Mister Satan's Apprentice: A Blues Memoir

4. No Bad Fella

C H A P T E R F O U R NO BAD FELLA Seems like everybody . . . in this world is down on me You know I ain't no bad fella . . . / don't intend to be —BROWNIE McGHEE AT WASLIVING IN HAMPTON, it turned out, with an older woman named Esther. He was ecstatic when I returned his call, as though my voice were a priceless gift. I was flattered and slightly unnerved. He was my master. He was summoning me. I grabbed my Panama hat and Mouse and harps, jumped in my car, and burned South for a long weekend. The drive down to Virginia takes eight hours and always starts with the same endless flat stretch of Jersey Turnpike. I propped my boom box on the front seat and replayed the tape I'd made that first May afternoon, matching licks with him. My sound these days was closer to his than to Old Me, although a difference remained. Xeno's Paradox: an arrow travels half the distance from bow to target, then half the remaining distance, then half the remainingdistance. When does it hit? You couldn't ever arrive at Nat's Sound. You could get usefully closer. My sound was darker and more Riddles-like than it had been. Slower, stronger vibrato; more kick. That's what you got for a year on the streets. Bill Taft, Gator, the summer in Europe. I was Satan's sideman now. 59 N Mister S a t a n ' s A p p r e n t i c e THE ADDRESS HE'D GIVEN ME was a two-story townhouse in the Foxhill Gardens complex. Virginia was still lukewarm in late November, air velvety with the smell of wild grapes and rotting leaves. Esther was an ivory-skinned woman in her late fifties with the South on her tongue—stocky, grandmotherly, kind. The house smelled heavily, deliciously,of cooking. Nat wasn't there, although he'd told her I was coming. I called the number she gave me. A gruff voice, not Nat's, answered over the clinks of glasses and bar chatter. "Nat!" I yelled when he came on. "I'm at Esther's!" "Adam!" He laughed violently, hysterically, turning away from the phone. "It's my buddy from New York!" he shouted. "I gotta get on home!" I was out by my car with the hatchback raised when a dented blue wreck of a Toyota Corolla vroomed into the parking lot, heaved sideways, and screeched to a stop in the empty space next to me. He yelled, I yelled, he jumped out—door hanging open, no slam—and bearhugged me, almost taking my breath away. He'd grown a small mustache and looked trim and fit and smelled good. "I am so happy to see you I can't tell you," he said. "Oh man. Ask Esther how I've been. I am just so awesomely happy I can't tell you." "Well it's nice to know you're not dead." "They ain't got me yet, which don't mean they ain't tryin'." "Nat, man." I shook my head and couldn't stop smiling. "So how the hell are you?" he said, hand rubbing my back. "Look what I brought." "A Mouse!" he shouted as I lifted mine out. It was plastered with stickers from Nice, Antibes, Amsterdam. "You brought a Mouse!" He hugged it to his chest, voice filled with wonder, eyes brimming. WE SAT AT ESTHER'S KITCHEN TABLE and drank Colt .45 and ate the dinner Esther had quietly prepared, and talked. Dinner was salty Virginia ham, greens in pot liquor, honeyed yams, yellow squash. Esther said very little the whole night, gazing tenderly at Nat from time to time across the room. 60 New Life He was working on a garbage truck now, getting his strength back. He outlined the various tasks he performed in sequence—riding shotgun, jumpingto the ground, two-handed heaves, cyclingthe compactor, leaping back on board. He made it sound like noble work, a Zen discipline of enacted mindfulness.He'd gotten the job after he'd moved down here back in February. His father and stepmother lived across town. He'd lived with them for the first coupleof months before moving out. "She treats me like a stepchild," he said furiously. "I came down here, I got a job, I was...