WRONG SIDE OF THE TRACKS. Overgrown tracks, a branch of the railroad that was abandoned years ago, but the geography persists, the line of convention. The river is invisible behind the steep slope of the levee, but you can sense it muttering and shrugging on the far side, looking for a way to spill over and spread itself out across the land. We ought to be on the road, finding somewhere to stay the night. Instead we’re in a juke, no more than a shack with crates of Schlitz beer and Double Cola behind the bar. We have brought a dead hush to the place, not busy at this early hour.
They have electricity, a bright bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. According to Chester, electricity has been their undoing. Gleaming in the corner is what in these parts they call a Seabird, a Seeburg jukebox, decorated with Cadillac fins and crammed with little plastic 45’s, a monster machine that seems to have landed here from the future. The Seabird is Chester’s enemy. It has “killed music.” We are the only white people to have walked in here since the last time it was raided by the police and now he’s giving the assembly a lecture about the evil of the Seabird.
—“Select-o-matic.” What is that? Why do you people even have this thing in here? Goddamn Sam Cooke.
—Come on, Chester.
—You are being corrupted, you know that? Do you know what you are throwing away?
—Chester. Let’s go.
—Forget this plastic trash. Pick up a fife! A fiddle! Blow over a damn jug!
The barman, who is perhaps also the owner, nervously smokes a cigarette. The other patrons, two or three old men, are staring at Chester, without staring at him. Everyone in here knows that trick. In this place, in all the places where we knock on doors, they know it. I always have the sensation of being stared at, but I never meet anyone’s eye.
AS WE MADE OUR CALLS, I found out that Chester was chasing information as well as records. Leads, details of the biographies of certain musicians. If someone had no records, but was willing to talk, he would run down a list. You heard of a guitar picker, singer, fellow used to play piano at a barrelhouse off of Sixty-one? Live round here? Played at dances or picnics? Went to the Mount Zion church? The names would change, depending on where we were. Kid Bailey. Joe Reynolds. Willie Brown. Charley Taylor. Calvary, First Baptist, Lamb of God. Up by the river around Friars Point, he started asking about Charlie Shaw.
It was the first time I ever heard the name.
Twilight. A few more calls, Chester said. Just one or two. We were driving on an old rural road. We passed a cabin and stopped to talk to a man outside working on a truck. When we asked him about records he said he had none. Chester ran his list of names. Garfield Akers, Robert Johnson, Charlie Shaw.
—Charlie Shaw, you say?
—Played guitar.
—From around here?
—Would have been about thirty years ago.
—Go on up the road. Ask Miss Alberta, maybe she help you.
He gave us directions, told us to look out for a white porch and a roof that was all cedar shakes, no tin. The light was failing as we found the cabin, which was set back from the road under a huge cottonwood. I switched off the engine and suddenly the night was full of information, the susurrus of insects closing over me in a great wave. On the porch burned a kerosene lamp. A little boy, maybe six or seven years old, scraped a bottleneck along a piece of wire nailed to one of the uprights. Up and down, a melancholy twang like a Jew’s harp.
—Evening, son. My name’s Bly. Is your mother home?
The boy just stared at us and carried on playing. Then I saw there was someone else on the porch, an ancient woman in a rocking chair. She was made of shadows. I can’t tell you how I knew, because I do not understand, but shadows were woven into the flowers on her cotton dress, the scoop of her eye sockets, her toothless jaw. I saw her and I lost the power of speech. Chester did not seem to see what I saw, or hear what I heard. That terrible insect war cry, that scraping.
—Good evening, ma’am. My name is Bly. We’re buying up old gramophone records. I’ll pay you a dime apiece for any we take.
—Ain’t got nothing for sale.
Her voice was like rustling paper, fugitive, near to silence. Chester put a foot up on the porch and smiled.
—You sure you don’t have anything just hidden away?
—Not interested.
—All right then. I won’t take up more of your valuable time. Just one last question, please indulge me. Man down the road said you might know something about Charlie Shaw.
Her silence lasted forever.
—Charlie.
Chester seemed unsure of her meaning. He leaned in.
—Charlie Shaw, a guitar player, from somewhere round here. I heard he came from along the river, between Rosedale and Friars Point.
Above his head, insects battered themselves to death against the glass chimney of the kerosene lamp.
—Boy was a rounder. Always traveling here and there.
Insect static. The crackle and hiss.
—You knew Charlie Shaw?
—Have mercy. He never came back from Jackson.
—Ma’am, I’m interested in all the blues players from round here. It sounds to me like you knew Charlie Shaw. Did you ever hear him play?
—Of course I heard him play.
—Where?
—Right here, on this porch. He was my only brother.
Chester’s face in the firelight, transfixed. Chester’s avaricious eyes.
Maybe I dropped off, just for a moment, or maybe I kept dropping off. My memory is full of holes. From here on there is no logic. The scenes are out of order. I don’t know how we got inside, whether she invited us or Chester just wedged his foot in the door. I don’t know what words were used. Chester was talking all the time, spinning stories, doing his pastor act. In my memory it’s a series of still frames. I’m at the car, then I’m on the porch, then I’m inside sitting on a stool, watching the dust dance in the lamplight. The small room is full of darkness. It is dense with darkness, stuffed with it like cotton wool. I scuff my feet on the rough boards and listen to the old woman talk about her brother Charlie, who went to Jackson and never came back. Chester has no interest in Jackson. He has a little leather-bound notebook. He is scribbling with a pencil, asking questions. What about his repertoire? What songs did he know? Who taught him to play? Miss Alberta remembers a man called Tommy or Copperhead, who used to come around. Man who worked the river. Charlie used to sit with him.