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 him 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.

Then I seent that blue pickup again, and an ugly white face with oily hair come out the shade of the cab and squinted at our car, then faded back inside. The pickup went down the street.

After we got us some cash, we headed in from the sun and got a couple beers.

“You see that truck fulla crackers?” I asked Yeller.

He hadn’t.

We was full of beer and big dreams when we headed outta Ruleville. I kept on lookin’ for that pickup in the rearview, but I didn’t see it. I knew sometime the real bad whites cruised the black parts of town lookin’ for outta state tags. That meant what they called agitators, what they figured was uppity niggers come on down to stir up ‘good’ black folks.

I parked by Dockery in the shade and we napped till round ‘bout eleven, then I took Yeller out to the crossroads.

* * * *

They was a row of power lines stretched out against the sky, and one of the old trees was gone, but them same cotton fields stretched way out across the dark land, and them dirt roads cuttin’ through ‘em was just the same. Them fuzzy white bolls was nearly ready and they was a warm night wind rustlin’ through ‘em, makin’ ‘em sway like church folks. The fields looked crowded with ghosts, which I guess they was, if you think ‘bout how many years all the black folks poured they blood and sweat into that crop. Probably they poor, dumb ghosts just go on draggin’ them long sacks through the rows, not knowin’ the season in that gray shadow land.

We walked out into the middle of the crossroads, and that’s when I slapped my leg.

“Goddammit.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Aww, we forgot to get us a pullet,” I said. The beer and pigmeat and that hot afternoon nap had drove it straight out my mind. “We ain’t got no blood to spill.”

Yeller looked at me and I could see the moon in his eyes.

“That ain’t so, Harp.” He moved closer to me.

That’s when the bright lights come on like we’d surprised the ol’ sun in his bed and he’d thrown back the sheet. Not one, but two shadow men stepped out.

“What say, boys?” said a voice, in that slow backwoods drawl that make a black man freeze.

I didn’t need to see the color of that truck behind them whose headlights was shinin’ on us to know it was a blue Chevy.

The .44 was in the glove box back in the Catalina. Maybe Yeller had his old pocketknife he’d been usin’ as a slide on the National, but I didn’t have nothin’ but my fists in my pockets. I got to feelin’ a cold sweat under my scalp and it run down my neck when I seent the long somethin’ each of ‘em had in they hands. Axe handles, maybe shotguns.

“What you boys doin’ out here so late?” the man asked.

“Nothin’, sir,” I said. “Just out walkin’.”

“You two sweethearts?”

“We ain’t the ones parked out by the side of the road in the dark,” said Yeller.

I hissed him quiet.

“Where you from, boy?” the man said to Yeller, the meanness fairly bubblin’ up in his throat.

“Chicago.”

“I told you he wasn’t one of our niggers, Boyd.”

“I had him pegged for a Kansas City pimp with them clown clothes he’s got on,” said Boyd.

“That a guitar, boy?” said the first man.

Yeller didn’t say nothing. It was plain what it was.

“Pick us out a song,” said the first man. Then he turned to me. The moon was shinin’ on his hair grease and the shotgun I seent in his hand. “And you, you gonna dance for us. No fancy nigger dance. Just let’s see an old time shuffle.”

Yeller put hands to his strings and began to strum out Dixie. I had been in this kinda situation before. They wasn’t nothin’ to do but pick up my knees like he said.

“You are murderin’ that song, ain’t you, boy?”

Boyd walked up next to his buddy and passed him a glass bottle of something that smelled like it ought to be in the Catalina’s tank.

“I told you a nigger can’t play Dixie,” said Boyd.

“Well, he’s a bluesman. Ain’t that right? Ain’t that why you’re out here? Come to the crossroads to make your deal?” said the first man. “I guess niggers in the north is just as spooky as they are down here. Listen here, boy. Only devil you’re gonna find tonight’s right here in front of you.”

He was steppin’ closer to Yeller while he said this, and he poked Yeller’s National with the end of a shotgun.

Yeller nearly dropped the guitar, and when he stooped to catch it up, he all of a sudden let out a crazy yell and brought it up fast by the neck. The steel body caught that white boy full on the jaw and put him on his back. Yeller didn’t waste no time, but put his foot on the shotgun and fell to beatin’ that cracker’s head in. Every hit made that National twang and echo. It was the sweetest music I ever heard.

Boyd went to help out his buddy, but I threw my fist into his gut, heard the wind come outta him in one big hush. He dropped what he had in his hand, just a baseball bat. I kicked him in the balls and started stompin’ on his back.

He cried and called to Jesus and said he couldn’t breathe. I felt his ribs cave in. I knew we was goin’ wind up lynched for it, but it felt good.

Yeller come up next to me and in the light of them headlights I seent his National was dented up bad and covered in blood. The chords was sprung and curled all over like a madwoman’s hair. He had blood on his shirt and his hands.

His eyes was dead serious and he kicked Boyd over on his back. I could see his chest swellin’ and fallin’. He was the one I seent look out of the truck cab earlier that day.

“Whatchoo waitin’ on, Harp? Finish this bitch off.”

I backed away, my limbs all shakin’.

“You ain’t never kill nobody?”

“Naw.”

“S’awright, brother,” he said, patting my shoulder. “I got this.”

Boyd was moanin’ and whinin’ like a kid.

I backed away. Yeller lifted up the guitar over his head in both hands like a caveman and he brang it down on Boyd’s face.

That same second, the headlights went out. I guess the battery had died on the Chevy. I heard what happened to Boyd though, felt it, wet on my shoes.

It was dark out in that road. The moon had got behind a black cloud, and lookin’ up at the sky, I couldn’t see the stars. Now that is peculiar on a Delta night.

We heard this pipin’ in the night, like a flute playin’, or maybe it was just the wind blowin’ through some reeds in the ditch.

They was somethin’ else standin’ in the road. I seent it, or the shape of it, behind Yeller, and I give out a yell, ‘cause what I seen didn’t make no sense. It was like a bush had sprung up in the road, but it moved, and not random, like a blowin’ bush will do. Every part of it breathed and twisted on its own, like droopin’ willow branches if they was to come alive, or a nest of black snakes. They was a shine among all that mess, too, like teeth, or eyes, or both.

In that minute Yeller spun, all them movin’ shadows sort of snapped into place like a shape out the corner of your eye, and a thin, dark man stood there. You couldn’t see his face, or his clothes, just his outline.

“Hit ‘im, Yeller!” I shrieked.

Yeller pulled back to swing, but then he lowered his busted guitar and shook his head.

“You him, ain’t you?” Yeller whispered.

The shadow man dipped his chin.

Yeller giggled like a kid at Christmas and looked back at me, eyes bugging.

“God-damn! You wasn’t lyin’, Harp!” he said. “This the man hisself!”

He turned back to the shadow man, and I looked around for that shotgun. But it was no use. It was too powerful dark in the road.

“Well, Mr. Nick, I’s here. King Yeller’s what they call me,” he said, slappin’ his chest, “and I done paid your price double. I ‘spect that ought to cover my friend here.” He looked back at me, and even though I couldn’t see ‘em, I could feel that shadow man’s eyes on me over Yeller’s shoulder.

I nearly fell over Boyd’s body backin’ away.

“Nossir, I didn’t take no hand in this. It wouldn’t be right.”

Yeller looked disappointed, maybe a little scared. “Well, your loss, cuz.”

He turned back to the shadow man.

“Awright, Scratch. Whatchoo say? You give me credit? Double the ante, double the pot.”

The shadow man didn’t say a word.

“I’m gonna need a new guitar,” Yeller said, holdin’ up his bloody National.

The shadow man reached out and took the guitar from Yeller. He run his black fingers up and down the neck, and pretty soon a sound come out of it, a crazy, distorted rift, like a hunnerd guitars playin’ at once–not the kinda sound you could tickle out no busted guitar.

“Tha’s a swell trick,” said Yeller. His voice was crackin’. He took out a shaky Kool and lit one, and in that minute I seent the shadow man’s face in fire. He wasn’t white, but he wasn’t no black man neither. All I got a good look at was his bald head and them big black eyes, sort of foreign lookin’. My daddy thought the picture show was godless, but one time when I was eleven, he took me to the Walthall in Greenwood to see The Ten Commandments. The shadow man’s eyes was just like the pharaoh’s in that movie.

The shadow man turned and walked off the road with Yeller’s guitar, crankin’ out them weird, lonesome sounds.

Yeller looked back at me.

“Don’t go with him, Yeller,” I just ‘bout begged.

“Be right back,” he promised, tiltin’ his hat over his eyes, grinnin’.

He went off with the shadow man. They went down the ditch and off into the cotton. That music echoed all up and down that black road and put a harrow in my heart. It made me feel like the dark sky was a mouth comin’ to close on the earth, like we was all ‘bout to be chewed up and swallowed into some cold, deep place worse than hell, some place even the angels wouldn’t go.

It got so bad I fell down on my knees and pressed my hands hard to my ears. I cried there, real, gushin’ tears. I felt so lonely, like that patch of dirt road beneath me was the only piece of land there was left, and I was fallin’ down a deep hole with no walls or bottom to be seent. I couldn’t summon no prayers.

I don’t know how long I knelt there, but all of a sudden the pickup’s headlights come back on, bright. I brushed my eyes and stood up, blind, still afraid.

Yeller was standin’ at the edge of the light. The stars was out again and the moon was bright over his head, as if they’d all been hidin’ from the shadow man. The moonlight was gleamin’ kinda green on the face of Yeller’s National.

Yeller’s eyes was half closed and he was shinin’ all over with sweat. He looked like a horse addict. That rascal light was gone from him.

“Let’s get outta here, Harp,” he said, and he went to where the Catalina was.

“What ‘bout these…,” I started to say ‘peckerwoods,’ but when I looked, they wasn’t no bodies in the road, just a couple butter yellow and black burn marks. They was a smell in the air like to make me sick, like a open sewer stuffed with dead dogs. I followed him to the car.

* * * *

Yeller’s fingers wouldn’t leave his National alone the whole ride back. The sounds comin’ out of it was like slippery chain lightnin’. I never heard nobody play a guitar like he did the ride back to Ruleville. The shadow man had made him natural born. He didn’t say a word, just stared at the white line of the road as the car sucked it outta the dark ahead.

I noticed they was somethin’ different ‘bout his guitar, too. The tunin’ knobs had been chewed by mice, he told me, but they looked brand new now. They wasn’t a mark of rust or tarnish now either, and the steel felt strange. It was warm to the touch, and they was trace marks all over the backside, so faint you could only see ‘em close. They was shapes, or pictures, but of what I couldn’t say. Animals, or fish maybe, but none I could place. I didn’t like ‘em.

* * * *

We stayed at a flophouse, and the next mornin’, and every mornin’ for the next week, Yeller went out to Greasy Street and cut heads. This time wasn’t nobody in sight that didn’t come over to hear him play, and some even come down outta the shops and the houses to listen. It got to be so’s nobody else played when Yeller was on the scene.

At night, we went from juke to juke. Yeller brought ‘em in like the Pied Piper. He played the Flowerin’ Fountain, Po Monkey’s, Red’s, JJ’s…we drove all over the Delta, and folks lined up outside to see him. He really lit them up, too. The belly rubbin’, the howlin’, it was on whenever Yeller played. Some said Robert Johnson had beat the devil and come back. They was a fight without fail anytime he played. Sometimes it would get real bad. I seent a man cut up his woman’s face with a razor at one show. Once, two men shot each other dead, right in the street out front.

Yeller never said nothin’ ‘bout this. They wasn’t no joy in him no more. He hardly ever smiled, an’ never sang out to no girls, though they did they best to get him to notice. He drank a lot, and when his set was up, all he wanted to do was hit the road.

His songs got strange too. Space Dog Blues, House Underwater, Black Goat Blues, they was all ‘bout darkness and dyin’ alone. Sometimes I didn’t even know what they was ‘bout, he jumbled up his words so bad. Nobody cared. It was that sound they loved.

I ‘member he did one called Cut Through You Sleepin’. I think it was ‘bout a man killin’ his woman in bed. The only words I could make out was:

What ain’t dead can keep a’layin’ – yas,

And come the judgment day even death might pass.

He’d always finish it with this sound, halfway between a sneeze and one of them Cuban big band shouts. F’uagh, or f’tagh.

Yeller hardly talked. After shows, he’d just set on the edge of his bed with a whiskey and drink, starin’ out the window till he passed out. He slept all day and I had to tell him to eat.

Then white men started showin’ up to his shows. They’d ask him if he never thought ‘bout recordin’. I know that’s what he wanted, but weeks went by of that and he always said no.

He might’ve been the biggest they ever was. Might’ve even saved the blues from them damn Beatles, ‘cept for The Crawlin’ Chaos Blues.

* * * *

One Friday night outside of Clarkesdale, I asked him when he planned on layin’ tracks, and did he want to go back to Chicago, maybe see if he could get a deal with Chess Records.

He looked at me with them spacey, scarecrow eyes, and he said, “How come you never asked me ‘bout the shadow man, Harp?”

I told him I didn’t want to talk ‘bout that. I didn’t like to remember it.

“You can see what he done for me, can’t you?” said Yeller. “You ain’t never asked me what I paid him.”

“I know what you paid,” I said, meanin’ the two white boys.

“No, you don’t,” he said.

“He ask for your soul?”

“My soul…I wish I had one. He ain’t the devil, Harp. Maybe they ain’t no devil. He showed me things. Things ain’t nobody got no business knowin’. You know, I wanted this so bad, I was goin’ to kill you that night. I thought I wanted more than chicken blood woulda got me, you know?”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

He was quiet, and he drank, then he said, “He took somethin’ from me I can’t never get back. He gimme what I need to be great, but I can’t.”

“Whatchoo mean?”

“Say a man build you a house, but he leave the roof off, and he tell you if you put one up yourself, the whole thing goin’ fall down on your head while you sleepin’. Whatchoo got, then? When the rain come, whatchoo got?”

I still didn’t know what he was talkin’ ‘bout, and he could see.

“Look. The shadow man put all these songs in my head, but then he gimme one song,” and he closed his eyes and smiled just a little, like he was thinkin’ of somethin’ sweet, “the best song anybody ever heard.” Then he opened his eyes, and that dead look come back, like happiness had excused hisself and got off at the last stop and misery just sat back down. “He tell me I ever play it, I’m goin’ lose everythin’. That song’s curled up in the back of my head like a snake, all the time. Even when I’m up there playin’ and singin’, that song’s what I’m thinkin’ of. Everythin’ else just sounds like shit.”

Tears come out his eyes then and he started tremblin’ all over.

“I can’t never be happy, Harp!” he wailed. “I can’t find no peace! I just wants to die! Don’t nothin’ mean nothin’ for me no more!”

I took the .44 out the glove box that night and kept it with me from then on.

* * * *

Next day, I took him to play at Sink City on Route 49 between Drew and Jaquith. We stopped at a drug store in Dwiggins and I bought me a pair of clay earplugs. Don’t know what made me do it.

Sink City was one of them deep country jukes, not much more than a shack, tin roof, spray painted sign, and grass for parkin’. It was situated in a field so’s the farmers could walk to it and ventilate after a long week. They wasn’t nothin’ around. In them last days, seemed like Yeller would pick the most backwoods place he could find, like he didn’t want nobody to hear him. Word traveled fast, and they didn’t meet him there, they beat him there. The field was full of cars, and seemed like the sides of the juke was swellin’ from all the folks packed inside.

The place had blue walls, I ‘member, painted with big tittied black mermaids, squids, and starfish. The ceilin’ was hung with Christmas lights, and it sagged real bad.

They was a smell of fryin’ catfish from the kitchen, and an old rawboned woman dished out greasy sandwiches till Yeller got to the stage. Ever’body slapped his back and whistled him up. He was a million miles from Silvio’s.

He sat down on the little stool and commenced to playin’ without a word, let the piano man and the drummer catch up. He played the old songs till people got to yellin’ for some of his own. Then he did that song I’d heard him do at Silvio’s, Damn Fool Woman, but some drunk fool yelled for Cut Through You Sleepin’ through most of it, and Yeller finally went into it. That got the place really sweatin’ and beatin’ on the tables.

They was somethin’ ‘bout them songs that got under your skin. They made the mens holler and the womens shake, got the couples slow draggin’ till they was fit to do the deed right there on the floor. I dunno what it was. I done said already how a fight always broke out.

When he’d played ‘em all, they hollered for more.

Yeller sat there listenin’ to them, his face just as dead as could be. I dunno what he was thinkin’. Then his eyes found mine in the crowd and he nodded at me and said into the mic, “Y’all wanna hear somethin’ you ain’t never heard before?”

The crowd hooted and shouted that they did.

I got a cold sweat and I shoved them clay plugs in my ears just as far as they would go.

The last thing I heard him say was, “This hear’s The Crawlin’ Chaos Blues.”

It was the tune he told me ‘bout, I knew. Maybe it was the one I heard the shadow man playin’ when he led Yeller out into the cotton field. Whatever it was, the people stopped still as Catholics when he started. I know they was words, ‘cause I seent his mouth movin’. He didn’t look out at ‘em whilst he sang, just stared at the floor. His fingers was a blur on the National and I could feel them deep chords in my chest, see his foot stompin’.

Then all hell broke loose.

The people on the floor commenced to dancin’, but wasn’t nothin’ held back. The mens tore they womens’ dresses to the skin, and the womens did the same to the mens’. Folks at the tables fell on each other in the same way. I had to push a big old girl offa me and shove my way to the front door. Time I got there, my shirt was rags. People was rollin’ on the floor and on the bar top like honeymooners. It was crazy.

I seent women clawin’ at the shoulders and backs of they mens, ploughin’ red lines all in they flesh with they fingernails. I heard a couple of loud pops then, made me jump near out my skin, and then I seent what they was. A woman took a pistol out her man’s waistband, even as he was givin’ her the business. She put the barrel in between his teeth and blew the back of his head wide open. I seent the blood splash all over her chest. He was dead, but his body kept movin’ between her legs like a prayin’ mantis. She put the gun up under her own chin then and drove her brains up on the ceilin’. Nobody took no notice.

They was busy doin’ they own things. Things I can’t hardly think on. If hell ever been on earth, if anybody ever laid eyes on pure, unnatural sin, it was there and it was me. I seent a man stranglin’ his woman whilst she tore his eyebrow off with her teeth. They was both of ‘em grinnin’ and laughin’. The owner held the old woman’s head down in the bubblin’ fryer grease whilst he hiked up her skirt, his eyes buggin’ out of his head and mad dog foam runnin’ all down his chin. His throat was cut and they was a bloody razor in the old woman’s hand. Another man charged at the bar like a bull, rammed his head into it, got back up, did it again. Blood was drippin’ down his nose. A gal near me tore her own hair out in clumps.

They was blood ever’where. The whole crowd was rippin’ and tearin’ into each other, limbs twistin’, heads flung back, wailin’ and grinnin’, teeth bloody. I seent a beatin’ heart go floppin’ across the stage, leavin’ spots of blood behind where it bounced.

Yeller just kept on lookin’ into nothin’ and singin’ that song from hell. The drummer had the piano player against the ivories; he was pushin’ his drumsticks in his eyes. The National was gleamin’ green and gold, and for a minute I swear I seent the shadow man’s snaky octopus arms curlin’ ‘round Yeller’s body, ‘round his neck and his ankles, drankin’ him in, drankin’ all of it in, like the sawdust on the floor was drankin’ up the blood. I seent the grinnin’ shadow man hisself risin’ up behind him, them Pharaoh eyes lookin’ across all that tearin’ flesh right into my soul.

I threw open the door to run, but they wasn’t nowhere to go. Instead of the field of cars and old Route 49, I swear they was nothin’ out there – nothin’ but a swirlin’ tornado blackness. If I’d a stepped outside, I felt I would’ve fallen forever.

I had the .44 and I pulled it. I don’t know for sure if I aimed for him or not, but I didn’t stop squeezin’ that trigger. I seent men and women go down from my bullets. They blowed a path to the stage, and when I had shot six, Yeller was lyin’ on his back with the National across his chest and the shadow man was gone. The liquor caught fire behind the bar, I don’t know how. But the way that little juke was built I knew it was goin’ up. When I looked back outside, the field and the cars was there again, so I run.

I found the Catalina and I got inside and got it movin’. I smashed into parked cars left and right tearin’ outta there. I didn’t care. Some people come runnin’ out, some of ‘em on fire. I seent ‘em in my mirrors, but I was like Lot. I didn’t stop till I left that dirt road behind and hit 49.

I drove till that burnin’ juke wasn’t nothin’ but a speck of starlight in the Mississippi black behind me. Then I couldn’t see it no more.

The highway patrol caught me doin’ ninety-five through Clarksdale, and finally knocked me offa DeSoto Ave, sent the Catalina rollin’ into a ditch. It was the only way they could’ve got me to stop. I couldn’t even hear the sirens with the earplugs. I was laughin’ when they pulled me out.

When I got out the hospital, I stood trial, but didn’t nobody bring up Sink City. On account of I had hauled ass through a white part of town and wrecked a couple of old money cars, I got the choice of goin’ to the pen or Vietnam. Three years later, I lost my leg to a different kinda Mister Charlie at Dak To.

I get to thinkin’ how things played out, and I think on Yeller and Uncle Luke, and even Robert Johnson, how they all made the deal and how they all was murdered short of gettin’ big. I wonder ‘bout how folks is moved and played like checkers by powers maybe we ain’t s’posed to see, and I wonder if Daddy and I maybe played the same part. Maybe Uncle Luke didn’t get his throat cut over no woman and maybe it wasn’t no accident I brang the .44 and them earplugs into the Sink City that night.

Even now, when I got the choice between dwellin’ on the jungle and that little Delta juke joint in the night, I chooses the ‘Nam every time.

Every time.

About the Author:

A sometime contributor to Star Wars canon, Edward M. Erdelac’s work has also seen print in Murky Depths magazine and The Midnight Diner, among others. He is an award-winning screenwriter and an independent filmmaker. Born in Indiana, educated in Chicago, he lives with his family in the Los Angeles area, and can be found putzing about the web on Facebook or his blog at http://emerdelac.wordpress.com/

Also from Ed Erdelac:
Merkabah Rider
Tales of a High Planes Drifter
by Edward M. Erdelac

eBook ISBN: 9781615720613
Print ISBN: 9781615720606

Horror Western Paranormal
Novel of 84,630 words

The last of an ancient order of Jewish mystics capable of extraplanar travel, The Merkabah Rider roams a demon haunted American West in search of his renegade teacher. But as the trail grows fresher, shadows gather, and The Hour Of The Incursion draws near… Four novella episodes in one book. This ain’t your grandpappy’s old west.

Merkabah Rider 2
The Mensch With No Name
by Edward M. Erdelac

eBook ISBN: 9781615721894
Print ISBN: 9781615721900

Horror Western Paranormal
Novel of 88,528 words

The Merkabah Rider continues his journey across the American Southwest of 1880 in search of the renegade teacher who destroyed his mystic Jewish order in the 2nd volume of this acclaimed weird western series. As the Rider unravels more of the mystery of the Hour of the Incursion, demons are the least of his troubles.

Also from Ed Erdelac:

Dubaku
by Edward M. Erdelac

eBook ISBN: 9781615720248
Print ISBN: 9781615720231

Horror
Novella of 14,903 words

In 1760, somewhere near the Bight Of Benin, an African shaman belonging to an obscure interior tribe surrenders himself willingly to an English slaving expedition. This man, Dubaku, has come in search of his wife, abducted and sold to another party of whites. Not knowing one ship from another, Dubaku boards the slaver hoping to find her. The captain, a cruel and careless man named Bryce, mistrusts him immediately, and when a rampant sickness takes its toll on the superstitious crew and their human cargo midway through the voyage to Jamaica, Bryce decides to offer up Dubaku as their Jonah. After a violent squall drowns the entire compliment of would-be slaves, Dubaku calls upon dark and terrible powers to enact a fitting vengeance on Captain Bryce and his men.