Mister Satan's Apprentice: A Blues Memoir

12. Catfish on the Raft

C H A P T E R T W E L V E CATFISH ON THE RAFT We arepilgrims on ajourney . . . through the darkness of the night We arebound for other places . . . crossing to the other side —ROGER MILLER, "THE CROSSING" T THIS POINT in the tour a guy suddenly fell in love with my sound. He was the replacement sax player: Arkady Kofman, Russian Jewish emigre and king of the Long Island bar mitzvah circuit. To him, / was the real blues. Arkady had joined our pit band in Spartanburg after Ann Patterson , a hawk-mouthed altoist from Texas by way of Venice Beach, had finished her promised two weeks and flown home. Ann was quietly professional; Arkady was the unquiet kind. Rick had warned us before he arrived. "The guy's a madman," he said. "Killer sight-reader, monster chops, plays three hundred club dates a year." Nobody was quite prepared. He showed up one night, a small wolfish guy with a mustache and brown mane, rock-star length. Ten years he's been in America and his accent was still Cossack-thick, Boris Badunov calling Natasha. He'd just blown a thousand bucks on a video camera; he had one month on the road to get it all, everything he'd been missing back in Brooklyn: Waffle Houses and Shoneys , 7-Elevens and Kwik-Stops; the salad bar at Hardee's with six 2 2 1 A Mister S a t a n ' s A p p r e n t i c e different dribble-on dressings; a series of puzzled but smiling gas station attendants, fireworks salesmen, front desk clerks, and motel cleaning ladies; and every other random American he could buttonhole , including the entire Big River cast. He'd race up and down the aisles of our motor coach with the viewfinder jammed against his eye socket, homing in on people tying shoelaces, napping, staring blankly out windows. He spun around when Belle pulled out a pick and started working her top-heavy Afro into shape. "Fascinating!" he exclaimed, wristing his zoom lens. "What are you calling thisdevice?" Belle eyed him. "Ain't you never seen a pick before?" "Beautiful, beautiful. You must smile, so whole world will be saying, Aha! BigAmerican movie star.' " "This one's for you, baby." She fluttered her eyelashes, teeth showing. "You want another shot of me doing my black-hairthing?" "Yespliz!" "Mm mmm," she moaned. "Dimitri, you sure do make me feel goooood." "Arkady," he corrected, pullingthe camera away and shaking out his mane. "No Dimitri. Arkady.Good Russian name." "You drink vodka,Arkady?" "See me later, we will discuss this." He latched onto me his first night in town, as I was leavingthe pit with harp in hand. I'd just tooted a couple of notes. "Hey!" he called out. He strode toward me, a tiny proud grizzle-faced guy with long thick hair—head tilted, eyes lit with amazement. He grabbed my free hand and pumped, jerked his chin at my instrument. "Ever since I was small boy in Kharkov,I want to learn this. You'll teach me?" "You like blues?" "Ohmygod. I'm huge huge fan of this music! Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters—excellent!" We never actuallygot around to a lesson, although he repeatedly made me promise we would; he was too busy cramming America into his videocam. I felt an uncanny sympathy with his crazyenergy, 222 Big River the way he bounced and davened while blowing sax in the pit. I, too, had relatives in Kharkov and was one-quarter Russian Jewish. We had cantors in our tribe, mournful demonstrative Asiatic blood. My grandfather had spent the first ten years of his life in a dirt-floored shack, then wandered the Baltics for five more with his mother, fleeing the pogroms. Amerikanski! she'd cried at strangers who pointed guns. We're Americans! You can't touch us! My father, born here, collected old jazz records: Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith, grooves filled with daring, finesse, and squawk. I read Holocaust literature and played blues harmonica. What did that make me? A white Russian negro? A blue half-Jew? Arkady didn't care. His eyes gleamed: I was the real thing, the American sound. "We will make videotape," he said, pulling me into the Radisson parking lot. "You're playing harmonica, I'm cameraman." I blew and sang a Sonny Boy...