The Gutbucket Quest Read online

  “That may be right,” Slim said. “Something brought me here, and I can feel it’s all tied up in blues. I know there’s power in it. The way you talk, the power’s pretty big stuff in this world. It’s not so much where I come from, but it’s there. The only thing is, people that grab hold of that power, it seems like most of them self-destruct.”

  “You right. It does happen just like that. See, there’s a big lie in this business that it’s okay to go down in flames. But that don’t do nobody no good. I’ve lost my own share of friends and players, don’t think I haven’t. Some of us can be examples about goin’ ahead and growin’. But some of us don’t make it there and end up examples because we got to die. I’ve hit the bottom a few times my own self, but I didn’t have to die. You don’t either, it don’t always have to be like that. Not everybody goes down. After all, you got me for a teacher. I cain’t save you from yourself if you’re determined to go down. But I can show you how to sneak up on it and how to stay away from stupid mistakes. You can take on the power and still keep yourself alive, be better for it. But without the power you ain’t never gonna find the heart of it.”

  “But shit, man, I don’t even know where to start.”

  “You starts from where you is. You got no other where to start from. Life is just livin’. Now, I’ve done me some of that, so maybe I knows a little. You, you still got a lot of life left to live on out.”

  “Hell, Progress, I’m almost forty.”

  This generated the biggest laugh in Progress that Slim had yet seen. He blushed, but never felt the man was laughing at him. There was only the feeling that the laughter was in delight.

  “Son, from where you stands, that may seem a long time, but from where I am, you’re still just a kid.”

  “Just how old are you, Progress?”

  “Me? Best I can recollect, if my momma and daddy told me the truth, I’m just about eighty-three. Comin’ into my prime.”

  Eighty-three? Slim wondered how long people lived in this world. Progress looked, at most, like a worn fifty or a well-preserved sixty. Nowhere even near the eighty-three years he claimed.

  “Yep,” Progress said. “I know what you thinkin’. It’s the power. It’ll keep you young. Long as you understands that young years don’t always mean pretty years. Blues power’ll lift you right up off your feet. I got to say, though, I am about the oldest old timer left around. I been lucky, I guess.”

  “Man, I’ll say. If that’s what blues power is in this world, I have got to get me some.”

  “Well,” Progress said, “don’t be breakin’ no trace chains just yet. It ain’t somethin’ that can be ‘got.’ It’s there inside you to be found. Somethin’ you got to fight about and suffer under and surrender to. It’s there, I feels it. But you got to find it and figure how to get from the inside out. The gettin’s gonna be easy for you. It’s the right doin’ of it and the surrender that’s gonna give you the problem.” Progress paused, his eyes serious. “You seen cold winters, ain’t you, son? And you know how things get all slow and hard? How they break easy when they’re froze up?”

  “Yeah,” Slim said. “Sure, I’ve seen that.”

  “Well,” Progress said, “people’s thinkin’s about the same way. You stay hot and loose and play through the changes. But if you get all stiff and froze up, sometimes all it takes is a little push, or a knock and everything breaks apart. I be thinkin’ you been stuck for a while. We got to warm up your mind and get you movin’.”

  “No, I—well, maybe, I guess.”

  “You see, now? You startin’ already, changin’ your mind and seein’ the truth about it. You be okay.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Slim said. His face looked sad. “Yeah, I’ll be okay. I just don’t know where I am or what I’m doing here. This isn’t my world. I don’t know anything here.”

  “You know who you are,” Progress said.

  Slim laughed. It was almost a healthy laugh. “Oh, man,” he said, still chuckling. “I barely know that at the best of times. I’ve never been all that sure of who I am. I get to a point where I think I know, and some good-lookin’ woman comes along and changes my mind. Hmmm—no matter. Listen, you got a map of this country? The whole country, not just Tex—er, Tejas?”

  Progress nodded and went into the back room. Slim soon heard drawers opening and papers being shuffled. He looked more closely around the living room. Actually, like his own version of the house, the living room and kitchen were mostly one large room, taking up the entire front half of the house. They were effectively separated by a counter on one wall and a stone platform on the other wall, on top of which sat a wood-burning stove. He was glad to see that, even in this world, that hadn’t changed.

  The living room was filled with helter-skelter knickknacks and pictures, but Slim’s attention was soon captured by a photograph off by itself, nestled between books on a set of shelves. It showed a young woman with green eyes, caramel-colored skin and very fine, very beautiful curly hair. Her eyes, even in the photo, drew him further and further in, wanting to be lost. Oh, he definitely had a feeling.

  “That’s my daughter.”

  Slim jumped at Progress’ voice. “Wha’d you say?”

  “That there’s my daughter, Nadine.”

  Slim could see a pride in the old man’s eyes, could hear it in his voice, as if he’d produced a work of art that had grown beyond him.

  “She’s beautiful,” Slim said.

  “Yep, that she is. She’s a singer. Pretty good, too. Anyway, here’s that map you was wantin’.”

  Progress handed Slim a folded map. It looked like a National Geographic, if they had that magazine in this world. The phone rang and, as Progress went to answer it, Slim unfolded the map and studied the new world he found himself in.

  Like the land and the house where he stood, the shape of the country was the same, but the resemblance ended there. Tejas was still the largest state—country?—in what he was used to thinking of as the United States. But it was extended in all directions; down and west into Mexico; up, to the Canadian border; east, eating up half of what had been the south. From the Canadian border, into Central America, right off the bottom of the map, Mexico took up the entire west coast. Much of what had been the midwest was now the second-largest area on the map, the Indian Nations.

  The rest of the map showed the east coast, divided horizontally by the Confederation in the south, and a very small United States in the north. Capping all of it was a Canada grown huge and detailless on the map, as if it were a nation of unexplored mystery.

  Not Slim’s world, indeed. All changed, all different. But there was something deep within him that liked the new configuration. Something in him that said it felt right. That it was more fair, more the kind of world he might like to live in.

  4

  The link between time and space is not lost in the blues. There is a realization that what is sought for in space, from North to South, must be sought for in time, from adulthood to childhood. At first, perhaps the suspension of movement is our only glimpse—after all, why travel if the goal is unattainable?

  —Paul Garon, Blues and the Poetic Spirit

  If You’re a Viper

  Dreamed about a reefer five feet long,

  Mighty mezz but not too strong,

  You’ll be high, but not for long,

  If you’re a viper.

  I’m the king of everything,

  I’ve got to be high before I swing,

  Light a tea and let it be,

  If you’re a viper.

  When your throat gets dry,

  You know you’re high,

  Everything is dandy,

  Truck on down to the candy store,

  Bust your conk

  On peppermint candy.

  Then you know your body’s sent,

  You don’t care if you pay the rent,

  The sky is high and so am I,

  If you’re a viper.

  Progress came back into the living room sh
aking his head. The ever-present smile had disappeared, replaced by a serious sadness and concern. “That feeling I had about you—it’s starting to come clear. I knew there was somethin’.”

  “Progress, I tell you I mean no evil to any—”

  “Come on, son,” he said gruffly. “We got to go to town, got to pay some dues.”

  “What are we doing?” Slim asked.

  “We got to see a man. They done stole the Gutbucket.”

  “Who stole what?"

  Progress was impatient, hurried. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get goin’. I’ll tell you about it on the way.”

  He bustled through the front door. Slim followed him out to a beat-up old pickup, the make of which was unknown to him. It started quickly and quietly, and they were soon on the driveway heading for the road.

  The well-known side of the road looked much the same. There had been an old, ramshackle, frontless mobile home up the driveway from the house. It wasn’t there anymore, but it had been replaced by a ramshackle, frontless house that filled its place perfectly. It leaked, and its wooden sides had been warped and bleached by years of summer sun and winter wind and wet. The land itself was greener, lusher, somehow. There were fewer houses and trailers than Slim was used to, not so many fences. The biggest surprise was the herds that roamed the free range.

  “Buffalo” Slim said. “Hot damn, this is okay.” Then he sobered. He knew that something was very wrong, but its nature baffled him. He turned to the old man. “Progress, who stole what? What’s the story?”

  Progress’ hands clenched tightly around the steering wheel. There was a grim look on his face.

  “Vipers,” he said. “That’s who I suspect anyway. Don’t know as anyone else’d have any reason to steal the Gutbucket. As for what that is, well, it’s twenty-two miles to town so I’ll tell you the story best I can.

  “See, back in the old days, there was a man named Luther Allrose. There was blues, but it was the ole country blues. Luther did a mighty wonderful thing. He invented the electric guitar. Took it to the blues and made a whole new thing out of the old.”

  Progress sighed deeply, caught up in the tight net of memory.

  “I owes a lot to that man,” he said. “That’s where a lot of my ideas about how to play guitar came from—listenin’ to Luther Allrose. Hey boy, I don’t know nobody could play sassier than that man. Rosie. That’s what we called him. He hated bein’ called Luther. There’s lots of different blues, lots of different styles, but the first time I heard ole Rosie I thought, this is it. Still do.

  “It was my older brother first exposed me to the professional blues. We growed up with the blues, you know, but it was just around, what everyone did sittin’ out on the porch Juggin’. But my brother, he started bringin’ home all these records of Catchin’ Vaughn, Sugar Box MaGee, Hound Dog Naylor, Black Bottom McPhail, Blind Black. And somewhere inside all that I ran into Rosie’s music. I put his record on and it was unbelievable. All these other folks was playin’ the same ole down-home blues we was used to. But ole Rosie, he’d electrified it, and whoo!, it was dirty and mean and low-down bad. There wasn’t nothin’ else like it. Never had been. And he was writin’ new kinds of blues that no one had ever heard before. That man had big mojo, and the people’s knowed it good.

  “ ‘Bout that same time, I began hearin’ him on the radio. I had me this little crystal set and I could pick up WDIA. That was an all-night blues station, and sometimes I could get the all-night stations out of Nashville, and some of the outlaw stations out of Mexico. I’d stick that little tinny crystal set under my pillow and listen late at night. Came a time they’d play Rosie’s music a lot.

  “I was workin’ to the slaughterhouse at that time, so I had me the money to get some parts and all and make me an electric guitar. Just to learn about, you know, ‘cause I kept stumblin’ on Rosie’s records here and there and they’d just make my hair stand on end. I couldn’t get enough of him. So I began tryin’ to figure out what he was playin’, just listenin’ to the records at night and kind of feelin’ my way around the neck, figurin’ out those bends and slides.

  “I first seen him play live when I was just a kid. He was substitutin’ for Blind Black who was in the hospital. Actual fact, Blind Black was s’pose to be openin’ for the Armadillo Jug Band. But when the jug band found out it was Rosie, they insisted on openin’ up for him. I had me a gig that night at a little dump called the One Night, on Eighth and Red River, ‘bout a block from the police station. There wasn’t no cover at this place, just a pass-the-hat situation.

  “Anyway, that night someone came over and said, ‘Hey, Luther Allrose is playin’, fillin’ in for Blind Black. You wanna go?’ And I got on the microphone and said, ‘Ladies and gennemens, I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna go see Luther Allrose, and if you got any brains, so will you.’ And I just packed up and left. Man, that was a night.

  “There was only about seventy-five people there when Rosie played, but every single person was there to hear Luther Allrose, so the groove and the attitude were hot. During the show I went behind a PA stack and stood on a table right beside the stage. I just stared at him, you know. And partway through the show, he takes his mike stand and walks it over to my side of the stage, plants it down and stands there playin’ and singin’ to me the rest of the night. He didn’t know me from a hole in the wall. I mean, here was this skinny little kid, all of eighteen. But I guess I yelled right or somethin’, cause he really took a likin’ to me. After he finished playin’, he walked over to me, handed me his guitar and shook my hand. Said, ‘That’s yours, boy. I expect you to be playing that the next time we meet.’ Then he left. I was stunned, walkin’ around holdin’ on to that guitar like it was made outta gold. I guess for me, it was. I’ll never forget that evenin’, though. Wasn’t many of us there, but he gave it everything he had.

  “Next time I seen him was at this place called Anthone’s, down in Arsten. I went there early, carryin’ that guitar, right around sound check time so’s I could see everything from the get-go. And the first thing he did was, he walked up to me, started pointin’ his finger sayin’, ‘I remember you, about three and a half years ago we met.’ He never forgot nobody. Started callin’ me by name, tellin’ me where we met, what happened and everything, askin’ me had I learned to play that guitar.

  “Later on, I was out in the audience and he starts talkin’ about this little kid, ninety pounds soakin’ wet, you know—then all of a sudden I hears my name. He called me up on stage with that guitar, and I thought I was gonna play maybe one song with him. But I ended up playin’ with him the rest of the night. It was amazing, you know. Nicest guy I ever met. After that, I just packed it up and he made me a part of the band and started teachin’ me. And I tell you, I didn’t never see him play but what he didn’t get it. You’d watch him come alive on that stage and man, there wasn’t nothin’ like it.

  “We played around—recorded some. Regular stuff. There was several things that we wanted to do, but they never came down. Just didn’t happen.”

  “Why not?” Slim asked. “And what does it have to do with the Gutbucket?”

  Progress shifted uncomfortably in the seat, and Slim could see his hands tremble on the wheel.

  “Well, now,” he said. “There’s the question. Hurts some to talk about, you see? Rosie, well, he was a high flyer and a midnight slider. What we used to call a slywalker. He liked his women and his whiskey and his dope. We all knew it was gonna put him under. Few of us were stupid enough to try talkin’ to him about it. But, you see, we’d all seen him when he didn’t have none of it, and it wasn’t the same. There wasn’t no spark in it, like he was a burnt-out light bulb or somethin’. The women and whiskey and dopin’, they lifted up his life while they was takin’ it away at the same time. And he just up and fell over dead one day. Oh, it was a sad day then, I can tell you.

  “Anyways, it surprised everyone, but old Rosie’d left a will and testament. Sort of. The man didn’t
have nothin’ really. Spent his money on the sportin’ life. But what he did have, he split up amongst his regular women. What he did have, though, was a last request. The man said he wanted his ole tired body to be cremated, but he didn’t want no regular burial. Said his life had always been in the blues, and even if he was dead, he didn’t cotton to that little detail stoppin’ him from playin’ on. So he asked for his ashes to be ground up real fine. He’d made up this special plastic compound he’d been usin’ to make his guitars, and he said he wanted us to mix his ashes up in a batch of that and then make it into a guitar body. He’d already made up the neck special and all the electronics for it. I guess he’d been ready for it, you know, for a while, thinkin’ what he wanted to do. Had it all planned up. So all his friends got together and did what he wanted us to. Once the guitar was made, well, he’d left it in his will that he wanted me to have it. I guess Rosie figured I’d be the one to use it best. Either that or it was his idea of a last joke.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Oh, thirty, forty years, I s’pect.”

  “Why aren’t you playing it?” Slim asked.

  “Well, that there’s hard to explain. I did try to play it for a while. Tried hard. But that thing was just too powerful. Some reason it didn’t take to me. A guitar’s a thing—it’s alive and aware, son. A part of any song you create, your friend and company, sometimes your worstest enemy. It helps shape you into what you’ll become. And just like a woman, you got to find the right one, the one that fits into all your curves and bends and matches your mind and your hands and your heart. The Gutbucket, well, it just wasn’t right for me. The magic was too strong, too much power.”

  “So, what’d you do?”

  “Well, I couldn’t just lay it down. I mean, that was Rosie, sort of. When it was made, the magic took over. I don’t know what Rosie did makin’ it, what he had planned, but it was so filled with power that it became the heart of the blues in Tejas. I couldn’t play it—maybe no one can play it. But it seemed like everyone who was playin’ was drawin’ power from it. We was all goin’ to the same well, but we was all comin’ back with different water from the heart of it.