with the grade.

  A growl came from Progress’ throat. “Vipers,” he said angrily.

  Belizaire turned to his wife, who was gathering herbs. “Mama,” he yelled. “Get de chillen inside de barn. Don’t come out till I say.”

  The woman quickly gathered up the children and the dogs and Belizaire began to chant low in his throat. Slim could hear the vibration of it inside himself. He watched as the man pulled a worn drawstring bag from one of the many pockets in the overalls he wore.

  The black car stopped in the road, between the lines of junkers. It looked like a stand
off, or as if the driver of the car was studying on just what to do upon finding Progress and Slim and Nadine here instead of finding the gris-gris man alone.

  Slim could feel a darkness pressing down on him, on his mind. He wondered if the others felt it as well. It was a sensation full of unhappiness, oppression and depression.

  He had trouble seeing clearly, and there was a feeling growing inside him that all was hopeless, that the best thing to do was just to give it up. Nadine would never love him. Progress could never teach his clumsy fingers to wrap themselves around the blues. And Belizaire—how did they know that the gris-gris man was on their side? He almost started running toward the black car, had even taken a step. But Progress grabbed his arm and held him.

  “It’s the power,” Progress said. “It’s gettin’ inside you, pullin’ at you, takin’ the blues away, takin’ your power from you. You got to fight it.”

  Progress let his arm go and started humming. Slim tried to fight. At first, he didn’t know how, didn’t know what to do to battle the oppression that was sucking at his soul. He looked at Nadine, and saw her looking wan and worn, just as depressed as he felt. It was affecting her too!

  But Progress’ humming gave him an idea. If the blues had magic, maybe he could use them to fight. Timidly, unsure of himself, he started singing one of his favorite old standards:

  “Going to the bottoms, to get me a mojo hand,

  Yes, I’m goin’ to the bottoms, get me a mojo hand,

  To try to stop the men, from takin’ my woman.

  The hoodoo told me, to get a black cat bone,

  Ole hoodoo told me, get you a black cat bone,

  And shake it over their heads, till they leave your woman alone.”

  The feeling of oppression slowly lifted as he sang. His voice grew clearer and he was filled with a sense of strength and freedom. He looked to the others. Progress was smiling at him and nodding his head, Nadine was looking at him in wide-eyed amazement.

  Belizaire, at that moment, opened the bag he held and poured a fine reddish powder into his open hand. He yelled out something in Cajun that Slim couldn’t understand, and then he blew the powder into the air. Instead of dispersing, the red cloud seemed to grow and move until it settled over the lines of junked vehicles on the roadside. Slim heard motors turn over, cough, stutter and start. To his astonishment, the vehicles he had thought were derelicts began moving, fast.

  The black car was trying to escape, but it had been blocked, both front and back. Two by two, the driverless heaps of rusted metal smashed into the driver and passenger sides of it until, eventually, it was a worse pile of flattened junk than any of the cars and trucks on the sides of the road. Then they pushed the demolished vehicle into a space that had been left and, one by one, they moved back into their own places in the lineup. Then there was silence.

  “Shit” Slim said, looking at Belizaire. “How’d you do that?”

  Belizaire grimaced. “Long time ago,” he said quietly, “I zombilize dose cars. Dey go on dey own, now. But I’m no killer, me. I don’ like dis, not any. Dose bad men, though, I tink dey try to kill us, me. So I figger some, and I tink dis only ting to do.”

  “It’s been serious,” Progress said. “I don’t know if they done kilt Bonehack. But I knows they was tryin’ to kill us.”

  Slim couldn’t see it quite that clearly. “But they didn’t really do anything, did they? Nothing to die for.”

  Progress patted Slim’s shoulder. “You don’t understand, son. They were usin’ the power. With the Gutbucket behind it. You knows how it made you feel. If you hadn’t found your way to your own power, to stop it, you would have gone lower and lower until you just laid down and died. Or worse, you would have gone on out there to them.”

  “Couldn’t you have stopped them?”

  “Yep,” Progress answered, an amused look on his face. “I s’pect I could have. But I needed you to find your way to your own power. I figured with Nadine and you at risk, you’d find your way to it. And you did.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me?” Slim said, half angry.

  “If I had’ve, you wouldn’t have found it inside you. I had to make you depend on you. If I was doin” it, I knew you wouldn’t have tried on your own, knowin’ I was there to back you up. But with Nadine in trouble, I knowed you’d rise up outta yourself and get it.”

  “Yeah,” Slim said. “I guess maybe you’re right. But listen, I wish you’d warn me about stuff.”

  “No, son.” Progress smiled at him. “You keep on findin’ your way through the changes when they come at you sudden like, then pretty soon you’re not gonna need to have no warnin’.”

  Belizaire handed Slim a leather pouch with a long, looped drawstring.

  “What’s this?” Slim asked as he took it in his hand. It had a feeling to it, a power that he couldn’t identify or understand.

  “You keep it, cum sa? Dis to knock some de pain out your soul. It help you, eh? And it fo’ later. You know when you need use it. Wear it roun’ your neck, close your heart. De time to use it, she come.” Belizaire turned to Progress. “You go home now, papa. I got tings to do, me, to take dis pain and killin’ from de groun’. I be there whenever you need me.” He turned and walked back into the house, leaving them alone on the porch.

  They piled back into the pickup and drove away. Slim turned his eyes aside as they went past the wrecked black car. He didn’t want to see.

  “I don’t want to go home,” Nadine said. “Not right now. I know we have to deal with that thing sometime, but the hound’ll keep it safe for a while longer. What do you say we go to Mitchell’s, Daddy? Have something to eat and drink. Relax a little.”

  “Okay with me, Nadine. How ‘bout you, Slim?”

  Slim was preoccupied, thinking about what had just happened and wondering how he could manage to sneakily put his arm around Nadine.” Anywhere’s okay with me,” he said. “I could use some food. I feel pretty empty.”

  “That’s the power,” Progress said. “Usin’ it will eat you up if you ain’t careful to eat good.”

  “But I didn’t hardly do anything.”

  “More than you think,” Nadine said softly. “More than I can do.”

  “Nadine?” Slim whispered.

  “Never mind,” she said. “Come on, Daddy. Let’s just go to Mitchell’s.”

  She wouldn’t talk any more on the way to town, but Slim was pleased and surprised when she grabbed his arm and put it around her small shoulders and then snuggled in close against him. Maybe he wasn’t as much of a joke to her as he had been.

  10

  Not only are the blues viewed as having physical attributes, which allow them to walk and run, talk to and shake the victim, but they can also predict the future and cause emotional reactions. They can even enslave the sufferer . . .

  —Daphne Duval Harrison, Black Pearls

  The Blues Ain’t Nothin’

  I’m gonna build myself a raft, and float that river down,

  I’ll build myself a shack in some old Tejas town, Mmmm, Mmmm,

  ’Cause the blues ain’t nothin’, no the blues ain’t nothin’,

  But a good man feelin’ down.

  Goin’ down on the levee, gonna take a rockin’ chair,

  If my lovin’ gal don’t change, I rock away from there, Mmmm, Mmmm,

  ’Cause the blues ain’t nothin’, no the blues ain’t nothin’,

  But a good man feelin’ down.

  Why’d you leave me blue, oh why did you leave me blue,

  All I can do is sit and cry and cry for you, Mmmm, Mmmm,

  ’Cause the blues ain’t nothin’, no the blues ain’t nothin’

  But a good man feelin’ down.

  It was a slow day at Mitchell’s. The waitress moved languidly to take and fill their orders. They got a pitcher of beer and all three ordered the chili and corn bread, bottomless-bowl style. The chili was full-bodied, spicy and satisfying, the corn bread light, but tight, yellow and solid. Slim could
taste why it was the specialty of the house.

  “Progress,” he said. “I can feel it now—the power I mean. But I didn’t know what I was doing. How do I make it work? How do I control it?”

  Progress kept on eating and thinking. Slim waited for him to answer, which he did, after a few minutes and chews. “Well, son,” he said. “Onliest way I can tell you, is by talkin’ blues, ’cause that’s what it is, you see? It’s about upholdin’ values and havin’ fun. The power’s there for you, for anyone. But there’s lots of things people don’t want to hear, and the last thing they want to hear is that power and freedom comes from discipline. That’s somethin’ you got to have. I guess players got it ’cause we got to work so hard to learn to play and keep it goin’, and ’cause we gots to work into the structure of the music. But you gots to give it latitude, too. Latitude’s your wings. That’s important. You be feelin’ slow, or fast, or in between, and you want to lay back, but blues players don’t slow down, they stretch time. They lay back so much they come sneakin’ up on you.

  “I’m talkin’ an attitude now, not chops. Chops is fine, but chops is just chops, just tricks. You want the real power. It’s like bein’ a singer. You might be a great singer, but if you don’t have a great song, what are you gonna do? It’s the same with players, and with the power. If you don’t have a great song to play a solo with, a good heart to base the power on, a base or foundation to do somethin’ melodically, chops don’t mean nothin’.”

  “I don’t understand,” Slim said. “I don’t get what you mean.”

  “It’s what I’m tellin’ you son. To use the power to fight, or enhance or enchant, you got to harmonize with the situation, work with what’s there. Songs and people are weird things. If you pick everything off of ‘em, all you got left is the bare bones, then you got to follow that. If you’re a painter, then you start out with an empty canvas. If you’re a player, your canvas is silence. Now if you fucks around with that—if you’re a player you fucks around with silence. And you leave some spaces, you leave some movement. Maybe it ain’t quick or flashy, but it works better and it’s a lot harder than just knockin’ off few quick licks. Savor each note before you go on to the next, and come up for air, too. Don’t forget to breathe and play the spaces as well as the notes. That silence is a condition of the sound, just like sleepin’ is a condition of life. You understand?”