Delta Blues

by Carolyn Haines

And you know I done stood over him firing off them last four shots right on into his skull til his head weren’t nothing but tomato pulp and little cut honeydew rinds.

  I DROP THE PISTOL, stumble on over to a thick patch of grass, and fall to my knees crying deep and heavy. Retching up what left of last night supper I stays on to crying and I cannot stop. I retches some more, all right. And more. But ain’t nothing but spit and noise after a spell. All hollow inside.

  Got my payback, sure nuff did. Got that payback … but it ain’t mean nothing. He dead … and I might just well be dead same as him.

  But there ain’t no bullets left.

  “ALL RIGHT NOW, JUNIOR?”

  I looks up, still on my knees inna grass. And who do I sees walking up to me, but that young Negro who drived us from Tulsa. Same as I ever done seen him and not a day older.

  “Toppa the world, Mister,” I says wiping my hand cross my lips. “Ain’t that plain to see.”

  He smile and nod.

  “Looks like you made a bit of a mess there, son,” he say tipping his head at old Whitney body laying there. “Everything better now?”

  “Ain’t nothing better now,” I says clenching my teeth hard. “Nothing. Likely worser, in fact. You looking at two dead mens here inna grass, friend-boy. Ain’t just one. Ain’t just him.”

  “That’s probably true.”

  “Got a name do ya?”

  “Chances are good. But you can just call me Jerome.”

  I git to standing up straight and look him dead inna eyes.

  “You ain’t age a minute since Tulsa, Jerome. How you count for yourself?”

  “Just lucky I guess. So tell me, Plow Boy. What’s your plan here? How far do you think you can go before they trace this jackass corpse right to you?”

  “Reckon I might just well turn myself on over. All right?” I raise up my hands, surrendering to the Lord. “Let this just end now . Less then you gots a different notion. I be all ears, all right, yes indeed.”

  “That’s what I like to hear,” he say grinning wide. “You follow me. I know a path that’ll take you FAR from here. None of these mothergrabbing fools will ever find you. Of course … it’s gonna cost a bit. This ain’t free, like Tulsa. You ain’t a boy no more, and this is a different kinda walk. You understand.”

  “I ain’t got no ways to pay you.”

  “You’ll find a way.”

  “So I follows you … and the Devils be offa my trail for good?”

  “Well . you’ll kinda be trading one set of devils for another. But you follow my lead, and don’t make a big show of yourself, and you’ll be just fine. Eventually.”

  “You . huh . you Satan, ain’t you?”

  “Ha-ha-ha!” He git to laughing, doubling over on hisself. “O shit! Ha-ha-ha! You are the first to ever just come right out and ask! Well . that’s a damn good guess anyway!”

  Inna distance I see them lamp lights just to floating inna trees. Getting closer and closer. And them devil voices get louder,

  “Right out yonder is where I heard them shots!” a voice say. “Follow me! Keep them rifles at the ready.”

  “Goddamn,” I says.

  “Goddamn indeed,” Jerome reply.

  “This it, I reckon.”

  “You could try to run, yes you could. But come on now. How far do you think you’d git on your own? You stay here and they are gonna burn you up. Or string you up. Or both. Choice is yours, Junior. Last chance, now.”

  “But … where we gonna go?”

  “What’s your pleasure? Big city? Ain’t so much the where, it’s the when.”

  “I heard something!” another voice holler. “Thisaway!”

  “Where your automobile at?”

  “O, we ain’t driving, Plow Boy. It’s a long dark path we’re walking.”

  I bends over to fetch my .38 and sling that guitar cross my back one time again.

  The voices float closer. “This way! I see something moving! Come on! Hey! Y’all out there freeze!”

  “We best git a move on, Junior. It is now or never.”

  SO WE DONE JUST THAT. Ducking on out into the brush, dodging the devils, quick and silent til we inna clear. Then walking. Walking all through the night. Not speaking nother solitary word. Leaving old corpse … and old Clarksdale … and every last bit of my life as I ever done knowed it far behind.

  9 Songbyrd Dead at 23

  Suzann Ellingsworth

  THE DEPRESSION, folks what call it that has a roof overhead and jobs to get up for of a morning. Most everybody else says it’s the Hard Times and they come on years afore them Yankee banks chained their doors.

  I don’t recall no Soft Times.

  I might’ve if my brothers kept sending money home, like they’d promised. After Mama died, my big sister, Mary Sarah, said she was goin’ to town to find work. I was to stay put and see to the chores, like I was a servant and our cabin in the Boston Mountains ever shined from hers and Mama’s scrub and polish.

  Along about the third day, I notioned to learn “Once I Had A Fortune” on daddy’s old mandolin. It was Mary Sarah’s favorite. Sulled up as she was when she left, she’d be tickled to hear it when she stepped through the door.

  The peculiar thing about teaching your fingers the song in your head is the tune and the words gets chopped up and stretched out to nonsense. Then all of a ziggety-zam, I was pluckin’ and singin’, “My sweetheart has a new fella, and me, she has turned aside. Farewell, farewell, my dearest lil’ darlin’, I’ll go where the world is wide …”

  Quick as that, I lit for Winslow, the neck of that mandolin clenched so tight it’s a wonder it didn’t crack in two.

  “Mary Sarah Comstock?” folks said, time and again, like I had a hundred sisters who’d swore to Mama they’d take care of me. “Why, I haven’t laid eyes on her in a month of Sundays.” The world is wide, sure enough. Never once did I think to ask what town she was venturing off to before she slammed out the door.

  It was too dark to walk home, as Arkansas was famed for haints and jimplicutes that breathed fire and prowled the woods of a night. I snuggled into the brambles by the railroad tunnel, hugging the mandolin and wishing Mary Sarah was in the ground, same as Mama and Daddy.

  That’s where Books poked me with a stick to see if I was alive. I’d never met up with a hobo before. Him and two others laid a fire between the tunnel’s maw and a boulder. A lard can plundered from a trash heap boiled bits of vittles they’d scrounged.

  Mulligan stew it’s called, irregardless of what’s in it and what jungle it’s cooked in. For the past two years, I’ve swallowed down gallons of it. Nowadays whole entire families are flipping freights to find work, the Promised Land or, God be merciful, both in the same spot.

  Cleburne, Texas ain’t it, but seemed middling prosperous with sun in my eyes. I found me a corner to panhandle on and slid off my knapsack jerry-rigged from a flour sack. What worldly possessions I had were in it, since anything that can’t be toted in a bindle or pockets owns you, instead of the other way ‘round.

  Folks that thought me a farm boy were startled when I whipped off my flop hat and the hair flew wild, pert-near to my waist. Daddy’s old mandolin had more nicks than a blind barber’s first shave. I blew off the cinders, plucked it for tune, then lit into “Old Dan Tucker.”

  Toes tapped along and hands clapped louder than just polite. Hard coin tinking in my cup made its own music. I sang another two before packing up, saying my throat was parched dry.

  A fat jake behind the grocery counter watched me fish a CocaCola outta his cooler’s rank slush. He palmed my nickel, then said, “Best you hitch onto the next train. We don’t abide tramps around here.”

  Towns a-bristle with churches bigger’n a courthouse seldom did. Him bluffing curt didn’t portend trouble, but I put a block between me and the store and crossed the street. Wouldn’t you know, the apples I’d took from his bin was wormy. Naught wrong with the Baby Ruths nestled in with ‘em.

  I strummed,
sang to a fare-thee-well, and started begrudging that nickel in the grocer’s till. What lands in the cup is for show. Pickin’ pockets is dicey, lest I draw a crowd. Then I can lay down the mandolin and take a rube for a do-si-do. Dancin’ bosoms behind my overalls’ bib do take a man’s mind off the cash he’s carryin’ and nimble fingers dousing after it.

  So far, the sodbusters I’d seen didn’t have squat in their pockets save lint. As if that wasn’t irksome enough, a gent in a Model T drove by a second time and parked at the corner. I suspected him for the law, but he just sat, arms folded on the window ledge, working his mouth funny, like his jawbone needed grease.

  “‘Back Water Blues,’“ he called. “Do you know it?”

  I shook my head, like I didn’t. Somethin’ for nothin’ I don’t give.

  Presently, he walked up flipping a half-dollar off his thumb. His necktie hung loose, but he’d shrugged on the suit coat to his pin-striped trousers. He hummed a piece of “Crazy Blues” offkey. “Please, miss, won’t you sing it for me?”

  “Please” was as rare as fifty cents all at once. Stupid I wasn’t. Sure as I got to get myself a gun, shoot myself a cop, he’d pull a tin star. “Can’t, mister,” I said. “It ain’t fit for a mandolin.”

  “Just sing.” To the lollygaggers, he said, “You’ll pay to hear it, won’t you?”

  A couple of biddies flounced off, whilst spare change rattled into my cup. The Good Book says the price of wisdom is above rubies. I sold mine cheap.

  He clapped hard enough to break the skin. “Never have I heard such a voice from a woman, much less a child.”

  “Eighteen’s no child, mister.” I snatched his coin lickety-split. “Thankee kindly,” I told them, looking walleyed from me to him.

  “I’ll be fifty before you see eighteen, hon.” He was fresh-shaved and smelled nice of hair oil and Witch Hazel. Rooster-tracks forked deep when he smiled. “I’d like to buy you dinner and talk a little business.”

  “Uh-huh.” I stowed my possibles and twisted my hair to smash under my hat. “We’ll get on down the street and you’ll say, ‘I done forgot my billfold in the hotel room, so’s let’s us go fetch it.’“

  Once you’ve been orphaned, decked boxcars the country over, been jailed, left a baby in a bloody bucket, been shot at and stabbed a time or two, there’s no tricks to learn, or learn from.

  “I won’t lay a hand on you, miss.” The card he gave over had Tom Vance Hickam in tall letters and Independent Talent Scout in shorter ones. “I came here to audition a lady who sings and tells bawdy jokes. Then I heard you.”

  My heart kicked up a beat. Real casual, I held out the card. “Then you ought’n not keep her waiting, Mr. Hickam.”

  That scowled his face. “Aren’t you ever tired of being broke and hungry?”

  I wasn’t and hadn’t been, since I hopped that first boxcar back in Winslow. Workin’ stiffs fret payin’ rent and gas bills and what in creation they’ll do, if’n the boss man gives ‘em the boot.

  Life’s for livin’, not killing yourself makin’ one.

  Mr. Hickam yapped at my heels. “I’m trying to tell you, there’s money in your voice. Plenty more than that cup holds.”

  I TOLD THE WAITRESS at the diner I’d have an egg salad sandwich and water to drink. Tom scratched it for two blue plate specials and two glasses of milk. We’d have coffee with our raisin pie.

  I hated milk. He doctored his from a pocket flask. “Here’s your first lesson about the music business, Dwaynetta. Don’t skimp when someone else is paying the tab.”

  Playing humble makes a generous giver, but what he didn’t know wasn’t mine to teach. I tucked into my roast beef supper, whilst he prattled as how Jimmie Rodgers, Maybelle Carter and her kin, and others had the jump on hillbilly music. A smart manager and a gimmick were needed to make a splash.

  “Topsy-turvy—that’s our gimmick. First off, you sound blacker than Bessie Smith.”

  Mama said singing woeful for what’s gone or unlikely to be blisters the heart. What my daddy would’ve done to him for sayin’ his li’l angel sang like a nigger would take the better part of a day to die of.

  “I ain’t Bessie Smith. And it ain’t just ‘cause she don’t play mandolin.”

  “That’s the beauty of my topsy-turvy idea, hon. Who do you think buys theater seats to hear her sing? Negroes?”

  A black hobo by the name of Big Bill told me nigh the same thing. We’d met up when he hopped the Illinois Central with a guitar slung ‘round his neck. Rode the line regular, betwixt workin’ in Chicago and visitin’ his wife and family in Langsdale, Arkansas.

  Big Bill said once a plantation owner hired him for a three-day picnic, there wasn’t no playing at the jooks. Whites paid extra for the best and the best was too good for niggers. A blues dive in Chicago was the first place he’d played for his own kind.

  He went on about how you had to be black to sing blue. He said whites liked the music, but don’t feel the words, ‘cause they ain’t lived ‘em. I’d laughed, seeing as how we were eatin’ the same stew from tin cans on the wrong side of the tracks. “Looks to me like hard times is color-blind,” I said.

  “Mebbe so.” He sucked his teeth. “But people ain’t.”

  I never seen him again on the IC Line. Might be his uppity mouth run a tad faster than he could.

  Tom thanked the waitress for sloshing us more coffee boiled from yesterday’s grounds. The flask topped off his cup. “Her hair. Did you notice? The day Volstead made liquor illegal, women cut off their hair like boys. Why, I can’t imagine.”

  He lit a cigarette and blew out the smoke all of a gust. “That’s why yours stays long. Shorter, but long. Topsy-turvy.” He smiled. “A long gown, too. There’s curves under those rags and dirt. I’ll bet our future on it.”

  The way he talked, stared through me, worked his mouth funny again, was like seed ticks creeping ‘neath my shirt. It wasn’t on accident the diner’s screen door was a hop-skip away from run like hell.

  “Dwaynetta, though …” His hawk-nose crinkled. “Do you have a middle name?”

  “Lurleen,” I said around a gulp of pie.

  “Dwaynetta Lurleen Comstock.” He shook his head. “No insult intended, but that doesn’t spell ‘songbird’ no matter how you slice—” He snapped his fingers. “Lena. Lena … Bird. No, B-Y-R-D. It’s classier.” His hand clawed and bobbed on air. “Tom Vance Hickam presents, Miss Lena Byrd, Blues Songbird Extraordinaire. One Night Only.”

  I cocked up a heel and swung my knee past the chair corner. “Call me Robin Redbreast, if’n you care to. I ain’t singing no nigger blues—”

  He clamped my wrist. “Five hundred a week, hon.” His breath stank of bootleg whiskey and scorched tobacco. “Believe you me, chances like this don’t come along but once. If ever.”

  “Five hundred dollars?” Daddy never earned near that in a year sawyering at the mill.

  “Minus expenses, manager’s commission …” Tom turned loose of my arm. “Could be less some weeks. Could be double, triple as much. What do you have to lose?”

  Thoughts of spending a stake that fat set my mind a-whirl. Tom said Easy Street was a steep climb, but he’d print handbills with Lena’s picture and string them from Texarkana to Mobile and all over the Delta. I’d sing on the radio, whether the station broadcast fifteen miles or five hundred, and invite folks to whichever tent show, music hall, club, taxi-dance, speakeasy or house party I’d be at next.

  “We’ll have to age you some, though,” he said. “Twenty-three seems about right. Young, but old enough to travel with a grown man.”

  I slipped his billfold from my pocket before he noticed it was missing. Deciding between sure money and a grift was a trial. Especially since I’d be singing my fool head off til I had enough cash to ditch him.

  “Sixteen going on twenty-three or not,” I said, “what’ll Mrs. Hickam think about you jitneyin’ Lena Byrd from here to yonder?”

  Tom’s eyes left mine. “The only Mrs. Hicka
m was my dear mother, God rest her.”

  Uh-huh. I nipped the inside of a cheek to stanch a grin. Right off, I’d pegged him for one of them confirmed type of bachelors. I nudged the billfold to the floor, whilst Bessie Smith sang in my head, “I got the world in a jug, the stopper’s in my hand.”

  Not quite yet, it wasn’t. But it would be.

  TWO DAYS LATER, Tom was parleying with that soda pop bottler when the chink gal seamstress brought the clothes she’d stitched for me.

  The radio station dress fit nice, but wasn’t flashy, aside from being pokeberry red. After I’d sing live, Tom would leave a special-made record to get around laws against playing them on the air. It’d sound like I was still there, talking up that soda pop, then commence “Lena’s Blues.”

  Tom wrote it. It weren’t no prize-winner, but most nigra blues wail about jelly roll and whores and booze. Sing or play one of them on the radio and the bottling company sponsoring the records would have conniptions.

  He knocked “Shave and Haircut” on the door, just as I shimmied into the new singing gown I’d wear at clubs and such. The chink gal sewed two alike, copied off a picture-page he’d tore out’n a magazine. They’re blue and slit high up a leg and low in the front.

  The matching gloves with cuffs at the elbows I’d nixed for a black pair. Slip a single dollar inside them light ones and it’d show clear as day. No sense wearing ‘em, if I couldn’t dip pockets on the sly for more than was paid to hear me or fell in my tip bowl.

  I twirled to show Tom the gown, my side-parted hair puddling on my shoulders, and the paste-diamond eardrops and necklace he’d bought me. Swayin’ and singin’ “Wasted Life Blues,” I pretended to cozy up to this jake and that one.

  By Tom’s face, you’d swear he’d gone simple. I reckoned a lady’s man wouldn’t notice me steal his socks out of his shoes.

  “The way you look, maybe we should drive straight to Chicago.”

  He’d already bored me to tears talking about singers lined up to audition for Yankee record companies. Topsy-turvy was gonna get Lena Byrd famous in the Delta. Them bigwigs were gonna arm-wrestle for her on the labels and finagle a headliner spot on the theatre circuit.