Crossroad Blues (The Nick Travers Novels) (23 page)

"Well, Johnson used to come by and play at my juke every few months. Sometimes I wouldn't see him for almost a year, and then he would set his guitar down and say he wanted to play. I used to feed him a meal, some whiskey, and let him be on his way. Sometime he'd teach me a few things on the guitar and sometime he wouldn't talk at all. He was real funny that way."

Nick's hands were quivering. This was it. The story men had spent their entire lives waiting to hear. He didn't move a bit. Didn't smile. Didn't frown. It was like balancing a house of cards on your head. One gesture could bring the whole act down.

"Back in thirty-eight, he'd been by a few months before and met my wife," Henry said. "Now I ain't sayin' he was just looking at her. I mean, he 'bout fell over when she come out the back of the store carryin' a sack of feed. He said something kinda off-color about her backside. And I tole him if he done that again, I was gonna beat him in the head.

"Well he jes' laugh and laugh about that; thought it real funny I say that. And soon as he started playin' later that night, he started to sing to her. So now I was mad and told her to go home. She patted my hand and left. And so did Bob, a little later.

"When I come home from the juke, I heard the back door slam and seen her button up the front of her dress. She deny it was him, but I knew."

"So when did you see him next?" Nick asked, the words circling in the rotted cottage as unreal as the grainy images from a World War II newsreel. But, somehow, he believed it. Somehow it all made sense. The rain patted the house hard now, and the thunder shook every loose dish inside the cracking wood frame.

"Before he come back that summer, a man come lookin' for him," Henry continued. "Fat white man in a long black Buick, had this little albino boy come with him, carryin' a bottle of whiskey for him like a little slave or somethin'. He told me he was from Texas and lookin' for a man name Johnson. Then he told me he play the guitar and say what he look like. Say he had this lazy left eye that he kept a tipped hat pulled over."

The bitter whiskey made the acidic bile rise in Nick's throat. He coughed, watching Henry's gray eyes stare into the equally gray rain through the rusted screen door.

"When I heard he was playin' down the highway, I knew he was comin' back. First thing I done is go into Greenwood and send a Western Union message to that fat man."

A truck without a muffler rattled by the house, and the smell of burnt beans grew stronger. Henry got up and turned the burner down under a flowered metal pot.

"Fat man's name was Devlin," Henry said, leaning into his kitchen sink, looking deep into the drain and rubbing the stubble on his chin. "Said Johnson stole somethin' that was his. He gave me twenty dollars for sendin' the message when he came the next day. Said he wanted to teach Johnson a lesson and ask me to give him a bottle of whiskey."

Another rumble of thunder rattled the whole house and a coffee cup fell to the floor, shattering. Henry opened the screen door and looked out to the Mississippi.

"Later that night, I picked him up outside Greenwood. His suit that was always so neat, it was all covered in dust like he just hopped off a train or somethin'. When we got to the juke, I served him a drink, ask him 'bout his records, and how fine he was doin'. He jes' stared down at the bar, like he didn't care nothin' 'bout talkin', and walked out."

Henry stepped outside, the rain covering his black face, like a drunk man put under a cold shower. Nick followed him and put his hand on Henry's upper arm. Henry jerked away like an angry child and walked out into his yard.

"I didn't mean fo' all that to happen. When Johnson come back, he jes sat in the corner of the juke, arms folded 'round his guitar. I knew what that white man done. Johnson had a ash face like a corpse. He was dead already and knew it. Kept on mutterin' that the devil comin' for him, time to give his soul and all that crazy mess. He stayed for a while until his partner, man named Honeyboy, come along and see he wasn't jes' drunk. Two fellas put him in back of a flatbed truck, and I ain't never saw him again. I kilt him though; weren't for me, that fat white bastard wouldn't know where he been at."

"You didn't kill him," Nick said.

"I kilt him! I kilt the greatest blues player ever lived over a woman who left me six months later for a sour-faced preacher who peed on hisself during Baptist revivals."

"Did Cracker know all this?"

"Me and Cracker's sin is a whole 'nother story."

"You got to understand the mess we was in at the time. A black man that kilt a white man might not see the dawn's light. We jes waited there for some white men to bust in the door and string a noose 'round our necks. But they didn't. The corn whiskey stopped tappin' on the floor and I looked down at that whiskey and white man's blood mixing. It kinda was washin' it away. And I knew what we had to do.

"I told Cracker to get off his knees and clean the man's blood up. And I knew if we dug a grave, it might make people nervous, so I found a real good spot for the fat man. Problem was that he was so wide it took most of the night to wedge him in there. And then right as the dawn was comin' round through the window, me and Cracker took that long black Buick to a deep part of the Yazoo River and let it slide on in."

"And you told Baker everything?" Nick asked.

"He started comin' 'round early this year, askin' me if I knew Robert Johnson. He knew who I was. He wanted to know why I'd changed my name. What it was all about. I guess I got weak. Told him the same thing I jes told you. I guess it somethin' with bein' old and wantin' to confess yo' sins."

"And he went looking for Cracker?"

"Yeah. He say Robert Johnson died about the same time this record producer name Devlin went missin'. Say Devlin might have been the las' person to make records with Bob."

"What'd you tell him?"

"Said I didn't know nothin' 'bout some lost Robert Johnson records."

"Do you?"

"Man had some recordings on 'im. But I'm gonna tell you the same thing I tole that man. Nothin'. What's buried is gone. Even when that man tried to close down JoJo's if I didn't tell, it didn't make no difference. You ain't cuttin' into my soul no more. Please just go."

The black clouds had blown over Orleans Parish. Broken shafts of bright yellow sunlight broke through curtained gray clouds like an image from a religious postcard. The rust on the Greater New Orleans Bridge looked almost purple in the splotched light as Nick drove back into the city.

It was exhausting to come back into the later century after hearing Henry's story. But Nick didn't feel superior after hearing a tale told by a man partially responsible for his hero's death. Just sad and tired. What a waste of two lives. Earl Snooks had essentially died a short time after Robert Johnson, his ghost still reaching out after all these years.

There was such an abrupt end to a man who saw beauty in rugged images. Hard, simple words that brought a clarity, color, and feeling to a specific moment, concentrated like only the best poets could write:

When the train, it left the station

with two lights on behind

Well, the blue light was my blues

and the red light was my mind

All my love's in vain.

Nick exited off Camp Street, then took a left on Julia down to the warehouse and reality. He could see the lights were on in the second floor as he drove into the garage that had once served as a loading dock for lumber. For a moment, he just sat in there and stared at the broken patterns in the brick. He shut off the ignition and walked upstairs.

The front door and the sliding door to his apartment were unlocked. A sad Little Walter tune played low and scratchy on the turntable.

Nick opened the refrigerator and grabbed a half of a po' boy from earlier and a cold Dixie. As he was about to put on some shorts and running shoes for a jog, he noticed a handwritten note placed on his kitchen counter. "Had to get out for a while," Virginia wrote. "Going for a walk in Audubon Park. Be back in a couple of hours."

Nick grabbed his keys and ran back down the metal stairs. Little Walter's voice and harp played distorted and burned-out under the needle.

The Cadillac fish-tailed as Nick turned onto a partially flooded St. Charles Avenue. He darted through traffic like a scared dog, in and around. He passed a streetcar headed in the same direction. The antebellum and Victorian homes whizzed past in his peripheral vision.

Nick slammed on his brakes and almost ran over a city worker in a yellow slicker holding up a caution sign while another man filled a pothole. He drove over the streetcar's neutral ground and headed against traffic, as swerving cars blared their horns.

Cruz had been watching him and knew about Virginia. After the fight at the Blues Shack today, everything was out. No more coy games. No hidden agendas. All the bullshit was gone. This was their chance to grab something he cared about and give them an advantage. He was too damn worried about getting the records, so damned wrapped up in the life of a dead man, that he didn't even watch out for Virginia.

It was like him to keep himself in the past so much that he completely blocked out the present.

He passed the construction and weaved back over into the right lane. Son of a bitch, they'd been following him, and he hadn't even noticed. Probably led them right to Earl Snooks. Goddamn that was soft. He didn't take a single precaution for her safety, just skipped around after three men were killed like they couldn't touch him. A tight lump arched in his throat as his mind raced with horrific thoughts of what twisted minds could do to a beautiful young woman.

Jesse tickled his arm lightly as he followed the path behind the redhead. The light rain must've driven everybody out of the park. There was just the sound of patting water dimpling little puddles and cicadas grating all around. Jesse stopped as Virginia watched two squirrels tumbling over each other on a putting green as flat and soft as velvet. To the left was a long, flat lagoon.

This place sure was weird. All those twisted trees like they had been here since before Jesus or something. It was damned awesome. After he got what he wanted and killed the woman, maybe he'd take Inga back here.

Maybe they could screw monkey-style high in those old trees. Yeah, they'd climb up there naked, and people passing by wouldn't even know what they were doin'. They'd keep quiet. He'd be like a damn ole Tarzan wild man.

When he turned back on the path, he saw the redheaded woman stare at his hard-on like he was crazy.

Nick stopped the car at Tulane and ran across the street, leaving the engine running and the keys in the ignition. He jumped over the stone fence and shouted Virginia's name. The late-day sun heated the pools of water, making steam rise off sidewalks.

There was a mother pushing a stroller of twins and a couple of college girls jogging. No one was on the golf course, and the rest of the park was empty except for a derelict inside a brick gazebo.