The Gutbucket Quest Read online

  Progress rolled his eyes. “Well, son, to tell the God’s honest truth, we ain’t got no plan beyond doin’ it. Bunch of us is gonna buzz around T-Bone and his men, distract ’em, like, while you and Nadine goes and gets the Gutbucket.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “Same way you found Nadine, son. Use the power to hook on to it, let it pull you along till you’re there.”

  Progress looked closely at Slim and Nadine, his face almost fierce. “Once you got it in your hands,” he said, “just come on. Don’t stop for nothin’ nor nobody. The band’ll be waitin’ on stage. The folks playin’ knows to step down when we got the Gutbucket ready to go. Once we got it, we gots to play right then. Right then. You got your playlist figured out?”

  Slim nodded and pulled a folded piece of paper from his back pocket. “Yeah,” he said, handing it to Progress. “I hope you know them all.”

  “Hmmm,” Progress mumbled as he looked at the list. “‘Standing at the Crossroads,’ ‘Who Do You Love,’ ‘Hoochie Koochie Man,’ ‘Ridin’ in the Moonlight,’ ‘Come to Mama’—good, that’s Nadine’s best song—‘Seventh Son,’ ‘Take Me to the River.’ Yep, we knows all these. But what’s these last two on the list. They got no names?”

  “One’s a song for Nadine and I to sing together,” Slim said. “No sweat, just a standard progression in A, a little hopped up and jumping. The other—I dunno. See, if we’re building up the power like you say, I figure I’d better wait and see. If the power’s working, by the time I get there and get ready to cut loose, I’ll know what to play. I can’t pick a song here and now, and have it be right, then.”

  Progress nodded. “I think you’re right, son. You just do what you gotta do. Kick out the jams, the band’ll be there along with you. All these folks that been playin’ on stage, they been buildin’ up a mighty power for us. Belizaire and Elijigbo and Mother Phillips been holdin’ on to it so it don’t run out like it usually would. There’s a big pile of it waitin’ to be let go when you open the gates.”

  Progress walked closer to them, put his arms around their shoulders. A touch of the golden smile returned. “Listen here, chillen,” he said. “I’m real proud of you two, I want you all to know that. I’m as happy as I can be that you got yourselves married, and I’m lookin’ forward to watchin’ you go through life together. So you be careful, you hear?”

  “You bet, Daddy,” Nadine said. She grabbed the front of Slim’s shirt and shook him gently. “I won’t let anything happen to this big lug.”

  “I lug you, too,” Slim said, barely containing his laughter and an impulse to grab Nadine’s breasts and shake them, which he knew tickled her.

  “All right, then,” Progress said. He looked at his watch. “There’s a new band comin’ on in a few minutes. Sonny Early and his boys. When you hear that, you’ll know it’s time to move. You’d do best if you get on the outside of this crowd before you start seekin’.”

  Progress walked away without another word. Slim and Nadine watched him, and then began their own walk, skirting the edge of the threshing floor and the swaying crowd that stood listening as the band wound down their last song.

  “What do you think?” Nadine asked.

  “I dunno,” Slim replied, “I feel okay. Feel good about it. I think we’ll be all right.”

  They threaded their way through the brush and found an isolated clearing a little way from the crowd and the music. They sat down on a huge, ancient, fallen cottonwood trunk. Slim started humming the fishing song he had used to find Nadine. She listened for a few moments, picked up the melody and started humming it with him. He worked at calming his thoughts and emptying his mind. Someone on stage began playing an accordion, and Slim noticed the dark clouds getting thicker, covering the sky. A soft, warm wind began to blow and he felt a hard tug on his power, in his gut. He and Nadine stood, and he led the way down to the river, along the bank, east, following the way the power was pulling him.

  They walked for about a quarter of a mile; then there was a hill ahead, at the edge of the river. One edge had been eaten away to cliff and rock. It was stony and steep, but there was a path that appeared to lead to the top. Slim began climbing the path, drawn to the top of the hill. The Gutbucket was up there. He could feel it.

  Nadine grabbed his arm and stopped him. “Wait a minute,” she said. “If they’re up there, they’ll be watching this trail. Come on, there’s another way.”

  She led the way away from the river and around the side of the hill. Slim noticed small, round holes in the boulders they walked through.

  “What are those?” he asked.

  “Oh, the holes?” Nadine replied. “The Indians used to grind their corn and wheat here at the river. They’d dump it in the hole and bash it with rocks. Over the years the holes got so deep they abandoned them and started new ones.” She stopped and looked around carefully. “Here it is,” she said, pointing to a narrow cleft in the rock wall. “Up there.”

  Slim moved carefully to the cleft. He saw that, past the narrow entrance, it opened out and slanted gently upward to the top of the hill. He squeezed through the opening, Nadine following, and began slowly climbing.

  Slim tried to walk as quietly as he could through the dry grass and brush of the hill. Surprisingly, he found it was easier than he thought it would be. They weren’t entirely silent, but silent enough so that when they reached nearly to the top of the hill, they could hear quiet, mumbling voices.

  Nadine crept up beside him. “Let’s get closer,” she whispered.

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re sneaking. When you’re sneaking, you’re supposed to get as close as you can. Don’t you know anything about sneaking?”

  “To tell you the truth,” Slim said, “I don’t.”

  “Well, come on,” Nadine said, creeping forward.

  Slim followed her. The voices grew louder as they approached what appeared to be a circle of stones. They hid behind one and looked surreptitiously out to the center. Three men sat on boulders around a small fire. One of them held a guitar.

  Slim nearly stood and went forward to the guitar when he saw it. It was a pearl-gray strat with a beautiful maple neck. The pickups weren’t the white plastic Slim was used to, but were blue-chrome tubes. The guitar seemed, to Slim, to glow with an almost-blue light. The Viper was holding it with what Slim saw as a total lack of respect, letting the butt end drag in the dirt. Now and then, he would reach down and pluck one of the stings far harder than he should have, as if trying to break them.

  The guitar called to Slim. He had to get it, had to play it. He could almost feel it in his hands, the smooth slide of the neck, the bends of the strings. He could hear in his mind exactly how it would sound, what he could do with it, how far he could go.

  As he watched, as the guitar called out to him, the pouch he’d worn around his neck since Belizaire had given it to him grew warm and heavy. The gris-gris man had said he’d know the time to use it. Now, with a little help and inspiration from a wolf spider, he thought he did know.

  “Nadine,” he whispered. “Go around to the other side of the circle and come out.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I need you to distract them. I have an idea that I think will work.”

  “What if it doesn’t?”

  “If it doesn’t, there’s only three of them. We can kick their asses. I’d rather try to do it easy, though.”

  “Okay,” she said. “But you better be right.”

  Nadine slipped quietly around the stone circle. Slim took the bag from around his neck and opened it up. It contained a red dust with bits of white stone or bone mixed in it. It felt warm in his hand and seemed drawn to the fire in front of the Vipers.

  He looked back into the circle and watched. Soon, he saw Nadine step out from between the rocks and walk into the circle. The Vipers jumped up and faced her. She inhaled, making her small bosom evident, and smiled, as if she had come upon them by accident and was about to ask direction
s to the festival.

  They smiled too, but not the same way; they surely saw her as a fit candidate for rape, just to wile away the time while they were waiting for the real action. They were about to get up and catch hold of her, knowing that it would probably require two of them to hold her while the third did his business with her. That was okay; they’d take proper turns, and it would be more fun that way. It wouldn’t even matter how loud she screamed, way out here. Screaming just added to the pleasure.

  When their attention was focused on Nadine, Slim ran into the circle. He hurled the gris-gris bag into the fire and yelled to Nadine, “Don’t breathe”

  The fire exploded in a thick red cloud that completely filled the circle. Slim and Nadine held their breaths for what seemed like hours. Finally, the cloud thinned, dissipated and they drew dusty, cinnamon-scented air into their strained lungs.

  The Vipers stood frozen, motionless. Slim passed his hands in front of one man’s eyes. They were unseeing, unmoving. He didn’t know if they were dead or alive, and he wasn’t going to wait to find out. He reached down eagerly to grab the Gutbucket out of the Viper’s hands.

  There was a lightning bolt in his hand. He was aware that it wasn’t literal; he had not been struck physically. It was only a thought, an image. But it was enough to freeze him in place, so that he stood for a moment as still and sightless as the Vipers.

  DON’T BE A FOOL!

  That was the voice of Shango; Slim recognized it, though he had never heard it before. The God of Lightning, who had brought him here. Why was Shango trying to stop him, now that he was on the verge of success?

  Slim didn’t know, but neither did he doubt the warning. He stood still, gazing at the Gutbucket—and his vision blurred, shifting. The guitar changed, and assumed the form of a giant Glory Hand.

  Now he understood! It was a trap! They had fashioned another awful fetish to take him out, and masked it so that he would grab it without thinking—and be vaulted back to his own world. In his moment of seeming victory, he would be nullified—and Nadine would be left to the brute mercies of the three Vipers, and all that was good in this world would become the object of T-Bone’s cruel exploitation. Everyone would lose, except the enemy.

  No wonder their siege of him had eased up recently. They had been preparing the worst trap of all, baiting it with the one thing he couldn’t resist, the Gutbucket itself. They had set it up here, seemingly inadequately guarded, knowing he would have little trouble nullifying the Vipers.

  How close he had come to falling for it! But for Shango’s timely warning—

  But there was no time to react to that. He knew the Gutbucket was close, because he had oriented on it. It had to be right here, just beyond the masked Glory Hand.

  Slim stepped around the fake guitar. Now he saw that the boulder the Viper sat on was fake, too; it was a box covered over with material the color of stone. He reached for it, pausing, but got no additional warning, so he touched it. He pulled away the material, and there beneath was another guitar, looking just like the fake one.

  He reached in and put his hand on its rounded surface.

  The reaction, as he touched and held it, was almost unbearable. If Nadine hadn’t been holding on to him, he would have fallen to his knees. He found himself, suddenly, with no warning, no transition, in another life, another time, another mind. In a matter of minutes, or, perhaps, seconds, he lived an entire lifetime.

  He was a poor black child, barefoot, sitting on a rough wooden porch looking up at a fat man playing a guitar and singing. Then he grew into shoes and a guitar and learned to let his own music out. He saw himself—no, his other self, the Gutbucket, playing at parties and on porches. Passing into teenage years, he discovered sweat and sex and playing rough blues at even rougher roadhouses. He felt the pain of drunken fistfights and the gentle, urgent touch of lover’s hands. He grew into a man with blues in his heart and whiskey and women on his mind. He felt the warm, liquid rush of heroin and the stumbling hunger of a weakening old man who knew it was slowly slipping away, trying desperately to hold on. And he felt the numb, orgasmic collapse of death and waiting, the painful awakening into the Gutbucket and the search for a player to give it all to.

  Slim opened his eyes and the Gutbucket was silent in his hands. He had drawn it out of its cavity during his vision, and now was holding it in both hands. There had been no real sense of surrender, no combat, but he felt older, and he knew the Gutbucket had accepted him. He didn’t feel diminished, or that he had lost control, but he had lost something. He didn’t know exactly what it was, but he didn’t miss it. He was left with his own mind and a knowledge of the blues, a feeling for the music he’d never dared imagine he could have.

  “Slim,” Nadine said, shaking him. Her voice seemed frightened, tentative. “Oh Slim.”

  He looked around himself, dazedly. The Vipers were beginning to shake and tremble, trying to break the spell the gris-gris had put on them.

  “I’m okay,” he said. “Run like hell.”

  They turned and began running down the trail they hadn’t gone up, swerving and jumping around bushes and rocks in their way. Slim held tightly to the Gutbucket. He could hear the Vipers beginning to run clumsily after them. Nadine was in front, weaving her way through the rocks and trees that grew at the bottom of the hill. They had a long way to go back to the festival, through the crowd and onto the stage.

  There was a heavy bass and drum line coming from the stage. Slim could feel it pounding in his gut as he ran. The Gutbucket felt almost alive, as if it were squirming in his hand. Not to get loose, but to cut loose, to play. How long had it been since Rosie’s death, Progress had told him? Thirty years? Forty? Slim suddenly realized that the hunger to play he carried in his own soul could never match the hunger that he could feel emanating from the Gutbucket, wanting to take him over. And so, he thought, it began.

  They approached the edge of the crowd. Nadine was still running ahead of Slim. The people saw them running, saw the Vipers chasing them and, as if it had been arranged, a path opened up for them. The three Vipers were close behind, but as Slim and Nadine got to the inside of the crowd, people closed the path behind them, so that the Vipers had to push and shove to squeeze their way through a crowd that was more than willing to push and shove back.

  Slim estimated the distance to the stage at just less than a quarter of a mile. That was a long way to run and a lot of people to go through. He was already winded from the run they had just made. For a second, he thought he would fall. But he felt a burst of energy from the Gutbucket and the guitar itself seemed to pull him along.

  A Viper stepped into the path ahead of them. Nadine didn’t pause. She just ran straight over him. People in the crowd grabbed the Viper and pulled him back in. Another stepped out after Nadine had passed. Almost without volition, the Gutbucket came up and the headstock slashed the man in the throat. The Viper dropped and Slim spun around to catch his balance and then kept running.

  Time seemed to slow. Running was a painful dream, the distance left to cover looked like miles. Slim struggled against the oppressive sense of exhaustion and futility that was trying to overcome him. He also fought against the attempts of the Gutbucket to enter his mind and thoughts. Lose or win, he swore, he would remain himself. He didn’t notice when the band on stage stopped playing and Progress and the boys stood out. He didn’t see the Vipers in the crowd ahead of them draw back. What he did see, what stopped his running, what pulled him up short, next to Nadine, was the short fat man all in white, standing in the path ahead of them, holding what looked like a very big gun. T-Bone Pickens had shown himself at last.

  23

  The blues is just a feeling, but in musical terms, it’s much more than that. The history of Rock ‘n’ Roll as we know it today makes a bee-line through the Mississippi Delta and the Texas Panhandle to Memphis and Chicago and all points in between. Elvis heard B. B. King in his Memphis youth and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, John Lennon and Paul McCartney,
Van Morrison and Eric Clapton heard John Lee Hooker and Albert King over the ether and across the Atlantic and Angus Young heard it all the way to Australia. And Ed Van Halen heard it from Eric Clapton and Steve Stevens heard it from Curtis Mayfield. From heavy metal to hard rock, from Led Zep to the Beatles, the influence of the blues is seminal. Lo and behold, the blues itself, in its original form and with a herd of true-to-the-roots believers, is alive and well and traveling all over the country and the world in the form of bent-note crusaders playing the clubs and colleges, the small halls and the outdoor festivals, carrying it on, true to the twelve bar.

  —Noe the G, Blues, the Anatomy of a Feeling

  Y’all might just as well stop right where you are,” Pickens said, handling the gun the same way he’d handled his money. “I admit I’m surprised you managed to get this far, but I never leave important matters to underlings. It’s all over, now.”

  He stepped closer and pointed the gun at Slim. “Hand it over, boy. And keep in mind, I’ll blow your ass off if I have to.”

  Slim stood, trying not to stare at the gun. All this, and T-Bone was going to win, just because he had a fucking gun? Slim decided, one way or another, that this slime wasn’t going to get the Gutbucket. He hoisted the guitar up to his chest and held it with both hands just under the headstock. He could see men in black pushing their way through the stubborn crowd, gathering in a circle around him, Nadine and Pickens. He looked up, and saw Progress and Belizaire on stage, but was unable to read the looks on their faces. A blackness came down around him, like tight steel bands round his chest, making it difficult to breathe, to think. Why should he fight, why should he struggle? He couldn’t beat a gun, Nadine might get hurt. He might get hurt. Why didn’t he just give the Gutbucket to Pickens? He’d never be able to play it . . .

  Then something took him. He stood and screamed “No” Swinging the Gutbucket up onto his shoulder, he brought it down and around like an axe, an axe that, with all Slim’s weight of body and soul behind it, crashed into the side of Pickens’ head with a solid thunk that was almost painful to hear.