She changes the channel. The TV shows us a police shooting, yellow incident tape flapping back and forth as a reporter does a piece to camera, surrounded by a jostling crowd. A woman appears in the frame. Why would they kill him, she asks. His hands were up.
Leonie says she’s going to sleep. She pulls the covers over herself and turns out the light by her bed. She puts her phone under her pillow. She has a panic button on her phone, she says. Press that button and they will come for her, abseiling out of a clear sky.
WE STAYED IN A HOWARD JOHNSON’S in Virginia, eating an early dinner in the restaurant. The next morning, Chester banged on my door at 5 a.m.
—Stop tugging on it! Time to hit the road!
I almost leapt out of my skin.
—What are you sulking for? he asked, as I fumbled with the ignition key a few short minutes later. I want to put on at least a hundred miles before breakfast. We’ve got a way to go.
Around eleven that morning we were somewhere south of Knoxville, Tennessee. Chester pored over a gas station map and directed me off the highway and over a railway line into an evil-looking settlement of shacks and tumbledown cabins. Chicken coops. Fierce dogs chained up in the yards. Here and there a woman or a child turned to watch as the woody pitched and yawed its way down the rutted track. Park up over there, Chester said, and straightened his tie.
He turned to me, flipping up the polaroid lenses clipped to his glasses so he could look me in the eye.
—Now listen. Ground rules. There are some records we can dispute over and some I will let you have for your education, but there are others about which I will brook no argument. I always take the lead in any kind of negotiation or sales talk. I will banter and put at ease. You will not speak, unless spoken to. You do not attempt any side deals or in any way indicate that you consider any material valuable or even interesting. That’s the quickest way to screw this up. Party line is it’s all junk and we’re doing them a favor by taking it off their hands. Understand?
I nodded.
—Good. So, let’s go see what they have here.
He got out of the car and picked his way through a yard to a shack, knocking on the door and calling out to see if anyone was at home. By the time I’d locked the car, he’d already moved on to a second. He knocked on doors at a furious rate, not waiting for a reply before he turned away. This was Chester’s idea of efficiency. If he could have knocked on all the doors simultaneously he would have done so. When anyone opened up, man, woman or child, he’d give them the same speech.
—My name is Bly. I’m traveling in these parts, buying and selling, and I wonder, might I ask if you have any old gramophone records? Under the porch, maybe? Out back? Give you ten cents for every one I take.
Rickety doors, barking dogs. No we don’t got nothing like that. No records. No sir. No. All kinds of people opening doors, but only one kind of people. Black people. Black people opening doors, white eyes in black faces, nervous eyes. Two white men on the porch never meant anything good. I found it hard to meet those eyes.
In a couple of places we did turn up some records. A toothless old fellow had a few in the drawer of a broken Victrola, sermons and religious music that Chester declared worthless. Then a woman let us into her home and showed us a stack a foot high sitting under the bed. Among a lot of dull military marches was a copy of Okeh 8455, Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Black Snake Moan” / “Match Box Blues.” They had a couple of Bessie Smith Columbias and an unplayable-looking Irene Scruggs. We took the Jefferson and the Smiths. Back in the car, Chester handed them to me. “They’re not particularly rare,” he explained, “and I don’t much care for Papa Blind Lemon.”
I was pleased, but also distracted. I had never been inside houses like that. Little shacks patched together with sheet metal and crating. Blackened cooking pots hanging over brick fireplaces, pictures from old calendars pasted up for decoration. I had not thought such places existed, not in America. Honestly, I hadn’t known.
We drove all day and on into the night, as Chester “wanted to make time.” He was constantly tuning the radio, hopping from one station to another. About the only thing he’d stay with were the religious stations or the ones playing country music. There were songs I would have listened to, snatches of The Coasters and Fats Domino swept away in static. We stopped for coffee at a gas station and he used the bathroom. I think he must have taken a shot because when he came out, he was a different man, all his nervous kinks smoothed out. He found a station and stuck with it, though as far as I could hear, the reedy voice reciting Bible verses was no different from a dozen others he’d passed over in the hours we’d been on the road. And one of the company said unto Him, Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me. And He said unto him, Man, who made Me a judge or a divider over you?
—Were you in the army, Chester?
—Navy.
—You get to see the world?
—Sure. Keep your eyes on the road.
But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?
By the time he finally decided we could pull in to a motel, I was exhausted. I went to bed without eating, the lights of the cars streaming on behind my closed eyes.