After he dropped Virginia off at the Purple Heart, Nick drove back to the same downtown Greenwood diner from the day before and ordered grits, toast, and black coffee. He'd grabbed a copy of
Nine Stories
from his Jeep glove box and read until his head hurt. He kept the book open with one hand and massaged his temples with the other. He put the book down, sipped on some black coffee, and looked out the window. In front of the closed storefronts, weeds sprouted around railroad tracks and weathered flatbed pickup trucks. The decay was symmetrical. Not depressing, more picturesque.
He thought about Virginia Dare coming to look for those mythic crossroads. Not too unusual. People came from all over the world to get a little Johnson-inspired magic. You didn't have to be a blues historian to know the myth. Most teenagers could tell you Johnson sold his soul to the devil late one night at a Mississippi crossroads. He cut his fingernails to the quick, waited for Lucifer to come, and then traded guitars with him. That's how they say the man earned his skills.
Nick knew it was a story Johnson cultivated, as one of the first music icons to know image was everything. Hell, it worked for the Rolling Stones. Other popular blues singers of the time almost reveled in their devil's-music status. In St. Louis, Peetie Wheatstraw, named for the evil character in black folklore, advertised himself as the devil's son-in-law.
Johnson's second recording session was filled with hard, evil images that would've made Dante shutter. In "Hell Hound on My Trail," he sings of being constantly pursued by the devil. Nick could imagine a leafless tree shuddering in the wind as Johnson made his way through a field on a dead cold night:
I got to keep movin',
I've got to keep movin'
blues falling down like hail,
blues falling down like hail
Some of the selling-his-soul-to-the-devil theory was bolstered by his mentor, Son House, who taught him some licks when they were living in Robinsonville after Johnson's wife died. Son said that when he first met Johnson, the young boy couldn't play a thing.
There is a famous story that takes place at a juke when Johnson tries to play Son's guitar, and the guests complain about a god-awful racket. According to House, Johnson left Robinsonville and returned a short time later, a changed musician.
Johnson walked up and asked Son and another bluesman if he could play, and their jaws dropped open at his prowess. House said he had been gone only six months, an impossible time to become great.
Nick believed the real story was less mystical.
In truth, Johnson had been gone for a couple of years. He went looking for his real father, a man he'd never known and maybe never found in Hazlehurst. While hanging out there and practicing guitar, he met Ike Zinneman. Zinneman was an Alabama bluesman who took over where Son House left off. He was Johnson's Yoda, a man who told his wife he gained his guitar skills by playing in graveyards at midnight. A very black, sleepy-eyed man who wore his fedora way back on his head.
Johnson watched and learned from the older man, taking notes on what Zinneman taught him. He honed his skills deep in the woods, where no one would cringe when he hit a bad note. He and Zinneman worked the local jukes and fish fries until the music consumed him.
It was like one of those karate movies where the student doesn't do anything but train with the master and commune with nature.
The guitar became a tool to expel the culmination of experiences that weathered Johnson's soul. Being born a bastard son to a married woman, being berated by a step-father who thought he was lazy and no good, and perhaps, most of all, losing his child and his sixteen-year-old wife while she was in labor.
Before he returned to Robinsonville, Johnson became known as just R.L.--a damned fine player. No wonder Son House was amazed. His former student was now a master.
As Nick took the last bite of toast, the bell jingled above the door, and a large black man walked in wearing a tan sheriff's department uniform. He had a smooth, bullet-shaped head, chest like a steer, and biceps as large as Nick's thighs.
He nodded to the cashier and came over to where Nick was sitting.
"Deputy Willie Brown," the man said, extending his hand.
Nick shook it.
"Heard you talked to Darnell Rose," Brown said, and sat down. His massive arms crossed over his chest.
"I did."
"You want to tell me why you're harassing Greenwood residents?"
Nick didn't consider giving someone a hundred bucks harassment.
"You make it seem like I'm walking around downtown showing my privates to old ladies," Nick said.
"I know you're looking for a man named Michael Baker. Sir, a report has been filed with us. We'll let you know if we find him."
"Great."
"When will you be leaving Greenwood?"
"Not before I show my privates to a few old ladies. And I'd like to see the cotton history museum. Looks fascinating."
"I know he told you about Cracker."
Nick sipped his coffee and opened a packet of saltines. He put a little Tabasco on top, nice little pools of red on the salt. A good hangover cure.
"Cracker's an old man who doesn't need some punk from New Orleans talking trash."
Nick leaned forward and laughed.
"You want me to get mad, maybe talk a little shit," Nick said. "Hey, maybe even take a swing at you. Yeah, right, so I can spend time in the pokey. You want to tell me what I'm doing wrong?"
"You're interfering with an investigation."
"You think he's dead?"
"I didn't say that."
"Can I see the report?"
"It's public record. Courthouse is open nine to five."
"Thanks." Nick sipped his coffee and Brown was silent. "Are we going to continue these belittling idiotic psychological games you probably read from a paperback book? We banter back and forth whacking off our verbal manhood. Let's talk. Let me meet Cracker, and maybe it will help. If you were a smart cop, that's what you'd do."
"What do you know about police work?"
"I've got a good friend with the NOPD."
"I know an astronaut but that doesn't mean I'm competent to do a fuckin' moonwalk."
"Don't discount Michael Jackson."
Brown stared at him. Nick looked down and noticed a purple-gemmed football championship ring on his thick finger.
"When were you at LSU?" Nick asked.
"What?"
"When did you play?"
"Back in the eighties. Why?"
"I played at Tulane," Nick said, thinking it was worth a shot to soften this guy up. He'd pump up his ego until he blathered all about the glory days, eyes wide with slow-motion memories. "What position?"
"Offensive tackle."
"Maybe we butted heads before."
"Wouldn't that be ironic? I'll trust you once," Brown said.
Nick shrugged.
"Can I trust you?" Brown asked.
"Hell, if you knew where to find me, that means you already ran my plates and did a criminal-records search. You know about me."
Brown smiled.
"So tell me about Cracker," Nick said.
"I saw Cracker when he was making the rounds, digging through trash around the highway. Told me the man talked to him and left."
"Did you ask why?"
"I know why."
Nick looked at him.
"Old Cracker thinks he knows who killed Robert Johnson. You know who Robert Johnson was?"
Chapter 14
Jesse Garon didn't realize how far back in the woods the old man lived. Last time, spying on the sharp-dressed black dude trackin' through the woods like he was Daniel Boone, Jesse hadn't thought about all the shit in between. The damned kudzu, spindly pine trees, and vines. He wished he'd killed them both when he had the chance--would've been a hell of a lot easier.
He'd followed the smart-ass nigra as he carried a box of records back to the motel. Keith had told him the man would be waiting to make an exchange for some cash. "Take the dude and the records to Puka's," he said, so Jesse put a knife into the nigra's ribs and kept it there all the way back to the junkyard. Long drive, with the man calling him a "little-dick racist."
Shit, Puka had all the fun killing the guy.
Tonight, all the crickets, cicadas, wild animals and shit were wakin' up. It was like some kinda fucked-up safari movie. Like
Paradise, Hawaiian Style
, when E and that good-looking woman were marooned on that island. They acted like they were just roasting marshmallows, singin' and shit. Bet your ass, off camera, they were fuckin' on that island.
Sure as shit, E could get the pussy.
He shook his head for thinking that. That was terrible. "Sorry, E," he whispered so low all he heard was the sound of moving lips.
It was just him and the weird-lookin' nigra man. He'd get in and get out. Take care of business. No guns. He could do this himself--just beat him until he had a heart attack from fright or take 'im with a blade. The old man was weak with the leprosy or whatever God's curse he had.
From where he squatted and waited, Jesse could smell the ole man cooking in the early dusk. Smelled real wild, like a squirrel or somethin'. He must've scraped the animal off the highway with a shovel, then roasted its smelly, rotten flesh. Maybe he had a sack where he kept all the dead animals he found on the highway. Sure as shit didn't hunt, as slow as he moved.
But the last thing he wanted was for the old man to get nervous and start shooting at shadows. If he knew someone was out there, the guy could hole up forever. Then everyone would be pissed at him: Keith, Puka, and his momma. Embarrassed 'cause he couldn't kill one old nigra man. This ole nigra probably had an advantage on him. He could sense shit by livin' in the woods so long. Could hear an animal if it licked itself.
This time he'd be careful, he thought, slowly taking his clothes off and tucking them under a flat rock. He put the switchblade in his mouth and bit down on the handle. He'd be an animal like the old man: no shoes, no clothes, no nothin'.
Above him, the moon was as round and perfect as the Sun God emblem on E's jumpsuit. He could feel its glowing energy giving him power. The moon had always done that for him--given him that power. If E was the sun, then Jesse was the moon. When it had all its force behind it, so did Jesse. Tonight, killin' was easy.
In and out. TCB.
Chapter 15
Nick and Willie Brown traveled south along State Road 7 to a hamlet called Quito, about ten miles from Greenwood. Outside the arced whiteness of the headlights, there was nothing. A place where people once lived, all the sharecroppers and landowners gone now. Just a few lights in rusted trailers. Hard-core farmers. Men who had worked the rich Delta loam for generations
"Did he owe the university some money?" Brown asked.
"Nope. Just stopped checking in," Nick said, chewing a wad of bubble gum and watching the weeds roll by in blackness.
"Why'd they send you?"
"Because I blend in so well."
"Yeah, like the cream filling in an Oreo."
Brown slowed and pulled into a circular, rocky lot. He stopped the car in front of a long shack with crumbling, fake-brick siding and plastic sheets for windows. The tin roof had rust splotches like blood smears and a narrow smokestack like a crudely made periscope. Two black men sat on the stairs sipping quart bottles of Budweiser.
Nick considered sitting down with them and bullshitting a little. Sometimes that was the best way to get stories. Bring some beer and let the words flow. Walk out of your car with a notepad and you can hear the locks clicking.
"You wouldn't know it, but this old place is a historic site," Brown said. "James's house here is the old Three Forks store. Used to be down the road a ways. But it was moved. This is where people say Robert Johnson died. Hey, James."
"Robert Johnson ain't at home," James said. His smallish face was as drawn as a hound dog's. "Don't bring no mo' damned tourists 'round here. This is my house."
James's buddy laughed, beer foam running down his chin, "Willie, tell him the part how he was howlin' like a dog when Satan took him."
"No. I think this man is too sharp for that," Brown said. "Why don't you tell us, Travers, how Johnson died. You're the blues man."
"I know this might not be the house where he was killed. Three Forks could've been anyplace. His old traveling partner Honeyboy pointed out a completely different spot where he died. Same as the Zion Church, where they say he's buried. There were over a dozen Zion churches in Greenwood in the thirties."
"Shut his ass up, Willie," James said. "Just made me fifty bucks yesterday from some Japanese. They thought I was Robert Johnson's son."
"You can't even play with yourself, let alone a guitar," Brown said.
"Now, hold on," James said, tossing Nick a bottle. "Listen, what happened to the son of a bitch? I live in this goddamned ghost house, and I want to know."
The bottle was lukewarm, and the label felt soft in the palm of his hand. Nick looked over at Brown and smiled. He ambled up on the porch, where the plastic sheeting was popping in the wind, and sat down on the brittle wood.
There was a feeling about the place, some kind of bad mojo. Maybe it was the August heat or just the possibility he was actually at the place where Johnson died. He wanted to go in and trace the layout, see how the place looked all those years ago. Listen to how the wood sounded under his feet, wood that may have soaked up Johnson's music.