An Agent of Utopia Page 8

  “Where all the white folks at?” I asked.

  “They all up in heaven,” the devil said. “You think they let niggers into heaven?” We looked at each other a long time. Then the devil laughed again. “You ain’t buying that one for a minute, are you, John?”

  I was thinking about Meemaw. I knew she was in heaven, if anyone was. When I was a youngun I figured she musta practically built the place, and had been paying off on it all along. But I didn’t say nothing.

  “No, John, it ain’t that simple,” the devil said. “Beluthahatchie’s different for everybody, just like Hell. But you’ll be seeing plenty of white folks. Overseers. Train conductors. Sheriff’s deputies. If you get uppity, why, you’ll see whole crowds of white folks. Just like home, John. Everything’s the same. Why should it be any different?”

  “Cause you’re the devil,” I said. “You could make things a heap worse.”

  “Now, could I really, John? Could I really?”

  In the next field, a big man with hands like gallon jugs and a pink splash across his face was struggling all alone with a spindly mule and a plow made out of slats. “Get on, sir,” he was telling the mule. “Get on with you.” He didn’t even look around when the devil come chugging up alongside.”

  The devil gummed two fingers and whistled. “Ezekiel. Ezekiel! Come on over here, boy.”

  Ezekiel let go the plow and stumbled over the furrows, stepping high and clumsy in the thick dusty earth, trying to catch up to the Terraplane and not mess up the rows too bad. The devil han’t slowed down any—in fact, I believe he had speeded up some. Left to his own doin’s, the mule headed across the rows, the plow jerking along sideways behind him.

  “Yessir?” Ezekiel looked at me sorta curious like, and nodded his head so slight I wondered if he’d done it at all. “What you need with me, boss?”

  “I wanted you to meet your new neighbor. This here’s John, and you ain’t gone believe this, but he used to be a big man in the jook joints in the Delta. Writing songs and playing that dimestore git fiddle.”

  Ezekiel looked at me and said, “Yessir, I know John’s songs.” And I could tell he meant more than hearing them.

  “Yes, John mighta been famous and saved enough whore money to buy him a decent instrument if he hadn’t up and got hisself killed. Yes, John used to be one high-rolling nigger, but you ain’t so high now, are you, John?”

  I stared at the li’l peckerwood and spit out: “High enough to see where I’m going, Ole Massa.”

  I heard Ezekiel suck in his breath. The devil looked away from me real casual and back to Ezekiel, like we was chatting on a veranda someplace.

  “Well, Ezekiel, this has been a nice long break for you, but I reckon you ought to get on back to work now. Looks like your mule’s done got loose.” He cackled and speeded up the car. Ezekiel and I both walked a few more steps and stopped. We watched the back of the Terraplane getting smaller, and then I turned to watch his face from the side. I han’t seen that look on any of my people since Mississippi.

  I said, “Man, why do you all take this shit?”

  He wiped his forehead with his wrist and adjusted his hat. “Why do you?” he asked. “Why do you, John?” He was looking at me strange, and when he said my name it was like a one-word sentence all its own.

  I shrugged. “I’m just seeing how things are. It’s my first day.”

  “Your first day will be the same as all the others, then. That sure is the story with me. How come you called him Ole Massa just now?”

  “Don’t know. Just to get a rise out of him, I reckon.”

  Away off down the road, the Terraplane had stopped, engine still running, and the little cracker was yelling. “John! You best catch up, John. You wouldn’t want me to leave you wandering in the dark, now would you?”

  I started walking, not in any gracious hurry though, and Ezekiel paced me. “I asked cause it put me in mind of the old stories. You remember those stories, don’t you? About Ole Massa and his slave by name of John? And how they played tricks on each other all the time?”

  “Meemaw used to tell such when I was a youngun. What about it?”

  He was trotting to keep up with me now, but I wan’t even looking his way. “And there’s older stories than that, even. Stories about High John the Conqueror. The one who could—”

  “Get on back to your mule,” I said. “I think the sun has done touched you.”

  “—the one who could set his people free,” Ezekiel said, grabbing my shoulder and swinging me around. He stared into my face like a man looking for something he’s dropped and has got to find.

  “John!” the devil cried.

  We stood there in the sun, me and Ezekiel, and then something went out of his eyes, and he let go and walked back across the ditch and trudged after the mule without a word.

  I caught up to the Terraplane just in time for it to roll off again. I saw how it was, all right.

  A ways up the road, a couple of younguns was fishing off the right side of a plank bridge, and the devil announced he would stop to see had they caught anything, and if they had, to take it for his supper. He slid out of the Terraplane, with it still running, and the dogs fell out after him, a-hoping for a snack, I reckon. When the devil got hunkered down good over there with the younguns, facing the swift-running branch, I sidled up the driver’s side of the car, eased my guitar into the back seat, eased myself into the front seat, yanked the thing into gear and drove off. As I went past I saw three round O’s—a youngun and the devil and a youngun again.

  It was a pure pleasure to sit down, and the breeze coming through the windows felt good too. I commenced to get even more of a breeze going, on that long, straightaway road. I just could hear the devil holler back behind:

  “John! Get your handkerchief-headed, free-school Negro ass back here with my auto-MO-bile! Johhhhnnn!”

  “Here I come, old hoss,” I said, and I jerked the wheel and slewed that car around and barreled off back toward the bridge. The younguns and the dogs was ahead of the devil in figuring things out. The younguns scrambled up a tree as quick as squirrels, and the dogs went loping into a ditch, but the devil was all preoccupied, doing a salty jump and cussing me for a dadblasted blagstagging liver-lipped stormbuzzard, jigging around right there in the middle of the bridge, and he was still cussing when I drove full tilt onto that bridge and he did not cuss any less when he jumped clean out from under his hat and he may even have stepped it up some when he went over the side. I heard a ker-plunk like a big rock chunked into a pond just as I swerved to bust the hat with a front tire, and then I was off the bridge and racing back the way we’d come, and that hat mashed in the road behind me like a possum.

  I knew something simply awful was going to happen, but man! I slapped the dashboard and kissed my hand and slicked it back across my hair and said aloud, “Lightly, slightly, and politely.” And I meant that thing. But my next move was to whip that razor out of my sock, flip it open, and lay it on the seat beside me, just in case.

  I came up the road fast, and from way off I saw Ezekiel and the mule planted in the middle of his field like rocks. As they got bigger I saw both their heads had been turned my way the whole time, like they’d started looking before I even came over the hill. When I got level with them I stopped, engine running, and leaned on the horn until Ezekiel roused himself and walked over. The mule followed behind, like a yard dog, without being cussed or hauled or whipped. I must have been a sight. Ezekiel shook his head the whole way. “Oh, John,” he said. “Oh, my goodness. Oh, John.”

  “Jump in, brother,” I said. “Let Ole Massa plow this field his own damn self.”

  Ezekiel rubbed his hands along the chrome on the side of the car, swiping up and down and up and down. I was scared he’d burn himself. “Oh, John.” He kept shaking his head. “John tricks Ole Massa again. High John the Conqueror rides the Terraplane to
glory.”

  “Quit that, now. You worry me.”

  “John, those songs you wrote been keeping us going down here. Did you know that?”

  “I ’preciate it.”

  “But lemme ask you, John. Lemme ask you something before you ride off. How come you wrote all those songs about hellhounds and the devil and such? How come you was so sure you’d be coming down here when you died?”

  I fidgeted and looked in the mirror at the road behind. “Man, I don’t know. Couldn’t imagine nothing else. Not for me, anyway.”

  Ezekiel laughed once, loud, boom, like a shotgun going off.

  “Don’t be doing that, man. I about jumped out of my britches. Come on and let’s go.”

  He shook his head again. “Maybe you knew you was needed down here, John. Maybe you knew we was singing, and telling stories, and waiting.” He stepped back into the dirt. “This is your ride, John. But I’ll make sure everybody knows what you done. I’ll tell ’em that things has changed in Beluthahatchie.” He looked off down the road. “You’d best get on. Shoot—maybe you can find some jook joint and have some fun afore he catches up to you.”

  “Maybe so, brother, maybe so.”

  I han’t gone two miles afore I got that bad old crawly feeling. I looked over to the passengers’ side of the car and saw it was all spattered with blood, the leather and the carpet and the chrome on the door, and both those mangy hound dogs was sprawled across the front seat wallowing in it, both licking my razor like it was something good, and that’s where the blood was coming from, welling up from the blade with each pass of their tongues. Time I caught sight of the dogs, they both lifted their heads and went to howling. It wan’t no howl like any dog should howl. It was more like a couple of panthers in the night.

  “Hush up, you dogs!” I yelled. “Hush up, I say!”

  One of the dogs kept on howling, but the other looked me in the eyes and gulped air, his jowls flapping, like he was fixing to bark, but instead of barking said:

  “Hush yourself, nigger.”

  When I looked back at the road, there wan’t no road, just a big thicket of bushes and trees a-coming at me. Then came a whole lot of screeching and scraping and banging, with me holding on to the wheel just to keep from flying out of the seat, and then the car went sideways and I heard an awful bang and a crack and then I didn’t know anything else. I just opened my eyes later, I don’t know how much later, and found me and my guitar lying on the shore of the Lake of the Dead.

  I had heard tell of that dreadful place, but I never had expected to see it for myself. Preacher Dodds whispered to us younguns once or twice about it, and said you have to work awful hard and be awful mean to get there, and once you get there, there ain’t no coming back. “Don’t seek it, my children, don’t seek it,” he’d say.

  As far as I could see, all along the edges of the water, was bones and carcasses and lumps that used to be animals—mules and horses and cows and coons and even little dried-up birds scattered like hickory chips, and some things lying away off that might have been animals and might not have been, oh Lord, I didn’t go to look. A couple of buzzards was strolling the edge of the water, not acting hungry nor vicious but just on a tour, I reckon. The sun was setting, but the water didn’t cast no shine at all. It had a dim and scummy look, so flat and still that you’d be tempted to try to walk across it, if any human could bear seeing what lay on the other side. “Don’t seek it, my children, don’t seek it.” I han’t sought it, but now the devil had sent me there, and all I knew to do was hold my guitar close to me and watch those buzzards a-picking and a-pecking and wait for it to get dark. And Lord, what would this place be like in the dark?

  But the guitar did feel good up against me thataway, like it had stored up all the songs I ever wrote or sung to comfort me in a hard time. I thought about those field hands a-pointing my way, and about Ezekiel sweating along behind his mule, and the way he grabbed aholt of my shoulder and swung me around. And I remembered the new song I had been fooling with all day in my head while I was following that li’l peckerwood in the Terraplane.

  “Well, boys,” I told the buzzards, “if the devil’s got some powers I reckon I got some too. I didn’t expect to be playing no blues after I was dead. But I guess that’s all there is to play now. ’Sides, I’ve played worse places.”

  I started humming and strumming, and then just to warm up I played “Rambling on My Mind” cause it was, and “Sweet Home Chicago” cause I figured I wouldn’t see that town no more, and “Terraplane Blues” on account of that damn car. Then I sang the song I had just made up that day.

  I’m down in Beluthahatchie, baby,

  Way out where the trains don’t run

  Yes, I’m down in Beluthahatchie, baby,

  Way out where the trains don’t run

  Who’s gonna take you strolling now

  Since your man he is dead and gone

  My body’s all laid out mama

  But my soul can’t get no rest

  My body’s all laid out mama

  But my soul can’t get no rest

  Cause you’ll be sportin with another man

  Lookin for some old Mr. Second Best

  Plain folks got to walk the line

  But the Devil he can up and ride

  Folks like us we walk the line

  But the Devil he can up and ride

  And I won’t never have blues enough

  Ooh, to keep that Devil satisfied.

  When I was done it was black dark and the crickets was zinging and everything was changed.

  “You can sure get around this country,” I said, “just a-sitting on your ass.”

  I was in a cane-back chair on the porch of a little wooden house, with bugs smacking into an oil lamp over my head. Just an old cropper place, sitting in the middle of a cotton field, but it had been spruced up some. Somebody had swept the yard clean, from what I could see of it, and on a post above the dipper was a couple of yellow flowers in a nailed-up Chase & Sanborn can.

  When I looked back down at the yard, though, it wan’t clean anymore. There was words written in the dirt, big and scrawly like from someone dragging his foot.

  DON’T GET A BIG HEAD JOHN

  I’LL BE BACK

  Sitting on my name was those two fat old hound dogs. “Get on with your damn stinking talking selves,” I yelled, and I shied a rock at them. It didn’t go near as far as I expected, just sorta plopped down into the dirt, but the hounds yawned and got up, snuffling each other, and waddled off into the dark.

  I stood up and stretched and mumbled. But something was still shifting in the yard, just past where the light was. Didn’t sound like no dogs, though.

  “Who that? Who that who got business with a wore-out dead man?”

  Then they come up toward the porch a little closer where I could see. It was a whole mess of colored folks, men in overalls and women in aprons, granny women in bonnets pecking the ground with walking sticks, younguns with their bellies pookin out and no pants on, an old man with Coke-bottle glasses and his eyes swimming in your face nearly, and every last one of them grinning like they was touched. Why, Preacher Dodds woulda passed the plate and called it a revival. They massed up against the edge of the porch, crowding closer in and bumping up against each other, and reaching their arms out and taking hold of me, my lapels, my shoulders, my hands, my guitar, my face, the little ones aholt of my pants legs—not hauling on me or messing with me, just touching me feather light here and there like Meemaw used to touch her favorite quilt after she’d already folded it to put away. They was talking, too, mumbling and whispering and saying, “Here he is. We heard he was coming and here he is. God bless you, friend, God bless you, brother, God bless you, son.” Some of the womenfolks was crying, and there was Ezekiel, blowing his nose on a rag.

  “Y’all got the wrong man,” I said,
directly, but they was already heading back across the yard, which was all churned up now, no words to read and no pattern neither. They was looking back at me and smiling and touching, holding hands and leaning into each other, till they was all gone and it was just me and the crickets and the cotton.

  Wan’t nowhere else to go, so I opened the screen door and went on in the house. There was a bed all turned down with a feather pillow, and in the middle of the checkered oilcloth on the table was a crock of molasses, a jar of buttermilk, and a plate covered with a rag. The buttermilk was cool like it had been chilling in the well, with water beaded up on the sides of the jar. Under the rag was three hoecakes and a slab of bacon.

  When I was done with my supper, I latched the front door, lay down on the bed, and was just about dead to the world when I heard something else out in the yard—-swish, swish, swish. Out the window I saw, in the edge of the porch light, one old granny woman with a shuck broom, smoothing out the yard where the folks had been. She was sweeping it as clean as for company on a Sunday. She looked up from under her bonnet and showed me what teeth she had and waved from the wrist like a youngun, and then she backed on out of the light, swish swish swish, rubbing out her tracks as she went.

  The Map to the Homes of the Stars

  Last night, I heard it again. About eleven, I stood at the kitchen counter, slathered peanut butter onto a stale, cool slice of refrigerated raisin bread, and scanned months-old letters to the editor in an A-section pulled at random from the overflow around the recycling bin. “Reader decries tobacco evils.” “Economy sound, says N.C. banker.” The little headlines give the otherwise routine letters such urgency, like telegraphed messages from some war-torn front where issues are being decided, where news is happening. “Arts funding called necessary.” As I chewed my sandwich, I turned one-handed to the movie listings, just to reassure myself that everything I had skipped in the spring wasn’t worth the trouble anyway, and then I heard a slowly approaching car.