Crawlin' Chaos Blues Read Free

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