Gutbucket Quest (19 page)

Slim looked at her. Her eyes were caring, without anger, and she seemed truly concerned and interested. He held on to her breast for security. “My folks were drunks,” he said. “That way—you just don’t grow up with any sense of what normal life and behavior are. You don’t know about the things you’re supposed to do, you don’t know about love. All you learn is how to repress your emotions, hide and try to avoid doing anything, good, bad or otherwise. You learn to distrust everything and everybody and just survive.”

Tears were rolling down his cheeks, but he was unaware of them. “A life like that,” he said, his voice breaking, “it cripples you, damn it. And it cripples you in ways nobody can see or understand. There’s so much love and need and want inside you, but you don’t know how to let your emotions out, not without ’em being twisted and turned on the way. And if you do, if you try really hard and do get ’em out to someone, it only takes having them trampled on a few times and all the walls go up again. You try to trust, and you get betrayed and abandoned and there’s more walls. You say or do something unknowingly and the other person gets pissed off and you don’t know why. You try to give help and advice and they see it as critical and patronizing instead of sincere, and they get angry again. You do something or you don’t do something and they get pissed off. You don’t understand
why and they won’t tell you because, damn it,
you’re supposed to know.
But you don’t, and then they abandon you and hate you and you
never
understand why. All you know is that once again you’re a failure, but you don’t know what you did to fail. After that happens a few times, you’re a wreck. But you never give up because you can’t live alone and survive. You know it’s gonna turn out bad, that you’re gonna get hurt and abandoned, but you need to love and be loved so badly that two months or two years of that love is worth any pain.”

“Why are you telling me, now?” Nadine asked quietly.

Slim sighed. “Because I love you more than I ever have anybody,” he said. “Maybe you won’t be able to understand me, like everyone else, but I gotta try.”

“I’m not everyone else,” Nadine replied. “I’m me. I don’t want to hear about everyone else. I—sort of understand. I can’t promise I will, but as long as you’ll talk to me about it, I’ll try. Okay?”

“Okay,” Slim mumbled. He was sucking on her nipple and felt safe. He continued for a few minutes, Nadine stroking his neck, then he lifted his head to look at her. “I want you to talk to me, too,” he said. “The deal goes both ways. So talk, now. What happened to you when the Vipers had you? How come you were so weird when we got home, so desperate for sex?”

“You complaining?” she asked, smiling.

“No, never. But it was strange. So what happened?”

“Is this the talent portion of the show,” she demanded, almost angrily, “when you jump to the wrong conclusions?”

“
Stash it,
Nadine. You want me to talk to
you
about stuff. Well, you gotta talk to me, too. Come on, be fair.”

“Oh, Slim,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him down to her breasts. “Okay. You know what the three-lock box is?”

“Yeah,” he said. “A player’s thing. Being together spiritually, mentally and physically. Giving it a hundred percent at the gig.”

“Right. Daddy calls it being a blues outlaw with a six-string gun. Well,” she sighed. “I lost it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I—after they got me, I tried to use the power. Slim, I
couldn’t.
Nothing happened. I sang my ass off, every song I could think of, but nothing happened.”

“Did you—damn! I can’t ever ask the right questions. I don’t know enough to know if you did it wrong or did it right. I don’t know what to think. For all I know, maybe it
did
work. Maybe that’s what helped me to get to you.”

“I don’t know, Slim, but it was terrible. All these years Daddy’s been telling me about the power, that I had it in me. All I had to do was let it out. But when I needed it, it wasn’t
there
for me.”

“Maybe it was all the machines.”

“Did it stop
you?
”
she said, looking at him seriously.

“Not from finding you, no. But we didn’t use the power to get you. Belizaire used gris-gris, but most of it was physical.”

“I guess so,” Nadine said. “Maybe you’re right. I don’t know. But it bothers me.”

“Why?”

“It’s not because I want to use the power for gigs. You know, I told you that. That’s got to be
me
.”

“Then why is it bothering you so much?”

“I—for a few minutes, it made me hate you. I was furious at you. You come here and you just have all that power. And you can use it. But you’re just you. He’s
my
daddy;
I
should be the one to have it.”

“But you don’t even want the power,” Slim said. He was starting to understand, but there was still a lot that remained a mystery to him.

“Right then, I did, I wanted the power. I didn’t want you to come after me. I guess I didn’t think you could do it, and I was afraid you’d get hurt. I wanted to get out on my own. But I was mad at you, too, and it made me feel bad. I mean, I knew you’d come after me.” She
looked down at him, her eyes wide. “Slim, how could I be so angry at you?”

He thought about it for a moment, trying to figure it out. “Maybe it wasn’t
you
”
he said, finally. “You know how their power makes people feel. So down and bad. Maybe it was because of that.”

“I don’t know. But anyway, that’s why all the sex. I just wanted to sink into you, to become a part of you, and I didn’t know any other way to do it. I felt so bad about hating you for something you couldn’t help. It seemed to me like, somehow, if we could love enough, we could be a part of one another.”

“We are,” Slim said. “I mean, it’s a surprise to me, but we really are.”

Nadine shoved at his chest with her hands. “Come on, man,” she said. “It’s time to get up.”

Slim stood and walked over to where his pants were lying on the floor. He thought of something else he wanted to say and turned around. Nadine was crouched on top of the bed and, before he could react, she leaped on him and knocked him to the ground. Then she straddled him and held him down.

“What the—?”

“I thought,” she said, grinning, “that after eight hours of boredom, you might appreciate one moment of pure, abject terror.”

“Right,” Slim growled. “Just you let me up from here and I’ll thank you.”

“Nope. I’ve decided I’m not speaking to you.”

“Well stop not doing it so loud,” he said, almost laughing.

“Huh-uh. You’re fair game.”

“Hey,” he said. “I may be fair, but I’m no game.”

Nadine grabbed a vital organ. “I always thought this thing pointed the other direction,” she said, wiggling it.

“Depends on which way it’s going,” Slim replied. But they both knew which way it was going to go.

17

Rhythm is one manifestation of the reign of law throughout the universe.

—Victor Zuckerkandle,
Sound and Symbol

Who Do You Love? (A-flat)

(additional verses)

Crosstown shack and an uptown bus
,

That kinda life don’t give me enough
,

Put me out in the sun and rain
,

And when I die I’ll come back again
,

Got the mojo hand and the monkey’s paw
,

Eyeballs sittin’ in alcohol
,

Come on baby take a little walk

And tell me who do you love.

Took my darlin’ by the hand
,

And said ooh ooh darlin’ I’ll be your man.

Who do you love?

Who do you love?

Who do you love?

Tell me who, who do you love?

Well, the cat yowled up and the cat yowled down
,

And a big black hearse rolled into town
,

The man in back sat up and stared
,

I ain ‘t dyin’ and I ain't scared
,

Now who do you love?

Tell me who do you love?

Got a tombstone hand and a gravestone mind
,

I lived long enough and I don’t mind dyin’.

So who do you love?

Who do you love?

Who do you love?

Tell me who, who do you love?

T
aking care of business was the business of the day. With Progress temporarily out of it, things fell on Slim and Na-dine to keep up. Though it took them a while to get out of bed, get dressed and get out of the house, after a moderate delay they did so.

The first thing was to drive out to Progress’ house. Slim picked up some clothes and his guitar, and then they headed back into town, to Charlie’s. Orville, who was glad to see them, took charge of Slim’s guitar. He would intonate it and make sure it was set up properly. Intonation was a process Slim had never quite understood. He knew the bridge pins had to be adjusted and such, but it was a mystery to him how a guitar could be in tune when it was open, and not in tune at the higher frets and octaves. But he could hear it was true when he played the guitar unintonated, and he had faith that Orville would make it right.

Nadine then told him to go into the front of the shop and pick out an amp. Slim tried to argue about it, but he was learning that arguing with Nadine was like swimming upstream in a flood. It couldn’t be done, never, no how.

Normally, he would just have looked for a duplicate of the Fender Super Reverb he was used to and preferred. But, to his dismay, Fender didn’t seem to exist in this world. And it seemed that, taking the power into account, he should be more than usually choosy about his amp. He started out deciding he would look only at tube-type amps, older models similar to the Super Reverb. He played through a few of them, checking them out, but none had the bite, the volume or the distortion he was used to. Then he noticed a dusty, ugly, orange crate of an amp sitting half-hidden in a corner. It was obvious that no one had looked at it or played with it in a long time. But it seemed to have a faint glow or shine about it, so he moved some other amps out of the way and rolled the orange monstrosity out to the center of the floor.

It was a simple construction of tubes, sheet metal, a reverb chamber, and unmarked, unnumbered dials. In fact, the only writing on it at all was the maker’s name, wrought in blue chrome across the front of the speaker grille. A simple word;
HILLS.
But the sound that came from the speakers when Slim plugged in was the sweet dirty tone he was used to, the warm twisted sound he called his own. It was more, though, and as he played he could sense undertones and harmonics that seemed to vibrate deeply inside him, and when he played a thumb edge to get a pure high harmonic note, it screamed and rang with sustain, far longer than he’d ever been able to catch before. The amp, he knew, had its own power.

“This is
it
,”
he said, smiling, excited.

The blond kid, Wanger was his name, Slim remembered, looked slightly disturbed. “You sure you want
that
one?” he asked.

“Yeah, why? There something wrong with it?”

“Uhm, no. Not exactly. It’s about twenty years old, but we reconditioned it, so it’s in good shape.”

“What, then,” Slim said. The kid was fidgeting, and Slim wanted to know why.

Wanger looked over at Nadine. She only shrugged. Did she know something about it?

“Well, see,” the boy mumbled. “We’ve sold that thing and had it returned ten or fifteen times so far. It sounds good and it works good, but people get freaked out by it or something. It’s never anything they can explain, it just makes them uncomfortable to play it. A few of them—well, almost all of them, really—said it felt like the amp was
fighting
them.”

“Feels okay to me,” Slim said, ripping off a quick riff in B-flat. “Feels real good. Who knows, maybe it was just waiting for the right player.”

“Maybe,” Wanger said dubiously. “I won’t be surprised to see you bring it back, though.”

“Hah! No chance. This is exactly what I want. Throw in a thirty-foot cord and I’ll take this sucker. If you can clean it up a little and have Orville tweak and match it, we’ll pick it up when we come back for the guitar.”

“Okay,” Wanger said, shaking his head. “You got it, for what it’s worth.”

The next order of business was the trip to the Canadian River to see how Elijigbo’s crew was doing setting up the festival site.

The site was crawling with activity. Crews were clearing brush and rocks from the audience area, smoothing it down and setting out trash cans. The stage had been constructed backing up to a hill, with the river behind it. The major activity centered around three cranes which were lifting a steel grid above the stage. Men and women were crawling on the grid, bolting it to columns which would support it, and attaching heavy cables to anchor and stabilize it.

Once the grid was secure, crews would attack electric winches to hoist up the lights and sound equipment which would be bolted to the
grid. Then the whole construction would be roofed with heavy canvas so that, eventually, around thirty-two tons of steel, lights, speakers and wiring would be suspended above the stage.

Slim had always had a great respect for the road crews he’d worked with. It was hard work with few rewards. The men and women, the “roadies,” who built the stage, hauled the instruments, went for food, strings, mikes and any other piece of “equipment” a player might want, loved the music and the work and the travel. Slim knew of more than a few who had been seriously injured or killed putting larger shows together. But roadies were quite often musicians themselves, working their way into the business, and those who weren’t, were artists in their own right. A lousy sound or lighting man on the control boards could totally fuck up a show. And a good one could make a band look and sound better than it really was.

Slim and Nadine climbed up onto the stage. Slim jumped up and down on it and found it solid and acoustically sound. This crew knew what it was doing, that was clear. The stage wouldn’t rumble or echo. Slim had played venues where the stage acted like a giant speaker box, muddying the sound with out-of-phase echo and bass. That was no problem here.

He walked to center stage and stared out. Slim had a habit of checking out empty stages and arenas. He was infinitely more comfortable with an audience in front of him. Empty platforms were uncomfortable and a little scary. They always made him wonder if he could pull the crowd, if he could grab hold of them and make them move to the groove. Non-players didn’t understand. They couldn’t comprehend how a person could be shy and nervous in real life, but at home onstage, totally comfortable. They couldn’t imagine feeling that the sound coming his fingers, his guitar, was like an invisible tentacle that reached out to touch people in their hearts and gut. A non-player could never feel the joy of hitting that one right note that rang sweet and rich and lingered forever, or jumping to the rhythms of a jam that
fell together naturally and only once, in a moment when everything was copacetic.

People always thought that when a player stood on stage, under the lights, with the beautiful darkness spread before him, that he couldn’t see the audience. But that was a myth. He saw, selectively. Individuals would stand out; a beautiful woman with a certain look on her face; a man standing alone, rocking and dancing to the music, the kind of man who would never stand out in his own life, but whom, for a moment, the music had grabbed and lifted up. Yes, you saw the audience. And if you were any kind of player, you loved it.

When Slim played the blues, played it right and touched people, he often felt like an old-timer, playing for a roadhouse crowd of drinking, sweating, dancing people out to have a good time in the midst of misery. Blues had always been the joyful noise that had lifted people out of their troubles for a time. You could be poor, you could be sick, you could have lost your lover, but you could still have the blues and know you weren’t alone. You could draw together in the sounds of the guitar with all the other people around you, and you could dance and sing, sweat and be happy. It was music from the heart, a music for the people.

Slim could play the blues and hear the deep heart lifting the sweet water to the top, founding and surrounding all the music he could think of. He could listen to a ten-year-old kid trying to find the blue notes, the flatted fifths, on a rough guitar with unskilled fingers, and he’d hear the heart and soul behind the attempt. And, here in this world, this
Tejas,
he thought he’d finally found his own heart.

Slim had never had many friends. He’d traveled through life alone, trusting that the women he loved would be his best friends. Which didn’t help when he needed solace for a broken heart. He’d wondered
many times if it was just because people didn’t understand him, or because he made it impossible himself, unable to commit to any kind of friendship.

He looked over at Nadine, sitting in the passenger seat of the van as they drove back to town. It was as if she knew that he was deeply into his own mind. He wondered about Nadine, wondered if they’d be able to be good friends. Right now, they weren’t beyond the first love and sex; they could see no further than the heart and flesh. Slim knew that that part of it didn’t have to end, but it had to be built upon to last, and he wanted very much for part of that building to be their friendship.

Friendship had become nearly as important to Slim as love. Sex was sex, and as vital to him as breathing, but he needed someone to talk to as well. Nadine had said she wanted him to talk to her. And he had. Somehow, he’d told her a few things he’d never talked to anyone about. That felt like friendship, like trust. But how could all of this have happened so fast? Slim was in the nasty habit of falling in love too quickly, but trust was a thing he’d stopped a long time ago. Until now.

Maybe this world was affecting him more than he realized. He had been feeling changes in his body. Although he was known for the frequency of his lovemaking, his bouts with Nadine had gone far beyond his usual abilities. And he thought that some of his fat was being burnt off. He felt better, healthier, stronger. He knew the power had something to do with it, but could the power, could this world, be affecting his thoughts, his emotions? Progress had said it would, and the changes had all been positive ones. But Slim was the kind of man who liked to understand the whys and hows. He wanted and appreciated the changes, but he wasn’t sure he like being fucked with and not knowing why.

His mind, though, kept holding to a single thought.
Nadine.
Everything else, the blues, the Gutbucket, the Glory Hand, was subsidiary
to that. But what did he do when the fighting was over? Would things still stay the same between him and Nadine? Between him and Progress? How did he hold on with a whole new world to learn?

“Nadine,” he said. “What happens when all this is over?”

She looked at him expectantly. “If we live?”

“Yeah.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead. I guess, if I have to admit it, I didn’t take it seriously until Daddy got hurt. I mean, I did take it seriously, but not in terms of
dying.
If we win, I guess we just go ahead and live.”

“You and me?”

She slapped him hard on the shoulder. “Of course, you and me,” she said. “You idiot, what did you think?”

Slim could feel the heat of a blush. “I just wondered.”

“Well, don’t. You’re not going to get away from me that easy. We’ll just live. Start a new band and play with each other. We’ll do whatever we do.”

“Talking about doing,” he said. “What do we do, now?”

“I don’t know. Wait. Why? You worried?”