Flesh Guitar

LEMON-SQUEEZING TIME

A hot, humid bedroom in a shack in Greenwood, Mississippi, in August 1938; bare walls, bare floors, the cracked windows repaired with duct tape, a bed thin as a tortilla. It looks like ancient history, but it’s not so long ago.

He’s unsure how he got here. Maybe someone from the club brought him home when they saw just how sick he was. And still is. In this rare moment of sense and clarity he looks around the room, sees the empty moonshine bottle beside the bed, his own sharp suit and shiny shoes arranged on a chair like a wraith. No sign of his guitar.

The sheets are tangled and wet with sweat, and swathed in them is Robert Johnson, blues singer and guitarist. He’s sick as a dog; pains in his head and stomach, in his very bones. In fact sometimes he howls like a dog, screams, sees visions, bays at invisible moons, talks to ghosts and demons. He hears music, not his own; strange stuff, from another country, or maybe another planet, like Mars or some such place.

It could all be worse. He could be in a tar-paper but in the middle of a swamp somewhere. He could still be on the plantation, or being worked over by smiling deputies. Being able to sing and play guitar hasn’t kept him out of trouble completely, hasn’t made his life a breeze, but without his gift he knows that everything about his existence would have been twenty times worse.

But why exactly does he feel so bad? It was just another weekend gig. He sang and played just like usual. All he did different was take a drink of whisky, from a bottle given him by the club owner. The guy sure had a good-looking wife and she sure did flash a nice smile poor Bob’s way, but he didn’t do anything about it. There were nights when he would have done, but not tonight. And he certainly couldn’t do anything once he’d started throwing up his guts. He certainly hadn’t done anything that you’d poison a guy for. Was he being punished just for his thoughts?

And suddenly, oh shit, there’s a woman in the room. Not the club owner’s wife, much worse than that, much scarier: a white woman. He’s in enough trouble already and this woman looks like really bad news. She’s wearing the weirdest outfit he’s ever seen, like fancy dress, like she’s a show girl or a specialized kind of harlot maybe. It’s pretty indecent the way her clothes hug her body, and show off her legs and breasts. She isn’t strictly his type. He prefers something more homely, someone older and more comfortably reassuring, but he can definitely see the attraction. And although he doesn’t exactly know how, there seems to be some sort of connection between this woman and the infernal outer-space music he keeps hearing.

That’s when he realizes he must be hallucinating. Oh sure, she looks solid and real enough, as though you could reach out and grab yourself a handful, but he knows she must be the product of his sick imagination. What manner of woman would be here with him at a place and a time like this? What the hell was in that moonshine that created such visions?

‘Hi, Robert,’ she says.

‘You know my name?’ he asks, but then why should he be surprised? That’s the way it is with hallucinations. They know everything.

‘I know all about you,’ she confirms.

‘And who the hell are you?’

‘I’m Jenny Slade.’

‘And what do you want from me?’ he asks.

‘I don’t want anything much. I just want to tell you about the future.’

‘You mean I got one?’ he says, as a stab of pain twangs through him.

‘Well, yes and no. That moonshine whisky the bar owner gave you, I’m afraid it is going to kill you.’

‘Oh Jesus.’

‘But that’s OK. That’s not the end of the story.’

No? It sure sounds like it to me.’

No, you have posterity on your side.’

‘Post what?’

Jenny smiles indulgently. She knows he’s not as dumb as he’s pretending.

‘Fifty or sixty years from now you’ll be known as the “King of the Delta Blues Singers”,’ she says.

‘I sure don’t feel like no king right now.’

‘Maybe not, but that’s what they’re going to call you.’

‘Who’s going to call me that?’

‘Blues fans, and record companies and journalists, and radio stations.’

‘You mean white folks, yeah?’

‘Mostly white folks, yes.’

‘Well, I ain’t prejudiced,’ he says, and he laughs through his sickness and stomach pain. ‘And what about my guitar playing?’

‘You’re going to be very popular for your guitar playing too.’

‘Hell, lady, I don’t see that I have to wait fifty, sixty years. I’m popular right now, you know. I recorded my song “Terra-plane Blues”, and it sold maybe five thousand copies. If that ain’t popular then I don’t know what is.’

‘You’re going to be even more popular than that.

‘For sure?’

‘For sure,’ she confirms.

Johnson doesn’t seem inclined to believe her. He says, ‘You see, these guys came down from the American Record Company. I recorded twenty-nine sides for ‘em. I made big money out of it.’

‘Big money for here and now, maybe.’

‘Yeah, well here and now’s where I’m at.’

‘That’s true, but things are going to change, Robert.’

He looks at her slyly, squinting through half-closed eyes.

‘Hey,’ he says. ‘You ain’t some kind of devil woman, are you? Come to take my soul away?’

‘Is that what you think I am?’

‘Well, no, can’t really say that I do, but you sure are a weird one.’

She looks at him disapprovingly, like a school teacher trying to chastise a pupil with a single look; an evil eye, maybe.

‘What is it with you and the devil, Robert?’

‘What you mean?’

‘I mean all this stuff about having hellhounds on your trail and having Satan knock on your door. What’s the point of all that?’

‘Say, you must’ve heard me sing. You must’ve paid attention.’

‘Yes,’ she says patiently. ‘I’ve heard you play many times, and I always wonder what’s all this nonsense about you having made some sort of pact with the devil.’

‘Hell, you don’t have to believe that stuff,’ Johnson says dismissively. It’s just showbiz. I had a friend called Ike claimed he learned to play guitar by sitting in a graveyard, letting the knowledge seep up through the tombstones into his ass. I don’t think too many folks believed him.’

‘So you don’t believe any of that stuff you peddle?’

‘I don’t believe in it exactly, but it does no harm to pay a bit of lip service, you know what I mean?’

‘Are you sure it does no harm?’ Jenny says, and she seems concerned. ‘You see, it seems to me that all this stuff about being in league with the devil is more than just bullshit, Robert. It’s actually very demeaning. It suggests that a poor black man couldn’t possibly have genius unless it was somehow handed to him from an external source. And that’s bad, Robert. That’s absolute crap. They try to pull the same stuff with women. You aren’t in touch with any devil, Robert, you’re just in touch with yourself.’

‘I’d sure like to get in touch with you,’ he says.

It’s a well-intentioned offer but they both know that Johnson’s in no condition to go touching women. Jenny sits down on the edge of the bed, but she’s visiting the sick, not accepting any sexual invitation.

‘It’s with the boys that you’re really going to be a hit. You’re going to be a big influence on lots of guys, a lot of them white.’

‘Now I know I’m dreamin’.’

‘There’s going to be a guy called Eric who’s going to base his whole career on playing “Crossroads”. Of course, it won’t sound much like your version; he’ll garble the words a bit and take a verse from a different song, and he’ll add a Chicago-style riff, but you’ll get a lot of the credit for it.’

‘And will I get money for it?’

‘You won’t need money when you’re dead.’

‘Yeah, but—’

‘And a band named after an airship will take some of your best tunes and lines and make them their own. And there’ll be books written about you, scholarly articles, television programmes, movies.’

It’s all getting too much for him now. All these words and ideas that he doesn’t quite understand.

‘What are you?’ he asks. ‘A fortune teller?’

‘No. And I’m not here just to tell you about your own future. I want to tell you about everybody’s future.’

‘You sure are something. OK, go ahead, tell me about the future.’

‘Well, the first thing is, the future’s going to be very loud.’

‘Guess I can live with that.’

‘Louder than you ever imagined.’

‘What? Like a thunder storm? Or a steam train?’

‘Like a train going through a storm with bombs exploding all around it.’

‘You mean there’s going to be a war?’

‘Well, as a matter of fact, there is, World War Two, but you needn’t worry about that. You won’t live to see it. But after the war everything will be different. The young people who missed it will want their music to sound as loud as a war.’

Johnson looks around again for his own scratched guitar, but it seems to have gone for good. He says, ‘Then I guess there won’t be much use for guitar pickers.’

Jenny laughs. ‘There’s going to be lots of use for guitar pickers, Robert. The word may not have got to Mississippi yet but there are already guys out there who are creating something called the electric guitar.’

‘Yeah? Would that be anything like an electric chair?’

She smiles but presses on. ‘You see there’s this little thing called amplification. Imagine you plucked a guitar string and it made a noise like, oh I don’t know, like a screaming banshee.’

‘That’d be spooky.’

‘That’ll be standard, Robert. With an electric guitar and the right amplification you’re going to be able to play to crowds of hundreds of thousands of people. And you’re going to be able to change the way your guitar sounds. You’ll be able to make it sound like you’re playing in a big empty warehouse, or in a cave. And you’ll be able to make it sound like a swarm of bees or a dynamite explosion.’

‘Why in God’s name would I want it to sound like a dynamite explosion?’

‘Maybe you wouldn’t, Robert, but believe me there’ll be plenty of guitarists who will.’

‘White folks?’

‘No, not exclusively white folks.’

‘You mean black folks are going to be able to afford these fancy electric things?’

‘Oh yes,’ she says. ‘The electric guitar will be available to more or less anybody.’

‘Well, that sounds like progress. And what’ll this amplification stuff look like?’

‘It’ll be a box, just a little black box with a plug and a speaker.’

‘Devil’s boxes.’

‘There you go again, Robert. And certain people will make music simply by ramming their guitars against these amplifiers. There’ll be guys who smash up their guitars as part of the act.’

Johnson looks at her as though she’s now telling the tallest of tall stories and has gone too far, passed the point of believability and sanity.

He says, ‘I once had my guitar smashed up by a couple of good ol’ southern boys. It didn’t sound so good to me.’

‘Well, it won’t only be a question of the way it sounds.’

‘Didn’t look too pretty neither.’

‘It’s more a symbolic act, I guess,’ she said.

‘You sure do talk fancy. Are you foreign maybe? From somewhere like England? Or from some other planet? Some other time?’

‘Sure,’ she says. ‘I’m all those things.’

‘And that music I keep hearing. You responsible for that?’

‘Yes, that’s my music.’

‘You a guitar player?’

‘Definitely.’

‘That’s nice. I like a woman who knows how to hold down a chord.’

Jenny is relaxed and softer now, as though she’s done what she came for, got over the important and difficult part of her visit. She asks, ‘Have you got any advice for me about guitar playing?’

Johnson’s face clouds over and he feels a twinge of pain rising and stabbing all the way from his stomach to his throat.

‘Sure,’ he says with difficulty. ‘I got some advice for you. Next time you feel like going down to the crossroads don’t.’

He laughs until it hurts, then screeches with pain. The terrible sound brings a man running into the bedroom. It’s Honeyboy Edwards, Johnson’s good friend, the man who brought him here when he saw how ill he was. Johnson looks around him, thinking he has some explaining to do, about how he comes to have a white woman in his room. At the very least he thinks that he should make some introductions, but suddenly Jenny Slade is nowhere to be seen. The music has gone too, and so has the relief from pain that her presence seemed to bring.

‘How ya feelin’?’ Edwards asks.

Robert Johnson looks as though he’s giving the question some slow, serious consideration. Then he says, casual as you like, ‘You know, Honeyboy, I do believe I’m sinkin’ down.’