In last week’s penultimate episode, Jimi convinced the ladies to go on a joyride around Lake Washington with him. They capped off the evening with a melancholy visit to one of Jimi’s childhood homes.

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Now, in this season’s final episode, Jimi visits his old high school. The students at Garfield High in Seattle give him an idea for a new song. Will it be any good?

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Enjoy the conclusion!

Patrick

Happy Sunday!

Last week, our heroes navigated the pitfalls of a local Seattle burger joint. Jimi forgot his wallet, Élise had to pay, and Saffronia explained to everybody about the Open Polar Sea and how to get there.

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But now, Eunice B. Fremon has everybody piled back into that busted Chevy Bel-Air, high-tailing it outta that burger joint to avoid the autograph seekers. They’re hurtling outta the city, into the hinterlands, headlong into whatever is supposed to happen next…

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Enjoy the ride,

Patrick

Hello,

Apologies for the delay in this week’s episode!

I got tied up with, um, I guess what’s called rebranding. What began a few years ago as a blog dedicated to ice hockey has gradually evolved into a podcast dedicated to serialized spoken word fiction.

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Therefore, my publication is no longer called Anatomy of a Dive. Distortion of Disbelief is what it will be called now.

I hope you enjoy this week’s episode,

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Patrick

Last week, Jimi and the ladies had to rush Saffronia to the hospital. Eunice B Fremon, in another one of her episodes, ran her over in the busted Chevy Bel-Air.

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Saffronia turned the tables on all of them when she refused to go inside Harborview Hospital, citing her adversarial relationship with that establishment’s accounts receivable department.

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This week’s Macguffin is more aligned with Saffronia’s wishes, and her budget. A bag of frozen peas from the local convenience store.

Check it out!

Patrick

In last week’s episode, we left Jimi and the ladies abruptly. Eunice B. Fremon had blown at high dough. Ran down an innocent bystander.

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Saffronia

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In this week’s episode Eunice and them deal with the consequences.

Check it out!

Patrick

Hey Folks!

I am happy to announce the launch of my podcast! Anatomy of a Dive will be dedicated to serialized fiction.

We will begin with a narration of the Jimi Hendrix story I published in text format up through last month. Once the Hendrix Saga is complete, we’re gonna try to put out text and podcast episodes in tandem.

The first five episodes are currently available on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you got for podcasts. They’re also linked below. New episodes will be released every Sunday…maybe extra ones during the week sometimes.

Thank you so much for listening and/or reading. I hope you enjoy and I look forward to any feedback…literary or technical!

Thanks Again,

Patrick

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When we last saw Jimi and the ladies, Eunice B. Fremon was giving everyone a tour of his humble beginnings. Élise and Gloria stole off to do their thing. They must have inspired Jimi.

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He made a pass at Eunice!

It didn’t work out the way he’d hoped. Now, she’s tear-assing away with them in the Bel-Air to who-knows-where, but she’s dead set on putting this boy’s mind right.

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When we last saw Jimi and the ladies, they were throwing a couple back at Sugar Ray’s, a dive bar in Seattle’s Main Stem. Jimi was regaling the ladies with stories of old school bluesmen from back in the day in the Mississippi Delta.

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Now, Eunice B. Fremon’s is in the driver’s seat. She’s behind the wheel of that busted Chevy Bel-Air with Jimi right beside her while Gloria and Élise are doing whatever in the back. She’s hurtling down Yesler Terrace.

It’ll be a trip down memory lane for all of them.

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Last month, I published a 10-part piece of serial fiction about Jimi Hendrix. Lately, I’ve been narrating it into audio. This is the third episode. Enjoy. Feel free to leave any feedback, particlularly w/r/t audio recording principles!

Last month, I published a 10-part work of serial fiction about Jimi Hendrix. Lately, I’ve been narrating them into audio. This is chapter 3. Let me know how you feel I’m executing w/r/t acoustics and sound.

Hello,

This is the first chapter of an audio version of Getting My Heart Back Together, a work of serial fiction examining Jimi Hendrix and his contributions to the rich tapestry of our culture.

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I hope you enjoy these. I’ll be trying to upload a new chapter every Sunday and Wednesday. However, I’m contending with a learning curve w/r/t voice recording. Apologies in advance for any delays!

Feel free to drop a comment regarding the story or the technical merits of the recording. I could definitely use some constructive criticism!

Thanks for taking the time to check this out,

Patrick

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[Table of Contents]

A bass drum pulled me along. Maybe it was foot stomping. The tempo came faster and faster. A guitar kept up with this smooth melody, a glassy tone going from something major to something minor. There was something jazzy in between, something haunting and jarring breaking up that glassy smoothness.

It was just outside my grasp. Almost there but I was losing it more and more as I came to.

I woke up in bed. The melody was totally gone. There was no Eunice. No Saffronia. There was no Élise or Gloria either.

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I was spooning my white Stratocaster, still wearing my clothes from last night. The purple vest. The moccasins on my feet.

I rolled over and yawned. It wasn’t a kick drum from my dreams. It was banging on my door. I popped up and felt light-headed. I wasn’t on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I was back in my hotel room.

I rubbed my eyes. The television was still on. It was just fuzz on the screen now. White noise. The picture on the wall wasn’t a bowl of fruit this time. It was the National Mall. A longshot gazing across at the Washington Monument.

I hauled myself up. Pounding away on the door. My head felt the size of a weather balloon. It would’ve floated away if it could’ve fit out the window.

I opened the door. It was Charlie, our tour manager. He was pulling off a cigarette in the door frame.

“Kid! You know how long I’ve been rattling your cage?! Thought you OD’d!”

“I had this dream. I was at the Renton Highlands up above Lake Washington…”

“I’m not from around here kid! No idea what you’re talking about!”

“This dream. I had this dream that my four ladies…”

“Kid! You gotta snap out of it!”

“I had a dream last night!”

“We’re late for the gig!”

“Damn! The Garfield assembly?!”

“It was your idea!”

“Okay. Just let me pull myself together a quick second.”

Charlie walked in. He fiddled with the dials on the television. I went in the bathroom and splashed water on my face.

“Say Charlie, any chance we can grab some breakfast? I’m starving.”

“Not a chance, kid! Not unless you wanna look like a real jerk at your old school! A real prima donna!”

“No. We’ll just go.”

I tried smoothing out my clothes in the mirror. My hair was all matted and frizzy. No time for my curler routine. I walked back out and scanned across the room. I found the tie-dye bandana. It was next to the pillow. I put it over my third eye and wrapped my hair back tight.

“You ready or what?!”

“Yeah…I just…feel like I’m forgetting something.”

Charlie shoved the white Stratocaster at me. “Oh yeah, damn.”

I brushed over the open strings. She was horribly outta tune. Delicate girl. Charlie leveled a stare at me. “Forgetting that ain’t like you, kid!”

I knew it wasn’t like me. But I was late. Late. For a very important date.

I had been expecting Noel and Mitch in the limo. There was no bass player. No drummer either. The driver roared off with just me and Charie in the back seat. I was guzzling down a jug of orange juice Charlie had liberated from the hotel kitchen.

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“You weren’t with them last night?!”

“No. At least I didn’t think so. Now, I’m not so sure.”

He gave me another appraising look. Shaking his head. Snickering.

“Looks like they tied one on, too! Neither of them answered their doors! This business never gets old! Anyway…looks like you’re going solo, kid!”

I plucked the open strings of the white Strat. Twisted her knobs back and forth. The frequency opened and closed. The waves flattened and coarsened. “Oh good lord…this isn’t the day for a tap-dance step.”

“Never is, kid! Never is!”

Charlie patted me down roughly, wiping debris off my clothes and straightening out my vest. He frowned and gasped as he managed my appearance the best he could.

I could see the grand imposing archways from blocks away rolling down 23^rd. They weren’t fronting a Roman senate or ivy league institution. Nothing like that. This was my old high school. The architecture’s timelessness made me feel queasy and insignificant. There were a million steps leading from the towering pearl white façade all the way down to the streets. There was no way I could climb all of them.

I strummed the Stratocaster instead.

Go on devil.

Go on back to hell.

The limo blew right by the grand entrance on 23^rd. I didn’t need to worry about all them steps after all. The driver hung a right and came in the parking lot where the busses entered.

This was the same parking lot that Eunice B. Fremon had been telling me about, the one where she had staged her protest. I craned my head around as we drove through. I wondered which quadrant she’d gathered everyone. She’d probably paced back and forth. They were assembled in front of her. She delivered some kinda rousing pep talk. It got them all keyed up. Spurred them on into the teeth of batons and riot police.

Unafraid.

I had drunk almost the whole jug of orange juice. The acid was sloshing around in my stomach. I strummed a slow blues as we looped around the bus turnaround. The vibrations from the white Strat produced that thick saliva. It was good for singing. It also settled my stomach.

The principal was posted out there with a handful of teachers as a welcoming party.

I pulled myself out of the limo. I was clutching my white Stratocaster like Linus’s blanket. I wiped an imaginary piece of lint off my purple vest. Straightened the tie-dyed bandana. With as broad a smile as I could force, I strode up to the principal and offered him my hand.

“Principal Strickland! Long time, no see!”

The principal’s politician’s grin was wavering. Teachers flanked behind him were biting their lips. His eyes were shifting back and forth, trying to meet my gaze but he was clearly sizing me up. The unkempt afro. The tie-dye bandana. Last night’s purple vest. The upside-down guitar strung backwards. I gathered that most of their public speakers didn’t have the exact cut of my jib.

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“Mister…Hendrix. Such a pleasure to…have you back? I must admit…I was surprised to learn you had even matriculated here?”

“I think I’m just as surprised myself…seems like this whole ‘nother life.”

We could hear the students from the boy’s locker room as they filed into the gymnasium for the assembly.

HELL NO! WE WON’T GO!

I was straddling a bench between two banks of lockers, running through Purple Haze on my unplugged Stratocaster. The progression of the song sent vibrations from my guitar that generated more of that saliva with the nice oily viscosity. My stomach was almost back to normal. I could make out Charlie and Principal Strickland going at each other from the corner of my eye. Excessive hand motions and sharp syllables piercing through hushed tones. They were arguing. I didn’t care to bother about the red tape.

I wanted to treat the kids to Purple Haze. I wanted to tell them I’d written it specially for them. The Purple and White. The Garfield Bulldogs. I debated whether the impact would be greater before or after I played the song. Not having the band was going to cause problems but I could work around it. Adding some double-stops would thicken my tone. If I could get them to clap or stomp their feet, it would make up for not having drums.

“Hey kid, we got some bad news!”

Charlie and Principal Strickland were towering above me now. Charlie was frowning. Strickland was smiling profusely. It hadn’t taken me long to figure out a smile on that man’s face was some kind of ruse.

Charlie explained how the school had some outdated PA that didn’t support an electric guitar. It didn’t support anything but a handheld microphone. Strickland stooped, apologizing for the low quality of the audio/visual equipment. His apology was interwoven with themes riffing on the tight budgets of public school systems and how he had been under the impression that a music act on a worldwide tour would have a speakerbox or two laying around. Charlie talked right over him about how our sound system would literally blow the school’s windows to smithereens.

I didn’t know a whole lot about sound engineering. I knew enough to know that it didn’t really matter how obsolete Garfield’s system was. Where there was a will, there was a way. In this case, there was no will. Charlie didn’t care, probably because there was no gate money at this gig. Strickland didn’t care either. I didn’t know the principal well enough to know the reason for his apathy.

It was infuriating. I had a vision for how I wanted the song to come off. The anti-war chants echoing louder and louder through the gym had made me apprehensive, but I still thought we could win them over. And the chance to retrofit their PA was a chance at a job well done. I didn’t know much about running cable or none of that, but I’d seen our roadies in action before. Some of my best tones came from problems just like this. Those cats got to mucking and tinkering around. Along the way to finding a solution, they usually discovered a half dozen other ways to make my guitar sound bad-ass.

We would never know what tone we could’ve gotten. We were outta time. There would be no bringing in the cavalry from the hotel. There wasn’t even time to cuss these two out.

“So, what do we do?”

Strickland looked at Charlie. Charlie waved him on. Strickland found a way to smile even broader.

“Mister Hendrix? We think the best approach would be for you to say a few words and then we’ll have Q and A.”

“Q? And A?”

“Question and answer!”

“…”

“I think our kids will come up with some very, um, neat lines of questioning for you.”

I said, “Well…we got a crowd waiting? Expecting to see us?”

Charlie said, “Sounds like they’re frothing at the mouth, kid!”

“And we ain’t got no band? And no speakers?”

“That’s correct Mister Hendrix!”

“Well…The best way out is through, I guess.”

Principal Strickland’s smile melted away. His face lost all composure. “A Robert Frost allusion? Splendid. Do you have an affinity for any other poets Mister Hendrix?”

“Affinity? Robert Frost? That was Alonzo I was quoting.”

“Alonzo? I’m not familiar. Is he contemporary?”

“I dunno. I think he might have his thirty in already.”

“Thirty? I don’t follow?”

“Sergeant Alonzo. Quartermaster. Was always riding my ass…A Rembrandt with a cuss word, though.”

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The Garfield High School Gymnasium was cramped and stuffy. All 1200 members of the student body were packed onto the bleachers. They pulled out from the wall, accordion-style, just like Neighborhood House, but way bigger. The basketball backboards were retracted up to the ceiling. Purple banners hung down from the rafters intermittently, boasting exploits from Georgia Bulldogs teams from years past. State Champs. Runners up. Glory Days. I always wanted my name on one of them banners back in the day. I didn’t even play a sport. It reminded me of when I was in the army. I wanted one of them Screaming Eagles patches so bad. Funny thing was, I was terrified of jumping outta airplanes.

I was starving. That OJ hadn’t done nothing for me. I needed some steak and potatoes. I could wolf it down right here and be done in time to give the speech. Instead, I stood next to Principal Strickland and a couple other administrative-looking types. We were fanned around the top of that horseshoe-looking thing they painted on all the basketball courts.

There was a wild din reverberating off the walls and ceiling of the gymnasium. It was making my ears buzz. They didn’t know where to focus. There was an acne-covered kid at center court. He kinda reminded me of the grill boy from last night. He was screeching the opening bars of The Star-Spangled Banner into the microphone.

His Adam’s Apple was pulsing. There was a hair on it.

The din didn’t let up for this kid’s attempt at the anthem. Actually, it seemed like they were actively trying to drown him out. There were black power fists like Tommy Smith and John Carlos. They were sprouting all throughout the bleachers. White kids were taunting and booing those black kids. Or maybe that was meant for the boy singing the anthem. It was hard to tell. His screeching really cut through the mix of the din. And not in a good way. It was making the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I shook my head. He’d launched into the song at way too high of a pitch. Beginner’s mistake. Nervous mistake. There was no way he had the range to reach the high note required to make freedom ring at the end of the song. They should never let these kids sing a cappella.

I was glaring sideways at Principal Strickland. He was smiling like the kid belonged at Lincoln Center or something.

Charlie had convinced me to leave my guitar in the locker room. He said it would give the kids the expectation I would perform. It would be a big letdown when all I did was talk. I was glad I didn’t have to feel these vibrations radiating into me, from all this bullshit going down all around me.

The booing hit such a crescendo throughout the room that it created a thick wall of sound, like a bass canvas for the kid to set his high-pitched screech against. Aside from the negative connotation of booing, it actually served the song rather nicely. Very tribal.

Even though I didn’t have to absorb those bad vibes, I felt naked without my guitar. I felt vulnerable surrounded by all those people, surly as they were. It was like going into a hostile environment without one of my senses. Blind in a war zone. Actually, I’d rather be blind than not have my antenna. If I were blind, I wouldn’t have to see all the hate and rage in all those faces.

In a way, the energy flowing out of the bleachers was fascinating. It was a torrent. Unbridled. If the chaos of those unruly students could be harnessed, it would be an awesome force. But that was impossible. It was all negative, the energy. It was all noise. Feedback. Harnessing this would be like trying to corral ice cold-shivering spasms into musical vibrations.

Fool’s errand.

The kid’s voice cracked going for the note in bombs bursting in air. I winced.

It felt like I’d just caught an uppercut in the stomach. I hoped he didn’t see me. He was just a kid. I didn’t wanna make him feel bad. He had bigger problems. The boos were somehow louder. They were roaring. There was also now a counterweight of hissing and howling at the higher registers crackling all around us.

Out of key sounds were physically painful to me. I don’t know how else to explain it. They gave me a headache and clogged my sinuses and that’s just for starters. A good groove was like a thick velvet blanket. This shit was like getting left out in the cold.

I fantasized about him hitting that high note at the end and carrying it – FREE – carrying it out like an opera singer. Just holding it and letting it resonate. Modulate. The entire student body shutting up, unable to deny the power of the moment.

I snickered. I composed myself again. I snickered again. I couldn’t help but be tickled at that imagination. If that kid managed to pull it together. Deliver on the home stretch.

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Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O-er the land of the FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

And the home of the brave

The whole song was about being stuck in the hell of battle in some brutal war. About not being able to see the flag, our symbol of freedom and government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The smoke and bombs were shrouding it.

It wasn’t by intention. It was pure incompetence and nothing more, but the kid’s shrieking and screeching – along with his booing and jeering accompaniment – captured that part perfectly. The chaotic noise obscuring the harmonious music.

If, by some stroke of sheer luck, he delivered that last part clean, that would make all that booing and shrieking worth it. It would perfectly capture the hope. It would perfectly capture the freedom. It would perfectly capture the ongoing struggle for a more perfect union. The moral arc of the universe bending toward justice.

I fantasized about walking toward him at center court, cheers now flowing out of the bleachers. Slapping him five. Holding his fist in the air like he was Muhammed Ali.

None of that happened.

Not even close.

It was a complete and unmitigated disaster.

He ran roughshod over the whole rest of the song. The booing continued. He trailed off toward the end, mumbling land of the brave as he skulked away from the microphone. They were whizzing paper airplanes at the poor bastard by then. One of the administrators hustled him off the court quicker. Principal Strickland was cringing. He had his head on a swivel. He had that smile plastered on his face but sweat beads were popping all over his forehead. It made me wonder if the performance was so bad that everyone associated with it was in physical danger. We might have to make a run for it.

Principal Strickland walked reluctantly to the microphone. The boos and jeers coalesced into a chant.

HOW MANY MORE?! HOW MANY MORE?! HOW MANY MORE?!

The gymnasium was a powder keg. I wished I had the words to explain to them that if they could focus this kind of energy in some kind of way, anything other than this incoherent rage, anything was possible. But I didn’t have the words. I didn’t have my guitar. I’d end up half-assing some lame platitude that would just make them angrier.

Strickland paced with the microphone. He paced feverishly. Frantically.

“Let’s give Timmy a hand for that, er, interesting take on our national anthem!”

It was beyond belief. They somehow broke through to another threshold with their boos and jeers. They coalesced again.

HOW MANY MORE?! HOW MANY MORE?! HOW MANY MORE?!

HELL NO! WE WON’T GO!

Strickland continued to pace. He continued to smile. He continued to sweat.

“Okay-okay…students we have a very special guest this morning, but before we bring him up, a couple quick announcements:

“First of all, anybody who’s eligible for a free lunch voucher, you need your completed and signed, yes signed, forms into the office by Friday. In triplicate. No exceptions.

“Next. Any of you who are turning eighteen. You need to register for selective service. This isn’t optional. It’s the law. You do that at the post office. It’s very simple. Very straightforward. Any of you who are confused, anybody who has any questions, stop in and talk to Betty in the office. She’ll walk you through it.”

The booing, jeering, and chanting continued. Fortunately, they were starting to show signs of laboring. I was thinking I might just make it out of this fiasco simply due to their physical exhaustion. The discord in the gym was palpable. Black kids with their fists in the air. White kids taunting them. Asian kids trying to stay out of it. I didn’t remember it being like this. We were poor and we were misbehaved little shits for sure. We were never angry like this.

Was this place really more harmonious when I was a kid? Was that just my memory playing tricks on me? I did skip a hell of a lot of school back in the day.

“And now, the moment we’ve been waiting for. Kids. Here with us today is one of the most popular recording artists in the business. His records are flying off the shelves. He travels around the world playing music for sold-out crowds. Yet, not too long ago, he was one of you, sitting right up there in those bleachers. Let’s hear a warm Garfield welcome for Jimi Hendrix!”

I walked from the horseshoe to center court. It wasn’t no warm Garfield welcome. There was still some booing. There was a few claps and even some cheers scattered around, but definitely the booing. The How Many More chant still had signs of life in pockets of the crowd too.

Principal Strickland offered me the microphone. I accepted it reluctantly. My mind was blank. I really didn’t know what to say. In the locker room, I had hashed together a few lines in my head about how I tried to represent Garfield High School honorably and respectfully at all my concerts. Now, after experiencing the nature of this crowd, I realized those words would fall flat. As I held the microphone in front of my mouth with no words coming out, the crowd addressed me.

PURPLE HAZE! PURPLE HAZE! PURPLE HAZE!

They were right. What I wouldn’t have done for a guitar and an amp right then. They were lathered up and restless. I could have knocked that crowd dead with all the energy in that building. This was the part where I punched out some electrified blues riff that galvanized the crowd like a lightning rod.

PURPLE HAZE! PURPLE HAZE! PURPLE HAZE!

I wanted to grab Charlie and Principal Strickland by the throats and knock both their heads together. There was no guitar to reach for. No amp to plug into. I was empty-handed. And my head was somewhere else. Thinking about punching out that blues riff made me remember how that kid desecrated the anthem, how it counterintuitively dovetailed with the rocket’s red glare and all that.

I couldn’t think of anything worth saying into the microphone. I knew there were still vibrations all around me. I didn’t have a guitar to amplify them, to help me understand them. But they were still there.

PURPLE HAZE! PURPLE HAZE! PURPLE HAZE

“Yeah…Hey. Hello everyone. Hi kids.”

I was gonna be as much of a disaster as that acne-covered anthem singer at this rate. I had a hostile crowd on my hands. I was probably gonna get myself lynched at my old high school. My survival instincts should have been kicking in by then. Instead, my thoughts were drifting. I considered my fantasy about how it could’ve gone over if the kid had brought the anthem home clean. My thoughts went in tangents, remembering trying to make music out of my shivering last night, wondering how my guitar could’ve shaped the bad vibrations bouncing off the walls around here right now.

“Yeah…Purple Haze. I wrote that song for all of you. The Garfield Bulldogs. The Purple and White…uh…go team!”

They cheered a little bit. Not all that much.

“I wish I could play for you today…but my band’s not around…and there’s no amp neither…one of them scenes, you know?”

They were booing again. I was thinking about all the times I heard the anthem in the service. The base played the same recording. Day in. Day out. In one ear. Out the other. People heard it so much, they stopped listening. Stopped thinking about what it all meant.

I kept bringing the microphone to my mouth, but I had nothing to say. I was just having thoughts. I had been thinking in the locker room about saying something about how I learned to be with people from all walks of life by going to school here. Whites. Blacks. Asians. Rich. Poor. Everything else. The message seemed too hopeful. The crowd felt too cynical. I didn’t think I could turn them with words alone.

And I was really more concerned with how spectacularly that kid screwed up the anthem anyway.

By now, the boos in the gym had tapered off into almost dead silence. I could hear my ears ringing. They were all watching me.

One voice echoed out in the silence. “Yo. How long you been gone from here, man?”

It was simple math. I should have been able to spit it out. I had no clue. “I don’t know? Something like two thousand years?”

“How do you write a song?!”

“Well…right now, I’m going to say goodbye to you, and go out that door, and get in my limousine, and go to the airport. And when I get out the door, the assembly will be over, and the bell will ring. And when I hear that bell ring, I’ll write a song. Thank you very much.”

The boos and hissing and howling rained down as I skulked out via the same route the anthem singer had taken.

“Sorry Charlie. I just ain’t no good without a guitar in my hand.”

I was stretched out across one of the backseats in the limo. I’d taken off my tie-dyed bandana. My hair was flopping everywhere but my head felt better. The bandana was draped across my heart. I was plucking the open strings of the white Stratocaster. She was still in tune. I was picking out the anthem. I hadn’t played it in years. I was plucking the notes across the strings.

Charlie sat across from me. “No need to apologize, kid! I’m sorry they didn’t have a rig for you!”

I quit going across the neck. I found the scale going up and down the G. I started playing the anthem going the length of the neck.

“I mean, even if I totally bombed out there, those kids can’t be all that mad. At least I got ‘em outta class for a while. Right?”

Playing it all on one string made it easier to slide into the notes. I played the anthem sliding into the notes. Charlie did a double-take at the fretboard, watching me throw together that bluesy anthem.

“You sure turn into something else when you get ahold of that guitar, kid!”

If I was gonna play it all along the G, why not catch the octaves on the A? The extra layer gave it more punch. Made it funky. I was sliding into those octaves too.

“Are we gonna have any time back at the hotel? I wanna plug in. There’s something I need to check out on my wah pedal.”

“Hotel?! Kid! We’re going straight to the airport! Is it important?!”

“Maybe? Maybe not. It’s too soon to tell.”

FIN

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[Table of Contents]

[Back to Chapter 9]

“No doubt, girl!”

Élise’s request sent a chill through me. Seriously. I was physically shivering. I hated it when things ended. It was such a drag. This was gonna send me on a serious bummer. For some reason, I really didn’t want this night to end. I wanted to stay in the cabin of that crappy Bel-Air with a broken spring jammed up my butt. I wanted to be huddled in there with those ladies, sheltered from the storm.

I wanted to be in there forever.

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I blurted out, “C’mon, let’s go take a cruise around Lake Washington first!”

Élise said, “I gotta work in the morning. It’s getting close to midnight!”

“It’s barely past eleven! Just come with us.”

I heard the murmuring. I felt it almost. My shivering simmered down into goose bumps. Gloria was back there cooing something or other into Élise’s ear.

“Well…I guess I can stay out a little while longer.”

I had bought myself some time, but only a little. The tide was going out. I tried to strum the anxiety out on the white Stratocaster. It was vibrating odd. It was like a shiver.

Go on devil.

Go on back to hell.

Saffronia didn’t have her ice anymore. She beat on the dashboard like a drum. The side of her thumb was a snare. The heel of her hand was the bass. Rain pelted the roof like cymbals. My shivering spasms were settling down. They gradually synced up with the vibrations radiating into me from the white Stratocaster.

I gazed out through the spider web windshield. The lights of Seattle’s cityscape reflected off Lake Washington. The sheet of water was like a mirror. Waves and ripples made it like an MC Escher melting mirror.

The rain was coming down in deliberate fat drops. They rang out on the roof in assertive cymbal sounds that cut nicely through the mix between me and Saffronia. They rippled out in endless concentric circles on the lake. I was syncing my bass notes with the thump of Saffronia’s hand heel. We traded off fills. Her snares. My trills. The rain arpeggiated across the surface of the lake.

Give and take.

Push and pull.

The lake was a trampoline for the rain drops. The drops penetrated the body of water. The water propelled other droplets off it. Bounding into the air. Arcing through the air. There was a relationship between their arcs through the air and the ripples on the surface cascading out. Some scientist could have jotted down a mathematical formula on a blackboard to explain it all and make it boring.

Saffronia gawked through the spider web. Drumming and contemplating the lake in wonder.

The droplets completed their life cycle. Parabolas back onto the sheet. Joining the body of water again. A trampoline again. More droplets starting new parabolas. Maybe they were the old droplets. Maybe they were old parabolas.

I had no blackboard. I sketched out the equation with an interplay between bass notes and pull-offs on the higher strings. That formula had my guitar purring with vibration. I released burp after burp. The white Stratocaster against my ribs. Eunice glancing from the road at me.

Go on devil.

Go on back to hell.

Élise and Eunice going back and forth. Élise was saying the Puget Sound fed Lake Washington. Eunice was saying Lake Washington was fed by a whole network of rivers and creeks bringing water downhill from the highlands. Élise said that didn’t add up. There wasn’t enough water up there to add up to a whole lake. Eunice said there was. Her white dress seemed to almost glow in the darkened cabin of the Bel-Air. She said the connection between Lake Washington and Puget Sound was man-made. It was a canal. The lake flowed out into the sound.

The pitch and cadence of their debate interlocked with the rhythm and melody from me and Saffronia. All four of us were building momentum. I wasn’t sure if it was the scaffolding between me and Saffronia ratcheting us up toward a crescendo. It might have been Élise and Eunice’s debate escalating toward an argument.

It could have been the rain picking up intensity on the roof.

I burped again.

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Gloria interjected. She thought it changed back and forth. Sometimes the water went into the sound. Other times the sound went into the water. It depended on rainfall and temperature and tides and millions of other factors. The water was just seeking its level. It was attaining balance.

I didn’t know who was right. I remembered a map of Puget Sound from grammar school. Maybe I had seen it at Neighborhood House. It was a big vein of water that came in from the Pacific Ocean. It branched out into rivers, creeks, and tributaries. It branched off finer and finer and finer.

A capillary or a lung.

A tree or a branch.

A fractal.

I was hammering full chords now. Saffronia had perked up. She wasn’t feeling no pain no more. She was coming down hard with all her bodyweight. Thunderclaps drumming into the dashboard. Eunice was perked up too, staring daggers at Élise through the rearview mirror. She was shouting, white-knuckling the wheel with one hand. Flamboyant hand motions with the other.

Gloria said, “Say, Jimi? I think this is where your mama’s at!”

“Say what?!”

“Your momma. This is where her grave is.”

I heard Élise mutter in the backseat. Almost imperceptible. “Debbie freakin’ Downer at all?”

I said, “I dunno where her grave is.”

Saffronia broke down the rhythm into a tumbling drumroll. Ended it with one final thunderclap that had her looking me dead in the eye. “How in the hell can you not know that?”

“I wasn’t at the burial.”

Gloria said, “Oh…yeah.”

“I wasn’t at the funeral neither.”

Eunice and Saffronia spoke in unison. “You weren’t at your own momma’s funeral?!”

“My dad didn’t take us…me or Leon.”

Gloria’s whispering was muffled in the back. Her head was in her hands. “Oh shit. I forgot all about this.”

Élise was muttering, “You really did it this time.”

I said, “I think he’d been drinking. He took us to a bar instead. Not Sugar Ray’s…some other dive…had my first whiskey that day.”

Eunice locked up the brakes. She cranked the wheel. She stomped the gas. The U-Turn sent Saffronia crashing into my chest and me crashing into the passenger door. I could feel her shivering in fear through the white Stratocaster. She was reliving the trauma from earlier.

“Whaddaya doin’ girl?”

Eunice said, “Turning this daggone car around.”

Élise hollered from somewhere down on the floor below the backseat. “No shit! He means why?! The fuck are you turning the damn car around?! Like a maniac!”

“Boy ain’t never been to his own momma’s grave?! He needs to get himself some closure!”

Saffronia howled. “You’re gonna give us all the closure if you don’t start driving with some damn sense!”

We arrived at the cemetery. I got out in the rain. The wrought iron gate was latched but it wasn’t locked. I held it open to let Eunice through before I got back in. The narrow path meandered through grids of headstones. Eunice crawled along the path in the Bel-Air. The rain had eased into a light mist. It glimmered in the headlights.

Eunice checked Gloria in the rearview. “What are we looking for, girl?”

“I’m, uh, not really sure?”

I shook my head playfully at Gloria. “If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.”

I winked at Eunice. She stopped the car. I got out with my Stratocaster. I was thinking I could play her a song. Probably, I would leave my guitar there at her final resting place. Somebody would steal it eventually. I didn’t care about that.

The gesture was very important to me.

I was walking up and down lines of gravestones. Trudging through the mud. I couldn’t figure out how the graves were organized. Sometimes it seemed to be in alphabetical order. Other times it seemed chronological. Then there were family plots here and there. Best I could figure, there were multiple organizing systems competing with each other, ultimately defeating the purpose of any of them.

I didn’t bother keeping my eyes peeled for a Hendrix family plot. I didn’t waste my time checking the names on the mausoleums either.

Gloria and Élise were outside inspecting gravestones on the other side of the path. I heard Élise cussing over the sound of the rain, over the sound of the Bel-Air’s engine. Something about a needle in a haystack. The door slammed when she dove back in the car.

I thumped the open strings of my guitar a few times. I was still in tune. I was going to play Little Wing for her. She’d been on my mind when I was writing that song. I didn’t write it about her. It seemed like there was a difference. That song was flowing out of me in the rain there.

The rows of gravestones went off into infinity.

I yelled across the hood of the Bel-Air. “Was it more toward the back of the cemetery? Or up front?”

“I don’t-I don’t know!”

We walked. The rain picked up. It picked up until it was creating a wall of sound rebounding off the path. White noise.

I was trudging between gravestones. It was getting muddy off the path. “Like…was it close to the path? Or was it further away? Down the line a ways?

“Jimi…I was just a little kid…it’s like one of those fuzzy memories.”

“…”

“I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

My vest was soaked. It was sticking to my chest. I kept walking. Every few rows, I’d randomly check the names on some gravestones. Gloria shadowed me. She trudged through the mud down the line on her side whenever I did.

I knew she wouldn’t stop until I did. I knew I would have to be the one that quit looking for my mother.

The rain was coming down harder still. It was hard to keep my eyes open. It was icy cold. I was shivering again.

Gloria crossed over to my side of the path. She stayed by my side as I checked out grave marker after grave marker. She whispered in my ear. She reminded me how she was just a little kid back then. She whispered about how it was the wrought iron fence that triggered her memory, how wrought iron fences hemmed in cemeteries all over town. She whispered that it wasn’t my fault.

I guided her back toward the path, back toward the Bel-Air. I kept my arm around her, trying to shield her from the rain the best I could. I was shivering but I was glad it was raining. The sky was crying so she couldn’t see me.

She was whispering courage.

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After we backtracked out of the cemetery, we were hurtling back toward the heart of the city. Saffronia was recoiling back, her feet up on the seat. “Eunice! Slow! The Fuck! Down!”

She was having a trauma flashback. Eunice said, “I wanna make it to Sugar Ray’s before the clock strikes midnight! I wanna nightcap!”

Gloria said, “Yeah, we could all use a drink. Sorry for dragging the night down guys. Dang flask’s empty too.”

Élise said, “Aren’t they open ‘til the wee hours?”

Gloria said, “Raining like this? On a Tuesday night? They’ll ring the chimes by midnight.”

I said, “I could use something to warm me up too.”

I was soaked to the bone. Shivering again. I tried strumming the Stratocaster. I was able to control the shivering here and there, corral the vibrations into music. Close to music, anyway. It wouldn’t last. As soon as I noticed I had it under control, I’d bust out in another spasm.

I finally gave up trying. I pulled the strap off and set the guitar down. I hugged myself for warmth, gazing through the spiderweb. It showed me Seattle in a funhouse.

The car had collapsed into silence. It was vibrating and bouncing. Eunice punched the gas and rolled over potholes. The broken spring was jabbing my spinal column. I was beyond caring.

I saw something in the spiderweb. I tracked it until I could see it plain through the passenger window.

“Eunice, pull off here.”

“Why here?”

“Just pull it off? Please?!”

“Alright-alright. Gimme half a second!”

Élise muttered in the back. “What happened to getting that drink?”

Gloria whispered back at her. “He stayed here when he was a kid.”

“This was his childhood home?”

“One of ‘em. One of a dozen…a couple dozen, probably.”

I couldn’t deal with the voices. I left them in the car. I pushed through the door out into the rain. It had receded back into a sprinkle.

It was a duplex. It wasn’t anything special. I thought it was the best place we ever lived in. It was two bedrooms. Mom and dad had one of them. They had their own bathroom in theirs. Me, Leon, and Joe shared the other one. Maybe it was a mansion in my memory because that was the last place we stayed before my parents split up. Maybe it was because that’s the last place we stayed before they put Joe up for adoption.

My Dad said we didn’t have the money. We couldn’t afford another mouth to feed. My mom used to get drunk and accuse him of being cruel. She said we had plenty of money. He just didn’t want Joe around because he was crippled.

My dad worked as a landscaper back then. I don’t know how much money he made. All I know is I hated it when he made me help him. I used to make myself hard to find when I knew he was scouting for a helper.

I hated doing that work. I liked having worked. But I hated doing it. That makes no sense.

I walked up the front path. Rainwater was coming down it. It was flowing through cracks in the concrete. Those cracks hadn’t been there when I was a kid. The water cascaded out into a postage stamp yard.

The porch creaked when I stepped on it. The wood was rotting. The windows were all boarded up. Rain pelted the canopy. It felt like the inside of a drum. There was one piece of plywood that was loose, hanging askew on the window.

However nice it was in my memory, it looked like a haunted house now. It was the type of place a gang of kids would dare each other to go inside. See which sucker would have the nerve to go for it. We were the dead family that haunted all them meddling kids. Made them stare at their shoes when they passed our place.

I pulled the loose plywood aside.

Go on devil.

Go on back to hell.

It must have been a shooting gallery now. The front room had been the living room. There was garbage strewn everywhere. Empty bottles of cheap wine and malt liquor. Fast food wrappers.

Gloria’s older sister used to babysit us here. Gloria was just a baby. Her sister would put me, Leon, Joe, and whoever else she was watching to bed with stories about Bonita, Audrey, and Roy. They were made up characters. They were always based on us kids. The story changed from day to day. It depended on what happened that day. Who’d been good. Who’d been bad.

There was always a moral to the story. I was always Roy.

I was Roy. Roy, the sweeping boy. That’s because I always had a broom in my hand back then. I didn’t do much sweeping. That was really my first guitar. I played air guitar on that broom. Gloria’s sister played the hit parade on the radio. I played the broom. I was up, standing on the couch like it was a stage. If my dad was around and I heard his footsteps coming, I jumped down off the couch. Pretended I was sweeping.

I usually got away with it. Sometimes he noticed loose straw on the couch. If he saw that, he knew I’d been screwing off. Playing air guitar. That’s when I caught a beating.

When I was Roy, in the stories she told about me, I didn’t play air guitar. I played a real guitar. People came from all over to hear me play. I was rich. I had a big car.

I was happy.

But I always did my chores. I swept the floor. I did the dishes. That was the moral of the story. No matter how rich and famous I got, I always came home. I always did my chores. When I got older, I tried to get Gloria to do her chores by flirting with her. Gloria’s sister tried to get me to do mine by filling my head with big ideas I guess.

She told me stories about how my guitar would make me rich and famous. And happy. Even though I had enough money to drive my big fancy car anywhere I wanted, I always drove it back here. Back to Seattle. Back home. I’d come rolling down the Main Stem honking my horn. Guitar in the passenger seat like she was my bride. All the kids would come streaming out of their houses and down their porches, running after me down the sidewalk.

I climbed back out through the window. I put the plywood back in place. I don’t know why it mattered to me.

The girls were waiting for me in the busted Bel-Air. The rain was picking up again. The storm had eroded gulleys into the postage stamp lawn. It was all overgrown, too, like nature was trying to reclaim it.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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[Table of Contents]

[Back to Chapter 8]

[Forward to Chapter 10]

Al’s Burgers looked like one of those classic 50’s diners. They had the booths and the jukebox. Red and white tiles glimmered across the floor and up the walls. Me and Gloria gawked at the motif tiling off into infinity.

The jukebox was dead. Nobody was in there but the staff. The cashier at the register was giving us a dirty look while we huddled in the entrance. I gave her the biggest smile I could. It didn’t matter. The more I smiled, the more she frowned. Her frown lines were blossoming like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas.

“Y’all gonna order or what?!”

Eunice came right back at her. “Yeah-yeah. We’re just checking the menu out!”

“Well hurry up! We close at eleven.”

I could have sworn they closed at midnight back in the day. “I thought you closed at midnight back in the day!”

“Not on Tuesdays.”

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I told them to get whatever they wanted. I told them it was on me. All proud of myself. I got myself a burger and a soda. They all got burgers and sodas. Except for Gloria. Gloria got herself two double cheeseburgers, a large fry, and an orange juice.

The cashier glared harder and harder with each passing item we ordered. I thought she was gonna break the register, she was punching the keys so hard. I could have sworn I heard her growling.

It was probably all in my head.

She rang us up. Everybody stared at me. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what they all wanted. Then I remembered how I said it was all on me. I patted myself down. That’s when I remembered my wallet I forgot.

I mumbled. “We gotta go…I left my wallet back at the hotel.”

I felt bad but they all cussed me out and it made me feel badder. Élise pushed past me. She was muttering something. I wasn’t too keen on figuring out exactly what. She paid the bill.

After that, we snaked back and forth, following the stanchions. It felt excessive. We were the only ones in there on a rainy Tuesday. Gloria ducked under and went straight through. She came up flashing me a mischievous grin. I shook my head. Everybody saw it. Nobody said a word. Not even the surly cashier. The line brought us past the flat-top where the grill boy covered in acne was doing his best not to stare at me. I was hoping it wasn’t my burger he was letting burn.

“Say, Élise, I got a weird question for you.”

“Whaddaya want now?!”

“Do you have any change…from paying the bill?”

“Are you serious?!”

“I wanna put something on the jukebox. All this silence is freakin’ me out!”

“You’re a real piece of work, Jimi”

She gave me the money. Practically tossed the change at my feet like I was a beggar on the street. I checked out the jukebox while they waited for the food. It was mostly top 40 stuff. I settled on Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay. Me and Otis had played Monterey together.

The ladies were in a booth around the corner. Out of sight of the surly cashier. I slid in next to Gloria.

Eunice and Élise were leaned over their trays, wolfing down their burgers. Saffronia was holding and icy-cold soda pop against her swollen eye, removing it to take a pull now and then. She had a burger in her other hand. She took little bites chewing gingerly and hesitantly, like she was taking her jaw out for a test drive.

I took tentative bites of my burger too. I couldn’t really tell if I was hungry or not. Chewing felt odd. The burger sliding down my throat into my tube was fascinating. I sampled the root beer. The effervescence swirling around in my tube felt like butterflies in my stomach.

Gloria had a burger in one hand and her juice in the other. She was switching back and forth between the two, lunging out with her neck for bites off the burger or pulls off the straw. She smacked her lips between bites and pulls.

“I think these are the best burgers I’ve ever had in my life!”

“I can’t even tell if I like mine.”

“That’s because you didn’t get any cheese. It’s all about the cheese!”

“I forgot. That lady at the register was bumming me out.”

“You shoulda gotten yourself a juice.”

She took a long haul off her juice until it came up dry. I said, “Why’s that?”

“Vitamin C. Heard it makes colors more vibrant.”

I swiveled my guitar around in front of me. I punched out some G majors followed by an E, played along to the chorus of the song.

So I’m just gonna sit on the dock of the bay

Watching the tide roll away

I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay

Wastin’ time

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“Shit. If you want the world around you to be more vibrant, all you gotta do is play in key!”

Gloria gazed at my fretting hand. “Holy cow!”

Eunice and Élise looked at us, their cheeks ballooning out like chipmunks. Then they looked at each other. Then they shook their heads.

I had given up on the burger. Gloria was onto her second. I didn’t know how she could handle all that food sliding in her tube. A sip of soda was still interesting. I could feel it’s crispness coursing through me, branching out, mapping my capillaries. I was arpeggiating G, B, and C. Thumping the bass note then trilling on the higher register.

Gloria was staring at me. I stared back at her. Sliding from one chord into the next. I mumbled, “I can see the whole world in your eyes.”

Élise tossed her burger down on the tray. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand as she finished chewing and swallowed. “That’s gotta be the corniest damn pick-up line I’ve heard since at least middle school!”

Gloria pointed at me. “No! He’s right! I can see it too! In your eyes!”

Élise muttered, “You two are ridiculous.” She picked up her burger for another bite.

I took a speculative little nibble off my burger. The texture was interesting. I contemplated the sensations of saltiness and fat competing across my palate. I wasn’t sure I wanted all that going down my tube. I had my head together just enough to know not to spit the chewed-up burger out on the table.

Gloria spoke with her mouth chocked full of food. Burger bun crumbs and hamburger grease crackled off her like the static electricity coming off that lightning bolt. I used logic and deductive reasoning to piece together what she was trying to say through all that food. “All your talk about your studio…what is it gonna be called?”

I took the leap. I swallowed the macerated bits of burger in my mouth. I felt them plummeting down through my tube, headed toward my stomach on a roller coaster ride. It was crazy. I looked all around the table. I couldn’t believe they’d all been doing this bite after bite. Nobody cared.

“Your studio?! What’s it called?!”

“Oh. I dunno. I haven’t thought about it. Experience Studios? Maybe? Something bad-ass, that’s for sure.”

Saffronia rolled her eyes and took a pull off her straw. The empty soda pop coughed and rattled.

Gloria said, “The way you were talkin about it, whatever it’s gonna be called, it reminded me of how sometimes, when you told me bedtime stories, you’d talk about that reverend from Mississippi.”

“Who?”

“I can’t remember his name. The way you told stories about him made me think you were gonna quit guitar and go become a preacher.”

“Oh! The Reverend Eldridge Harper. That was grandma’s preacher when she lived down south. She told me all those stories. I probably hacked them all up when I was trying to get you to sleep.”

Saffronia said, “What stories.”

“Just the way he ran his church. It wasn’t some stuffy old place. The way she told it, it sounded like a club…like you were big in this world if you were part of that scene.”

Gloria said, “You used to say he saved the whole town from a flood?”

“The Great Mississippi Flood. He organized the whole community granny said.”

“And there was some story about a pipe organ or something?”

“Yeah-yeah-yeah. I think granny made that one up just to keep me interested, though.”

Gloria took another massive bite. She motioned with her burger when she talked. Grease and ketchup splattered the table. She didn’t even realize. “They, like, built a pipe organ in the church?”

The other ladies looked at me confused. I interpreted Gloria’s muffled burger mumbling for them.

Saffronia said, “The whole congregation built one?!”

“That’s what granny said. This cat supposedly won a pipe organ off some rich plantation owner in a game of cards or something…were talking a couple consoles, hundreds of pipes, all different sizes, the bellows and all that.”

“What? They like took it apart then put it all back together in the church?”

“It’s a tall tale. Granny likes to tell stories. She’s an entertainer from way back. Vaudeville. I don’t know how a bunch of farmers in the delta would figure out how to get all that working. You ever gotten a look at a pipe organ?”

Saffronia nodded. “It’s like one of them Rube Goldberg machines.”

Gloria flashed me a knowing grin, “You’re trying to build a pipe organ your own self, with that studio!”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right…you think that’s crazy?”

“Hmmm…Yeah, but…good crazy. Maybe.”

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Saffronia shook the ice in the paper cup. She was trying to free up a reservoir of soda. The juke box had died out again. But she had a maraca going. I ripped off a quick pentatonic run. Her one functioning eye swiveled over toward me. Its eyebrow arched. She kept rattling cubes. I shuffled up and down along the scale. We were in and out of sync. Never too far out. We were good and loose.

Then she stopped. Stopped abruptly.

I opened my eyes. I didn’t even know I’d closed my eyes. I glared at her like she’d perpetrated a genocide. She basically had.

“Why’d you stop?!”

“You ever hear of the Open Polar Sea?”

“Girl! Shake that damn ice!”

Eunice leaned her elbows on the table. “Nah. I wanna hear about this!”

Saffronia set the cup down on the table. She rubbed her jaw.

“The Open Polar Sea. All these scientists and explorers and other smart people. Well-respected folks. Bona fide. They said there was this, like, oasis at the top of the world in the middle of the Arctic Circle.”

I said, “When did all this supposedly go down?”

“Way back. This explorer. A bunch of rich people gave him a bunch of their money to buy a boat and take it up there and discover it, claim it all for them. Got the best boat money could buy. Sturdy. Hired himself a whole crew with that money.

“They set out for the Arctic Circle. The top of the world. It got colder and colder, the further they went. The ice got thicker and thicker. And this explorer, his crew was on the verge of mutiny. He tried keeping it down to a dull roar by telling them any day they’d be breaking through. Breaking through into the Open Polar Sea.”

Élise said, “And this was supposed to be an oasis you said? In the middle of the bitter cold Arctic Circle? Like Hawaii you said?”

“I didn’t say shit. That’s what them folks said. And they kept pushing through thicker and thicker ice, putting themselves through hell – frozen hell – on that basis.”

Gloria said, “But there ain’t nothin’ up there but more ice!”

“Correct. And eventually that ice cracked the hull of their ship. Destroyed it. They barely survived. Actually, a bunch of them died. The rest of them got frost bite. Plenty of them had fingers and toes amputated. All this nonsense over a mirage. Something that didn’t exist and never existed. A figment of their imagination.

Eunice pulled off her straw until her soda was coughing and she slammed it down on the table. “Poor bastards.”

Saffronia said, “They ended up finding themselves an oasis eventually. It was called Siberia. Imagine that? Being in a situation so fucked you think reaching daggone Siberia is like heaven?”

Eunice shook her head. “Shit.”

I said, “Where’d you learn all this?”

“I read about it.”

“For school? They never had cool books like that where I went to school.”

“Not for school. For the fuck of it.”

“Oh. That’s fresh. What’s it all mean?”

Eunice fixed a look on me. “Means you don’t need to go wandering all over creation looking for some damn oasis. The oasis is inside of you.”

“But, like…is it cool to just wander? Like, for the hell of it?”

Élise said, “Jimi are you gonna eat that burger or what? The staff keep poking their heads around the corner. They want us outta here?”

“I can’t do it. This thing’s too damn weird.”

The whole process of bringing our trays to the garbage receptacle and discarding leftovers turned into an adventure. The simplest of tasks turned out to be full of options and endless possibilities. Saffronia watched me sizing up the trash receptacle, determining the best procedure for sliding the tray through the protective door without spilling garbage all over the floor. I took a break and simply rested it on top.

“Know something, Saffronia? Them folks on that boat? They never found no Open Polar Sea and they went through hell...but they also had the time of their lives.”

She took the tray from me and slid the debris into the garbage. One smooth motion. I was floored. She said, “Yeah. I suppose. That’s one way of looking at it, anyway.

I followed Saffronia across the sea of red and white tile. We made it across the diner and out the door. Outside, the rain had settled into a mist. It was actually refreshing, especially compared to the torrent when we’d scrambled into the joint.

“I totally forgot I used to play right across the street there.”

Saffronia said “Where? I don’t see nothing across the street.”

“That vacant lot. One of my bands in high school. I think that one was called the Tomcats.”

“Did a lot of people come to your concerts?”

“Well…a lot of people came to this here burger joint. So in a way?”

“You’re a piece of work.”

We caught up to the rest of them where the Bel-Air was parked. I opened the door to let Saffronia slide in the front seat.

“Mister Hendrix? May I have your autograph?”

I sprung around. It was the acne-covered grill boy. His apron was covered with ketchup and mustard, and he was holding a marker in his hand. It was shaking like a leaf.

“Yeah, man…sure thing!”

“…”

“You, uh, got a, uh…whaddaya want me to sign, kid?”

He looked to his left. He looked to his right. Nothing. He patted himself down. Nothing. Despair and anguish were blooming across his face, sprouting from the acne even. Gloria reached up and snatched the paper chef hat off his head.

I looked around for a flat surface. Everything was wet from the rain. The kid leaned over the Bel-Air, improvising his back into a tabletop. There was somehow ketchup on his back. It got on the chef hat. I figured that just made it more authentic. I tried thinking of something to write with my autograph.

“Say kid, what’s your name?”

“Alex, sir.”

“Alex, what’s your favorite song of mine?”

“Oh…I like ‘em all, sir!”

“C’mon now! You gotta pick one! If you could hear me play just one song!”

“Oh…well…I’ll tell you one I find really interesting, that song, 51^st Anniversary.”

“Damn. No kidding? I wasn’t expecting you to say that one.”

“Like I said, I love ‘em all!”

“But that one jumps out at you?”

“It just seems like…It seems like something an old man would write…it seems like you’re too young to write a song like that. You’re not even married.”

Eunice came outta nowhere with her arm around my shoulder. “He don’t even have himself a steady girl yet.”

I shrugged. I looked at my shoes. “Sometimes? I don’t know exactly where these lyrics come from. I just follow my heart. They hit me like a dream. You can stand up now.”

I handed him his chef hat back. He shook my hand then clutched the paper hat with both hands. “Dear Alex. Thanks for the burgers. We didn’t mean to show up so late. Sorry for wasting all your precious time. Jimi Hendrix…Gee! Thanks, Mister Hendrix!”

“Do you, uh, you play at all yourself, Alex?”

“Play? You mean, guitar? I used to…I suck.”

“I sucked once too. I wanted to give it up once too. Hell, many times. Sometimes you hate the guitar. But if you stick with it, the guitar will reward you.”

“I don’t know, man. I don’t even know the cowboy chords.”

Gloria said, “Well, there’s your next step then.”

Saffronia chimed in, “Your next wall.”

I winked at Saffronia. “And then you’ll break through. Into the Open Polar Sea.”

Alex gave all of us a bewildered look.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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[Back to Chapter 7]

[Forward to Chapter 9]

When she got drunk, my dad got jealous. Anger like a mathematical equation. It was a smaller piece of some bigger chemical reaction. Like one of those tendrils coming off that lightning bolt.

My goose bumps again. I could still see that lightning splintering off into fractals on the back of my eyelids.

Saffronia laid her hands across the fretboard. She deadened the vibrations and broke the silence.

“Know what? I think I’m gonna be alright. All I really need is some ice for this shiner.”

Eunice said, “I oughta have my own head examined. Can’t believe I’m not dragging you in that hospital kicking and screaming. But I don’t like the vibe here no more. Let’s get outta here.”

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We stopped at a 24/7 convenience store. Élise ran in. Gloria offered Saffronia her hip flask again. Saffronia turned it down this time. She offered it all round. Me and Eunice shook our heads too. Gloria shrugged and took a pull off it before slipping it back into the lace on her inner thigh. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“You know, Saffronia, it wasn’t right, Eunice running you over. But still, you shouldn’t be out walking the streets alone on a night like this.”

“Walking the streets?! I told you! I had piano lessons. I ain’t got my own piano. I gotta walk down the street to do that. It’s a risk I gotta take.”

“Well, the better part of valor is discretion.”

“Those are just words!”

When Élise came back, she jumped in the back seat and tossed Saffronia a bag of frozen peas.

“This ain’t no ice!”

“Chill! It’ll work just as good as ice. And you’ll have a side dish later too!”

I turned back toward Élise. “They’re sold outta ice?”

She shrugged. “Frozen peas are way cheaper.”

Saffronia scowled. We were cruising down 6^th Avenue. She had her head on my shoulder, leaning so the peas could rest directly on her swollen eye.

Gloria jumped up on the seatback. “Eunice! Pull it off here!”

Eunice slammed the brakes. “Why here? Ain’t nothin’ here but this jail.”

“Yeah! This where Leon stay at.”

Eunice had the flashers on. We were pulled off alongside King County Jail. It was an anonymous brick building. If I squinted my eyes just right, I could convince myself we were still in front of Harborview Hospital. But there were no windows. That and the razor wire spiraling over the fence betrayed my fantasy.

I gazed out through the spider web, through the rain drops beading on the window. I wondered what Leon was up to. Probably sleeping. Trying to sleep. “What did my little brother do this time?”

Gloria rubbed my deltoid. “Stole some money.”

“Who’d he rob?”

“Car wash they said.”

Eunice said, “Did he lawyer up?”

Gloria shrugged. “I dunno.”

“Poor bastard.”

Saffronia pulled the peas off her head and sat up. “Must be tough for you, huh? Having some job that takes you all over the world but life’s still happening just the same back here for your people?”

“Shit. If I hadn’t caught a couple breaks? That would be me in there right now.”

Gloria said, “Would have been? Ain’t this the same exact spot you were locked up back in the day?”

I shot her a glare. Saffronia’s one good eye tightened up on me. “You been locked up, Jimi?”

“Yeah, on some trumped-up bullshit.”

“What were the charges?”

Gloria blurted out, “Grand Theft Auto!”

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I shot her another look, fiercer than the last. She winked at me. I mouthed some cold-sounding consequences if she didn’t shut the fuck up, like, really damn quick. She blew me a kiss. I snorted.

“It wasn’t Grand Theft Auto! I was just catching some sleep in the back of an unlocked car on the Main Stem. I couldn’t find my dad to get the keys. It was so cold out that night!”

“I dunno what your excuse was. I just know the charge was Grand Theft Auto. I remember the citation. It was one of the first things I ever read all by myself. The People versus James Marshall Hendrix. I remember thinking you must’ve been such a big deal…for all them people to stop everything they were doing just to write you a letter…I didn’t know nothin’ about nothin’ back then.”

I cussed her out under my breath.

Eunice turned from the steering wheel and panned the cabin, taking time to make eye contact with each of us. “There ain’t no shame in that. I see that kinda thing every day. Drunk white boys wrap a car around a telephone pole? Their parents come pick them up at the station. Black kids give the cop a funny look walkin’ down the sidewalk? Cuff him and stuff him and throw away the key…happens all the time.”

“I knew I had a problem on my hands the second that cop car came around the corner. It was like a premonition. Right then and there, I knew I was outta luck.”

Gloria mussed my hair. I cringed away from her. She was messing up my headband. She said, “That night made all the difference in the world for you, though! It was a blessing in disguise.”

I frowned at her. “Kind of a rough ride as far as blessings go.”

Saffronia looked back and forth at both of us. She winced again. “How was getting locked up a blessing?”

I shook my head at Gloria. “I enlisted in the army. That was my only way out of doing real time.”

Gloria hugged me from behind. I tried to wriggle free. She wouldn’t let me go. “That’s how got you outta Seattle. Got off the streets.”

“They wouldn’t even let me bring my guitar.”

“Finally got some meat on them bones. That was probably the first time in your life you ate three square meals a day.”

“I didn’t have my guitar and the only song I got to listen to through all of basic training was The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Saffronia said, “Damn! That had to be tough, huh? Having the ear of a musician and that’s the only song you got to hear? Was that kinda like only being able to eat crackers or something?”

“Something like that. They played it over the PA. Once in the morning. Once at night. Every damn day.”

Élise said, “That song sucks! It’s probably the worst song in America! I can’t believe they chose it for the anthem! Ugh!”

“Oh…and Taps. They would play Taps at lights out.”

Élise snickered. “Nice of them to change it up for you.”

Saffronia said, “Don’t you think there’s something cool about the anthem, though? Doesn’t something about it, give you butterflies in your stomach? Like a sense of anticipation? I dunno. Maybe that’s because it reminds me of going out to the ballgame…and the next thing I’m gonna hear is the umpire yelling ‘Play Ball!’.”

Eunice nodded, “You’re talkin’ the Pavlovian Response.”

Saffronia looked Eunice up and down. She still couldn’t let go of her bitterness about being run over by the car. She finally said, “I think that rings a bell, Pavlovian Response. What is it?”

Eunice eyed her warily. “It’s like you said, ringing the bell.”

“Are you gonna answer my question or not?!”

“The man rang the bell! Before he fed his dog every day! Eventually, the dog would salivate just from hearing him ring the bell. He didn’t need to feed him or nothin’.”

“Oh yeah. I knew that already.”

“Course you did, chile.”

Saffronia frowned at Eunice, then she turned back to me. “What do you think of the song itself? As a piece of music?”

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Gloria was humming the melody to the anthem. She was gonna mess it up. I could tell. For starters, she was humming in the wrong key for whatever passed for her vocal range. She was also totally disregarding the structure of the song. Humming off in tangents, like the tendrils coming off that lightning bolt.

I tried to ignore her. “Tell you the truth? My Pavlovian Response or whatever? It makes me feel relaxed and chill. I guess that’s because whatever was happening on the base had to stop whenever the anthem came on. No more orders. No more pushups. We got to just chill for a minute or two.”

Élise said, “It still sucks.”

Gloria’s humming just trailed off. She must’ve known, instinctive or otherwise, she didn’t have the range to pull it off. The car rocked on its worn-out shock absorbers as she swayed to the rhythm that had been relegated back into her heart.

I said, “Élise, you’re thinking about people singing the anthem. On base? It was always an instrumental recording. People are always messing it up, when they sing it.”

Saffronia said, “Why is that?”

“There’s this high note toward the end? When the lyrics say land of the free? Free is really high. People don’t think about that in the beginning. If they start the song too high-pitched, they don’t have the pipes to get up there and hit that note, get up there and let freedom ring. That just makes the whole song fall flat.”

“When they don’t let freedom ring?”

“Yep. Whole song builds up to that one note. Whole song is just an excuse to let freedom ring…in my opinion at least.”

“Oh, really? So the bad anthems are anticlimactic?”

“That’s a good way of putting it!”

“Huh. I never even thought of it like that!”

“And if you ask me? It’s a big mistake making people sing it a cappella. Like you were saying, people sing it at ballgames and stuff? Places where there tends to be a big crowd? A lot of these singers, it’s the biggest crowd they’ve ever performed for. So, they’re feeling the heat. They don’t have an instrumental to guide them and it’s got that challenging high note.”

“So, it’s almost a situation that’s designed to make you fail?”

“Kinda, yeah. In front of a big crowd of people, too.”

Élise said, “They should have picked a song that everybody could sing, not something that was designed to sound bad. It’s fucking embarrassing!”

I found myself fiddling with the melody to the Star-Spangled Banner. My G string had fallen out of tune again. I tightened the tuning knob.

Saffronia touched my arm. “You said earlier you got busted for sleeping in that car, right?”

“What? Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.”

“They, like, rousted you?”

Eunice said, “The police around here love rousting someone that can’t stick up for themselves…makes them feel all tough.”

Saffronia shot her a look. “But that’s what you said. They rousted you.”

I squeezed on the trem bar. I plucked the G. It was definitely the trem knocking that string outta tune. “Yep. I didn’t give them any attitude or nothin’. They didn’t care. Just tossed me in the slammer.”

“But-but…you said that you knew the jig was up when you saw them coming around the corner?”

“Huh?”

Eunice leaned over the steering wheel. Her eyes were staring at me. Saffronia’s one good eye was too. All three of them were trained on me. I squeezed on the trem bar again. Pumped it a few times.

Eunice nudged Saffronia. “If you don’t do it girl, I’m gonna.”

Saffronia rolled her eyes. She took a deep breath. “How-how…How are you gonna spot the police coming around the corner? If you’re all bundled up in the back seat? Out like a light?”

“…”

Eunice said, “Shit don’t make no sense.”

I was twiddling all the tuning knobs now. They weren’t even out of tune. I wasn’t even plucking the strings. I was just fiddling with the knobs. “I-I mean…Wh-what kinda person just goes and leaves their car unlocked on the Main Stem?”

Saffronia’s one good eye screwed up a little tighter at me. I felt Gloria’s hand rubbing my shoulder. Saffronia said, “You were just a kid, and that was a long time ago. Why do you feel like you have to lie to us about it?”

Gloria was whispering in my ear now. “Don’t let that bitch get to you, baby. You’re super cool.”

She was whispering courage. I patted her on the back of the hand.

“You-you…you don’t understand. The owner didn’t even press charges. They didn’t even care. They just arrested me. Threw me in a cell with a bunch of drunks and hardened criminals…like an animal really.”

Gloria whacked the seatback. It kicked like a bass drum. “Hey! I was hungry before we ran over this bitch. Now I’m starving. Let’s eat.”, she slapped me on the shoulder, “Let’s go to that burger joint! The one you could never afford to bring your girl!”

I said, “That’s fresh! Nowadays I can afford to bring all my girls to dinner!”

Saffronia arched her one good eye at me. “You better be careful about who you’re calling your girl!”

Eunice put the Bel-Air in gear, but not before chuckling and slapping five with Saffronia.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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[Back to Chapter 6]

[Forward to Chapter 8]

She was curled up tight against my shoulder as Eunice barreled down the street. Veering around slower cars. Blowing through stop signs. She was stealing glances down at Saffronia while she executed hair-raising driving maneuvers.

“Hang in there, girl! We gonna be at the ER in no time!”

The white light of the streetlamps refracted off the puddles of rainwater into rainbow prisms. Saffronia was groaning. I didn’t need the guitar. She was groaning right into my chest, vibrating through my tube, making me burp. She had a fat lip and a shiner of a black eye. It was already swollen shut. Her hair was all a mess, too. For that one instant framed by the windshield, she’d looked so beautiful. Her afro perfectly blown out. Effervescent. Now it was all matted and drooping. Poor girl.

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Gloria was leaning over the seat back. She had pulled out that whiskey flask from her garter belt. She was holding the flask to Saffronia’s mouth, pouring in sips gingerly then massaging her throat so she’d swallow her medicine.

Gloria offered me a pull between doses. I waved it off. She shrugged and threw one back herself. I was holding one of Saffronia’s red heels. I twirled it around and around. I contemplated.

After Eunice hit her, Saffronia went staggering on down the street. She had one hand clamped over her eye. She was waving us off with her free hand.

We were all scrambling after her, telling her to let us help her. We were telling her this after using the Bel-Air like a battering ram on her.

“I’m fine! Goddammit, I’m fine! Just stay the hell away from me! I ain’t goin’ anywhere near that death trap!”

I’d noticed her shoe. It was laying all the way over in Betty Jean’s front lawn. The force of the collision had knocked it over there. The ladies corralled Saffronia and somehow talked her into the car while I ran over and retrieved the shoe. The blinding motion light scared me half to death when I set it off.

I said, “Saffronia? Is that really your name?”

Élise was perched over the seatback. “Saffronia? That ain’t a name! You fucked that girl up Eunice!”

“I’m fine! That’s my name bitch!”

“You shouldn’t be out all alone at night!”

“I was coming home from piano lessons.”

“You oughta be more careful!”

“Y’all are the ones oughta be more careful! I’m the one that got run down!”

I said, “Okay Saffronia, just calm down, okay? You’re right. We should’ve been more careful.”

“Don’t know what I’m thinkin’ even bein’ in this car.”

“I have your shoe. I’m gonna put it back on for you, okay?”

She started to nod, but she winced. Eunice noticed and looked around at us nervously. We all shrugged. None of us had any answers. Eunice swerved around a few more cars.

“Say, girl? Were almost here, okay? We’re gonna be getting you checked out in no time.”

“Almost where?”

“Harborview Hospital. It’s only a couple blocks down this way.”

“Oh, hell no. I can’t afford no doctor bill.”

I said, “You just got hit by a damn car! See that busted windshield?! That’s from you bouncing off it!”

She winced. “I’m fine…I kinda rolled off it anyway.”

Gloria leaned over the seatback. “Girl? You didn’t roll off shit. You got shwacked. I seen it all happening!”

Eunice said, “Jimi, hold up some fingers or something. See if this girl hit her head or not.”

I held up some fingers. “Saffronia? How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Are you fucking kiddin’ me?! Can’t you see my eye’s swollen shut?! Gonna ask me to count daggone fingers now?!”

I looked back at Gloria and Élise. Élise shrugged. “Girl’s got a point.”

I said, “Well…I don’t know…what’s your definition of freedom?”

Gloria muttered, “Here we go again.”

“My definition of freedom?!”

“Yeah. What does freedom mean to yourself, actually?”

“Why are you asking?”

Élise said, “It’s what we were talking about before you got in our way.”

Saffronia went to turn back at her but winced again. She grabbed the back of her neck.

“I dunno. Freedom? My father’s always getting on my case. He says I fritter away my time on nonsense. Those are his words, not mine.

“If I was free, I guess I could pursue them frivolous things all day long and not have to waste my time with practical things like he makes me. He says I need a vocation, like a bank teller or a schoolteacher or something. And he’s kinda making out like I gotta find a man with a good job and full bennies and all that kinda stuff.”

Élise said, “Some health insurance would probably go a long way right about now.”

Saffronia ignored her. “Well if I was free, I wouldn’t have to worry about that. I could just date some guy I thought was interesting. I could spend all day learning to play piano. Then when the sun went down, I could spend all night with my telescope checking out the stars and other planets.”

I said, “You got a telescope?!”

“Nah. I wanted one. My dad said I couldn’t have one. He said it was a waste of money. He says it’s the Pacific Northwest. That there’s always a thick layer of clouds between us and the stars.”

Élise said, “Your dad actually makes a lotta sense.”

Saffronia said, “I think that bitch is giving me a worse headache than getting hit by the car.

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Eunice said, “Saffronia, you sound like you’re talking straight but were here now. I think it’s better safe than sorry. I think we oughta go in and get you checked out.”

“I mean, I’m fine. My neck’s a little stiff but it ain’t nothin’…and my lip’s all fat but…yep…I still got all my teeth…and my hip is throbbing something fierce…but I can still walk on it…more or less.”

Élise said, “Wait until the adrenaline wears off. Then your gonna know just how bad you hurt yourself.

The ladies all went back and forth about whether Saffronia needed to go into the ER or not. They tried to reason with her. Saffronia didn’t want anything to do with Harborview Hospital, particularly their Accounts Receivable department. They finally compromised. They decided to circle the block for a while until the adrenaline wore off. If Saffronia was in agony by then, we’d take her into the ER.

Eunice settled into a cruising speed well below the speed limit. Saffronia pushed herself off my chest. She forced herself to sit up straight so she could evaluate her injuries better. I watched her smooth out her tie-dyed dress. The reds, purples, greens, blues and yellows. The colors bled into each other. They pulsed. They disentangled. She tested out her neck, slowly swiveling her chin from one shoulder to the other.

“Hey! Are you Jimi Hendrix?”

I shrugged.

“Shit. Maybe I do have a concussion.”

I pulled up the white Stratocaster. Then I stabbed out the opening phrase of The Wind Cries Mary.

“Damn…say…when you were picking up guitar? You ever hit a wall?”

“A wall?”

“Shit. Um, it’s like…when…say…you’re learning and you’re getting better, you know, slowly but surely, or sometimes real fast, and then BAM! It’s like this bitch hitting you with a car. You just get stuck somewhere, and you can’t get no better, no matter what you do.”

“Hmmm…Well…what are you struggling with?”

“I just borrowed some of my friend’s Professor Longhair records?”

“Oh, yeah-yeah-yeah! I dig that cat!”

“No doubt…but…I can’t get the rhythm right no matter what the fuck I do.”

“Yeah…you’re preaching to the choir there. I remember when I was coming up, I used to get stuck on Elvis for months at a time.”

“You? Got stuck on Elvis?”

“Blue Suede Shoes.”

“The best I can manage is a really slow version of whatever the hell he does.”

“Yep.”

“I’ll speed it up and sometimes it’ll be goin’ good for half a second but then it all falls apart.”

“Yep. It’s like you notice it’s starting to sound kinda like the record and the second you notice and feel good about it, that’s when disaster strikes.”

“Exactly!”

“You’re so lucky.”

“Lucky?! I wanna throw myself outta frickin’ window lately!”

“Yeah. I know exactly what you mean.”

“Sucks.”

“Embrace it.”

“Huh?”

“Embrace the suck. You’re on the verge of a breakthrough. Something special’s about to happen between you and that piano. I guarantee it. Just a matter of time, really.”

“Tell you the truth? I think I’ve actually been getting worse. The last week or so? I’ve actually regressed. I think it’s all the negative energy. Visualizing slitting my wrists and all that?”

“I’m telling you Saffronia, I’d pull out my eye teeth to trade places with you right now. It’s been a while since I’ve felt that way. That anguish. That-that...frustration.”

“I’m, like, under duress.”

“Oh, yeah-yeah-yeah! That’s the word! Duress! You nailed it!”

“It ain’t nothin’ to embrace, tell you that right now!”

“Yeah it is! It’s gonna be like magic! You’ll see!”

“How?!”

“Just wait for it. It might be next week. Maybe even tomorrow. But maybe not for a month.”

“But what?!”

“You’re gonna wake up in the morning, and it’s just gonna happen. Effortless. That Professor Longhair rhythm you’ve been chasing? It’ll just flow outta you. And then you’ll be off to the races. You’ll barrel through a bunch of new skills like it ain’t no thing.”

“Really?!”

“Yep. You’re gonna be on top of the world!”

“I can’t wait!”

“I’m so jealous of you. I was born here you know.”

“At the hospital, here?”

“Yep. Rainy night. Just like this. Thunder and lightning crashing all around.”

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Gloria leaned forward over the seatback. “Rainy night?!”

“That’s right.”

“You told me it was a full moon!”

“When did I say this?”

“You used to tell me bedtime stories and you told me that you were born on a full moon and a gypsy woman came and told your mother that her baby was gonna grow up to be a famous guitar player that people came from all around to see.”

“What?! I didn’t tell no bedtime stories. It was your older sister that told all them.”

“Maybe when you were little. But by the time I was around? It was you telling them.”

“Hmm. Well, that sounds like a pretty good story, Gloria!”

“Other than it wasn’t true! And you would always do that! Always flipping around the facts, just to make the story sound a certain way.”

Saffronia said, “Well it’s true in a way. He did grow up to be a famous guitar player. It’s prophetic.”

Gloria said, “And it’s a lie. Probably wasn’t raining or a full moon. He was probably born during the day, on a sunny day!”

Élise said, “With a rainbow.”

Saffronia said “Ain’t that…what is it called? Poetic license?”

I said, “I like the sound of that.”

“It’s when you kinda mess with the minor details to make the overall story hit just right.”

Gloria shook her head. “Poetic license?! Pfffft. Monstrous! Eleven buckram men outta two!”

We all looked at each other. We all looked at Gloria. Then back at each other.

I shrugged. “I believe you, Saffronia. You’re brilliant. You’re gonna go places with that piano or whatever you end up doing. Trust me.”

“Hey thanks, man. That means a lot coming from you. Lemme ask you something, though.”

“What’s up?”

“You don’t ever hit a wall anymore? With guitar? You’re like at the end of guitar?”

“I’ve gotten to the point where, I guess I’m going out looking for a wall to hit. I don’t wanna sound arrogant or nothing, but with guitar? It’s really hard for me to hit one like you’re talking about. I get tripped up a little when I try some new technique, but I just have a lotta experience with adapting when it comes to guitar. I’m not really gonna have that frustration like you’re talking about…that duress.”

“You say it like it’s a bad thing.”

“It is a bad thing. Ever since I picked up a guitar. The duress? Wanting to throw yourself outta window like you were saying? That’s always the feeling you get before something beautiful happens. Hearing you explain it? It makes me remember. It gives me this hunger. This thirst. I wanna feel it again.”

“So what are you gonna do? To get your fix?

“Hate to say it, but this guitar’s holding me back. I’ve gotta get past guitar. I wanna learn to read music. I wanna take a year or so off and just study it. I was telling Eunice all about it before.”

Eunice looked over from the wheel. She managed a patronizing smile. “He wants his own studio. He calls it his church.”

Saffronia said, “Church? Like music is your religion?”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what it is.”

“That’s funny you say that, because I read about some of those early blues musicians? A lot of them came outta the Baptist church tradition? Some of them switched back and forth between being preachers and bluesmen.”

“Makes a lot of sense, right?”

“Yeah. Preaching and singing the blues. The skillset is interchangeable.”

“That’s what I wanna do with my studio. I wanna have a big band. I dunno. Maybe a whole orchestra. But it won’t be a symphony. It’ll be the blues. Electric church music. But there’s no way I can direct that many musicians without being able to speak their language. That’s why I gotta study music. I gotta learn it.

“It sounds so weird to hear you of all people say that.”

“It’s the truth.”

“You ever think of writing a protest song? About the war?”

“Huh? What makes you say that?”

“I dunno. You were talking about making yourself hit a wall, feeling that frustration, and I was thinking about it. You don’t really have any political songs. Maybe that would take you outta your comfort zone.”

“Like a protest song…about Vietnam?”

“Yeah.”

“Problem is…I’m not exactly sure if I’m against the war.”

Eunice locked up the brakes. “You ain’t exactly sure if you’re against the war?! In Vietnam?!”

“…”

“You can’t be serious!”

“I’m just not sure! I served in the army, you know? The hundred and first airborne division?”

“Yeah?! Well…you’re starting to sound a little bit like an Uncle Tom!”

“Oh, am I?! Thanks for letting me know, Eunice. You’re not the first person to say that about me…probably won’t be the last neither!”

“If looks like a duck! And it sounds like a duck!”

Élise popped her head over the seatback. “Eunice! You ever think it might be a good idea for you to keep a lid on it? Just for a minute or two?”

“Excuse me?!”

“You’re a lawyer, a professional fucking arguer, which is…whatever…but nobody’s suing anybody right now. Nobody’s going to jail. We’re all here, just trying to have a talk. And we’re never gonna get to the heart of the matter or the truth, or whatever, if you’re dead-set on winning every single damned argument.”

“…”

“Why don’t you go ahead and circle the block another time.”

“…”

Saffronia looked over both her shoulders. At Eunice and at Élise. “So, Jimi…what is it you’re confused about.”

“Well…I guess a couple things. I don’t like the idea of protesting the soldiers. I was a soldier. It’s basically just another bullshit job. Like landscaping or being a rhythm guitarist on the Chitlin’ Circuit. I don’t think it’s fair to make those people out to be monsters. People that are basically just punching the clock.”

“I hear you. What’s the other point?”

“I dunno. I don’t wanna pretend like I know it all about the big picture. I’m not smart like Eunice…but…I’m just not sure how I feel about communism. I know everything’s not all rosy over here. That’s for sure. Anybody who grew up like we all did, knows things ain’t how they oughta be…but I still wonder if communism might be even worse.”

“It sounds like you have a lot of thoughts about this stuff?”

“Yeah. Maybe. I dunno.”

“If you were simpler, maybe it would be easier to write a protest song.”

“I don’t wanna protest nothin’. I don’t wanna tell people how to think. I wanna teach them to think for themselves.”

“Well that would make for a cool song!”

“I sure don’t like being called an Uncle Tom neither.”

Eunice honked the horn at some other car’s real or perceived driving offense. “Yo, Jimi. Don’t take it personally, alright? I get emotional about the war and stuff! And I go for the throat when I argue. That’s just my nature and shit! C’mon now!”

“I’m not talking about you. I’m always catching that Uncle Tom rap from brothers and sisters, though. They say I play white music. Shit. Ain’t nothin’ blacker than the music I play.”

Saffronia said, “You don’t have to explain yourself. You don’t have to justify your art.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re not in the public eye all day, every day.”

“True that.”

“I’m not even black. My granny was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian!”

“You’re not black?”

“Nope.”

“I guess being native helps you avoid getting sucked into all that racial strife? The black and white thing?”

“I sure don’t like being called an Uncle Tom.”

“Being Indian means you don’t have to pick sides? Like a defense mechanism?”

“I dunno about all that. All I know is I was raised on my grandma’s stories. Indian culture. Indian heritage. My Mom? She died here. Died at this hospital.”

Eunice leaned over the steering wheel. “Shit, Jimi. Where’d that come from? We been circling this hospital for a while now.”

I was leaning my head against the window. The rain beaded up on it. “I dunno.”

Saffronia said, “How did she die?”

“Drank herself to death.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Eunice was careening around corners, coming up on two wheels. The Bel-Air hydroplaned through intersections. Horns were blaring all around us.

Élise and Gloria were in back, clutching onto each other for emotional support. I was up front, plucking at the guitar to keep my mind off my own mortality. Riffing around the Sheriff Ed Barkley Bluesprogression. The white Strat was vibrating ominously into my ribcage. It was making my stomach go sour. Eunice was devoid of expression, white-knuckling the steering wheel.

She locked the brakes up. The Bel-Air screeched to a halt.

Élise said, “This ain’t Maneki!”

Gloria muttered, “This ain’t even Merchants Café.”

I looked up from the fretboard. This was Betty Jean’s house.

My high school sweetheart.

“Whoa-whoa-whoa! What are we doin’ here?! Are you crazy?!”

“This is where your girl stay at! Your steady girl! Am I right?!”

“You gotta get us the hell outta here! I’m gonna look like a creep!”

“Nah.”

“Would ya at least kill the damn headlights?! I mean for chrissakes!”

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Eunice let out an annoyed exhale. She reached out laboriously toward the dashboard. She finally flipped off the headlights. The rain was coming down harder. Either that or it just sounded louder plunking on the roof now that we were stopped.

I wasn’t hungry. I really wanted to be in a restaurant. That sushi place. That diner Gloria had been talking up. Any restaurant. Anywhere in America, really. Anywhere other than idling out front of my ex-girlfriend’s house.

I wanted to explain that to Eunice, but I didn’t think it would do me any good. She was clearly furious. Her mouth was pursed. Her jaw was set. Her eyes looked like they could stare through lead.

She looked like a goddamned prizefighter.

I was beginning to suspect my discomfort was the goal here. I didn’t know if it was the kiss I tried to plant on her or the cheesy pickup line. She had been right, after all. I did use that bit about naming a song after them on a lot of girls.

It didn’t seem like the time or place to be coming clean about all that.

I turned back toward Élise. It was instinctive. That lady seemed comfortable revealing unpleasant truths. She had the process well-rehearsed. She would talk sense into Eunice.

We made the briefest of eye contact. Élise found something out in the rain. It gradually fascinated her.

I turned toward Gloria. Gloria shook her head vigorously.

I turned back toward the front. Eunice’s head turned away from the windshield. She was staring directly across.

Daggers. Coming right at me.

It was a long silence.

About a million years.

Finally, she said “Did Betty Jean come out to your concert tonight?”

“Huh? How should I know?”

Her eyebrows arched. That made the stare somehow more intense.

She flipped the headlights back on. Lit up Betty Jean’s house. Rain coming down diagonal in front of it.

“The hell are you thinkin’, girl?!” I reached across to flip them back off.

“You best get them damn hands back on your side!”

My hands made an organized retreat back to my side. I didn’t wanna snap them back in a way that revealed fear. But the way she said it, I could tell she had something bad, something specific, planned for my hands. My hands were my moneymakers.

“I haven’t talked to Betty Jean in years!”

Eunice let out a gasp. She leaned on the horn. It was so loud. It blared. It felt like an air raid siren. I ducked for cover.

I was balled up. Fetal. Hidden under the dashboard.

Eunice was staring down at me. I said, “Are you outta your damn mind!”

“What are you afraid of?! Some girl you say you ain’t talked to in years?!”

“Look! I just don’t wanna look like a desperate idiot in front of my ex and her parents…don’t that make any kinda sense to you?! Don’t you have a heart?! Even a little bit of one?!”

“You better come clean! Else I’m gonna lay on this daggone horn And this time? it’s gonna be for a little old while!”

I put up my hands in surrender. I whispered. It was a stage whisper, dripping in desperation.

“Look! Just relax! I talked to her today! Alright?! But it’s not like you think. Just turn off those damn headlights. I’ll explain!”

She exhaled again. It was long. Audible. Belabored. It seemed more about sending me a message than about breathing. She killed the headlights, though. I was shivering in my own sweat now, clutching the Stratocaster for emotional support.

Gloria and Élise were both drooling, perched over the seatbacks so they could hear better.

I shook my head at them.

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Balled up under the dashboard, with the rain pelting down on the Bel-Air harder and harder, I explained how I had called Betty Jean from my dad’s house that morning. It was the first time we’d spoken since I’d broken off our engagement.

“Engagement?!” All three of them reacted in unison.

I had proposed to Betty Jean after I signed up for the service, in the weeks leading up to basic training. I wanted to marry her before I left. Her parents stepped in. They said I needed to be gainfully employed. They said I needed to be able to show I could support a wife and family.

It was their word over mine.

I couldn’t even afford an engagement ring back then. Hell, I couldn’t even afford to take her out for a burger on the weekend.

We promised each other we’d get married as soon as I got out of the army. I meant it. I think she did too.

But one thing led to another. One of them scenes. I tracked down an army buddy in Nashville after I was discharged. One thing led to another. A one-night stand rang out longer when I caught on with one act then another. Then another.

That was 6 years ago. Six years of one thing leading to another.

When I talked to her in the morning, it didn’t take long to tell our lives had taken us down different paths. I still hadn’t settled down. She’d already been married and divorced. She was back living with her folks again. I told her how one of my songs, Red House, was about her. She didn’t know that song. She didn’t know any of my songs.

Eunice was looking down at me, shaking her head.

“What is it this time?!”

“I knew you were all talk! I knew that was just some line with you! I wrote a song for you. Pfffft.”

“Oh shit! But it’s true, er, this time it is, anyway! I really did write Red House about her!”

“You really think I’m that stupid, don’t you!”

“Wha-wha whaddaya talkin’ about?!”

“Boy?! That’s a daggone brown house I’m looking at over there!”

I peered up over the dashboard at Betty Jean’s place before ducking back under again. “Yeah? No shit. How many people you think are gonna listen to a damn song called Brown House?!”

“…”

Me, Élise and Gloria all traded looks with each other. I said “Mark it on your calendars, ladies! Eunice B. Fremon. Ain’t got nuthin’ to say!”

Eunice shook her head at me. She was frowning, but I could tell she was actually stifling laughter. I looked up at her. Things had somehow gone off the rails between us. I wanted to make things right with this lady.

Had to.

“Eunice? I owe you an apology. I’m sorry I pulled that cheesy line about writing a song about you. It was stupid. You’re way too smart to fall for something like that. And you’re way too special for me to want you to. Tell you the truth? I was trying to impress you.”

“You? Wanted to try to…impress me?”

“Yeah! You-you, you intimidate me…is what it is. If I’m being honest.”

“Wha? How?”

“I dunno. I’m surrounded by groupies and party girls. But you? Your picture is in the newspaper. You run projects like that Neighborhood House on the side as, like, a hobby?”

“And that scares you?”

“I dunno. Maybe it’s that. Maybe it’s that you’re a lawyer. Lawyers I know? They wear buttoned-up suits. They’re all business and they use fancy words, talking about stuff I don’t understand…I just end up signing whatever they hand me.”

“You just sign? Whatever they give you?!”

“Yeah, I don’t even read it.”

“Chile, we gonna talk about all this.”

“Okay, but what I’m trying to say is that…with you being a lawyer in a court of law and serving on boards…doing all this upstanding stuff…it makes me feel like I’m sitting here next to a giant or something.”

Élise snickered. Gloria shook her head. She whispered into Élise’s ear, “Dumb-ass. Didn’t never know how to talk to no lady.”

We could all hear it. I glared at Gloria. I shook my head. “That’s not how I meant it. I think you’re really pretty…and you got a nice physique and all that…the point I was tryin’ to make was that, you’re a professional and you’re involved in all this stuff…I dunno where you find the time, or the energy. You’re electric.”

“…”

“An electric lady.”

“You can try all the lines you want! I ain’t goin’ home with you tonight!”

“I’m not tryin’ to pick you up, Eunice! Not this time, anyway. I admire you. It blows my mind, the way you are.”

“Chile, it seems amazing to you because you’re not there every day. You don’t see me reading through dusty old volumes of case law...or reviewing hundreds of pages of transcripts for that one little misstatement that’s gonna impeach a witness.”

“But that’s so amazing! You have to be so smart to have an eye for that!”

“Nah. It’s just like you reading all them musical symbols. I see that treble clef or whatever you call it. It’s all like Greek to me. None of it makes any sense to me.”

“Don’t make no sense to me neither.”

“Chile, what are you talking about? You can’t read music?”

“Not a lick.”

“But your one of the best musicians in the world they say! That’s like…that’d be like if…damn.”

“I wanna learn how to read music. I wanna take a year off and learn theory. Then I can come back and make some real music. I love this guitar…but I’m talking a symphony. A blues symphony! Electric Gospel Music!”

“What are you waiting for?!”

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“It’s not that simple. I got responsibilities. I can’t just leave. I wish I could just be free, but I’ve been boxed in one way or another my whole life.

“When I was a kid, I was poor. Hell, I was po’.”

Gloria rubbed my back in solidarity. I reached back for her hand. Squeezed it.

“Then I went to the army. I was off the street. Had my own bunk. Had money in my pocket for the first time. I still wasn’t free. I was taking orders. All day long. I was getting told what to do. I was property of the US Government.

“I finally got discharged, honorably discharged. I made it to Nashville. I caught on with a band touring all around the south. Playing for cheering audiences every night, just like I’d dreamed about.

“I still wasn’t free.

“It wasn’t just being on the Chitlin Circuit, dealing with the racism in the dirty south. Sundown towns and colored restrooms. That all sucked. But the worst oppression? It was the dang band leaders!

“They were the worst! Worse than any small town sheriff. Telling me how I had to play, right down to the note. I was a slave with a guitar in my hand. I know-I know. That makes me sound like a spoiled brat. It’s how I felt, okay? Honestly? Being told how I had to play my guitar was worse than being sent to the back of the bus. I’m probably the only one that feels that way. That’s alright.

“Then this cat came along, Chas Chandler. I thought he was gonna be my salvation. He was bringing me to England. He was gonna get me a band. He was gonna make me the bandleader. He was gonna put me on the radio.

“But I still wasn’t free.

“I was the bandleader, but I was taking orders all day long. The record producers and the executives. The executives wanted their record delivered by a certain deadline. The producers wanted every song on that record to have a couple verses and a chorus. They all had to be under 4 minutes. So they could be on the radio. So they could be hits. That brought in the profits.

“In the studio we gotta nail a song on the first take. Second at the very worst. Anymore takes than that was unacceptable. Studio time is expensive. Cuts into the profits. Executives don’t like that. Bad for business.

“That’s why I wanna own my own studio. I can spend all day in there. I can do hundreds of takes. We can have a jam at the studio in the middle of the night. And it won’t just be a trio. It’ll be a huge band. All kinds of pieces. A symphony. An electric church.

“One of these days. That’s what I’m gonna do. That’s why I’m jumping through all these hoops right now. Paying my dues until I can learn music and have my own studio. My own church.”

“Well…that’s some vision you got there. Music. It sounds like it’s a religion for you.”

“That’s exactly what it is.”

Élise cleared her throat so loudly it reverberated throughout the cabin of the Bel-Air. She said, “Eunice, sounds like you got the same problems as our boy. Between being a busy lawyer…and running that soup kitchen or whatever…not to mention all that rabble-rousing you like so much.”

“Chile, don’t be trying to fix me up with this boy. He been put in his place.”

“Forget him. We’re talking about you. All those commitments. All that day to day. You have any free time? Just for you?”

“Chile, my day to day is my freedom.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”

“Huh?”

“You heard me. Nobody’s free until everybody’s free. I never feel more free than when I’m part of the cause. When I’m in fellowship with my brothers and sisters.”

“Fellowship?”

“Providing legal representation to folks that can’t afford it. Or-or putting food in hungry people’s bellies. Or-or speaking up when something just got to be said. You know? Being part of something bigger than yourself?”

“Whatever”

“Excuse me?!”

Élise shook her head. “You’re overthinking it. You want yourself some freedom? You get yourself some money. It might not sound sexy, but it’s the truth. Money is freedom; pure and simple.”

“Hell, money can be bondage worse than a junkie needing a fix.”

“Or a workaholic? Needing to fill the hours?”

“I think there were slaves picking cotton back in the day that were actually free. I think there’s been kings and presidents so bound up they might as well have been in chains.”

Élise waved her hand dismissively in Eunice’s direction. “Yap-yap-yap. No wonder you’re so good at convincing judges to let murderers loose on the streets!”

Gloria said, “I think freedom is being able to soak up all the experiences life has to offer. I don’t wanna be on my death bed regretting I didn’t do something because I was too afraid.”

Eunice rolled her eyes. “Chile, you just wanna do whatever the hell you want and have no one to listen to.”

Gloria nodded. “Exactly! Freedom!”

Eunice shook her head. “Nah.”

“Huh?”

“Freedom come from salvation. Salvation come from within.”

“No way! When you lose freedom it’s because some outside force stops you from doing something you wanna do.”

“Like what? Example!”

Élise said, “Yeah! Explain yourself!”

Gloria glared at Élise. Then she turned back to Eunice. “It’s like…say…family. Family can be a form of oppression.”

Élise and Eunice made eye contact. Then they both busted out laughing. Eunice said, “Chile, I should drink some of whatever it is you got in that flask. Shit.”

Gloria scowled back and forth at both of them. “Think about all the people who get so caught up in living up to their family’s expectations that they never take a minute to live for themselves! Jimi! Tell them!.”

I put my hands up in surrender. “Fuck that! I just barely got back on her good side! I’m staying the hell outta this one, Gloria!”

“But-but think about how your dad used to treat you. You’re a lefty. He used to beat you when he caught you writing lefty. He forced you to write righty.”

I rubbed my left wrist. “He used to call me devil child.”

“Shit. I remember you used to be playing that old Supra lefty? Then you’d hear him stomping down the hall? And flip it over righty! You were so scared he’d catch you!”

“I still write righty to this day.”

Eunice cocked her head so she could see Gloria in the rearview mirror, “You’re actually making a little bit of sense.”

“Really?!”

“That’s what Oedipus is all about. That boy killed his daddy and made love to his momma. Now, that’s provocative as hell. But underneath it all? It’s just a metaphor. I use metaphors and analogies all day long in court to make jurors understand stuff easier. All that killing his father means is renouncing the values that weren’t true to himself. That weren’t intrinsic. And banging his momma? That just means rebirth is all.”

Gloria said “Exactly!”

Élise said, “Acceptance is the price of freedom.”

Eunice whipped her head around. She sized Élise up in the back seat. She said, “The hell you mean by all that?”

“My grandmother always said that…say that daddy you wanna kill to purge out those values you don’t believe in? What if he’s got millions and millions of dollars? You might thump your chest getting to say your gonna live your life how you want to, but if you don’t have no money? if you gotta go to Neighborhood House for all your meals? Well, maybe you woulda been a little more free if you swallowed your pride and worked things out with your old man.”

Gloria went slack-jawed. She glanced over at Eunice, awaiting her response. Eunice shrugged.

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I looked at Élise. “So then what’s your definition of freedom?”

“Freedom? Shit. You’re all overthinking it.”

“Oh yeah? Then simplify it for us.”

“Tell you the truth? There ain’t no freedom. Not in this life anyway. Freedom’s just an illusion, a mirage to keep people like her showing up for court in the morning, keep people like you out on tour. Freedom’s a shiny object people get distracted by.

“Life boils down to a simple choice. Boredom. Or suffering. That’s it. Pick your poison.”

We were all silent in the cabin. The rain kept plunking down on the roof. I looked up at Élise from down under the dashboard. “Damn, sis…you ever thought about writing a blues song?”

Gloria pulled Élise down off the seatback. Her voice came muffled from in back. “You just chose suffering, bitch!”

Eunice said, “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.”

I said, “Damn. You sound poetic.”

“I didn’t come up with it.”

Élise pulled herself back up on the seatback. Her hair was all mussed. The gold braids on her jacket were flying open again. “Who did?”

“It was some old white guy. I think he was a slaver even.”

“Shit. That’s a kick in the ass.”

“Yeah. Ironic.”

Gloria threw her arms around Élise. She said, “Can we finally get some food?!”

I said “Anywhere’s better than lurking out in front of my ex’s.”

Eunice gave me a look. I thought I struck another nerve by mentioning Betty Jean. But then she started chuckling. “True that. You can at least crawl out from under there, though.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

I pulled myself back into the seat. I slung the Stratocaster over my shoulder. It must’ve been getting cold. The guitar had slipped outta tune. The strings had contracted. I fiddled with the knobs as Eunice cranked the engine to life. She flipped the headlights on.

My heart leapt straight into my throat. I jolted straight up in my seat. Eunice screamed.

Someone was looming directly in front of the car. The hourglass shape of a lady. Staring right at us. A giant afro. A tie-dye dress. Red and green. Purple, yellow, and blue. One color bled into the next. Red high-heels.

Eunice’s scream soared like an opera singer’s. She punched the gas. The torque from the engine slammed me into my seat. The lady bounced over the hood.

THHWWWAAAACCCKKKKK!

She cracked off the windshield. Left a spiderweb fracture in the glass. The rain in the headlights made prisms through the spiderweb.

“What the hell was that?!”

“I dunno! She was just standing there!”

“So-so you run her over?!”

“Well…I-I thought it might be that Betty Jean bitch?!”

“So?! You run her over?!”

TO BE CONTINUED….

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[Back to Chapter 4] [Forward to Chapter 6]

Gloria followed behind her, rubbing down her neckline. “I dunno! It was kinda exciting!”

I said “What’s this? Your apartment complex?”

Eunice didn’t like that. I didn’t know why, but she was glaring at me. “Nah.”

She slammed her door when she got out. I followed, scrambling behind her up the steps to the front door. She pulled out keys and unlocked the door in a smooth motion that told me she’d been here plenty before.

“I thought you said you don’t live here?”

“You can’t be serious.”

Eunice shouldered the door open. Élise and Gloria followed behind us into the darkness. Eunice blinded us flicking on the switch. The fluorescent lights in the alcove were brighter than the sun. I had my hands clamped over my eyes shut tight. The light was still piercing through. I was watching geometric shapes twist and recoil on the backs of my eyelids.

Gloria said, “Shit. Neighborhood House! I ain’t been here in years!”

Tentatively, I opened my eyes. Prisms were dancing everywhere, but I was able to make out an unmanned reception desk. Murals were painted on the walls. Unprofessional murals. Kids had done them. I knew they had. I had been one of them.

My eyes adjusted to the light. Long dormant memories were coming back to me, like receding dreams when I woke up and shook off the sleep.

Behind the reception desk, the word MISSION. Below that, Neighborhood House opens doors for people of all ages experiencing language, cultural, and systemic barriers to housing, health, education, and economic opportunity.

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There were folding chairs arranged in front of the wall to the left, like an improvised waiting room. Across the top of that wall, the word VALUES. Below it, the paint trickles had dried coming off the letters making up the words. The letters were in all different colors. No rhyme; no reason.

Equity. Integrity. Relationships. Sustainability.

The right wall was dominated by a pair of double doors. Above the archway, VISION.

A healthy, diverse, and welcoming community, free of poverty and racism, where all people thrive.

Eunice was standing in front of the double doors. “You starting to remember?”

I nodded. My parents used to ditch us here all the time when we were kids. Me and my brother Leon. She pushed open the doors. “Let’s go check it out.”

The double doors opened into a larger room with a stage at one end. There were a couple dozen folding chairs scattered around the room. A few were in a crescent in front of the stage. Others were arranged in circles in different parts of the room. One was isolated facing into a corner.

Eunice cursed. The way she propelled the cuss word from her mouth, like it had a bad taste, made the rest of us stiffen up.

“That damn Zach! I told him to stack these daggone chairs!”

Élise nudged Gloria. She pointed toward the chair in the corner. “Is that where they used to send you? When you were a kid?”

Gloria was fondling the gold braids on Élise’s blue hussar jacket. She kept toying with braid after braid, going lower and lower on the jacket. “Nah, I was…really bad. They had to take me away. Give me a talkin’ to.”

“They took you away?”

“Yeah, it was this whole different room. They had to get stern with me. They couldn’t have the other kids seeing all that.”

“…”

“It got nasty.”

“…”

“C’mon I’ll show you the room.”

Me and Eunice watched Gloria guide Élise away like she was sleepwalking. We were both shaking our heads. I gestured toward the stage. “I played guitar up there.”

“Damn straight. Why do you think I brought you here?”

“You were here?!”

“You played Elvis. Hound dog.”

“How in the hell do you remember that?!”

“…”

“I must not have seen you because of my nerves. I think I was staring down at my shoes the whole time. This place was one of the first times I ever played in front of people.”

Actually, it was the very first time. I was so scared, I almost didn’t go up. I had been starving. I hadn’t eaten all day. I still turned down the after-school snack. I was afraid it would come right back up once I looked down and saw all those people watching me. All 9 or 10 of them.

“I still remember I messed up the solo. My hands were so clammy from the nerves, that’s why.”

Eunice grabbed a chair and folded it. She began lugging it across the room. She said, “You didn’t have it easy. None of us did. But you did have some help, Jimi. It wasn’t just Roscoe whoever and a bunch of ghosts that made you who you are.”

I came up alongside her. I went to grab the chair from her, like a gentleman. She blocked me. She gestured around the room at all the other chairs scattered around. I went and grabbed one.

“I can’t believe you were here that day.”

“I’ve been here all along.”

“You work here…you’re, like, a teacher?”

“I’m on the board here…I work with the kiddos here and there too, though.”

“But I thought you worked for that Nonviolent Coalition or whatever it’s called? That picture in the newspaper. You work here too?”

“The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. That’s some volunteer work I do. So is this. It’s not my job.”

We had settled into a division of labor. I was stacking the chairs on dollies. She was folding them. My voice echoed off the walls when I hollered across to her.

“I’m actually doing some volunteering of my own…tomorrow.”

She perked up, just like I’d been hoping for. “Oh yeah? Doin’ what?”

“Over at Garfield High School. Our old stomping grounds. You been there lately?”

“Used the parking lot as a staging area for a protest once. Other than that, can’t say that I have.”

“Protest, huh. I’m, uh, doing a free concert for the kids.”

I told Eunice how I had my manager coordinating with the principal of the school. I wanted it to be a surprise for them. They were gonna wander into school like it was going to be another boring day. After homeroom or whatever, they’d be instructed to head to the gym. They would all file through the hallways, wondering what kind of boring nonsense they were in for, only to walk into gym with the Marshalls blaring Purple Haze.

Blow their little minds.

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“Those kids sure are lucky.”

“Yeah. I don’t make it back here much nowadays. I wanna make it count while I’m in town. You know what I mean?”

“I gotta be honest with you, Jimi. I don’t remember you at all from high school.”

“I remember you.”

“Really? Because we weren’t, like, friends or nothing.”

“I guess it was more reputation. Your name was always on the honor roll and president of the, of the…what were you president of?”

“Student council.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. The student council.”

“I do remember you from this place, though. Me and you were always here it seemed like.”

“I guess that was when we were just real little.”

“Nah, I kinda think it was straight through our whole childhoods.”

“Uh, anyway, so your man must be the one that works? So you can do this volunteering stuff?”

She rolled her eyes and shoved a chair at me. “I ain’t got no man. I do got a job of my own, though.”

“Oh, really? Whaddaya do?”

“I’m a lawyer.”

“You’re a lawyer?!”

“Yep.”

“Like…you go to court?! And argue a case in front of a judge?!”

“Uh-huh. Got some poor bastard off on murder charges just last week.”

“You must make pretty good money then.”

“I don’t make shit. I’m a public defender.”

“This is crazy! Eunice B Fremon from Garfield High School is a lawyer…talk about minds being blown!”

“Ain’t no crazier than little James Hendrix from the after-school program at Neighborhood House going on to become a rock star!”

“I guess it makes sense the more you think about it. You were the valedictorian.”

“Salutatorian, but who’s keeping score.”

“I thought you were the one that gave the speech? At graduation?”

“Nah. I sat next to the kid that gave the speech.”

“Oh…I wasn’t at graduation.”

“You were hardly ever at class!”

“…”

“Place still got a hold on you though!”

“…”

“Say, let me show you around. Show you what’s new.”

“You sure? I’m not sure where Gloria and Élise wound up.”

“I’ll just talk loud so we don’t stumble onto anything we don’t wanna see. We do a lot more than babysit kiddos after school now, you know?”

She was looking right at me. I knew what she wanted me to say, so I said it.

“No. I don’t know. Show me.”

I just didn’t understand where she was coming from. When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait to put as much space between me and this place as I could. Eunice was a smart lady. I couldn’t understand why it seemed like she wanted to make this place, of all places, her everything. But it was undeniable. This place made her light up.

She brought me through to the back. There was a kitchen back there, a commercial kitchen, like you find in a restaurant. Eunice made a point of whacking one of the big pots that was hanging. It made a racket rattling off all the other pots and pans, giving Élise and Gloria plenty of fair warning wherever they might be. All the tables were sparkling stainless steel.

I told her it reminded me of touring down south when I was just a rhythm guitarist. Paying my dues and learning my chops. The Chitlin Circuit. They never let us sit in the restaurants down there. We bought our food out the back of kitchens just like this. Ate in our laps as the bus rattled down the road toward the next gig.

She said, “A lotta bullshit down there, huh?”

I shrugged. “I knew what to expect. My grandma did the vaudeville scene down there in her day. She told me all about it.”

I couldn’t tell if she was impressed by the injustices I’d faced or not. She’d barely acknowledged me. Talking about how this was where they prepared all the food for the free breakfast program they’d been running the last couple years. Nobody had to bother with applications and whether they’d qualify. If they were hungry, they just came by here in the morning.

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We doubled back to the original room with the stage. I hadn’t noticed before but there were tables that folded up and slid into the wall. Big long tables, several times the length of a picnic table.

That was why she was so mad at Zach or whoever for not stacking up the chairs. The volunteers that arrived in the morning before the sun came up to prepare for serving the free breakfast would have had to take care of the chairs before pulling out the tables.

“It’s not a major job. It’s just about respect.”

“Good thing you and I came…we saved the day!”

I flashed her the biggest smile I could. She directed my attention over toward the far wall. It was a floor to ceiling corkboard. “This is our job board over here.”

Some of the postings were just the Help Wanted section of the Post-Intelligencer. Others were handwritten. Notebook paper with frayed, ragged edges. Cocktail napkins. Company letterhead. Eunice explained that people from around the neighborhood that were holding down jobs would leave a note here if they got word their work was hiring.

“Most people around here that got a job? It’s because they knew somebody. Somebody put in a good word for them. Helped them get their foot in the door.”

“I know what you’re saying. My old man got hired as a hotel porter once. It was just like that. He knew a guy.”

“Chile, I’ll bet you yourself got hired once or twice like that!”

“…”

“…”

“Well…come to think of it…this cat I met in the army? Buddy Miles? He scored me a few gigs in Nashville when I first got outta the service.”

“There you go!”

She brought me across to another wall. A broad American Flag was pinned across the top. It was red, white, and blue, and it had the gold fringe. Below it, there was another massive corkboard. This one was marked off into a calendar grid with masking tape. There were programs that people could sign up for. Resume workshops. Job Interview training. Public speaking. English classes. Eunice said there were more and more Asian immigrants in the neighborhood. Hispanics also migrated up through California.

They were trying to coordinate with colleges and high schools around Seattle to start an extension program so people could get their GED’s and learn skilled trades that would get them better paying jobs. Hosting it here was more realistic, right here in the neighborhood. Going right to where the people were at got them to participate.

“It’s a slow process is all.”

“You oughta have some programs teaching people how to manage their money.”

“That’s a great idea, Jimi. There’s a lot of great ideas. Every single one of them requires more volunteers, more space, and more money.”

“…”

“Three things that are in short supply.”

I gazed around the room, taking it all in again after everything she had explained to me. The folding chairs and the pull-out tables. The job board and the extension program. The stage.

“Do you still do anything with music here?”

“Nothing formal. We don’t give music classes or nothing.”

“You should do that!”

“Time. Money. Space.”

“Oh yeah.”

“Some of the kiddos, though. They play at our community mixers when we have them.”

“You throw parties here?”

“Whatever you wanna call it. We’re building a community here. Part of that is helping people get jobs and stay fed. Another part is creating a sense of fellowship.”

“Fellowship?”

“Yeah.”

“…”

“The sense that were all in this together?”

“Y’all sound like hippies to me!”

“Call it whatever you want. We’re just trying to get by.”

“I hear that.”

“It’s just strange. Folks come through here. We do what we can to help them keep their head above water. Some of them? It don’t matter. They slip between the cracks. Get lost in the system. But others? They really end up making something of themselves. Doctors. Lawyers.”

“You sure didn’t slip between the cracks! A lawyer arguing cases in court! And doin’ all this on the side?”

“It could be anything. Someone that ends up being a bus driver that can support their family. That’s a success story.”

“Yeah, for sure.”

“People from here go down all kinda different paths. Some of them wind up in the strangest of places. You wouldn’t believe half the stories.”

“Eunice? I can only imagine!”

“But the ones that make it out? So many of them seem to forget that the little bit of help they got from here might’ve made all the difference…I dunno…I ain’t no psychologist or nothin’…but…Sometimes I wonder if they’re ashamed of being poor, ashamed of needing a handout…and giving back to us makes them uncomfortable because it reminds them they weren’t always standing on top of the world…you know what I mean?”

“You didn’t forget! You came back!”

“Um, yeah…yeah.”

I reached out with my hand on the small of her back. “You’re amazing Eunice…everything you do…I got this song I’ve been working on? Jazzy little number. I’m gonna name it after you.”

I slid my hand down onto her hip. She leaned back. I leaned forward, turned her around. My lips were feathering hers.

She pulled away from me.

I went slack-jawed. I was about to whine out some kind of objection. She was looking up at me. I saw her eyes tighten up. Something told me not to say shit.

Her voice boomed out in the hall. “You pull this bullshit on all the girls.”

“Wha-wha…whaddaya talkin’ about?!”

“Gonna name a song after me?! That’s probably the oldest trick in the book with your kind isn’t it?!”

“No! I’m serious!”

“No. You’re not.”

“…”

“You’re, like, the opposite of serious. What’s the word for that.”

“Frivolous?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. You’re one frivolous motherfucker.”

“Well, you’re…like…really uptight.”

“What the hell did you just call me?!”

“You two need to get yourselves a room! Shit!”

Élise’s voice. I spun around. Desperate to change the subject. She’d been brought back to life. Strutting rakishly across the room. Gloria on her arm. The gold braids on her hussar jacket were all undone. She didn’t care. Gloria’s hair was all a mess. Dress was all askew. She didn’t care either.

Gloria said, “Can we get outta here? I’m starving!”

Élise rubbed her shoulder. “You must’ve worked yourself up an appetite, girl. You were really getting’ down to business back there.”

Eunice said, “There ain’t no sense in stickin’ around here no more. Where do y’all wanna go?”

Elise said, “Let’s get sushi. Let’s go to Maneki!”

Gloria said “Sushi?! I want something that’s gonna stick to my ribs. Let’s go to Merchant’s Café.”

Eunice said, “Let’s just go.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

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[Table of Contents]

[Back to Chapter 3] [Forward to Chapter 5]

My clothes were dripping puddles onto the floor of the station wagon. The water drained through all the rusted-out holes onto the pavement racing by beneath us.

That Chevy Bel-Air was beat. Lurching down the road. The jalopy was gonna vaporize into a cloud of rust particles. The upholstery was all tore up. Shot through like a pin cushion. One busted spring was poking through, right at my butthole. Jabbing. Over every bump with the blown-out shocks. I sat all cock-eyed, off-kilter. Off balance.

I couldn’t afford the distraction. Headlights and streetlamps were refracting off the glistening pavement. Prisms shot off in tangents.

Eunice was slid across the bench on the passenger side, playing it off but eyeing me close. Gloria was straight staring me down in the rearview mirror. Élise scowled at me back there. She squeezed Gloria and pulled her closer.

I had one hand on the wheel, another on the radio, trying to find something decent.

“Damn, boy!” Eunice sprung across and yanked on the steering wheel.

“Hey, girl! Whaddaya doin?!”

“You almost side-swiped that daggone Chrysler!”

“What Chrysler?”

“What Chrysler?!”

Gloria’s face jutted up between us. “He can’t see a dang thing! Boy’s blind as a bat! Been that way since way back!”

“It’s not that bad. It’s just when it gets dark…and stormy…like this. You know? Dealing with all the reflections? And prisms?”

Eunice sprung up in her seat. “Prisms?! What prisms?!”

Élise muttered, “He’s gonna get us all killed.”

Eunice said, “Pull it off…I’ll be driving this damn bucket of bolts from now on!”

“Oh c’mon, now. I can’t be seen getting’ driven around by no woman!”

“Boy? You don’t even know where the hell we’re goin’!”

“…”

“You see? Pull it off!”

“But-but…”

“But nothin’. You gotta get up outta that driver’s seat!”

“Seriously?!”

She leaned across the bench and whispered to me. I could feel her lips feather my ear lobe.

Goose bumps.

“C’mon, baby. You know I need you serenading me with that guitar you brought along.”

I gulped. “Well…since you put it that way.”

After we switched, Élise shoved the white Stratocaster at me from the backseat. Gloria jutted her head forward again. “That damn thing almost went right up my ass when you were swerving all over the road!”

She winked at me when she said it. Élise’s hand came forward. Yanked Gloria back.

I fiddled with the knobs. Tuning my guitar and finding a song on the radio. I stumbled on a station playing Dylan. I didn’t have an amplifier, so I toyed with the volume until it was balanced with my guitar’s resonance.

The lyrics of Visions of Johanna vibrated into my guitar.

Ain’t it just like the night to play

Tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet?

We sit here stranded

Though we’re all doing our best to deny it

I burped, tracing his voice with my notes.

Gloria had an arm draped across my chest from the back seat. She was whispering to me now. “Don’t worry, baby. I saw them prisms you were talkin’ about too.”

The hairs on my neck were standing up. “Say, Eunice…where are we goin’ anyway?”

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Sugar Ray’s was a juke joint on the Main Stem. That was the black part of town in Seattle.

It brought back memories.

This place used to be one of my old man’s favorite watering holes. I couldn’t for the life of me remember if it was called Sugar Ray’s back then, but I would’ve known this place after a hundred years. That smell of stale beer and cigarettes. Sawdust all over the floor. All rickety, not a right angle in the entire building. The walls, the bar, all the tables and chairs, it all came from scrap wood. None of it was painted or stained. Wasn’t even sanded.

I used to trudge down here when I was 10 years old, looking for my dad to get the keys to the front door so I could get me and my little brother, Leon, inside. I never understood why he could trust me with my little brother, but he couldn’t trust me with the keys.

Nothing back then ever added up.

I was gritting my teeth. This place made me angry. Still, how could I knock it. Maybe I kinda loved this place. It was places like this that made me what I was.

Wandering into shitholes like this looking for Al.

That’s how I discovered The Blues.

There was a beat-up old man wearing a beat-up old suit. His gnarly rheumatoid hands were limping over the fretboard, coughing out the death rattle of a twelve-bar. It was a pin-striped suit, all wrinkly and torn. It had probably looked sharp on him back when he was a younger man. They called him the cat’s pajama’s back in the day. Something like that.

Élise gawked from the doorway. “There’s gotta be a classier place than this.”

The old man was propped on a barstool onstage, leaning on his dry old tiger-striped guitar. The stage was a shipping pallet tossed in the corner. He could’ve been in his 80’s. Then again, it might have been just 60-something years of hard living. It was hard to tell with his fedora pulled down low like he didn’t want his face associated with the music he was putting out.

Gloria shook her head. “Jimi! He’s a lefty just like you!”

She said it like I should have been fascinated. The odds were a mathematical curiosity. Those odds gave way to a deeper feeling. I was staring across the barroom at that old man. I was looking through a mirror. Gazing across the Rubicon.

Élise shook her head. The place was empty. Besides the old man, there was just the bartender and a couple drunks perched on stools at the end of the bar. The scattered cabaret tables were empty. The sawdust on the floor was still dry.

Gloria shrugged. She waved at the bartender. “Whassup Eric?!”

“Hey girl! You lookin’ fine!”

“Don’t I always look fine?!”

“Yeah…yeah, true that.”

She leaned over the bar, toying with the necklace dangling in front of her cleavage. “Thanks baby! Where all your regulars at?”

“Brown-bagging it? Nobody got no money!”

Élise was glaring back and forth at both of them. Gloria said, “Hey, I’m here with my cuz…keep the riff-raff off our backs, will ya?”

“No doubt baby girl! Don’t be such a stranger!”

Gloria winked and did a twirl for the bartender. Élise scowled at both of them.

Eunice slapped Élise on her shoulder. “Snap out of it, girl. This is perfect…anywhere classier will just mean crowds and autographs.”

Élise took a deep breath, trying to find acceptance. Eunice persisted. She plunged a couple octaves into a throaty whisper. “Why don’t you go buy me something nice.”

“Like what?”

“I dunno. Something I can stick my pinky out when I drink it.”

Eunice hooked her elbow around mine and pulled me into the corner. The old man was stumbling through a turnaround. The tune was probably in E. I’d been debating it in the back of my head since we’d walked in. I was pretty sure, but it could’ve been G. His guitar was so outta tune.

There was a mirrorball shimmering above all of us in that dreary room.

“Where are you takin’ me?”

“Back here, so we can have us some privacy.”

Gloria was behind us. “We want you all to ourselves tonight!”

I shook my head at Gloria. I said to Eunice, “If we want some privacy, we should just catch a cab back to my hotel.”

Eunice arched an eyebrow at me. “We don’t gotta be worrying about all that…Let’s just relax, see where the evening takes us.”

She pointed me to a table in the back corner cloaked in shadows. I pulled my guitar around off my back so I could sit. Let it rest across my chest in playing position. When Eunice sat next to me, I leaned over and whispered in her ear. I tried returning the goose bumps she’d given me.

“Don’t worry ‘bout that Gloria girl none. She’s all talk. She’s just my little cousin.”

Gloria across from us. “Just your little cousin?! The hell is that supposed to mean?!”

She was staring at us. Her eyes were like silver dollars. I said, “She’s outta her head.”

Eunice said, “Y’all are cousins?! Ain’t you, I dunno, a bit familiar?! For bein’ cousins and all?!”

The white Strat was buzzing. I could feel the vibrations. I could tell Gloria wasn’t really mad. She was just playing. But Eunice? She was tense. She really was thrown off by not knowing what was going with us. I had to spell it out for her. Damn Gloria.

“She’s always been like this. Always had a crush on me. Ever since she was a little girl and I had to babysit her.”

“What?! You wanted to babysit me. You used to beg my mother.”

“Nah-nah. That’s what I told you. I was in high school. You think I wanted to be pinned down? Babysitting you?! I wanted to be at Spanish Castle playing with my band!”

She leaned forward with her elbows on the table. Her head shaking. Her huge eyes twinkling. Pushing her cleavage all out.

“That’s not true! You used to hit on me something fierce! Bustin’ moves on me! Layin’ it on real thick. You should’ve seen it, Eunice. It was bad!”

“Don’t listen to her Eunice. You must be crazy if you think I had the hots for some knobby-kneed little girl! I was just playin’ with your little mind, trickin’ you into doin’ the dishes was all…tryin’ to get you to brush your damn teeth before bed…shit.”

“You musta been worried somethin’ fierce about my oral hygiene then! Worried to death. Because them sweet nothin’s you used to tell me? You put some thought into them! My dear lord!”

She started fanning herself. She winked at Eunice.

“What sweet nothings?! There weren’t no sweet nothings!”

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Élise was back from the bar. She handed Gloria a glass of bubbly. It matched her own. She handed Eunice a drink with a helix of lemon peel hooked over the rim.

“Damn! I’ll definitely be sticking my pinky out to this one. What is this?”

“It’s called a French 75. Gin and champagne and stuff. Had to go behind the bar and make this damn thing myself. Useless frickin bartender!”

Eunice said, “Well, I’m sure glad it’s got some liquor in it…after what them two have been revealing.”

She knocked back a healthy swallow as Élise handed me my drink. I sniffed it. “Whiskey?”

“Yep! Same kind your old man drinks!”

“How the hell you know what my old man drinks?”

Gloria rolled her big eyes. Élise shook her head. I looked back and forth at them.

Gloria said, “That’s your damn sister!”

I stared at her a second. Finally, it clicked. “Oh damn! That’s right! What’s happenin’?!”

Eunice knocked back the rest of her drink. “What. In the hell. Kinda daggone family. Did I get myself mixed up with here?! Y’all gotta level with me!”

I said, “I just met her today.”

“…”

“I’ve been on the road a lot.”

We all took turns explaining how my dad got remarried when I was off in England, catching my break. This morning before the concert, I’d been over at his place. It had been an impromptu reunion. A whirlwind of old faces and new people to meet. I’d somehow forgotten meeting Élise.

Eunice was staring at me bewildered. The vibrations were telling me that she was more amused than anything. She was from the neighborhood too. She was used to these sketchy family tree situations.

The ancient bluesman creaked out the beginning of another number. This one, I could spot. It didn’t matter how outta tune the guitar was because he began by rhythmically raking the deadened strings. That old man had some rhythm. It came out when he could just rake, when he didn’t have to rely on his withered old hands building chord shapes.

I took a sip of my whiskey. I stared off into the abyss of the mirrorball and matched him.

I could’ve done it in my sleep. I would’ve recognized this intro anywhere. I salvaged some respect for the old man despite his recklessness with the tuning knobs.

This was Gypsy Boy Blues by Roscoe Brown. I discovered it in this here barroom, when I was just a boy, when I was out looking for my dad.

It was my first taste of The Blues. The real Blues. When I began trying to decipher the mysteries of the guitar, this was the first song I ever learned from start to finish.

That old man found his youth for a brief fleeting moment with a monster bend coming off the intro. He eased it back to pitch, wobbling me with vibrato.

Well I’ll roll on into this devil town

Blow out with the wind the very next day

Pitch my tent on the wrong side of this track

Might even lay you right down on yer back

‘Cause I’m a gypsy chile

Lord know I’m a gypsy chile, baby

It was that percussion. Scratching. Raking. Rhythmic. It made the song easy to follow when I didn’t know any chords, not a single note, nothing about the instrument. I started out raking from start to finish. I felt like I was a part of the song. I used to play along with a broom sometimes. Gradually, I stumbled across the right note here, discovered the proper chord there. Slowly. Geologically. Until I had all the notes and chords in the right order. Then I worked it and worked it and worked it until it came outta that guitar smooth.

The next song was easier to learn. They got easier and easier as I went, but that first one was so hard. Hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

Teaching myself to teach myself.

I was back in that shithole bar. Back to playing off to the side. Back to playing along to some old man - one foot in his grave – going from raking to ringing out notes and chords and back to raking. Never losing the rhythm. I’d been gone a long time. I hadn’t played this song in years. I was right back in the pocket.

Gloria was up dancing, grinding, bumping the table. Splattering everybody’s drinks. She had that red dress hitched up so she could shake her hips. Instead of the mirrorball, now I was raking gazing off at her moves.

Eunice cleared her throat. “You said she was just your cousin.”

“…”

“That’s what you said…”

I shrugged. “Hips…are hips.”

Eunice rolled her eyes. She went for another pull off her drink. The glass was empty. Gloria hiked up her dress even further. She had a whiskey flask jammed into her garter belt. She pulled it out and uncapped it. Never stopped shaking her hips. She offered it to Eunice. Eunice chuckled but waved it off. Gloria shrugged and took a pull. Then she capped it. Then she slid it back into the lace. Never stopped moving her hips the whole time.

I was gazing off into her gyrations, “I oughta record me a version of this.”

Élise said “What did you say?”

She was fiddling with the gold braids on her blue hussar jacket. Gloria was rocking back and forth to the shuffle rhythm, fingering the plunging neckline on her red dress.

I liked the sound of what I’d said. I stuck my chest out. “I wanna do a remake of this song!”

She said, “This sounds like redneck music to me…real hillbilly stuff!”

Eunice and Gloria laughed. I scowled.

I said, “This song’s goin’ on my next album. You’ll see! This is Roscoe Brown!”

Élise sipped her bubbly and brushed her hand down the side of Gloria’s hip. “I never heard of no Roscoe Brown, but you better think twice. This song’ll cost you your reputation!”

Gloria clinked glasses with her. They both chuckled. I couldn’t tell if she was serious or going for laughs. She kept on chirping, though. “You won’t be selling out baseball stadiums no more…that’s for sure…probably be fighting that old man for gigs!”

They clinked glasses again. They were laughing more. They were somehow laughing and drinking all at the same time. I felt someone rubbing on my shoulder. I caught Eunice’s white linen dress outta the corner of my eye.

“Who’s this Roscoe Brown, chile?”

“One of the greats! Like Charlie Patton…Muddy Waters and them?”

“I dunno. I’ve heard of that Muddy Waters. Charlie Patton even kinda rings a bell. But Roscoe whoever? Nah! Never heard of him!”

“Well-well, lemme put it like this. If there weren’t never no Roscoe Brown, then you never woulda heard of Muddy Waters. Charlie Patton never woulda rung your bell…shit…there never would’ve been me for that matter.”

“Okay, calm down…You know what hyperbole means?”

I stopped raking. “Yeah, I know what it means…whaddaya think of me?!”

\ She put her hands up like she was innocent. “Just sayin’…your layin it on pretty thick!”

I knocked back the last of my whiskey. I set the tumbler down with a thud and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “I’m gonna explain to you ladies about Roscoe Brown.”

They all leaned forward with their elbows on the table and their chins on their hands. Gloria pushed her cleavage out again. Eunice fluttered her eyelashes. I knew they were mocking me. I just ignored that crap.

I gazed off into mirrorball so I could clear my head and tell Roscoe’s story the way he deserved it to be told.

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I explained to them how the old man in the corner was hopelessly outta tune and probably piss drunk. They couldn’t appreciate Roscoe’s brilliance based on this guy torturing his songs.

The real Roscoe had been a virtuoso. His playing sounded like there were two guitars. Three even.

The critics liked to give me all this credit for how I played. I was so fake. All I really did was plug Roscoe’s style into a tube amp.

He’d innovated all that decades ago, before the war. It was just laying around on paraffin, waiting to be discovered. He was the real deal. His style came straight outta the Mississsippi Delta. This was in the 1920’s. Sharecropping. The height of Jim Crow.

The white Strat was purring. It gave me a warm glow in my belly. I could tell I had Eunice’s attention. I turned toward her, directing the story her way, in that linen dress.

“When he was a kid, he used to sneak onstage at barrelhouses around the Delta. He’d snatch up some bluesman’s guitar on a set break. Start banging on it. He’d try mimicking their acts. Nothing would come out but noise.

“The bluesman and the bartender, even the patrons, they’d all chase him outta the joint.

“He got a girl pregnant in one of these plantation towns. Sherwood, Mississippi. He ran off, leaving her and her family in the lurch.

“He came back a year or so later. He was playing the best guitar anyone in those parts had ever heard. He was toting his own record, fresh off the presses. When people asked him how he’d gotten so good so fast, he’d look back and forth over both of his shoulders. When he was sure there weren’t any preachers or lawmen or any of those types around, he’d tell them how he’d sold his soul to the devil.

“The most popular song on the record was Sheriff Ed Barkley Blues. It was about that very sheriff in Sherwood Plantation. How he mistreated the black folks around town. The record sold like hot cakes. It was on the radio. It was a smash hit, in that little corner of Mississippi it was anyway.

“Roscoe ended up getting charged with murder. Some said that was Sheriff Ed Barkley getting his revenge, infuriated that a black man would have the nerve to challenge his authority.

“Others said Roscoe was guilty as hell. Murder was just as much a part of him as blues music. This actually added up. Roscoe’s music had this quality of going from sweet melodies to ferocious anger all in the course of a single bar. It shifted on you like an unpredictable mood swing. It kept you off-balance. It was part of the appeal.

“Whatever the truth, Roscoe was convicted and shipped off to Parchman Prison Farm. In there, he killed a fellow inmate. None other than John Dixon, one of the most dangerous and homicidal criminals to ever set foot in the Delta.

“Roscoe escaped, the only known person to have ever successfully escaped Parchman.

Gloria rolled her eyes. “I see you’ve been practicing your delivery over the years.”

“It’s all true!”

“I dunno. You got this way of…playin’ it up!”

Élise said, “What happened to him?! After he escaped?!”

I shrugged. “Nobody knows.”

She swallowed down the last of her bubbly, slammed the glass down. “Nobody knows?! The hell kinda story is that?!”

Gloria finished hers too. “Probably drank himself to death on some gutrot sour mash. That’s how his kind do.”

Eunice leaned forward. She was looking around, trying to make eye contact with all of us at the same time. “What if he wound up in Chicago?! Or New York?! Or somewhere?! The timing adds up. That was just before the Great Flood. Right at the start of the Great Migration.”

I smiled at her. “I like that idea. My grandmother. She came north around that same time. I like the way you think.”

Eunice leaned into me, rested her weight against my shoulder. I leaned back into her.

Élise screwed her face up. “That sounds like wishful thinking. We woulda heard about it if he made it out of there.”

I said, “You never know.”

“They probably shot him down dead. Like a dog. Probably just didn’t feel like bothering with all the paperwork.”

I squinted at Élise. She shrugged.

I couldn’t look at Élise. Nobody was talking. The dominant sound in the room was that acoustic guitar. That old man was pedaling on an open string which might have been a good idea in theory, but that particular string was so hopelessly out of tune it was making me wince. It was gonna give me a migraine.

Everything was regressing into grayscale. Eunice was arching her eyebrows, watching me visibly recoil from the onslaught. I didn’t wanna cut down a fellow guitarist. We take care of our own. Just trying to play music for people, that was honorable.

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But still.

I whispered to her. “It’s so bad. It’s making me nauseous.”

She ignored my whining. “You know? I’ve got a bone to pick with you.”

“Oh no. What’s that?”

“You say this Roscoe Brown cat, he’s the one that made you a musician?”

“Well Robert Johnson and John Lee Hooker and them too. But yeah, Roscoe Brown.”

“You forget everything everybody around here’s handed you.”

It was my turn to arch my eyebrows. I went for my drink. There was nothing left. “I’m not trying to brag…but…other than them cats on those records? I did it myself.”

She looked up into the mirrorball. She blew out a short breath, like the air had been irritating her lungs.

“Now that’s some bullshit.”

Gloria said, “No. I gotta actually stick up for him here. Nobody ever gave him nothing.”

Eunice scanned the table. “Y’all are finished with your drinks? I got something to show all y’all.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

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