Free Crawlin' Chaos Blues by Edward M. Erdelac Page B

the time he finished up, her man had took notice.
    Wolf seent it, too. He looked at me and shook his head, then got up with his beer, said, ‘’member what I told you,’ and went off to the bathroom.
    It was hot and close in that place when Yeller come back to his seat and ran his beer bottle ‘cross his shiny forehead.
    “How you like that, country boy?”
    “S’awright,” I said, watching that woman he’d been singin’ to start into arguin’ with her man. He kept on lookin’ in Yeller’s direction.
    “Awright, sheeit,” said Yeller. “You see that fox out in front? Got my Johnny Conqueroo goin’.”
    “Still say you’d sound better you got yourself a bottleneck,” I said.
    Right then that nigger pushed his woman down and come stompin’ over.
    “Say, boy,” he said, proddin’ Yeller in the shoulder and leanin’ on our table. His coat fell open and I seent he had a pistol butt stickin’ out his drawers.
    I picked up my beer and didn’t say nothin’.
    Yeller turned in his seat and pushed the man’s hand offa his shoulder.
    “Whyn’t you try that again, shine?” he said to the man.
    “You been eyeballin’ my rider, boy,” the man said.
    “Nigger, what you want?” Yeller said. “An apology? When she wasn’t shakin’ her ass at me she was drankin’ me up over your shoulder.”
    “You got a mouth, nigger,” the man said. “Look t’me like some peckerwood been at yo momma, too.”
    Yeller knocked over his chair gettin’ up. The man reached in his pants and pulled out a .44. Whether he meant to shoot Yeller or slap it in his face I didn’t know, but I reached across and smashed my bottle ‘cross his hand. He dropped the gun on the table and I laid the broke bottle next to it, done with it.
    But Yeller picked both of ‘em up.
    He stuck the busted bottle in that man’s eye and broke it off. When the man commenced to howlin’, Yeller laid the pistol upside his head.
    The gal started screamin’ when she seent her man hit the floor, and that got the rest of the womens doin’ the same. The mens took to runnin’ out the door and the bartender snatched the phone off the wall.
    Yeller just turned to me, tucked the pistol in his pants, and slipped the bloody bottleneck over his finger. He held it up to me and said, “Look like I got my bottleneck now, Harp.”
    I didn’t know what to do. When the big doorman come over, Yeller slapped the handle of the gun and the man stepped aside.
    Then he took me by the arm and pulled me out.
    Pretty soon, we was in my car, the gun in Yeller’s lap, passin’ my moon back and forth. We didn’t stop till we hit Maxwell Street. He bought us a couple of Polishes and a Jack with his tip money. Then he started in talkin’ ‘bout Robert Johnson.
    “That’s how Son House woulda done it, Harp,” he told me. “Didn’t take no lip. Robert Johnson, too. You know that crossroads story?”
    “Sure,” I said, slow. “Everybody do.” Truth tell, I knew it better than most.
    “’Bout how he went down to them crossroads and made hisself a deal with the Devil,” Yeller said, like he hadn’t heard me. “You know where them crossroads is at? I heard they was where the Sixty-one and the Forty-nine cross.”
    That was some bullshit somebody in Clarksdale come up with to sell t-shirts. I wished he hadn’t asked, and I wish more I hadn’t answered. Maybe things would’ve been different in the end.
    “Naw,” I said. “It ain’t there. It’s over by Dockery Plantation outside of Ruleville.”
    “Ruleville?” Yeller said.
    “Yup.”
    “Hey, we ought to go down there you and me, huh?”
    “Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout, nigger?” I laughed.
    But he was dead serious. I seent it in them honey eyes.
    “I mean it, man. The police goin’ be lookin’ for this car. You got to get outta town anyhow. You ain’t got no money for gas back down to Quinto—”
    “Quito.”
    He took out a fat wad of cash from his pants pocket.
    “I gots me some saved up. Was