Blossom

jump-rope with metallic strands. The steel guitar cried to itself.

Rebecca's voice: 'My Virgil can play, can't he?'

Blossom: 'You couldn't get closer to the Lord in church.'

Then the band went into its own stuff. Telling the truth. Nightclub women and working girls, cocaine and do-without pain. Hell's hounds, jailhouse-bound. Dice players and pimps. Cheating wives and gunfights. Don't mind dying. Hard times and hard people.

The baby spot hit the players as they each took a solo, the singer saying each man's name for the crowd as they played.

They finished the last number. The slide guitar worked the bass notes, with only Virgil's piano helping him along. The man on crutches talked to us.

'Men, you ever have a good woman? I mean a gooood woman…the kind of woman who'll stand up when she has to and stand by while you do time? You know what I mean. A woman who can give that good love, that real love? Answer me if I'm telling the truth!'

They answered him. Tapped their whiskey glasses together, yelled 'That's right!' up at the stage, groaned their encouragement.

'And you threw her away, didn't you? You let her go. You gave up a used Cadillac for a new Ford, you know what I'm saying?'

They knew.

'You ever want just one more chance? Well, listen to me now. The electric fiddle worked under the harp this time, the chubby kid welding the notes into new shapes. The man on crutches came through the music like a fist punching through a door, his cobalt voice nailing the crowd.

I've done you wrong

So many times

Treated you cruel

Played with your mind

I know you're leaving

And I'll miss your loving touch

But won't you listen just one more time?

Woman, don't you owe me that much?

I drank and I gambled

But you always let me come home

Yes, I drank and I gambled

But you always let me come home

You always forgave me

Till you heard that little girl on the phone

A woman in the crowd screamed something up at the stage. The singer bowed in her direction and went back to work.

I lost my job, even went to jail

And you always stayed by my side

When I lost my job, and I went to jail

You always stood up, right by my side

But you saw me with that other woman

You swore your love had died

First you said you'd kill her

And then you changed your mind

Yeah, you said you'd take her young life

But then you changed your mind

You threw my clothes in the street

And told me to stay with my own kind

He hit us with verse after verse, telling his story. Telling the truth. When he got to the end of the road, he had us with him.

I need you for my woman

I need you for my wife

You know I need you, woman

Lord knows I need my wife

But if you won't send an answer

I guess I don't need my life

He finished the set with a razor-wire version of 'She's Nineteen Years Old.' In case there were any tourists in the audience.

The crowd wouldn't let him off the stage. A woman in an electric-blue dress stood up, holding a beer glass in one hand, shouted something at him I couldn't hear.

The bandleader's voice came back at her through the mike. 'Maybe I can't run the hundred-yard dash, darlin', but I'm still a sixty-minute man.'

He owned the crowd. 'One more,' he said. And meant it. The drummer switched to brushes. Virgil intro'ed off the bass keys. A piano doesn't have special notes inside it like a guitar, but Virgil played them special. The slide guitar stayed low with him.

'God Bless the Child.'

The band held the fort as the singer slowly moved himself off the stage. Then it went dark.

75

A TAP ON MY shoulder. Virgil. I got up, followed him through the darkness to the bar. 'Wait here. I'll be back for you in a minute.'

I ordered a whiskey from the bartender, left it sitting on the counter. A white man was making noise at the end of the bar, drunk, whining to his friends.

'Why can't I sing the blues?' he demanded. 'Because I'm white?'

A factory man's dark voice answered his call. ''Cause you can't sing, sucker!'

Virgil took me into a back room. The massive blues shouter was sitting in an armchair big enough for a meeting. 'Doc, I want you to meet my brother. Burke,' Virgil said, bringing me over.

He held out his hand. I took it, felt a palm leathered from years of holding crutches. 'You're the best I ever heard,' I told him.

'Thank you, brother.'

The harp man was talking on the phone, intensely. The slide-guitar man was smoking a joint. Nobody else around. Virgil moved his head a couple of inches. I followed him to another door.

Inside, an old chrome-and-Formica kitchen table. Four chairs. One of them occupied by a featureless man in a white shirt, balding, bifocals perched on top of his head.

'Arnold, this is my brother. The guy I told you about.'

'How ya doin'?' he piped up, in a thin voice younger than his face.

I sat down. Lit a smoke. Bowed my head slightly to greet him. Waiting.

'Virgil said you needed some stuff?'