Novel Treatments / American Blues Ch. 16: Journey to the Delta
Will pushed the brim of his hat back and squirmed to find a comfortable position on the scarred wooden bench. Rested his left foot across his knee and used a discarded matchbook to scrape off a gray wad of gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe. The air, close and pungent with bus fumes, made his nose itch and eyes water. Sweat ran down his back and dampened the spot where his shirt pressed against the seatback.
A layer of lost hope and apathy hung in the air of the Memphis Greyhound station like a fog. The green linoleum floor carried a coating of grime as ancient as the wooden benches. Fluorescent lights flickered high overhead. A large woman wearing purple stretch pants and an Elvis tee-shirt shuffled by in tattered house-slippers. A dried-up man with a graying untrimmed beard, a well-worn straw cowboy hat on his head, stuffed a duffel bag into one of the pay lockers along the wall.
When he realized Kate had left without him, Will decided staying in Memphis was probably not a good idea. He packed his bag, took a taxi to the bus station, and bought a one-way ticket to Clarksdale, Mississippi. Now he sat waiting for the Greyhound that would take him into the Delta, a trip he saw as a cross between going into enemy territory and a religious pilgrimage.
The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta covered the northwestern quadrant of Mississippi and good sections of Louisiana and Arkansas as well. The abundant soil—in some places hundreds of feet deep—was laid down by centuries of annual overflow by the Mississippi and tributaries such as the Yazoo. It was quite simply the richest cotton-growing land in the world. Once home to hundreds of thousands of slaves turned sharecroppers after the war, the Delta in 1990, was agriculturally, historically, and culturally fertile, but an economic wasteland to the predominantly black population. The blues was born in the Delta.
Will had passed through the Delta on the train going north to Chicago when he was just nineteen, and then again going south when he returned home less than a year later to bury his father. During his years on the road, he played in little clubs and juke joints in many of the towns scattered across the Delta; Clarksdale, Merigold, Tutwiler, Greenwood, and others. And though he’d never lived there, he felt a deep connection to the land and the people. The two had spawned the music of his soul.
The growl of a bus engine and hiss of compressed air broke through his thoughts. He looked around. A bus station was also fertile territory for the blues.
He had no idea if Kate had gone back to Chicago or down into Mississippi. Probably headed back home since she had no real business or destination in Mississippi without him. He kept thinking maybe she was just trying to teach him a lesson. That she’d pull up, leave the black Camaro purring at the curb, and come striding through the door. A bleating bus horn and raspy intercom announced the arrival of the bus to Clarksdale and the departure of that fantasy.
It took the driver a good twenty minutes to get the bus out of downtown and onto route 61 heading south. Within a few miles, the surrounding tree-covered hills gave way to open flat land as far as the eye could see.
Will sat on the right, towards the back. Had the row to himself. He cracked the sliding window to the warm, wet air. It felt good on his face and the smell of it, ripe and clean, sent him thirty years back in time. He smiled and exhaled a breath he’d been holding for decades.
He gazed out at the endless rows of calf-high green plants running straight as train rails to the horizon where distant lines of trees limned the fields. Some rows ran diagonally from the road, their lines ending to butt along the length of those in a neighboring field. Fragile white and purple blossoms dotted each bush. Cotton—Delta gold. Other fields held head-high corn stalks, and still others were surrounded by low dams to keep water soaking the grassy rice plants.
Will watched an old red pickup truck turn off in front of them. He followed its progress along the dirt road by the plume of dust kicked up and hanging in the air like the contrail of a ground-level jet. He looked out across a field of cotton to where a line of rusting orange cotton wagons stood waiting for someone to find a use for them. A cotton gin, including a large warehouse and a two-story-high pile of cotton seeds, dark and oily, came next. Then oversized tillers and picking machines, the tillers done for the year, the picking machines ready to be moved into place for the harvest in a few months.
He thought of the time when the work of those machines had been done by hundreds of thousands of black people. Aching, back breaking work done for twelve to fourteen hours a day, six—sometimes seven—days a week. Work performed for a pittance. A pittance those people often didn’t see until the crop was in and sold. Sometimes not even then. He thanked god he’d never had to pick cotton. He knew a lot of guys up in Chicago who had, including some of the best and most famous bluesmen in the world.
Will took a deep breath and thought he caught another smell playing beneath that of the rich, dark Delta dirt. Never within site, the great river was never far away.
Something about the Delta made Will feel isolated from the rest of the world. Like he’d traveled back in time and to another land. His reason for the trip seemed remote, unreal. Right now, this land where the music he loved had sprouted and grown in the soil of people’s pain, watered by their blood and sweat—this was real.
Will’s head flopped forward, jerking him awake from a shallow sleep. The bus slowed to a stop with squeaking springs and the hiss of brakes. A blue and white sign sticking out from the corner of a yellow brick building showed the outline of a racing greyhound and the word “BUS” in large letters. Along the side of the building another sign read “Clarksdale, Mississippi Greyhound Depot.”
He retrieved his suitcase and guitar, asked a young boy riding by on a bike for directions to the Riverside, and started walking. Sweat poured down his face and back as he plodded along weighed down by his belongings. Here, along the route 61 bypass, the sweet smell of rich soil from the cotton fields could not compete with that of sun-baked asphalt and car exhaust, and the odor of grinding poverty.
At Sunflower Avenue he turned right and walked past a handful of rundown shotgun houses. He stopped in front of the low red brick building with a sign reading “Home of the Delta Blues” and “Riverside Hotel” beneath.
The Riverside was famous for two things. It had housed dozens of world-famous bluesman over the years and, back in the days when it was a black hospital, Bessie Smith had died there after reportedly being turned away at a white hospital. Will had stayed there himself many times in the old days. Seeing it now, brought the memories tumbling back. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and walked up to the door.
He had to spend an hour reminiscing with the proprietor, who had owned the place for decades, before he escaped to his room. Once there he blasted the air conditioner, stripped off his sweat-clammy clothes, and then lingered in the luxury of a long cool shower in the communal bathroom.
Will stretched out on the bed and wondered again where Kate was. Maybe this is the way it was supposed to be—him on the road solo with plenty of time to think. He needed to plan his next move towards finding Purcell Slayton. Needed time to get used to the idea of being back home. What he didn’t need was a good-looking white woman complicating things. Yeah, it was better this way. The hum of the air conditioner transported him to a dreamless sleep.
He woke with a fuzzy head, unable at first to remember where he was. When he did, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat with his head in his hands, unaccountably low. Will thought he should be feeling the anticipation and excitement of being mere hours away from his destination.
But he didn’t. He felt lost and uncertain. Wondered if he’d made a big mistake.
Here he was, in one more crappy little room, in a depressing little town, heading to a place he’d sworn never to set foot in again. Will had left behind a good job and a woman who needed him—and her boys who needed him even more. Plus he’d managed to get stinking drunk, get a couple hundred dollars stolen, and lose a good friend.
He sighed and pushed up off the bed. Maybe some food would improve his mood.
When he came to the corner, Will eyed the single-story brick building across the street doubtfully. The scratched metal door stood flush with the sidewalk, and the ancient air-conditioner sticking out from a window opening threatened to topple from its perch. Along the top, outlining where they had protected the brick, evidence of long-gone letters spelled out “LaVene Music Center.” Beneath a tattered and bent white plastic awning, new letters, spray painted by hand, spelled out “Ruby’s” and “No Standin Outside” and “No Drugs.”
Like many of the other buildings in town it looked abandoned. Only the presence of a billow oil-drum smoker on the sidewalk in front of the building, and a white Chevy half-ton pickup and three cars parked on the street hinted at possible activity.
The door opened and Will heard Lightning Hopkins singing “Crawlin’ King Snake” coming from within. A solidly built black man with maple syrup skin and close-cropped hair showing a reddish tint, stepped out, stretched, and leaned on his elbows against the side of the truck bed. Baggy shorts, a tee-shirt, and flip-flops suited the early evening Delta heat. He looked over at Will, nodded, and took a drag off a cigarette.
“Y’all lookin’ for some blues?” the man said flicking ashes in the gutter at his feet and nodding at the guitar case in Will’s hand.
“Matter of fact, I am,” Will said, crossing the street to the man.
When he reached the sidewalk, Will stuck out his hand.
“Will Jones,” he said, “Guess this must be Ruby’s place. Don’t suppose you’re Ruby.”
“Ain’t no Ruby,” the man said, shaking Will’s hand, “I’m Red. Hadn’t got around to paintin’ a new sign. Might not bother. Folks know Ruby’s. Might stop comin’ if I change the name.”
“Got anybody playing tonight?” Will asked.
“Couple guys might stop by to jam. You any good?”
“Good enough.”
“Can’t pay you,” Red said.
“A plate of whatever’s cooking in that smoker is payment enough,” Will said, “That and whatever drops in the hat.”
Red looked at the half-smoked cigarette in his hand, shrugged his shoulders, and flipped the butt in an arc to the street.
“That’s fair,” he said. He reached for the door, then stopped and said, “But the peoples will let you know if you ain’t any good.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Dark and loud and small. A white guy with a grey ponytail and another wearing a black hat with a concho hat band sat at the bar. Lightning Hopkins had been replaced by Koko Taylor singing “Mother Nature.” Three very large, very dark women at a table toward the back were singing along with Koko and calling out words of encouragement.
“Sing it, KoKo.”
“You tell ‘em, girl.”
Glasses of pink-colored wine sat on their table. The women were undulating in their chairs, and at times one or the other would raised her hand in the air, swaying it back and forth as if testifying in church.
A pool table stood in the very back behind the women. To the left, stacks of amps and a mixing board marked the place where a band would set up. To the right ran the bar, behind which was a picture of a busty, light-skinned black woman eyeing a can of Colt 45 lustfully. Above their heads, a sheet of clear plastic, corners tacked to the ceiling, held a small puddle of water, the apparent remnants of the most recent rainfall.
Will had seen crummier little holes-in-the-wall serving as juke joints—but not many. Still, the air, stirred only by a couple ceiling fans, carried more than a hint of home. He’d been playing in places like this since his early teens.
“Got a damn good jukebox there,” Will said over the music as Howlin’ Wolf came on singing “Back Door Man.”
“Not as good as it was. That ass hole Ruby took all the best stuff when she split.”
Red pronounced it as if it were two distinct words, each receiving equal and definite emphasis as if he wanted the listener to think carefully about each one: ass, and hole. There was no doubt, if Red called someone an asshole, they must, indeed, be an asshole.
“What’d you do, buy her out?”
“Nope. She left me. Run off with some ass hole from down Greenville.”
“Hey, Denzel, baby.”
One of the women at the table was motioning in his direction. Will looked around.
“Denzel, baby.”
“Think that’s you. Looks like you got a fan club.” Red nodded in the direction of the table.
Will turned and saw a woman with blonde braided hair extensions and wearing a more-than-skin-tight pink dress that molded the rolls of her body. She was gesturing for him to come over.
“I’ll send out a posse in a couple hours,” Red said, laughing.
Will sat and talked with the women, flirting just enough to make each one feel special, but not so much as to create expectation. A talent he’d fine tuned in the early years of his career. At one point the one with the blonde braids got up and came back with a plate of food for him—chicken, ribs, potato salad, greens, and cornbread. One more thing that pulled him back to memories of home.
After eating, Will set up and started playing. Only half-a-dozen people in the place at first, but after an hour, Will looked around and realized the place was wall-to-wall people. Black and white, both. Not too many in their twenties or thirties. Wearing anything from shorts and tee-shirts to suits and sequin dresses.
A guy came in and sat down at the drum kit that was set up behind where Will stood. Later, when he was taking a break, another guy introduced himself as a base player, and he jumped in on the next set. Will had put his hat out on the floor in front of him and at one point Blond-Braids grabbed it and took it around the room cajoling people to cough up a dollar or two.
He wasn’t sure what time it was that a slim, pale figure in shorts and a tube top wriggled between the people to stand at the front of the crowd. But he knew when he saw Kate standing there smiling that he’d been fooling himself about things being better without her. And it scared him a little to realize how much his heart jumped at the sight of her.
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Clearly, you know your territory here. I’ve travelled to Mississippi, and you conjure it it up exactly – I can still smell that Delta mud, still feel that molasses-thick air, still hear that blues, blues like no other place on the planet. I can’t remember ther last time I read something so evocative, so descriptive, and so deceptively simply written. You have layers and layers of story here, you have atmosphere, you have something ever so slightly deeply disturbing bubbling around the edges, and I..want more, and I want it now. Please tell me this will get published, please tell me it IS published, so I can rush out, devour it and threaten to bludgeon all my firneds with my Robert Johnson collection..if they don’t read it, too!
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Second sentence “[He] [r]ested”. You forgot the subject of the sentence.
Third sentence reads better as “Close and pungent with bus fumes, the air made…” As written as “The air, close and pungent with bus fumes, made” the distance between the subject “air” and the verb “made” makes it confusing.
Actually, I rather enjoyed the slow pace of this piece, like the humidity in the Delta, which made me slow when I read it. The story seems well paced. It seems to work.
Thanks for sharing and good luck.
Your writing style is good though the storyline is kind of cliche’. I mean that by the whole avenge a brother or relatives death. Maybe you’ll be able to bring this out better than most writers and directors have in the past. Keep it up;.
It doesn’t really read like Chapter 16. It could be much nearer the beginning. I think maybe what gives me that impression is the exposition about the Delta and Will’s past. It’s like I’d expect his backstory to have appeared already, maybe in more subtle little bits—and the little history lesson isn’t very novelistic.
The description is very good, and so is the dialogue, and that makes me identify with Will—but the narratorly distance set up by those expository passages kind of ruins the mood.
Very good writing, though. I’d like to see the narrative stay more consistently and firmly in Will’s point of view.
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