RL's Dream

Eighteen

The day after Kiki came home early, Soupspoon called Rudy. “I’ma play at a street fair on Saturday, Rudy. Down on Carmine Street just offa Bleecker. You could come on down an’ hear me t’see what you might get.”

“Okay, Uncle Atwater. How you feelin’?”

“Like I was dead an’ then I died again.”

Rudy laughed at Soupspoon’s blues. “I told A’ntee Mavy ’bout what’s goin’ on wit’ you. She said she’d like to talk if you wanted.”

He found himself pressing her buzzer at about noon. She didn’t live far from the Beldin Arms. Fourteenth Street and Avenue A.

All those years and we was just walking distance, Soupspoon thought. Might as well been a million miles.

“Who is it?”

“Me, Mavy. Atwater.”

There followed a long silence. In a corner of the vestibule a water beetle was dying on his back, waving his hairy brown legs at the light. Soupspoon raised his foot but then put it back down.

Who knows what he thinkin’.

“Rudy said that you got cancer,” Mavis said at last.

“That’s what the doctors say, babe. That’s what they say.”

“Elevator’s straight back when you walk in. Eight G,” the talk box barked. Then there was a loud buzzing and Soupspoon pushed his way in.

She was old and skinnier, dressed all in white. Her skirt and her shirt and shoes, even the shawl over her head, which she clutched with both hands at the chin, was white.

He couldn’t kiss her standing like that; couldn’t even shake her hand. So he stood there, briefcase hanging from his fist.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Tape recorder an’ my lunch.”

“Tape recorder for what? A Walkman?”

“Naw.”

“What is it then?”

“Can I come in your house, Mavis?”

The question caught her up short. Maybe she thought that they could stand at the door and say what they had to say. After that he could go home to die and she could fade back into white.

There was music coming from an old phonograph behind her.

“That the same old Victrola, Mavy?”

“Yeah, sure is.”

“Where you find a stylus fo’ it nowadays?”

“I got six dozen of’em at a flea market down North Carolina ’bout fifteen years ago.” She frowned, angry that he got her talking. “You could come in for a little while, Atwater, but I got work to do.”

He perched on the edge of her antique white sofa while she sat up straight in a blond chair. As the minutes went by she got younger looking. Her face, at first hard, was now regal. He caught a whiff of perfume, Forest Rose. She was wearing that scent when they met over forty-five years before.

He told her about the cancer treatments, but not too much. He told her about his whole life since they’d parted — it didn’t take long.

“One day been just like t’other these last twenty years. Sometimes I even forget what year it is,” he said.

If anything Mavis’s life was even simpler. She’d left Texas after only a few months because being next to where her son had died was too painful to bear.

“I got a driver named George pick me up every Tuesday at eleven-fifteen. He take me up to Angela’s Curios and I let off all my flower arrangements and she pay me. She got seven shops here and on Long Island an’ dried roses always sells good. Then George take me up t’get my groceries an’ I pay’im fifteen dollars cash.”

“Where you get your flowers from?”

“Korean place. Usually their little boy, Kwan, bring ’em up. I give’im fi’ty cents for that.”

And that was it. Neither one had done a thing special in years. Except now Soupspoon was dying. Now he missed things that he had never even noticed before. But he didn’t talk about those things to Mavis — he didn’t have the heart.

Instead he said, “You know now I’m sick I figger I better do all the things I left till later.”

Mavis took a long white cigarette from a porcelain cigarette case on her glass table.

“An’ one’a them things,” Soupspoon went on, “is to put down what I remember about the blues.”

“Like a histr’y book?”

He nodded. “Only I put it down on tape. Stories and songs too. When I’m through I’ma send it to Mr. Early. You remember him?”

“Hm! Mo’ shit about Robert Johnson’s all it is.”

“Him too. He was part of it. Why not him?”

“Cain’t you even die by yo’self, Atwater?” she asked. Then she brought the back of her hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry, honey. I shouldn’ta said that. That was wrong.”

“You never really told me everything about that one time you met’im.” It was all Soupspoon wanted.

“You ain’t s’posed t’talk to yo’ huzbun ’bout some ole boyfriend you had. That’s wrong too.”

“But I ain’t yo’ husband no more, Mavis. We ain’t even friends. This is all I got left, baby.” He pointed at his briefcase. “I ain’t never made no records. I ain’t got no heir.”

“Well? What you want from me?” Mavis’s voice was both small and angry. “What can I do about that now?”

Soupspoon opened his briefcase and took out the recorder. He pressed two buttons and smiled.

“Just tell me about it, Mavy. Just tell it like it was.”

“You mean... just talk?”

“Uh-huh. That’s all I do. Usually I start tellin’ somebody like Kiki or Randy a story an’ then I just forgets that they there.”

Mavis didn’t know who Kiki and Randy were, but she was afraid of the recorder box. She scowled at the thing and balled her fists so tight that her knuckles popped.

Soupspoon moved down to the end of the couch, nearer her chair.

“Tell me ’bout the night you met RL,” he whispered and then he touched her thigh.

She jumped when he touched her, but she also looked away from the box.

“What you want me to say?”

“Just talk,” he said, and he touched her leg again. “Start with Rafael. He was your boyfriend back then, right?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, Rafael was my common-law huzbun.”

“But you never really married him,” Soupspoon primed her.

“Naw, uh-uh, Rafael wasn’t no good, he was just all I had is all.”

“He was a bad man?” Soupspoon asked.

“Naw. He wasn’t bad, he just wasn’t no good.” She paused for a moment and shivered. “The only good thing ever come’a Rafael was my son Cortland — and he’s dead all these years.”

Through the window Soupspoon could see the dark and overcast New York afternoon. Inside there were at least two dozen bright lights blasting silently against white walls, white rugs, and white furniture. Mavis took out another long white cigarette and lit it. Her head was held back in elegant fashion, reflecting on many hard years. But the only indication of her age now was the two deep furrows in her cheeks and the wrinkles about her eyes. She opened those eyes dramatically and Soupspoon knew that he had her.

“Yes. Rafael was a wild man, but I wasn’t too tame back then myself. I loved my baby somethin’ terrible an’ Rafe loved us — the way a hard-lovin’, hard-drinkin’ man loves. Sometimes he’d come in all mean and worked up. The way he’d talk was like a animal growlin’. Cort’d start whimperin’ and I’d get up and tell Rafe to get-ass away from us until he was civil.”

Mavis sat back and dragged deeply on the unfiltered Pall Mall. She exhaled the smoke into the air above Soupspoon’s head.

“He wasn’t afraid to hit me,” she said. “An’ he knew I wasn’t afraid t’hit him back. You know my fists is big like a man’s....” Mavis balled her left hand to prove the point. “I had some power too. And if we’d fight an’ get so worked up we had to make love, I’d tell’im that he had to carry me outside on the porch ’cause I didn’t want Cort to see that. Rafe’d pick me up and he’d be shakin’ he wanted it so bad.

“Rafe would love a woman hard. I could feel my back hittin’ the flo’, and later on I’d always be pullin’ splinters outta my rear.” Mavis exhaled and stubbed out the cigarette; she only smoked it halfway. “I used to think I liked a hard-lovin’ man. Like when you see a stallion or a bull bitin’ and fuckin’ wit’ that crazy look in they eyes.”

Mavis gave Soupspoon a look that reminded him of the first night they met.

“What about Robert Johnson?” he asked. “Did he meet Rafael?”

“Hell no! Rafe woulda et that po’ boy up. He was a big man an’ mean when it come to what was his.” Mavis lit up another cigarette. “When I met Bob, me and Rafe was livin’ with Number Seven, Rafe’s youngest brother, in a old ruined sawmill on the river. Number Seven and Rafe made moonshine up there and I picked flowers and did things for the white ladies in town. On weekend nights we’d get inta Number Seven’s Terraplane an’ drive down to town, that was Panther Burn. That is, we did used to go down there — until Terry’s juke joint burnt down.

“We were down there on the night of the fire. A crowd was already gathered by the time we come and the music was goin’ strong.

“Pete Hollis was there that night.

“Pete was a big ole boy like to dance wild. I mean, he’d get all the way down to the floor, if you see what I mean. All the way down. You know he grabbed me the minute I come in an’ th’owed me around till all I could do was laugh an’ laugh.” Mavis was lost in the story now. Soupspoon could tell by the way she breathed. “An’ when the song stopped and another one started, Rafe grabbed me an’ spun me so hard that I couldn’t even see straight. The musicians would hardly take a break between songs and so they got the crowd hotter an’ hotter and I felt like the hottest momma there bein’ th’owed from Rafe to Pete Hollis. The floor cleared out around us for every dance and them boys got wilder an’ wilder tryin’ to outdo the steps the last one done.

“One time Rafe th’ow me so hard that I falls down an’ hurt my butt an’ tear my dress. You know that shit made me mad.” Mavis cut her eyes the way young women did in Soupspoon’s day. “Girl like a li’l rough handlin’ don’t mean she wanna get th’owed to the floor. So I go over to Pete an’ he smile all evil an’ we start shakin’ our shoulders an’ holdin’ hands. First he th’ow me down between his legs an’ then he pull me up so I go flyin’ an’ twirlin’ in the air. But he caught me. Ev’ry body was watchin’ us an’ cheerin’ us. I was wearin’ this big skirt that twirled open but I didn’t have no underwears on

“Number Seven come up right then an’ grab Pete. Before I could say ‘Hey!’ Rafe had me dancin’ again. But it really wasn’t like dancin’ at all. He had my wrist hard and was just th’owin’ me out and back again like a sack’a beans. He tried to th’ow me down between his legs but I dug in my heels so he couldn’t do it. Then he tried to twirl me in the air. I let my weight hang down, but Rafe was real strong, he got to hold’a me under the arms an’ th’ows me so that I hit up against a kerosene lantern on the wall.” Mavis opened her eyes in real fear. “Fire spread over the floor so quick that nobody could stop it in time. We was all runnin’ for the door. My hem had caught fire an’ I was runnin’ an’ yellin’ till somebody caught my arm an’ put me down in the mud to put out the flame.”

There was a loud thought in Soupspoon’s mind. He never knew that Mavis had met RL at Panther Burn; at the fire that marked the last time he was ever to see his friend. He felt a double loss. It seemed to him that RL had raised up out of his grave to steal his wife away. Mavis had never been his because she had never, even from the start, opened her whole heart to him.

The hard truth of his thoughts was reflected in Mavis’s cold stare.

She lit up another cigarette and gazed out of the dark window. After a while she got up and pulled the curtains closed. This had the effect of making the room even brighter.

When she came back to her chair Soupspoon was very quiet — afraid that the spell would be broken and he’d miss the story he wanted so bad. But when he saw the sneer that Mavis gave him he knew that she wouldn’t stop. He knew that she had to talk just as much as he needed to hear.

“The man who put out my dress,” she said, “helped me up and walked me back down to the wreck. The whole place burnt down in ten minutes flat. Musta been a dozen people ate smoke so bad that they was stretched out. Four’a them died, but not for a coupla days. I looked for Rafe and Number Seven but they was gone — run off wit’ Pete Hollis. The three’a them got scared an’ run down to a place called Mud Town. It wasn’t no real town then, just a place where colored people made their beds for a while.

“I was sick at how terrible it all was. My leg was hurtin’ from where I hit the wall and I was caked wit’ mud. But then the man who helped me touched my arm. He was a hush young man and I saw that he had a guitar. It was Bob Johnson. He took my arm and walked me away from the fire. Everybody was leavin’ because nobody wanted to be there when the law came. I took Bob on a path that led up to the mill. We was alone and he was quiet, just holdin’ my arm.

“It was too quiet for me, so I asked him, ‘You the one playin’ music tonight?’

“‘Yes, ma’am,’ he says as respectful and sure as a deacon. And then he turn t’me an’ says, ‘Could I come home wit’ you?’ Just like that.” Mavis was still amazed by the bluesman’s audacity. “I didn’t know him from Job but he askin’ me t’share my bed. And here I am puttin’ my filthy arm ’round his shoulders an’ hopin’ that Rafe wouldn’t be back that night.”

Mavis stubbed out her half cigarette, savoring the last drag. Soupspoon saw a small roach making its way along the base of the wall behind her. He tried not to stare at the insect for fear that Mavis would turn to see. Maybe she’d burn down this house if there was a bug in it.

“He made me to take off my dirty clothes out on the back porch. Then he filled up this bucket full’a cold water and soaked my dirty things in it while I washed the mud off. Then he find my room an’ come out with the prettiest dress I got. There I am, naked to the world, an’ here’s this pretty man holdin’ the dress up on my titties. I steps right into it an’ he done up the buttons. You know I started to shake for that boy the same way Rafe’d shake for me.

“He was sweet in bed too. Real different from Rafe. You know a man like Rafe squeeze till you don’t know where you stop and he start. But I knew where I was wit’ RL. When I come he jump up t’look me right in the eye like he was scared’a what he called up. An’ you know he had to be lookin’ me in the eye like that all night, just about. Mmm.” Mavis leaned her head back and brought the new cigarette down to her mouth with sensual pleasure. The smoke came out of her nose and drifted down her dark face in white rivulets.

“When I woke up it was still dark. I thought I mighta heard sumpin’ and I worried that it was Rafe comin’ in. So I jump outta bed and go out to the porch. We had mosquito netting out there and a couple’s old chairs. The whole mill was up on stilts above the river. The moon was shinin’ back there, half-faced and yellow. And the woods was a rough black color under it. Bob was naked an’ sittin’ on a empty five-gallon shine barrel. He was huggin’ on his guitar like it was a woman or a child.

“I asked him what was wrong an’ he says, ‘Nuthin’, momma,’ in this sweet li’l voice. He mighta been talkin’ to his own momma as well as me. The tears was comin’ down his face. He was so sad and beautiful out there naked to the moonlight. I was drawed to him. I took his guitar an’ put it down real soft next to the banister and then I pulls him down to the floor with me. All there was was a burlap sack there for us to lie on, but we didn’t mind. My chest was slick with his tears. And the bare breeze called up goose bumps.

“He told me all ’bout his girl down around Robinsonville. Just fifteen but she still died with their baby. He cried like chirren do, all lost and sad. I could see by the way he felt her death how he could play such strong music.

“He told me how everybody hated him. First his stepdaddy who beat him and then later all the folks who made fun’a him not workin’ in the fields. Even the musicians didn’t want him to play nuthin’ but mouth harp. They bad-talked him until he trained his-self to play right...”

“He tell you about how he sold his soul?” Soupspoon asked.

Mavis shook her head, still caught up in the memory. “He never said nuthin’ ’bout that to me. All he could say was how he had been pushed around. Everybody was jealous of him. They stole his music and blamed him for all kindsa things. Maybe they blamed him for sellin’ his soul.

“There I was layin’ back naked with a man, legs open for him to do whatever he please, but there wasn’t nuthin’ like that. When he turns t’me an’ ask, ‘Could I stay here with you?’ I almost told him yeah. I wanted to ask Rafe t’let me have that boy. I thought that if I took him in I could p’otect him.”

Mavis laughed and shook her head at the white floor. “I know better now. Men like him ain’t never had no chance at no normal life. If that child-wife’a his woulda lived it wouldn’ta mattered. If that baby had lived he woulda been left with some woman in some town suckin’ on a wet rag an’ cryin’ fo’ some daddy he never had.”

Mavis smoked and stared directly into the lamp behind Soupspoon.

“Bob left in the mornin’. I kissed him goodbye. Then I got Cort from down at my cousin’s where I left him t’go dancin’. I found out from her about where Rafe an’ them had gone. After two days I heard that two men and one woman had already died from smoke. The county law was askin’ questions about me, so I took up Cort an’ run down to La Marque, Texas, where my older sister Martha lived. I did it ’cause Cort needed his momma an’ I couldn’t go to no jail. I mean, it wasn’t my fault that them people died, but they woulda taken me down to the women’s prison if they wanted. So I run. An’ ’cause I did my baby is dead today.”

Mavis lit the last cigarette and smoked it slowly while she stared off.

He remembered all the years that they had together. His broken leg, her first job with the church choir. They had come from the deepest, saddest south — not much better than slaves — and made it up into the twentieth century with automobiles, telephones, and indoor plumbing. He remembered everything but it all seemed like a play. He had said his lines and Mavis recited hers.

Not one moment of that life was like the two weeks after he met RL in Arcola. Those days went beyond everything. What they discovered was new and nobody could predict what would happen next. It was a hard song of disease and death. A wild dance and Soupspoon and Robert Johnson played the tune.

He remembered the fire. He was scared out of his mind. But somewhere he knew that this was the last great moment of his life.

Now he saw that the same was true for Mavis.

He had met her later, down in Texas. But that was after Cort had died. She was never wild again.

“Thank you, Mavy.” Soupspoon reached down to touch her again but she stood up.

“You got what you wanted?” she asked him.

“I don’t know. I thought that Rudy said you wanted t’see me.”

Mavis took a half-smoked butt out of the ashtray and struck a match.

“I did,” she said. “But you come on in here wit’ yo’ tape recorder an’ yo’ questions ’bout Robert Johnson. Well... I done answered yo’ questions. Is there sumpin’ else?”

“I don’t know, Mavy. I just wanted to talk.”

“Well, you done talked an’ now it’s time for me t’get back t’my flowers.” She turned her face toward the door.

He watched her back, knowing that there was something he should say. He wanted it; she did too, he knew. But all he had left in him was the truth. A barren marriage behind a bare blues life. He never cared enough to find her again after they broke up. He didn’t even know that she was back in New York until Rudy told him.

All he really wanted was on that tape recorder.

“I’m sorry, baby,” he said.