The Gutbucket Quest Read online

  Nadine wouldn’t let him stop dancing, even though he was sure his face was red through it all. For forty-five more minutes they danced, Nadine breaking out in giggle fits now and then, sometimes so severely she had to stop dancing to laugh. Slim thought he should be angry or embarrassed, but somehow it made him love her more that she should be so amused by getting him off the way she had. It made him feel almost young and foolish again.

  Then, the music was stilled, the beers were drunk and they were sitting in the van. Nadine was still giggling.

  “Oh, Slim,” she said, “you should have seen your face. You were so surprised.”

  “Jeez, Nadine. Is sex always so—public around here, along with talking about my personal life?”

  “I’m afraid so,” she said. “Most folks around here, well, we just don’t care. It’s not everywhere. There are places you can and places you can’t. I generally try not to go to the places you can’t.”

  “But you said you didn’t—that there weren’t any other men.”

  “There aren’t,” she said. “That was true. But I like the people and the attitudes better where you can have that kind of freedom.” She laughed again. “Listen, Slim, the only reason I didn’t just reach down your pants and grab you is because I didn’t think you could handle it. Didn’t you see the other people on the dance floor or at the tables?”

  He shook his head and smiled. “No, I only saw you.”

  “That’s sweet,” Nadine said. “I know this isn’t your world, okay? But for a lot of us, sex is out in the open. No one cares. It’s not loose. I mean people don’t just do it with anyone. But when people are in love and joyful with each other, we just let it go. It makes us feel good, you understand?”

  “No,” Slim said, “not really. You mean—I don’t know what you mean.”

  “It’s like I said. There are some clubs around town where folks are free to do what they want as long as nobody gets hurt. If you wanted to drink one beer too many, someone would have stopped you. Or if you’d tried to start a fight, you’d soon have been surrounded by people determined not to let you. But if you and I want to discreetly fool around on the floor, no one cares as long as we’re not in the way.”

  “I see,” he said. “You know something? I honestly do like this world. It’s strange, but it’s strange my way. Is it all free like that?”

  “I don’t know,” Nadine said. “I don’t know what’s different about your world to what it is here. From everything you’ve told me, though, your world isn’t a very happy place.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s not at all.”

  “Tell me a little about it,” she said. “What your world’s like.”

  Slim sighed. Where did he even begin to describe his world? “It’s dirty,” he said. “The air, the water, the land, all polluted and dying. There are too many people, way too many people. Most of them mean. They hurt each other, kill each other. It’s a mean place, full of violence and loneliness and fascism disguised as a democracy. People don’t cooperate or care about one another. People, children, live on the streets, homeless, starving to death, while people who could help them walk by unseeing. I don’t even want to talk about the stupidity, the ignorance and illiteracy, the wars.”

  “How did it get that way?”

  “Damned if I know. Back in the sixties, it seemed like it was changing. There was a movement toward the good, toward freedom. But people like T-Bone crushed it and twisted it completely until all the most beautiful aspects of it were selling soap and cars and underarm deodorant. I guess the worst thing, to me at least, is that people of different races hate each other and victimize each other. None of it makes any sense to me, but it’s there. People beat and abuse their children, and their children grow up to beat and abuse other children and each other. And women, well, women don’t get treated any good at all in my world. It seems like they’re everybody’s victims. And the politicians and idiots call it a good world. It sucks.”

  “Isn’t there anything good about it at all?” she asked.

  “Mmm, I guess, yeah. Sunshine, when you can see it. Animals, the ones that are still left alive. What there is to enjoy of nature and beauty. And I love driving. The music’s good, sometimes, too. The blues is alive, but scant. And we got rock and roll. That isn’t here.”

  “What is it?” Nadine said, puzzled.

  “That’s hard to explain,” Slim said. “It grew from the blues, but it got complicated and different. I’ll sit down and play it for you when this Gutbucket gig is done, that’s the only way I can explain it. It’s blues, but it’s played with a different rhythm and a different attitude. Who knows, maybe this world is ready for a little rock and roll.”

  “You think?”

  “I don’t know,” Slim said resignedly. “Me, I like the blues a lot better. When rock and roll came along in my world, real blues sort of fell out. I don’t want that to happen here. I love the blues too much.”

  “Don’t let it happen, then. Just play it for me and we’ll keep it our secret.” She paused and took his hand. “Nothing else good in your world?” she asked.

  “Probably is,” Slim said. “But nothing I can’t find here, and better. Besides, you’re in this world, and that makes it far far more wonderful than mine.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “Listen, let’s get back to the house. You sleep with me from now on, okay?”

  The flat statement nearly knocked him over, but he tried very hard not to let it show. “Okay,” he said. A few moments passed in his avid gazing into her eyes. Then he said, “Nadine? Do you love me a little, maybe?”

  “Maybe,” she replied, smiling. “Ask me tomorrow or something. I don’t know yet.”

  Slim wondered achingly when she would know. He wondered with all his heart and soul when she would know. It seemed, to him, that that was one of those little things it was important to have a definite opinion about. But, then, she must have one, he thought. She had made love to him.

  13

  The hero is himself the spokesman and the representation given (in this case in the songs) brings before the audience . . . self-conscious human beings, who know their own rights and purposes, the power and the will belonging to their specific nature, and who know how to state them. They are artists who do not express with unconscious naivete and naturalness the merely external aspect of what they begin and what they decide on . . . They make the very inner being eternal, they prove the righteousness of their action, and the pathos controlling them is subtly asserted and definitely expressed in its universal individuality.

  —G.W. F. Hegel, On Tragedy

  Back in the pickup, once again on the road, the next day, Slim sensed that Progress, and to a lesser extent Nadine, was very nervous. The ever-present gold smile had vanished, and the mood was serious, even afraid. It made Slim jumpy. Nadine’s hand in his didn’t even calm his anxiety, since he could feel, in the flesh-to-flesh touch, how tense she was. Finally, near to town, he could bear it no longer.

  “Okay, Progress,” he said. “Who’s the guy we’re going to see— what’s his name?”

  “Elijigbo,” Progress answered simply.

  “Why’s going to see this Elijigbo makin’ everybody so uptight?”

  Progress whooped, and his hands relaxed minimally on the steering wheel. “That’s a good question,” he said. “I don’t know if anyone knows the answer to it. But I’ll tells you what I do know. Elijigbo, he’s the leader of a community, a town. It’s separate, but in town. A religious community. They came here about forty years ago, nobody knowed from where, and set it up. It’s a big place, all walled around. Peoples can go in, but they gots to follow the rules inside. And Eli, he’s ‘bout the most powerful man I know of. I don’t understands it all, but it has to do with a whole mess of Gods they believe in. And knowin’ Eli like I do, I guess I half believe in it my own self. They do got hold of somethin’.”

  “Don’t the Christians get on their shit?” Slim asked.

  “Christians?”
Progress looked curious. “What are those?”

  “A religion, in my world,” Slim said. “One of the biggest, maybe the worst. For sure the richest and most powerful.”

  “I dunno,” Progress said. “We got nothin’ like that ‘round here. We gots a lot of religions, but no one that’s bigger or more powerful than the others. Folks just pretty much leaves other folks alone to believe what they wants to.”

  “What about you?” Slim said. “What do you believe?” “Me? I believes in women, and I believes in the blues.” Slim laughed, truly delighted. “Me, too,” he said. “That sounds good to me.”

  “Well, son, I don’t want to make it sound all simple. I mean, there’s things you does because you knows they’re right. No one nowhere else gots to tell you. Way I figure it, you can spend your life tryin’ to understand women and the blues, the two of ’em just naturally goin’ together like they do. And if you gets even halfway there, then you’re doin’ real fine in this here world. Right, Nadine?”

  Nadine shook her head. “Don’t ask me, Daddy. I’m too busy just trying to understand myself and what’s been happening.”

  “I understand it,” Slim said happily. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to understand women and trying to figure the blues out.”

  “It ain’t somethin’ you can figure,” Progress said. “Not really. You gots to live it, and the understandin’ comes with the livin’. You jumps in, and you gets hurt, and you jumps right back again. The jumps get longer and harder, and if you’re doin’ it right, lookin’ around, pickin’ up any little understandin’, they get further apart. Sooner or later, you still jumps, but you learns to land. Then the jumps get mighty interesting with finer scenery on the way.

  “But the jumpin’s all there is to life. We jumps to women and we jumps to creation. Not everybody, I guess. Some folks thinks they need different things, so they jumps to those. And I guess women have things their own selves that they jumps to. Not so different maybe. I think people like you and me and Nadine, we needs a partner, a woman or a man, someone who opens us up and breaks out all those good things we got inside us tryin’ to get out.

  “In the end, you know, you gots to believe in yourself, before you believes in anything else. Believin’ in somethin’ else ain’t gonna change the situation of your life. You does that by keepin’ on jumpin’ and gettin’ hurt. You see where you lands and you walk on ahead from it. It’s a hard road, I know, but you learns to take it slow and swerve ‘round most of the bad bumps.”

  Nadine let Slim’s hand loose and laid her own on his leg, awfully close to where he had often suspected his brains were located. “Oh, Daddy,” she said. “You always say everything’s a road. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up one of these days with tire tracks all up and down my ass. It’s not that easy.”

  “Sure it is, Nadine. Life’s easy unless you makes a choice for it to be hard. Look at you and Slim gettin’ together. Is that makin’ it hard or makin’ it easy?”

  “Both,” Nadine said, moving her hand to the heart of the matter. “I don’t know yet. It’s a lot of changes.”

  “What about you, Slim?”

  Slim looked at Nadine, a habit he had quickly gotten into lately. She smiled and her hand held him. He could see that, over the years, her touch would always reach deeply inside him. It made it hard to talk. “I don’t know that it’s easier,” he said. “But I know it’s better, that it’s what I’ve wanted all my life.” He hesitated. “Why is it that everyone I meet wants to discuss my personal life? Why does everyone ask such deep questions around here?”

  Progress laughed heartily, his teeth shining in the sun. “Not everyone,” he said. “The people you’ve been meetin’ are people with power. You’ll find that people like that go right to the center of things. No bullshit, no foolin’ around. They ask the questions to judge your heart. They gots to know what kind of man you is. They don’t have no time for small talk and foolin’. Their lives are important to ‘em, so they only talk about the important things. You handle it, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Slim said. “I guess so. It’s embarrassing, though, for everyone to seem to know everything that’s going on. It makes me uncomfortable.”

  “Me, too,” Nadine said to Slim, “and I’m used to it.”

  “Well, chillen,” Progress said, “we’re here.”

  They drove past Two Dude’s Holistic Auto Repair and pulled into the parking lot of a strange nightclub called Fluorescent City. It was painted in wild rhythmic colors, as were the roof-high adobe walls that stretched out on either side of it. If Slim was right, they were on the west side of town, about where, on his world, the West-gate Mall had been. He wasn’t sure, because he’d never been there. But he knew it was a very large piece of land.

  They got out of the truck and walked through the open door of the club. It was dark inside and filled with the smell of freshly baked bread that was stacked on racks against one painted wall. On other racks on other walls were woven baskets, pots of red clay and small statues and paintings. A very dark black woman, dressed in shiny white, stood behind the bar.

  “Brother Progress,” she said. “Welcome.”

  “Hello, Ayisha,” Progress replied, with a friendliness that made it clear he was far from an infrequent visitor. “Is Eli around?”

  “Why sure. He’s out and about the Torriero. Go on through, he’ll find you. You know how it goes.”

  They walked to the back of the club and through another door. Slim felt, on passing through, that he’d walked into yet another world. White adobe houses with thatched roofs lined the streets. People bustled everywhere, dressed in white and active, yet without giving the impression of hurrying. There were people walking, carving wood, doing laundry in large iron pots wreathed in steam, working on houses, painting, cooking over open fires, tending goats or chickens, working in small, front-yard gardens. There were the smells of meat cooking in rich spices, bread baking, beans boiling and flowers. “This is the Torriero,” Progress said quietly. “The club is the only entrance. They call their religion Candomble. One of the rules is that you cain’t just go in and see who you want. Eli says you gots to walk around the Torriero awhile, visitin’ and thinkin’.”

  They passed several dark old men throwing bones on the dirt ground. Slim stared at the religious murals that seemed to be lovingly painted on every house. The murals depicted men and women dressed in white, dancing and singing. Nearly transparent, brightly colored, often humorous creatures who appeared nearly human rode on their shoulders and backs, melded with their bodies. The creatures, Slim could see, were painted to invoke visions of water or lightning, Earth or wind or sex. Their Gods, Slim assumed, right out in the open, where the people would live with constant reminders of their presence.

  The sounds of music and singing were constant in the Torriero. Rhythms that matched and complemented the tasks that each person was performing. Wildly different songs that blended, somehow, into a pleasant, if odd, harmony. These people were happy, Slim thought, and peaceful. Whether it was the religious beliefs, or simply the coherence and cooperation of the community didn’t matter. It was there, solid, and Slim felt good being in the midst of it.

  A young, beautiful woman danced up to them. She was, like the rest of the people in the Torriero, dressed in white, wearing a white turban and red and white beads around her neck. Her dancing motions never slowing or ceasing, she reached into the woven basket she carried and began sprinkling them with fresh, sweet-smelling, multicolored flower petals. When she’d covered them to her satisfaction, she danced off with the small group of curious children who had been following them.

  “What was that all about?” Slim asked, brushing himself off.

  “It’s the Candomble way of purifying us,” Progress replied. “We should run into Eli pretty soon. They don’t send someone around to purify you until it’s nearly time to get down to business.”

  They continued walking aimlessly along the dirt roads of the Torriero, greetin
g people, listening to this or that one singing or playing, watching dancers, enjoying the savory smells of the cooking, sampling the bits that were offered. Shortly, a man approached them.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  They followed him onto a narrow, tree- and plant-lined path to a large building sitting isolated, almost hidden in the foliage, then went inside. The interior was one large room, like a warehouse. The furnishings consisted solely of a large table and its accompanying chairs, and a stage against one wall, set up with band instruments, ready to use. It was dark inside.

  The man said, “Sit down,” and then he left.

  They sat at the table and waited. Soon, from the rear of the building, a man approached them. They heard his bare feet slapping on the polished wooden floor before they saw him. When he came into sight, they saw he was also dressed in white, a long white robe, and there were multicolored beads around his neck. Many strands of them. His face was ebony and unlined, his age undeterminable. He moved with unusual grace, arms and legs swinging easily, loosely, feet planted solidly on the ground, lifting off naturally. He smiled when he saw them.

  “Progress,” he said happily. His voice was deep, rumbling. “A pleasure to see you again. And you, too, Nadine.” He looked a Slim a few moments, and Slim could feel power exuding from Elijigbo’s body. “And you, too, young man,” he continued. “Welcome to the Torriero.”

  “Howdy, Eli,” Progress said. “How you be?”

  “Ah,” Eli laughed. “I am wonderfully well. The Torriero prospers, the people are happy and in love. The Orishas are pleased, life is good. And you, my friend?”

  “Well enough, I suppose,” Progress replied. “I guess it’s foolish to ask, but do you already know the problem we’ve come here about?”

  “I’ve heard some few things. What do you need from us?”

  “Well, we’re settin’ up a blues festival for the thing. I was hoping you and your people would set it up for us. Road crew, security, all the regular stuff.”