I know exactly to the moment when my own luck ran out. There was a woman over the river in Arkansas. When she call, you better come. She fix you so you come. That woman call me and told me to sing for her. She was powerful. She could have a man rolling on the floor, walking like a hog. I sang to her about money and good fortune and the suit of clothes a woman in Memphis promised me if only I would stay with her just one more night. Her husband’s suit of clothes. The granny woman was tickled by that one, so she made me a conjure hand, but I lost it and after that I couldn’t get along. I lost the hand she made for me, just left that little root bag on the sink in a bus station bathroom. I don’t know why. I was riding away before I knew. After that, everything I did seemed to be in vain.
So by the time the recording session came around, I was a worried young rounder with a troublesome mind. I could not sleep and I could not eat. I knew all my power had been in that hand. I knew I ought not to go to Jackson, but all the same I waited for the Yellow Dog to take me there, sitting outside the Moorhead depot playing my guitar. Something must have stopped my ears, because I never even heard the train coming. No way I wouldn’t have heard it, unloading its cargo and taking on more. No way I wouldn’t have heard that whistle blow, but it happened. I ran and watched it pull away down the track, and right then I could feel it, the jinx, slipping round my ankles like a cat. I thought I was doing OK when I got a ride most of the way on a truck, but those boys were making a delivery at a farm and I had to walk the last four or five miles into town. That way took me through a white neighborhood, where it was not safe to be on the street after sundown. Though the light was failing, I didn’t feel afraid. I had cash money and a letter from the Key & Gate Recording Laboratories in New York City, inviting me to Jackson’s famous Saint James Hotel to make a disk of my music. I was a young man, young enough to believe in the power of my charm. Then the policeman drew up beside me in his big Ford car.
There was a lot of dust on the roads. I was tired from walking. My clothes were dirty. Sweat on my brow. Maybe I seemed like a vagrant to him. I told him everything, about the money, the letter. Boy, he said. You look like a ghost.
If you ever go to Jackson, better walk straight. You better not stumble and you better not fall.
—Where you going, Sam?
—Farish Street, sir.
—Farish Street? That’s a long way from here. You sure are in the wrong part of town.
He told me to get in the car. And I did. After that came nothing good.
A dark night in a jail cell and no sleep. They took away my guitar. I never saw that guitar again. In the morning I was shackled to a long chain with five other men and taken to the courthouse. The very day I was supposed to be recording. Judge Wilbur Wallace presiding, under the cool breeze of an electric fan. Anderson, Solomon; Boyle, James; Hardy, Charles; Hill, Isaac; Jackson, Thomas; Mitchell, Edwin; Shaw, Charles. They called my name and found me guilty of vagrancy, fined me a hundred dollars.
—You got a hundred dollars, boy?
—No sir.
—Declared unable to pay and so remitted to J.J.W. Wallace Construction for one year in lieu.
Ten of us they sentenced that morning, everyone the same. Judge Wilbur, on behalf of the thrifty state of Mississippi, set us all to work for his brothers on the levee. Then he broke for lunch.
And just like that, I was thrown into silence and darkness. Never to have my voice recorded. Never to be remembered, never known for who I was or how I could play. Instead of going to the Saint James Hotel to take my first step into history I was driven in a wagon to a camp on the river up near Rosedale, almost within sight of Mister Billy’s farm. They took me there and put me to work.
CAPTAIN JACK AND CAPTAIN JIM were the riding bosses. Walking boss was a man called Ferguson, work you from can to can’t. First light till you drop, rolling your wheeler and dumping the earth, all in the Mississippi summer heat. Only word Captain Jack ever spoke to me was I don’t like your look. You better watch out, he said. My eye’s on you. The Wallace brothers had camps all up and down the river by then, building the levee back up after the great flood. Everybody knew them. There were songs about the Wallaces. They were on their way up. Boys, Big Jim would say, when he came around. You ought to be proud. You working for the US Government now.
I once watched Jack Wallace go wild on a man. Just got down off his horse and beat him with a pick handle until he stopped twitching. We laid the body down in the levee and we rolled our wheelers and covered him up with earth.
All day from can to can’t. Up at first light, knowing there’s nothing until sundown but heat and mud. Knowing I ought to have been sliding down Farish Street in my sharp suit, followed by female eyes. I never knew how many of us Jack Wallace put down in the levee. They say he once shot a mercy man for telling him not to work some broke-shouldered mule. He didn’t like to hear the word no.
Not all of us were convicts. Some were even getting pay, just enough money in the pocket to gamble and visit the whores who pitched their tents down below. Sally and Suzie calling who wants me, waving at the river, waving at men on boats. The stink of that camp. The fever in that camp. A kitchen tent, a mess, a commissary, a hog pen, a barrelhouse, a corral of mules and tents for the men. They chained twenty of us bad ones together when we slept. Others could come and go. You tied up and someone wants to cut you or fuck your ass, not a damn thing you can do. The knife blades working, making another dead man while I squeeze my eyes tight, hoping they don’t come for me.
Captain Jack rolling down to the water trough to tell his little joke.
—Nigger dies get another, mule dies I got to buy another.
That was his joke. My heart was full of hate for Jack Wallace. I polished my hate-filled heart like a precious stone.
I did not deserve this.
Went to the Captain with my hat in my hand Went to the Captain with my hat in my hand Said Captain have mercy on a long time man Well he look at me and he spit on the ground He look at me and he spit on the ground
Says I’ll have mercy when I drive you down