Crawlin' Chaos Blues Read Free Page B

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