Nighthawk Blues (8 page)

They were still out in the country when it started to get dark. Jerry wondered if they were just going to keep going straight through the night when he realized that the old heap in front of him had slowed to a virtual halt and that Hawk was peering over the wheel with more than his usual intentness. Behind them traffic had backed up for what seemed like miles, and the driver next in line behind Jerry started honking impatiently. Jerry shrugged without any hope of sparing himself embarrassment. He didn’t know if this was Hawk’s way of getting back or if the old man was simply oblivious to the chorus of horns which had started up.

Hawk turned off on a dirt path that didn’t even deserve to be called a road, between a closed-down gas station and a boarded-up old clapboard house. Jerry hesitated slightly before following him, wondering for an absurd moment if Hawk might still be capable of springing some kind of improbable trap. The road, if it was a road, had obviously not been used in years, and to say that it was full of potholes would be giving it credit for an initial intention which it scarcely seemed to possess. Jerry lurched along behind the old black-and-tan Ford, for what seemed like miles in a time span that could have been hours, following the curve of the road overgrown with bushes until finally they came to what looked like a long-ago-abandoned dump, a clutter of rusting metal objects, rotting lace-up boots, tin cans, broken glass, a pile of brush, and a muddy stagnant pool of water. Beside it ran a rusted railroad track whose bed had become a garden of weeds, with half the ties twisted and broken and all the orangy color of rust. Off to one side was a railroad car, open to the elements, its door long since disappeared. Jerry watched in disbelief as Hawk climbed out of the car and with both hands scooped up some of the brackish water, tilting his head back and letting out a long sigh of appreciation as if it were fresh spring water that he was drinking. He splashed some on his face and then went to work gathering together the few sticks that were lying about, throwing on the remnants of what once must have been a chair, squatting down and coaxing a fire from this unlikely collection of combustibles. At last it caught and Hawk hunched over it for a few minutes, rubbing his hands in front of the fire until he was evidendy warm, then hoisted himself up and swung back to the car, rummaging around without apparent success, then at last seeming to find what he was looking for. Jerry just waited—for what, he wasn’t sure. There they were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by ghosts of a past he had never known, and he was waiting for an invitation! Hawk limped back to the fire, where he pulled a saucepan from under his coat and started in to work. Soon something was frying away, whatever it was the smell soon filled the air, and for all of his distaste, for the scene and Hawk’s presence in it, Jerry grew hungrier and hungrier as he watched the old man add ingredients to the sizzling repast. At last when it was ready Hawk removed the pan from the fire and set to work on his meal, patiently picking at it piece by piece, licking his fingers scrupulously as he finished each separate portion. Jerry kept thinking that he would start to feel some remorse, glance back, acknowledge his manager with a nod and indicate for him to come join him, but nothing of the sort happened, of course, Hawk never so much as gave him a tumble. When he was at last done, Hawk licked his lips loudly, trundled back and forth stoking the fire, put his cooking utensils back in the car, then disappeared into the low scrub that surrounded the clearing, only to reappear moments later with a long stick. He lowered himself again in front of the fire, pulled a jackknife from somewhere inside the recesses of his coat, and patiently began to whitde. Even after the sun had gone down and it was completely dark, he kept it up by the light of the fire, and even if Jerry hadn’t been able to see him hunched over his work he would still have known Hawk was there by the slow scraping of the knife, which was the only sound to be heard save for the occasional hooting of an owl or scurrying of a small animal or hiss of a truck’s airbrakes out on the highway. Once Hawk cleared his throat, and Jerry jumped.

It began to get cold. Jerry shivered a little. He was tired. He was hungry. He would have humbled himself and asked Hawk for something to eat, but he knew Hawk didn’t count gestures for anything, if he had wanted to feed Jerry he would have done so, without Jerry having to ask or be bidden. And it wouldn’t mean anything to Hawk one way or another if Jerry were to admit error, since Hawk never doubted himself long enough anyway to need anyone else’s admission of guilt.

At last Hawk seemed to grow tired. He stifled a few yawns. Then he carefully folded up the knife and encased it somewhere within his loosely fitting garments, picked up the stick, walked over to the edge of the clearing, and with some difficulty relieved himself. The door of his old car opened with a creak, he climbed over the front seat and lay down in the back. Jerry watched it all curiously, like a spectator at the movies, and looked at his digital watch. It read 8:45. It glowed in the dark. It probably emitted “safe” amounts of radioactivity. What was he doing here?

At last after a suitable interval he got out of his car, crossed the clearing, and peered through Hawk’s window. Hawk’s eyes appeared to be open, but that didn’t prove anything. He claimed he always slept with his eyes open in case some sidewinder (like Jerry?) ever tried to creep up on him in the middle of the night. Jerry shivered. Well, he supposed it was all right. Hawk was breathing regularly. And he didn’t like to drive anywhere at night.

Jerry went back to his car, switched on the ignition, after a number of backings and fillings managed a U-turn, and headed back toward the highway. Going out didn’t seem anywhere near as long as going in, with the car bottom scraping against branches and vegetation and the headlights scouring scrubby bushes. When he finally emerged onto the highway, Jerry carefully took note of landmarks, then joined the stream of traffic until he came to a truck-stop diner that looked passable. Inside there was loud talk, men were eating noisily, the jukebox blared country-and-western music, and the waitress wanted to talk about her eight-year-old son Kenny. The steak was tough, the coffee plentiful, you could hear the sound of cars whooshing by on the highway outside. Civilization. When he finally brought himself to look at his watch—after having his cup filled four times and exhausting every possible avenue of conversation with the waitress—it was after eleven, and he wearily decided that he had better get back. He had no trouble finding the road and traveled confidently now over the familiar terrain until his headlights finally came to rest on the abandoned boxcar on the far side of the clearing. Everything was as he had left it. Nothing had changed. Hawk’s car was still there, the fire barely flickered from time to time. He got out and threw a few sticks on the fire. From Hawk’s car he heard a phlegmy clearing of the throat and knew he would get no further greeting than that. Hawk appeared to be asleep anyway, tossing and turning and making sounds, remembering no doubt some half-forgotten moment of glory, like the time he played for the queen and sang her his “new tune”—only fifty years old—“Lizzie Can Shake It.” The papers had had a field day with that. Jerry tiptoed away from the car. But Hawk wasn’t asleep. And he wasn’t thinking of the queen either. His eyes were closed for once, but he was wide awake and alert in his thoughts. He didn’t sleep much anymore, hadn’t really slept well since his next-to-last wife Annie had died in ’62, he didn’t really know why. …

W
ELL, TIMES CHANGE.
People change. World keep changing—all the time. That’s what that boy don’t understand—what he want with me anyway? He done got all he could get out of me. More, if the truth be known. It ain’t like I’m his meal ticket, that cute little gal Lori, she the one that’s gonna pay the grocery bills. Cute as a button, that gal, and if you don’t hear what she putting down, then you don’t got ears, boy. Too many people in this world ain’t got ears, or eyes neither. They don’t see nothing the way it really is, just the way they think it should be. Don’t matter to ’em how a thing sounds, just whether you knowed ol’ Charley Patton or Blind Lemon Jefferson—Lemon, he was one of the nicest guys in the world, give you his last drop of whiskey if it come down to it, but he couldn’t sing worth a shit, didn’t have no
tone—or
else they want you to remember some song that your daddy sung ninety years ago on the cotton rows. She-it, they oughta just snap to it, the boy oughta just open up his eyes and live a little, ’stead of worrying everything to death like he do.

I told him in the first place. First time I ever laid eyes on him, I told him, You just keep heading in the other direction, don’t you go getting no fancy ideas or nothing, I’m doing fine on my own, thank you. Just keep right on passing through. Course he wouldn’t listen, it was all mister this and mister that, can’t remember why I even listened, seems like it was something about the world needing me. Shoot, the world don’t need nobody, keep right on turning all by itself, and everybody know, only a fool need the world—ain’t nothing in the world for nobody
but
a fool. Which is what we all is, I guess, at least if you listen to the preachers, who are the biggest fools of all, seem like to me.

I remember when they found Papa Eggshell, made a big deal of it at the time, wrote it up in all the papers. Shoot, anyone could have told ’em where he was right along, out behind Miz Payton’s in his little shack or most likely out in some alley drunk, pissing on himself. He wasn’t no good for nothing when they did find him, mind half gone, couldn’t stay away from the juice, needed it so bad his hand shook when he didn’t have it, couldn’t even remember his own name sometimes, let alone his songs. What they want with him for? But they found him, bought him a guitar (which he prompdy go out and hock, then lose the ticket, so they gotta go out and get him another), then they play him all his old records over and over so he couldn’t help but remember, and they take him up north to that Newport Festival, where he excapes and lands in the hospital without even getting up to play. Shoot, now you tell me what’s the sense in that? That damned old fool just confused and befuddled all the time, steal your last dime just for a drink of whiskey, that one time we went overseas, he didn’t know nothing about what was going on, and still and all them overseas cats falling all over themselves to interview him. And him making up stories, because he don’t remember shit and he don’t care anyway. Which is why Lonnie always say, Are you another one of them damn cats wants to put crutches under my ass? She-it, they don’t know. In the old days that man was
strong.
He knew his mind. Come a time when he feel like he tired of your company, he just gone, wasn’t no wasting time or waiting around. When you old they ain’t but one place where you fit for, and that’s home. Because home they all know you for whatever you is, and they don’t pay no mind. …

J
ERRY AWOKE
painfully with the sun, to the sound of Hawk crashing through the bushes with all the delicacy of a water buffalo. In the pale light of day the spot held even less attraction than it had the night before. The abandoned tracks, the rusted railroad car, the tall weeds, the forgotten refuse of humanity—it seemed hard to believe that men had once populated this jungle, cooked meals, hopped trains, that this was all a living part of Hawk’s memory. Jerry had seen pictures, of course, of haggard, hungry men, he had heard all the songs, he had sensed the fellowship and camaraderie—he wondered where they had all gone to.

Hawk was putting dirt on the fire by the time that Jerry emerged from the woods, having relieved himself and splashed water on his face. He felt as if he were aching in every bone of his body, and there was a foul taste in his mouth. He watched the old man meticulously put everything back in order—for what? For the next transient who came along just to cultivate his memories? Why couldn’t Hawk stay in a Holiday Inn like everyone else who had made it in this great free-enterprise system that Hawk was always talking about—“God bless the United States of America,” he often would say at the conclusion of his concerts, whether sincerely or sarcastically Jerry never knew for sure. “They got the only free-enterprise system in the world.” Audiences were always nonplussed; Hawk never so much as cracked a smile. But what the fuck was he doing staying in a defunct hobo jungle with more than $1,500 in his pocket? What a pain in the ass the “last of the great blues singers” was!

At first his car wouldn’t start, and Jerry had a moment of panic as he pictured himself abandoned in this dump, having to walk out to the highway, convince a strange mechanic that he hadn’t been doing anything illegal in this godforsaken hole—he watched the dust rise up in the wake of Hawk’s departure, at last the motor caught, Jerry gunned it, the car lurched forward, and he cast a single backward glance, still looking for a clue, before he abandoned the scene forever to memory.

They were just a few miles from St. Louis, and Jerry occupied himself with thinking of all the times he had read about St. Louis or written about it, in liner notes oudining the Screamin’ Nighthawk’s legendary travels and development as a blues singer. In St. Louis Hawk had met Little Walter, no more than twelve or thirteen, still imitating Sonny Boy Williamson, the first Sonny Boy Williamson, John Lee, playing in the marketplace. Walter had stuck with him for a couple of months, learned what he could, taken off for Chicago. Hawk’s second wife—or was it his third or his fourth?—came from St. Louis, the famous vaudeville singer from the ’20s, Lottie “Little Kid” Moore.

“Could she sing, boy,” Hawk used to reminisce in his more tender moments. “For the last four years I was with that gal, I just about give up my music, she just naturally had me under her spell. Of course she hadn’t joined the church at the beginning but she was always
nice,
you know what I mean, we used to laugh about all them other gals, they thought it wasn’t nice, you know, to be singing them nasty type of songs and shaking their yas-yas-yas in front of all them peoples. But Litde Kid, she didn’t care nothing about that. Man, the menfolks would just eat it up, and the wimmins could learn something from it, too. Boy, you wouldn’t’ve known me in them days. She had me working regular, only time in my life except when I was a little kid and didn’t know any better—and enjoying it, too! I was working up at Ernie’s Garage, corner of Fourth and Market, greasemonkeying, you know, fooling with them cars. And she had me going to school nights, too, ooh wee, she musta thought she was gonna make a preacher out of me. I was reading them books about Dick and Jane and they dog Spot, I was doing pretty good at it, too. Of course I forgot all that now, but I don’t know what it was come over me then, I guess that domesticated feeling just sneak up on me before I even knowed it. Well, you know how it is, everyone like their ham and eggs, and I guess everyone if they had their choice likes it
regular,
but I’ll tell you something true, it’s them gals that act like ladies on the outside, you get one of those little old gals behind closed doors, just like the song say, they liable to tear the roof off, bedslats and all. I’ll tell you, boy, sometimes I prayed that morning would come just so she’d turn me loose. And I’ll tell you something else, wasn’t no prowling going on back in them days, not for this Nighthawk, wasn’t no
way,
I was too tuckered out. Couldn’t do no howling neither. Just churchgoing, Wednesday evening and twice on Sunday. Then she joined the Ladies’ Sodality, man, on Tuesday nights, and I was going to my classes on Monday and Thursday, seemed like after a while we hardly had time for each other at all. Well, I didn’t think nothing of it until one day I got this little head cold, and of course back in the old days, out in the piney woods and levee camps and what have you, I wouldn’t have paid
that
no mind, but I was getting so highfalutin and refined, I just naturally thought, Well, my dear little wife, she be worried about me working myself into a lather and me being so sick and all, so I takes off from work early, get the boss man’s permission, and I comes home—and I find the preacher in my bed.” Hawk would slap his knee. “And, man, don’t let nobody tell you a preacher don’t have a Johnson just like everybody else, cause this preacher’s must have been a foot long and growing!” Then Hawk might launch into his song—“Some folks say a preacher won’t steal/ But I caught one in my cornfield/ Preacher talk about religion, talk about the church/ All the time he’s doing his dirty work.”