Gutbucket Quest (3 page)

3

Blues is like a doctor. A blues player. . . plays for the worried people . . . See, they enjoy it. Like the doctor works from the outsides to the insides of the body. But the blues works on the insides of the insides . . .

—Roosevelt Sykes, blues pianist

P
rogress wasted no time beginning Slim’s education. After a ham-and-egg breakfast, he started in about the music and about Slim.

“I don’t want to make no big thing of it, but I gots a feeling that you didn’t just come here for no reason. Not just by chance, no pun.”

“It was dumb luck that that lightning caught me,” Slim Chance said. “If I had been walking just a little slower, or faster, it would have missed me. And it was dumber luck that it knocked me here instead of frying me.”

“I don’t think so. Things like that don’t just happen. You came here ‘cause you were destined to come here; how it happened don’t much matter. And I’m not sure it’s good.”

“Progress, I swear I never planned this, and I mean no harm to you or anyone here”

The man lifted a hand, smiling. “I know that, Slim. I know you’re
innocent. But there’s somethin’ else, somethin’ behind this, maybe making you a pawn, or maybe a decoy duck, and that’s what I’m frankly nervous about. Somethin’ I don’t understand.”

“If you feel that way, I’ll get right out of here! I’m not looking to bring anybody any mischief”

But Progress’ hand was on Slim’s shoulder, firmly. “Don’t you budge. Whatever it is, I’ll figure it out by and by, and then we’ll know what to do about it. But meanwhile, I don’t think it’s smart to waste any time, ‘cause we don’t know how much you got to know how fast.”

Slim began to feel an apprehension. He had not known Progress long, but already he trusted the man’s judgment implicitly. “Just tell me what you want, and I’ll do my best. But I hope I can get to play the blues. Really play them, I mean.”

“Son,” Progress said. “Fore you can rightly play the blues, you got to know what they is.”

“I’ve had the blues,” Slim said. “I’m surprised my skin’s not purple as much as I’ve had the blues.”

Progress chuckled. “I can see that, son. But havin’ the blues and understandin’ ‘em is two different things entire.”

“Okay, so how do I understand them? What do I do?”

“Well, first you got to know that the blues is the facts of life, the true facts of life. The blues is the bone in the avocado, and if you got no bone, you got no avocado. Your quality got to grow from the ways you find to deal with havin’ the blues. You can be broke and have the blues, you can be hungry and have the blues. If you has a good woman and she quits you, then you knows you got the blues. There’s lots of ways to have the blues.”

“My way is that one with the good woman,” Slim said. “I have no end of problems with those particular blues.”

“Yessir, that’s just about the way it is with most men.” The broad,
golden smile never left Progress’ face. As deep a bluesman as he was, as much as he obviously knew about life’s pains, he seemed to be in constant good humor.

“Progress,” Slim asked. “How do you stay so happy all the time?”

“Well, son, there’s folk’ll tell you you cain’t have your cake and pizza, too. But I’ve done pretty good for myself, so I’ve had me about everything I wanted. I got a roof over my head, food to eat, good friends. But I ain’t bound to anything except that groove in my heart. See, I loves people, but it’s the groove that’s happenin’ for me.

“The blues is a vital and important thing. It changed my life, and I knows it changed lots of other folks’ lives, too. Anybody says otherwise is just a fool talkin’ trash. I know what it feels like to be down and alone and,
whoo,
that music got the power to make all that go away.”

“Yeah, but how do I get there from here?” Slim asked. He was fascinated by Progress, awed by his playing and his wisdom, but he was frustrated by his own ignorance. “How do I find it and grab hold of it?”

“Way I figure it,” Progress said, “maybe that’s why you’re here with me, now. I means to say, most things don’t happen by accident, so you here for a reason, wishin’ and hopin’ maybe. I don’t rightly know. But the blues is somethin’ each person got to figure out for they own selves. A player, now, I never seen one yet couldn’t use some help along the way to it. So maybe that’s why you’re here.

“You almost got the blues too hard, almost too sad and unhappy to play the blues. Remember, when you play a blues, when you hear a blues song, don’t think the worst of it, think the best of it. ‘Cause when I play the blues, I be feelin’ good. But it got to come from inside you. Like a musk deer. That deer’ll run ass over antlers trying to find out where the smell comes from, but all the time it’s comin’ from its own self. You got all your scales and chops and such?”

“Yeah,” Slim said. “I got the technical side down.”

Progress nodded in satisfaction. “Good,” he said. “Me, I know the theory and all. Had enough readin’ players explain it all to me to get where I understood why this or that works. And that’s important, so your fingers know where to go without you havin’ to tell em. But I don’t think about none of it when I’m standin’ up there playin’. I just go from the heart, from the gut.

“You see, son, you gots to understand. Blues is a thread that links experiences. If you listens to a blues player, you’re listenin’ to their lives. The only things you can take away from that are things that echo in your own life. Other than that, everything falls away. Most folks try to find their own lives. But too damn many people try to hide what their true life is and take on somethin’ else. Now you, I don’t think you rightly know what your own life is. I don’t think you been able to find it, but you ain’t took on nothin’ to hide that. I think you been sent here to this world from whichever a one you came from so you can have a whole new life to find out who and what you are. You see?”

“I guess so,” Slim said. “I don’t know where to start though. I can hardly believe any of this is really happening. I don’t know
anything
about where I am or what’s going on. I just don’t know where to begin.”

“Right here, son. Don’t be gettin’ no attitude about any world where you’re welcome is better than where you comes from. This here is a hard world. I ‘spect any world is a hard world, like any other. It’s all in how you walk it, how you talk it, the well of the cuff and the angle of the brim. You gets by the best you can just pluggin’ it in, playin’ it and shuttin’ up.”

“But that’s all I want to do,” Slim protested. “I just want to play the music.”

Progress shook his head. For once, the ever-present smile left his face. “Don’t whine, son. That ain’t pretty. You got what you got. I know you wants to play, I can feel it inside you fightin’ to come out.
But I thinks you got you a problem, whether you’re here or wherever you came from. Blues got power, mighty power. I think you’re scared of that power. I think you’re afraid that power gonna take you over, gonna change you and make you a different man than you are. And it will, you know it will, so you back off from it. You run away and the feelin’ never gets through you so you can stand up and say what you got to say. But you got to come out from under that shell and start kickin’.”

“That may be right,” Slim said. “
Something
brought me here, and I can feel it’s all tied up in blues. I know there’s power in it. The way you talk, the power’s pretty big stuff in this world. It’s not so much where I come from, but it’s there. The only thing is, people that grab hold of that power, it seems like most of them self-destruct.”

“You right. It does happen just like that. See, there’s a big lie in this business that it’s okay to go down in flames. But that don’t do nobody no good. I’ve lost my own share of friends and players, don’t think I haven’t. Some of us can be examples about goin’ ahead and growin’. But some of us don’t make it there and end up examples because we got to die. I’ve hit the bottom a few times my own self, but I didn’t have to die. You don’t either, it don’t always have to be like that. Not everybody goes down. After all, you got me for a teacher. I cain’t save you from yourself if you’re determined to go down. But I can show you how to sneak up on it and how to stay away from stupid mistakes. You can take on the power and still keep yourself alive, be better for it. But without the power you ain’t never gonna find the heart of it.”

“But shit, man, I don’t even know where to start.”

“You starts from where you is. You got no other where to start from. Life is just livin’. Now, I’ve done me some of that, so maybe I knows a little. You, you still got a lot of life left to live on out.”

“Hell, Progress, I’m almost forty.”

This generated the biggest laugh in Progress that Slim had yet
seen. He blushed, but never felt the man was laughing
at
him. There was only the feeling that the laughter was in delight.

“Son, from where you stands, that may seem a long time, but from where I am, you’re still just a kid.”

“Just how old
are
you, Progress?”

“Me? Best I can recollect, if my momma and daddy told me the truth, I’m just about eighty-three. Comin’ into my prime.”

Eighty-three?
Slim wondered how long people lived in this world. Progress looked, at most, like a worn fifty or a well-preserved sixty. Nowhere even near the eighty-three years he claimed.

“Yep,” Progress said. “I know what you thinkin’. It’s the power. It’ll keep you young. Long as you understands that young years don’t always mean pretty years. Blues power’ll lift you right up off your feet. I got to say, though, I am about the oldest old timer left around. I been lucky, I guess.”

“Man, I’ll say. If that’s what blues power is in this world, I have got to get me some.”

“Well,” Progress said, “don’t be breakin’ no trace chains just yet. It ain’t somethin’ that can be ‘got.’ It’s there inside you to be found. Somethin’ you got to fight about and suffer under and surrender to. It’s there, I feels it. But you got to find it and figure how to get from the inside out. The gettin’s gonna be easy for you. It’s the right doin’ of it and the surrender that’s gonna give you the problem.” Progress paused, his eyes serious. “You seen cold winters, ain’t you, son? And you know how things get all slow and hard? How they break easy when they’re froze up?”

“Yeah,” Slim said. “Sure, I’ve seen that.”

“Well,” Progress said, “people’s thinkin’s about the same way. You stay hot and loose and play through the changes. But if you get all stiff and froze up, sometimes all it takes is a little push, or a knock and everything breaks apart. I be thinkin’ you been stuck for a while. We got to warm up your mind and get you movin’.”

“No, I—well, maybe, I guess.”

“You see, now? You startin’ already, changin’ your mind and seein’ the truth about it. You be okay.”

“Yeah, sure,” Slim said. His face looked sad. “Yeah, I’ll be okay. I just don’t know where I am or what I’m doing here. This isn’t my world. I don’t know anything here.”

“You know who you are,” Progress said.

Slim laughed. It was almost a healthy laugh. “Oh, man,” he said, still chuckling. “I barely know that at the best of times. I’ve never been all that sure of who I am. I get to a point where I think I know, and some good-lookin’ woman comes along and changes my mind. Hmmm—no matter. Listen, you got a map of this country? The whole country, not just Tex—er, Tejas?”

Progress nodded and went into the back room. Slim soon heard drawers opening and papers being shuffled. He looked more closely around the living room. Actually, like his own version of the house, the living room and kitchen were mostly one large room, taking up the entire front half of the house. They were effectively separated by a counter on one wall and a stone platform on the other wall, on top of which sat a wood-burning stove. He was glad to see that, even in this world, that hadn’t changed.

The living room was filled with helter-skelter knickknacks and pictures, but Slim’s attention was soon captured by a photograph off by itself, nestled between books on a set of shelves. It showed a young woman with green eyes, caramel-colored skin and very fine, very beautiful curly hair. Her eyes, even in the photo, drew him further and further in, wanting to be lost. Oh, he definitely had a feeling.

“That’s my daughter.”

Slim jumped at Progress’ voice. “Wha’d you say?”

“That there’s my daughter, Nadine.”

Slim could see a pride in the old man’s eyes, could hear it in his voice, as if he’d produced a work of art that had grown beyond him.

“She’s beautiful,” Slim said.

“Yep, that she is. She’s a singer. Pretty good, too. Anyway, here’s that map you was wantin’.”

Progress handed Slim a folded map. It looked like a
National Geographic,
if they had that magazine in this world. The phone rang and, as Progress went to answer it, Slim unfolded the map and studied the new world he found himself in.

Like the land and the house where he stood, the shape of the country was the same, but the resemblance ended there. Tejas was still the largest state—country?—in what he was used to thinking of as the United States. But it was extended in all directions; down and west into Mexico; up, to the Canadian border; east, eating up half of what had been the south. From the Canadian border, into Central America, right off the bottom of the map, Mexico took up the entire west coast. Much of what had been the midwest was now the second-largest area on the map, the Indian Nations.