Mister Satan's Apprentice: A Blues Memoir

20. What We've Been Trying For, All These Years

C H A P T E R T W E N T Y WHAT WE'VE BEEN TRYING FOR, ALL THESE YEARS Hey everybody, let's have some fun You only live once and when you dead you done So let thegood times roll. . .. —Louis JORDAN, "LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL" I UGH LATER, A couple of years after Nat had died, I was able to cry and get out what I felt for him that way.My eyes still fill, at unexpected moments. When I'm cruising alone down certain stretches of the Jersey Turnpike and remember my last pilgrimage to Richmond. When I walk through Astor Place and remember his finger-in-the-air lectures—backed by Charlie Hilbert on guitar—about how blues was American music, the best we had to offer, and Thank you darling for that lovely tip. When I first heard the news, though, tears wouldn't come. Crying wasn't useful. A death sentence wasn't the same as dead, and miracles were always possible. If anybody had a miracle in him, it was Nat Riddles. One last surprise up his sleeve. I truly believed that. I had to believethat. My throat ached; all the bottled-up feeling collected there, a throbbing cartilage-knot of grief, disbelief, and shit-lousy sadness. I didn't want to lose the guy.I loved him. Passionately , faithfully, in my own way. I hadn't realized how much until the bad news came. The ache in my throat was a pretty good measure. 368 M H a r l e m Blues You could play the blues from a throat like that. He'd taken the trouble to show me how. ACUTE LYMPHOBLASTIC LEUKOMA was the term he used, when I called. He was in the oncology unit of the Teaching Hospital at the Medical College of Virginia. We had a brief conversation before I drove down. He was sleepy and sounded drugged, but in pretty good spirits. Remember that swollen chipmunk-jaw he'd had last time he was up in New York? It went away, then came back; two weeks ago he'd collapsed on the floor of a friend's apartment. "I wasn't gonna let that go by," he chuckled softly. I've never been one, as you know, to mess around as far as my health is concerned." I thought about his days with Doreen, the white junkieprostitute who had died of AIDS the year before. He seemed to read my mind. "It's not AIDS," he added. "I made them test for that." "I was worried when I heard." "No, it's not, ah . . ." He drifted off. I heard a nurse's murmur. He came back on. "Temperature time." "You have a fever?" "What's that?" he said hoarsely. "You running a fever?" "I'm a little cold right now," he said. "They got some nice cotton blankets down here, some wool blankets. I'm part of an experiment ." A H U N D R E D AND THIRTY FLAT S T R A I G H T M I L E S the length of the Jersey Turnpike—from the George Washington Bridge to the Delaware Memorial Bridge, a clean beautiful lofting arc. Past the Chesapeake House service area, where seagulls stroll the parking lot demanding crab-cake crumbs. You skirt Baltimore, dip through the Fort McHenry Tunnel, fly thirty more southerly miles. The Beltway, a curving roller coaster, drops you off below D.C. There's a bluegrass station at the bottom of the dial—an older DJ. who knows from twang—that lasts you half the ninety minutes to Richmond. 369 Mister Satan's A p p r e n t i c e This leg always seems to come in late afternoon; you and the truckers highball it along shadowed twin southbound lanes cut through forested hills that smell cool, leafy, fertile, Virginian. Old backcountry . I S T U C K MY H E A D T H R O U G H THE D O O R of his hospital room, afraid of what I'd find. He was, amazingly, sitting cross-legged on his bed with an electric bass in his lap, practicing. A notebook was open in front of him. His face was slightly drawn. He looked distinctly undead. "What took you?" he chuckled, glancing at the plastic I.D. band on...