Crawlin' Chaos Blues Read Free Page A

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