Come home Charley Patton

Come home Charley Patton

Come home Charley Patton 1 When the dream came I held my breath with my eyes closed I went insane, Like a smoke ring day When the wind blows Now I won’t be back til later on If I do come back at all But you know me and I miss you now. “On the Way Home,” by Buffalo Springfield, was the first song I danced to drunk. It was 1969, I was fifteen. We’d have dance parties every weekend at St. John’s Church, which was a block away from my high school. There was a local band that played there all the time, and they’d do covers of Buffalo Springfield. They’d also play Creedence Clearwater Revival stuff, and “Louie Louie” was a standard. On this particular night, Thanksgiving weekend, I remember, there was an early snowstorm, and I was really, really drunk. I’d been drunk before but not this drunk. My friends and I would connive my older brother and his friends to buy us pints of Smirnoff’s Lime Vodka. Begrudgingly , they would always do it, agreeing to the stupid and necessary truth of our passage. But this time before handing the pint over, my brother shook his head and said, “Y’all need to read James Baldwin.” Who? “Baldwin, James Arthur Baldwin, who said, ‘When I was growing up I had no writers, no artists—maybe a couple boxers.’ Y’all need to think about that.” What? Boxers ? Chuckling, like little winter ducklings, how my friends and I sincerely and predictably responded . My brother also knew that Baldwin, whoever he was and whatever he represented, had no real meaning in this part of the passage. I’d drink the whole pint, always, guzzling. One gulp. Then I would normally pass out. I’d finish the bottle and would get fifty yards from my house and pass out in the middle of our block’s back alley. In the winter the landing was often soft but deadly; frostbite is no joke. On this night I made it to the party. I was with two of my friends. Minneapolis is different now, but then there were five black people in the whole city. That’s a joke, of course. Sort of. (In 1963 the Cincinnati, Ohio, Department of Agriculture transferred 32 black families from Cincinnati to Minneapolis. Before that transfer the entire population of black people in Minnesota was at 2 percent. My family began the black migration of Minneapolis. “We made the city black,” my father likes to say.) The party was a sanctuary for many of my white friends, two of my black friends, and me, dancing . . . or stumbling around drunk to early Neil Young. Though we rush ahead to save our time We are only what we feel And I love you, Can you feel it now. And then Jeff Gunderson showed up. Jeff Gunderson was the city’s best fighter—best white fighter. He would go to different parties in the different neighborhoods, neighborhoods of mostly white high schools. (The mostly black high schools were in a far different part of town, were mythological, were said to have governments and armies.) Gunderson would invade these parties to pick fights and kick the shit out of people. So he had a kind of tough-ass badge. And it was interesting because he was white, and he was really tough, fearless. Handsome, but he was missing teeth, a grinning absence that was part of his badge. Obviously, my two friends and I were easy targets, walking into this party. So Gunderson sent his friend up to me, and his friend said, “Jeff has picked you guys to fight tonight.” I was eighty- five pounds, ninety max. I was also teetering from side to side, while trying to comprehend his challenge. Jeff was a giant and his friend was a smaller giant, and I was drunk. The guy said, “I’ll fight you, and Jeff wants to fight your big black friend over there.” My big black friend was Grover. Grover could fight, but he was crazy. He didn’t evaluate situations well, and this was not a good situation. “So talk it over with your friend, and I’ll come back at the band’s next break to set it up, cool,” Gunderson’s friend said and then walked away. So Grover wanted to do it, but...