If i get home before daylight by BloodwingBlackbird

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If I get home before daylight

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Her name is Bobbie Johnson, and before you ask, yes, her daddy is a blues fan. 

Was a blues fan.

He died last January, with an aneurysm. No one knew it was coming.

This trip is a pilgrimage of sorts, a drive south from Naperville, Illinois down to the Mississippi delta. She’s driving the Blues Highway, Nashville to New Orleans, stopping to see any site she can find. She spent last night in Memphis, and did that whole thing, wandering Beall Street, visiting Graceland, Paul Simon in her head the whole time.

After dinner alone in the dim and cluttered Charlie Vergas’ Rendezvous (ribs and a frankly disappointing glass of red wine) she had left Memphis and moseyed south, wondering why she’d decided to make this trip at all.

She doesn’t even like the blues.

She stops in Clarksdale for the night, at the America’s Best Value Inn and Suites. She can’t sleep, and doesn’t feel like lying there and being mad about it, so she gets up and wanders out to the parking lot, lit up bright and blue in the Mississippi night. It’s just barely June, but it’s already hot down here, and noisy at night, with bugs and frogs all singing from the creek behind the hotel.

Stars are out, but she can’t see them over the bright parking lot lights. She’d like to, she thinks, so she goes back inside, and pulls on some shorts, gets her keys and her wallet, slides her feet into some flip-flops and after a second of consideration, brings her guitar.

She drives a bit, just outside of town, to where open fields stretch flat alongside the road, and to where she can’t see any lights. She pulls off just past an intersection, then climbs out, sharp grass scraping her ankles. She can’t see headlights in any direction and feels as alone as she’s ever felt. With her guitar, she clambers up to perch on her trunk, and looks up, sky stretching horizon to horizon, and just full of stars, big bright stars, constellations she ought to know the names of, stars in the spaces in between stars.

She breathes in the night air, the smell of grass and dirt and trees and everything. She holds that breath tight, and then lets it go.

Her guitar is a cheap one, bought from a pawn shop, and she isn’t very good at playing it. She’d tried a bit in high school, part of a group of nerdy boys who’d talked their parents into buying them instruments, convinced that was enough for them to become the next System of a Down. They’d managed all of one practice before giving up. She’d sold her guitar and amp in college, then lost touch with them, except for the occasional Facebook post: pictures of their wives and toddlers. Bobbie doesn’t have either of those. She has an ex-wife, a cat, and a therapist. She doesn’t have much to talk about with those guys.

Then her dad had died, and she’d been looking for something, anything, to help feel close to him. He’d played for her, holding her on his lap, with the guitar in front of her, and played blues songs, Muddy Waters and B.B. King, and, of course, Robert Johnson.

She still doesn’t like the blues, but she likes playing the handful of boygenius songs she knows, stumbling through the chord changes.

She loses track of time, plunking her way through songs, for once not thinking about who can see her, who can hear her. Not worried about voice training, or whether or not her ex would like this song, or anything else. She thinks, suddenly, that she’d like to get really good at this. Maybe she could write a song about the last five years.

That’s when she hears it.

Footsteps.

Halting, but sharp, boots tapping on the road.

The night noises have gone silent. She is quiet, too. Waiting. 

She should leave. She should do anything rather than sit on the trunk of her car in rural Mississippi and wait to get hate-crimed.

Her eyes must have adjusted to the dark, because she can see him coming toward her, walking down the middle of the road. He’s tall, almost too tall, and skinny as a rail, pointy black boots reflecting starlight. He’s wearing all black and walking with a cane, and he comes right up to her and stands there, staring her down.

“Let me see that guitar,” he says.

Maybe it’s because she’s spent the day hearing tall tales about bluesmen selling their souls to the devil. Maybe it’s because his eyes are glowing and he’s grinning at her like a demon. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t occur to her to question him. She just hands the guitar over.

He takes it and twists the pegs, and then he plays a song that wraps itself around her throat and squeezes out all the tears she thought she was done crying.

“Is that what you meant?” He says when he’s done.

“What?” she can hardly talk.

“You wanted a song about hurting.”

“I –” she stops. “I guess I did.”

“You wanted to learn to play. To write the things you felt. Is that what you meant?” He hands her back the guitar. She holds it like she’s never touched it before.

“Are you offering to teach me?”

“Not for free,” he says, laughing.

A chill runs up her spine. “My soul,” she says.

He looks at her for a long, long time, uncanny eyes flashing at her. Then he breaks, nose crinkling, eyes shut tight, doubled over in knee-slapping mirth.

“What the fuck good is your soul gonna do me?” He crows. “Shit, no, girl. I just want you to buy me a drink. There’s a 24-hour truck stop up the road a ways. You drive there and buy us a bottle of whiskey, then come back here and I’ll teach you whatever mopey hipster tripe you wanna play on that little shitbox you got there.”

“I could just give you the money,” Bobbie says.

“Nah, they don’t let me come in there no more. You gotta do it.” He folds himself up, long legs faintly spidery in the dark, and sits right down on the shoulder of the road. “Go on, then.” He waves a hand.

 

Bobbie stands in the bright lights of the convenience store, bills clutched sweaty in her hands, and asks the clerk for a bottle of Jim Beam. He gives her a look, the kind of look she’s used to, the one that says he’s a second away from calling her ‘sir,’ and she dips her chin, looks away.

She wonders if her new friend is a purely musical sort of demon, or if he might entertain other varieties of deal.

 

Driving back, she wonders if maybe she dreamed it. Maybe she’s having some sort of stress induced episode, and the whole thing has been a hallucination. She’s not even sure she’ll be able to find the intersection again.

She does, and the stranger is still there, except now he’s lying down in the overgrown grass and gravel on the shoulder of the road, his hands extended upwards, reaching into the air, weaving graceful shapes in her headlights. She leaves then on as she climbs out of the car, whiskey bottle in a brown paper bag.

His eyes gleam as he glances her way. He sits up when he spots the bottle. He’s got scars on his face, and his black suit’s all faded and dusty.

“Don’t sit down here. Fire ants’ll bite your ass.”

“Aren’t they biting you?” she asks, handing him the bottle.

“Nah,” he says, unscrewing the cap and taking a generous swig. He doesn’t even grimace. “My ass ain’t as nice as yours.” He puts the bottle aside and holds out his hands, flexing them at her. He’s got burns on his palms, and when he sees her looking, he closes them up into fists.

“Are you trying to ask me for the guitar?” She quirks up an eyebrow. “Use your words.”

“You’re awful cocky for somebody who thought I was a demon from the deeps of hell, not more’n a half hour ago.”

“I’m not sure what you are,” she says, but she isn’t afraid of him.

He laughs and drinks again. “What makes you think I’m anything? Maybe I’m just an old drunk who was tryin’ to sleep in a cotton field, ‘fore somebody woke me up with her caterwauling.”

She just looks at him, sitting there, drinking whiskey like it’s water, eyes glowing like the moon.

“Alright, alright, you got me.” He looks up at her. “You bring me that guitar and I’ll tell you about it.”

He doesn’t though. He gets distracted as soon as he has an instrument in his hands, almost forgetful, like he’s somewhere else altogether. Bobbie can’t complain, not when he’s playing like that. 

“You go to Sunday school, girl?”

She stirs. “Not really.” It feels like it’s later, maybe hours, maybe weeks, she doesn’t know. 

“You heard Cain, at least? Killt his brother?”

“Yeah, I know about Cain and Abel.”

“Well, it’s something like that,” he says.

“You expect me to believe that you’re Cain?”

“You thought I might be the devil hisownself, but NOW you wanna call bullshit?” He materializes a cigarette from somewhere. “Got a light?”

She shakes her head.

He shrugs and takes a drag on the lit cigarette. He winks when he sees her look. “I ain’t Cain. But I just might be the world’s oldest sinner.” He strums the guitar, “And I can play like a motherfucker.”

“So you aren’t the devil that Robert Johnson sold his soul to?”

“Told you, wouldn’t know what to do with a soul if I had one. I met him, though.”

“You taught him to play guitar?”

He cackles. “That man didn’t need no teaching. We just played together, got drunk, talked some, like this.”

“Oh,” she says, fiddling with the hem of her shirt. 

“You been listening to a lot of stories,” he says. “You ever think about singing your own?”

She snorts. “Thought you were gonna teach me. That’s why I bought you the whiskey.”

“Nah,” he answers, completely unapologetic. “You can’t listen to an ol’ liar like me. That ain’t why I’m here.”

“Why are you talking to me, then?” she asks. She’s sitting up on the hood of her car now, watching the bugs flutter around in the headlights. She oughta turn them off, look at the stars again, but she likes the way they light up the grass all sharp, the way they make the leaves of the scraggly trees at the edge of the field bright green against the dark sky.

“Honestly?” he asks, and it’s an offering.

“Give it a try,” she says.

“You got a voice.” he says, and she wants to call him out, tell him that has to be a lie, but he says it soft, like he means it.

Still, she has to challenge it. “I hate my voice.” That wasn’t quite true. She hated the way her voice always told on her, the way people treated her because of it, the pressure to try to change it. Right now, though, she didn’t mind it much.

“Maybe,” he says, “but it’s the one you got. You keep on making yourself small to suit the world, pretty soon you find you ain’t there at all.” He leans over the guitar for the bottle. “Ask me how I know.”

“So you just hang out by the crossroads to give motivational speeches? Seems like a strange penance.”

He chokes on his sip and laughs again. “Nah, girl, I was telling the truth before. I was trying to sleep. See that scruffy little apple tree yonder? I’m heading down to New Orleans. Needed a rest.” He wipes his eyes. “‘Sides, this ain’t even the right crossroads. All the devils hang out over in Hushpuckena.”

“You want a ride?” she asks.

“In that thing?” he gestures at her car.

“Well, yeah.”

“Hell no,” he drawls. “Never got used to anything faster’n a horse. I’ll keep to my own one foot, thank ye kindly.” He clinks the bottle against his prosthetic. “You want a swallow?” 

She waves and stands up. “Better not.” She stretches, closing her eyes. “I’ve got to sleep if I’m gonna drive tomorrow.”

“Suit yourself,” he says, and passes the guitar up to her. “Let me hear you play something ‘fore you get going.”

She doesn’t know where the song comes from. It’s just the same four chords she knows, but they come easy tonight, and her fingers find a nice pattern on the strums. She surprises herself singing, unselfconscious, eyes closed, words that have been in her heart for years, just looking for a way out. It’s not beautiful, she thinks, but maybe with some work, some polishing, it could become something. 

She opens her eyes planning to say something like that, to tell him thank you, or ask his name, at the very least.

He’s gone.

 

In the morning, Bobbie packs the car and heads on down to New Orleans.