Crawlin’ Chaos Blues
By
Edward M. Erdelac
Damnation Books, LLC.
P.O. Box 3931
Santa Rosa, CA 95402-9998
www.damnationbooks.com
Crawlin’ Chaos Blues
by Edward M. Erdelac
Digital ISBN: 978-1-61572-257-0
Cover art by: George Cotronis
Edited by: Lisa J. Jackson
Copyedited by: Lisa J. Jackson
Copyright 2010 Edward M. Erdelac
Printed in the United States of America
Worldwide Electronic & Digital Rights
1st North American and UK Print Rights
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form, including digital and electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the Publisher, except for brief quotes for use in reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For Chester
“This is where the soul
of man never dies.”
Crawlin’ Chaos Blues
‘It’s like a spirit from some dark valley, something that sprung up from the ocean–like Lucifer is on the Earth...’ – Howlin’ Wolf, 1968.
Don’t nobody remember King Yeller. The Delta folks don’t like to talk ‘bout him like they do Muddy or BB or Robert Johnson, though I ‘spect he was as good as them if not better. I don’t know no white folks ever heard of him. They ain’t a page on him in all the blues books ever written.
I ‘spect I’m the only one alive knows why.
I met him in sixty-four in Chicago. In them days, the draft was in full swing, and I didn’t see no way out of it, so I figured I’d do some drivin’ around before Uncle Sam come callin’.
I’d always wanted to hear that ‘lectric blues played, so I filled up the tank of my daddy’s ’52 Catalina, bought me a sack of tamales and a jar of moon off my cousin, and drove up there from Quito, Mississippi. I got to Maxwell Street on a Saturday when the Jew Town market was open. The sidewalk buskers and the gutbucket players paid the shop owners out they tips to run extension chords from the shops to they amps, and you could hear that ragged, powered sound goin’ all up and down the market like a rattletrap Ford with a cryin’ drunk at the wheel, crashin’ into the songs of the Gospel singers, street hustlers, and the yellin’ of the rummage sellers. A lady drummer let me blow my harp with her and her husband for pocket money. She told me ‘bout a place called Silvio’s on Lake and Kedzie where Howlin’ Wolf played on the weekends. I went over there to see him.
I seent King Yeller when I pulled up. He was a little younger than me, skinny, high yeller, and red headed; a sharp dresser. A more troublesome lookin’ nigger you never did see. Had shifty, light-colored eyes and a way of talkin’ out the side of his mouth. When I first seent him, he was leanin’ on a beer sign watchin’ that Lake Street L clackin’ overhead, one bent Kool stuck in his lips, beatin’ out I Ain’t Superstitious as best he could on a rusty ol’ National with a pocket knife for a slide.
“What we got here?” he said, when I come up on the curb.
I figured he meant to hustle me and I wasn’t ‘bout to have it.
“You got Harpoon Elkins here,” I said.
“Harpoon,” he grinned, trying my name out. It wasn’t my Christian name sure, but I didn’t wanna go throwin’ that ‘round Chicago anyhow. “See you got Mississippi tags,” he said, noddin’ to my car.
“Tha’s right,” I said.
“You up from the Delta?”
“Quito,” I said.
“Man, I ain’t never heard of no Quinto.”
“Quito. What that got to do with me?”
“Ease up now, blood,” he said. I seent he had that pocket knife still between his bowin’ fingers.
“Sound better you used a bottleneck,” I said.
“My uncle taught me with a knife. You play the slide?” he asked, slappin’ his guitar.
“Naw. I blow a little harp.”
“Who don’t?” he held out his hand. “Name’s King. No relation to Martin Luther. Yeller’s what they call me. King Yeller.”
I shook. I figured he was awright, long as he didn’t ask for nothin’. I ast him was he playin’ here tonight.
“Mm hm,” he said. “Want in? It ain’t but a buck, but you look like you could use all the bread you got.”
It wasn’t no lie.
He got me past the doorman like he said he would. Pretty soon we was settin’ in one of them smoky corners at a booth with a little candle in red glass and a couple cold Blue Ribbons in front of us, watchin’ some sweet browns wrapped up tight as candy, slow draggin’ with they mens across the floor. Crammed into the corner with a jumpin’ band was the man hisself, Howlin’ Wolf, all three hundred pounds of him, black as pig iron and sweatin’ like a steam engine, crawlin’ on all fours, rollin’ his eyes, and flickin’ his tongue like a snake. He was singin’ Evil, and he sure looked like a man possessed by a devil. He was too big for the place, so goddamned big when he put his harp between his hands and blew he looked ‘bout to swallow it whole.
“How you like it, country?” Yeller hollered at me.
I just nodded my head, grinnin’. Seein’ the Wolf in action was a sight to take a man’s words.
When the set was up and the folks stopped grindin’ up on each other long enough to clap the band down, Wolf come to stand over our table, moppin’ at his forehead with a cocktail napkin and starin’ at us through some black-rimmed glasses he took out his shirt pocket.
“You up, Yeller,” he said. He had a different way ‘bout him once he was off the stage. You hardly thought he was the same man. Up there, he’d been like a wild dog. Now, it was like lookin’ up at your daddy.
“This my boy Harpoon, just come up from Quinto, Mississippi,” Yeller said, getting up with his guitar.
“Quito,” me and Wolf both said at the same time.
I looked at him.
“You heard of it?”
“Yeah, I heard of it,” Wolf said, takin’ a beer bottle off a girl’s tray and settin’ down in Yeller’s spot. “It’s offa the Seven, ain’t it? South of Mosquito Lake.”
“That’s it,” I said.
“Been fishin’ down there,” he said.
Wolf sipped his beer and looked at me.
Over his shoulder, Yeller set up, smilin’ out at the crowd before twiddling into a song I’d never heard, what I guess was his own:
I’m in love with a damn fool woman,
She got a heart as cold as ice,
Said I’m in love with a damn fool woman,
She got a heart so cold like ice,
Why can’t I find a woman, who will love and treat me nice?
It was awright. He sorta fumbled with that National, but nobody was sober enough to notice, ‘cept maybe Wolf, who squeezed his eyes thinner every time Yeller hit a bad chord. Them big-legged women kept on dancin’ with they men, clawin’ hungry-like at they behinds like they was ripe fruit in them bright, tight dresses. Yeller did have a good voice though, raw, and mean, like Elmore James.
“I like you, Harpoon,” Wolf told me, after he’d sucked his beer down and raised his hand for another. “You listen here. Stay away from that high yeller boy,” he told me, thumbin’ at Yeller over his shoulder. “His uncle, Destruction, used to play piano for me. He wasn’t nothin’ but a fat mouth rounder, and Yeller ain’t no different. His mouth get
you killed you ain’t careful.”
Yeller had picked out one of them biscuits in the crowd and was singin’ straight at her. She was that devil-eyed type woman lay her business on you, make you forget your own name, how much money you got in your pocket. She seent what Yeller was ‘bout right off and she smiled at him over her man’s shoulder. That gap in her two front teeth let you know she liked to get her jelly rolled. He played Come On In My Kitchen at her, and then One Way Out, and by the time he finished up, her man had took notice.
Wolf seent it, too. He looked at me and shook his head, then got up with his beer, said, ‘’member what I told you,’ and went off to the bathroom.
It was hot and close in that place when Yeller come back to his seat and ran his beer bottle ‘cross his shiny forehead.
“How you like that, country boy?”
“S’awright,” I said, watching that woman he’d been singin’ to start into arguin’ with her man. He kept on lookin’ in Yeller’s direction.
“Awright, sheeit,” said Yeller. “You see that fox out in front? Got my Johnny Conqueroo goin’.”
“Still say you’d sound better you got yourself a bottleneck,” I said.
Right then that nigger pushed his woman down and come stompin’ over.
“Say, boy,” he said, proddin’ Yeller in the shoulder and leanin’ on our table. His coat fell open and I seent he had a pistol butt stickin’ out his drawers.
I picked up my beer and didn’t say nothin’.
Yeller turned in his seat and pushed the man’s hand offa his shoulder.
“Whyn’t you try that again, shine?” he said to the man.
“You been eyeballin’ my rider, boy,” the man said.
“Nigger, what you want?” Yeller said. “An apology? When she wasn’t shakin’ her ass at me she was drankin’ me up over your shoulder.”
“You got a mouth, nigger,” the man said. “Look t’me like some peckerwood been at yo momma, too.”
Yeller knocked over his chair gettin’ up. The man reached in his pants and pulled out a .44. Whether he meant to shoot Yeller or slap it in his face I didn’t know, but I reached across and smashed my bottle ‘cross his hand. He dropped the gun on the table and I laid the broke bottle next to it, done with it.
But Yeller picked both of ‘em up.
He stuck the busted bottle in that man’s eye and broke it off. When the man commenced to howlin’, Yeller laid the pistol upside his head.
The gal started screamin’ when she seent her man hit the floor, and that got the rest of the womens doin’ the same. The mens took to runnin’ out the door and the bartender snatched the phone off the wall.
Yeller just turned to me, tucked the pistol in his pants, and slipped the bloody bottleneck over his finger. He held it up to me and said, “Look like I got my bottleneck now, Harp.”
I didn’t know what to do. When the big doorman come over, Yeller slapped the handle of the gun and the man stepped aside.
Then he took me by the arm and pulled me out.
Pretty soon, we was in my car, the gun in Yeller’s lap, passin’ my moon back and forth. We didn’t stop till we hit Maxwell Street. He bought us a couple of Polishes and a Jack with his tip money. Then he started in talkin’ ‘bout Robert Johnson.
“That’s how Son House woulda done it, Harp,” he told me. “Didn’t take no lip. Robert Johnson, too. You know that crossroads story?”
“Sure,” I said, slow. “Everybody do.” Truth tell, I knew it better than most.
“’Bout how he went down to them crossroads and made hisself a deal with the Devil,” Yeller said, like he hadn’t heard me. “You know where them crossroads is at? I heard they was where the Sixty-one and the Forty-nine cross.”
That was some bullshit somebody in Clarksdale come up with to sell t-shirts. I wished he hadn’t asked, and I wish more I hadn’t answered. Maybe things would’ve been different in the end.
“Naw,” I said. “It ain’t there. It’s over by Dockery Plantation outside of Ruleville.”
“Ruleville?” Yeller said.
“Yup.”
“Hey, we ought to go down there you and me, huh?”
“Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout, nigger?” I laughed.
But he was dead serious. I seent it in them honey eyes.
“I mean it, man. The police goin’ be lookin’ for this car. You got to get outta town anyhow. You ain’t got no money for gas back down to Quinto—”
“Quito.”
He took out a fat wad of cash from his pants pocket.
“I gots me some saved up. Was goin’ to buy me a bus ticket and head down to them crossroads myself.”
“Nigger, you crazy.”
“Harp,” he said, and took the whiskey from me, serious. “You tell me now. Whatchoo think of my playin’?”
“You sang pretty good,” I said.
“Didn’t ask ‘bout my singin’, asked ‘bout my guitar playin’.”
“I told you, you be better with that bottleneck.”
“Nigger, my own momma wouldn’t sugar coat it, you just tell it.”
I shrugged. “It ain’t so good.”
I seent right off he was hurt, but shit, he had asked.
“I know it,” he said. “I ought to be better. I cut my fingers practicin’, but it don’t help. Wolf keeps me around on account of my uncle, but he only let me on when everybody’s good and drunk. How I’m s’posed to get better that way? You tell me.”
“You just got to keep practicin,’ man. You’s a good singer.”
“Sheeit,” he said, and passed the whiskey back. “Singer need a band, Harp. I gots to be able to play this here guitar. Even if I get good, it ain’t goin’ be enough. I gots to be great, man. I gots to be the best, like Robert Johnson.”
He took a long pull of whiskey and passed it back, but he didn’t let go when I tried to take it. He looked me in the eye.
“You show me them crossroads, Harp.”
He wasn’t askin’ so much as tellin’.
“That shit is just stories, Yeller,” I said, though I knew they wasn’t.
“Stories...I’m nineteen years old, man. I’m black. I’m poor. I’m just a step outta Joliet. They goin’ send me to Vietnam. I ain’t got the money for no school. I’m goin’ die over there if I go, I know it. I gots to get to them crossroads. Got to make that deal. Ain’t gonna get rich no other way. Even if a story’s my only chance, shit, man! I’ll take it.”
They was somethin’ ‘bout what he said, ‘bout Vietnam and bein’ cold in hand. I guess that’s why I told him I’d take him.
* * * *
We talked the whole way down south. He told me he’d grown up in Gary, Indiana, where his daddy had worked for U.S. Steel till he got pulled under a roller at the mill, got his feet crushed so bad they cut ‘em off. His daddy got to be a mean drunk in a chair after that, and one night when they shut the ‘lectricity off, he kilt hisself with a shotgun. The kick sent his chair ‘cross the kitchen and rollin’ down the basement steps. That was where Yeller had found him, callin’ and feelin’ for him in the dark till he put his hand in the mess where his daddy’s face used to be.
“Tell me ‘bout them crossroads,” he said. “What’s so special ‘bout ‘em? How come you can’t make the deal in any ol’ crossroads?”
I didn’t know that, but I told him what I did know. My uncle, Luke, used to play guitar in my daddy’s congregation (Daddy was a preacher) till he switched to The Celestial Providence Church in Boyer, then he dropped religion altogether to play the blues. He went down to them crossroads and made hisself a deal. He told me ‘bout it, drunk one night. He said he’d gone at midnight and twisted the head off a black rooster and let the blood pour out, and that a shadow man come up out the ground and tapped him on the shoulder.
“The devil,” Yeller said.
“He never said it was the devil.”
“Who else would it be?”
I shrugged. Uncle Luke told me the shadow man made hi
m promise somethin’ (I ‘spect it was his soul) and then took his guitar and taught him some songs.
“Was he better after that?” Yeller asked.
“I’s just a boy,” I said. “I ‘member him bein’ pretty good in church, but that’s all.”
“What happened to him?”
“Got his throat cut at his breakfast table. Never found out who done it.”
Yeller turned towards the window and didn’t say nothin’.
My daddy told me he’d been kilt over a woman. I’d told him ‘bout Uncle Luke’s deal and he looked real sad. He drove me to see them crossroads (though not at midnight) and he told me my soul wasn’t nothin’ I should try’n lay my hands on and give over to nobody, and that nobody that come askin’ for it had my good in mind. He told me not to think ‘bout Uncle Luke no more.
I never went to them ‘ol dirt crossroads again, though they stayed in my mind over the years. My daddy always told me you got to render unto Caesar what’s his, and render unto God what’s His, but sometime you get to a place where you can’t afford to render unto Caesar when he come knockin’. Then renderin’ unto God seems like a bill that’s goin’ be a long time comin’ due. I guess that’s where Yeller was. Maybe I wanted to go down there as much as he did, but I don’t know just why. I sure didn’t want to be no bluesman. His talk of buyin’ his way outta Vietnam sounded pretty good to me, though.
It was open season on black folks in Mississippi in them days, and the rednecks didn’t let us forget. We wasn’t ten minutes in town when we seent this beat-up blue Chevy pickup with a couple sun burnt elbows stickin’ out the windows cruisin’ real slow up and down South Oak in Ruleville where we stopped to eat a couple pig’s ear sandwiches and wait out the day.
Yeller wanted to see Greasy Street, where Wolf had told him he used to play for tips, so we went over. We spotted a boy playin’ slide with a nearly bald ol’ blind woman beatin’ on a tamborine. They was wailin’ Oh Death to a crowd of folks. Yeller set up with his National outside a corner grocery ‘cross the street and tried cutting heads with the kid, but it was four-thirty on a Thursday and wasn’t no drunks around to forgive him his playin’. I seent a couple folks wave they hands at him, and a little boy in overalls even laughed. I felt bad and joined in on my harp. Couple folks come over then, but most stayed by the boy and the ol’ woman.
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