Robert Johnson Makes His Deal

            “Early this mornin’ when you knocked up on my door,” A high, nasal singing voice cut through the warm bathwater that Mississippians call air, and echoed off of the standing tombstones of a centuries old cemetery. “I said, ‘Hello, Satan, I believe it’s time to go.’” The voice faded away, and the twangy guitar that had been accompanying it quickly followed.

            Two men sat on adjacent headstones in the light of an almost full moon that filtered through the branches of an ancient magnolia tree. One, with a beaten dime store guitar sitting across his lap said, “That’s all I got so far. Pickin’ up this guitar was easy enough, but comin’ up with songs to sing is tough business.”

            The second man, guitar leaning against the headstone upon which he was sitting, replied, “Bobby, I gotta tell ya, you ain’t precisely the best picker on that old git-box, either.”

            “Yeah, at least I ain’t no signifyin’ field holler who can play better than any man alive but never does it nowhere but a graveyard in the middle of the night.” Bobby said defensively.

            “Better you hear it from me than some head cutter that makes a jackass out of you. I’m just lookin’ out for ya, friend to friend.”

            “I know that, Ike, but this is all I ever wanted, just to play this thing good as you. I told myself, ‘If Ike Zimmerman can’t teach me to play great, no one can’ and even you ain’t been able to teach me.” Bobby swatted at a fly that had settled on his guitar. “This is all I got left, I just can’t figure why I can’t get good at it. I been playin’ this damn thing with you every night and I just ain’t gettin’ no better.”

            “Maybe you oughta stop trying to come up with songs ‘bout the devil and let a little bit of god into your life.” Ike said with slight embarrassment, knowing Bobby wouldn’t take it well. “Preacher Jackson say that god can do anything if you let him into your life.”

            A frown took over Bobby’s handsome, strong chinned black face, but he kept silent and stared away from Ike. In the two years since his young wife had died in childbirth Bobby had learned to bite his tongue whenever someone brought up the subject of god, a deity who sat idly by while his sweetheart and their child suffered horrible pain and died.

            “I could introduce you to Preacher Jackson if you want to come to meetin’ with me come Sunday. I’m sure he could help you find god-…”

            “Ike, you think I never gave god a chance?” Bobby interrupted. “Just ‘cuz you never known me to be a prayin’ man don’t mean I never was. I only been livin’ with you a year, so you don’t know that till I was eighteen years old I was in church every Sunday. I hallelujahed, and amened, and prayed till my knees was bloody, and god never give me nothin’. Not one damn thing. He kept me poor, he kept me sharecroppin’, and he kept me living like a dog under white folk. Fact, he took away the only thing that ever made life good for me.”

            Ike stared off into the dark of the cemetery. “That mean you goin’ in for the devil anymore?”

            “You know old Doc Leonide?”

            Ike was caught off guard by the apparent change of subject but followed along with his friend. “That ol’ creole with the jake-leg live on the edge of town? What ‘bout him?”

            “I been spendin’ some time with him, talkin’ to him a lot. He got some ideas that make more sense than what they teach in church. He say that god and the devil ain’t who the church folk say they are. He say they just two out of a whole mess of spirits that look after things, and if you ask the right spirit the right way they give you want you want every time.”

            “Bobby, you talkin’ ‘bout hoodoo, mumbo jumbo. That’s for swampers, fairytales for bayou folk down Lou’sanna. You ought not take no truck with that stuff.”

            Bobby slid down from his tombstone seat and retrieved his hat form the low magnolia branch it had been hanging from. “God don’t answer no prayers, might just as well try askin’ someone else. Doc Leonide say I can talk to his sprit folk, ask ‘em for things, and I’m gonna try to.”

            “How you gonna do that?”

            A bright smile slowly spread across Bobby’s face. “There’s ways. Don’t know rightly if they work, but I aim to find out, and I’m gonna do it tomorrow.”

            “You gonna find out that ol’ hoodoo man is fullashit, that’s what you gonna find out.”

            “I got a five spot that say it works.” Bobby offered his hand to make the bet.

            “And if you don’t get what you want you gotta come to meetin’ with me Sunday, how’s that deal sound?”

            “You got a bet.”

            “You gonna have to dress up nice for church, you know that, right?” Ike shook Bobby’s hand with a smile. As they walked toward the cemetery gate Ike said, “If you see Ol’ Scratch, you tell him Ike Zimmerman could use a little hocus pocus, too.” His chattering giggle echoed and died among the forest of tombstones.

            Bobby stood alone in the middle of a country crossroads, pouring sweat from a long walk in the sticky Southern heat. As he was instructed to do, he had brought along a bottle of white rum and he placed it in the dirt at the center of the intersection.

            “Been long days since a soul come to give me anything way out here.”

            Bobby spun to face the source of the voice that had startled him and found himself staring down at the top of a straw boater. He took a step back to get a better look at the person under the hat and saw it to be a stopped, older-than-dirt black man leaning heavily on a crutch of raw oak and chewing on the stem of a corncob pipe.

            “How’d you sneak up on me like that, ol’ man?”

            “Oh, I don’t do no sneakin’. You think a gimpy ol’ man like me’d ever be able to sneak up on anyone?”

            “That’s what I’m wonderin’ ‘bout.” Bobby said.

            “Naw, I ain’t that sneaky. I been here the whole time, just watchin’, and when you set down that bottle of rum I figured I might as well get me a drink.”

            “That mean you the man I come lookin’ for?”

            The old man felt around the pockets of his baggy, threadbare coveralls. “Seems I misplaced my smoke bag. You ain’t got no tobacco about ya, do ya?”

            Bobby retrieved his tobacco pouch from his shirt pocket and offered it to the old man. “I asked you a question. You the one I come lookin’ for?”

            The old man took a pinch from Bobby’s pouch and packed it in his pipe and, without so much as a match, it began to smolder. “Depends,” he said, puffing on his pipe, “on who it is you come lookin’ for.”

            Suddenly afraid of making a fool out of himself, Bobby didn’t want to say. If the old man wasn’t who Bobby was looking for, he would come off sounding like some soft in the head boondocker out chasing ghosts. But then, there was the way the old man had seemingly popped out of thin air, and the way his pipe had lit itself. “I’m lookin’ for a man name of Legba.” He finally said.

            “Oh, that’s too bad,” A shadow of disappointment passed over the old man’s face. “Ain’t never been a man I heard of goes by that name.”

            “I hear that if I come out to the crossroads and-…”

            “I been around a long time, boy, and I forgot more that you ever gonna know, and I tell you there ain’t never been a man name of Legba.” The old man leaned down, rickety and wobbly, and picked up the bottle of rum. “You mind?” But he had the cork out and the bottle to his lips before Bobby could give him permission. After a long, deep drink of rum he said, “My name is Legba, though.”

            Bobby watched a dribble of rum drip from the old man’s lips and soak into his coveralls. “You said there ain’t nobody named Legba.”

            “I said there ain’t no man goes by the name of Legba. Learn to listen, boy.” The old man slapped Bobby upside the head with a strength that was belied by his appearance.

            “You sure as hell look like a man to me.” Bobby said, rubbing his head.

            “Looks ain’t always what they seem. Now, what you come out here to ask me for?”

            Bobby’s rational mind clung to a little suspicion in terms of the man standing before him. “How do I know you really Legba?”

            “You just gonna have to take my word.” The old man smiled, flashing his perfect white teeth. “You gave me my fee, my rum and my smoke, now ask for what you want ‘fore I lose patience.”

            “I want to play guitar, suh.” Bobby blurted. “I want to be able to play better’n  anyone else in the world.”

            “Why?”

            He had never thought about why he wanted to be the best. “I just want to, that’s all.”

            “What’chu want out of it, boy? Nobody wants something like that if they ain’t getting’ nothin’ out of it.”

            Bobby let the first thing that came to his mind fall out of his mouth, “I wanna be rich and famous like Son House.”

            Legba chewed thoughtfully on his pipe for a moment before saying, “I’m more in the business of healin’ and helpin’. I never been much of one to go ‘round givin’ people selfish things like that.”

            “But Doc Leonide, he say that if I bring you that rum you have to help me.”

            “I ain’t have to do nothin’, boy. I do favors for folk who do them for me, and you done me one.”

            “That mean you gonna help me?”

            “In a way. I can’t outright give you nothin’ so selfish, but I know who can. Goes by the name of Kalfu and you can find him right here in this very crossroad, but only at night.” Legba slipped his hand into the hip pocket of his coveralls. “And he take his rum a little stronger.” He brought a clenched fist from his pocket and from it he poured a black grit into the bottle of rum before handing it back to Bobby. “What’s your name, boy?”

            “Bobby Johnson, suh.”

            “Kalfu is a mighty serious type, Bobby Johnson. If you go lookin’ for him tonight you best keep your wits and your manners ‘bout ya, ya hear? And you introduce yourself as Robert, not Bobby, he only does business with grown ass men.” His tone, which had been concerned, almost fatherly, suddenly turned harsh, “And bring your damn guitar with you, boy. How’d you expect anyone to help you play if you don’t even bring the damn thing with your fool self?”

            “This Kalfu another one like you? Another one of the spirits Doc Leonide tell me about?”

            “You could say that.” The old man said with a sly smile. “He kinda like my brother, of sorts, my other side. He help the folk I don’t.”

            Bobby’s head was swimming. His wish hadn’t been granted, but he knew it could be. Doc Leonide’s spirit folk were real and they were willing to help. To steady his giddy nerves Bobby raised the rum to his lips, but Legba grabbed his wrist with shocking strength.

            Wagging a finger in Bobby’s face Legba said, “You don’t wanna drink that, I don’t think it be no good for ya. See, Kalfu has peculiar tastes, he like a little gunpowder and goofer dust in his rum. It give it a little extra kick.” Bobby stared down at the mouth of the bottled and gulped down a dry lump. “Now, get outta here, Robert Johnson, and remember what I told you about mindin’ yourself ‘round Kalfu. He been known to hold a grudge. Good luck to ya, boy.”

            Bobby heard a car approaching from a distance and glanced over his shoulder to see a dust cloud barreling up the dirt road. “Thank you, Le-…” He began to thank the old man, but on turning to face him, Bobby found that he had disappeared. In the dust where Legba had been standing lay the bottle’s cork and the ashes tapped out of a pipe. Bobby picked up the cork and pounded it into the bottle, put the bottle under his arm, and stuck out a thumb to flag a ride from the approaching car.

            The crickets in the grass were making a racket of the night, but their incessant noise was a strange comfort to Robert as he walked down the deserted road out of Rosedale. It struck him that, despite the enormous full moon that sat on the horizon, the night was as dark as the inside of a grave. In fact, it was like the moon was hiding from him, every time he moved to get a better look at it behind the branches of a distant magnolia it seemed to shift its position ever so slightly to slip behind another.

            Out of the corner of his eye Robert was almost certain he caught a sudden movement somewhere out on the expanse of flat grassland that spread in every direction. He stopped dead and stared out to where he thought he saw the movement, but he may as well have been staring into his hat. He couldn’t see a damn thing, but under the cacophony of crickets he could swear that he heard the faint growling of an angry dog. Tightening his grip on his guitar case and taking hold of the neck of the rum bottle in a way that would allow him to use it as a bludgeon if the need arose, Robert continued on his way toward the crossroads.

            Trying to ignore the butterflies that were beginning to flap around in his stomach, he focused on coming up with new words for the song he had been working on with Ike the night before. “You can bury my body down by the highway side.” He tried to see some kind of detail about the side of the road that might inspire a line, but it was just too dark and he mumbled to himself, “Shit, I don’t care where you bury my body when I’m dead and gone.” A few more minutes of walking and humming and Robert came up with a way to finish the line, “You can bury my body down by the highway side, so my ol’ evil spirit can get a Greyhound bus and ride.” He was silently laughing to himself over the image of his ghost hopping a bus when he realized that he was once again standing at the center of the crossroads.

            Robert placed the gunpowder and grave dirt infused rum in the same spot he had left it for Legba earlier that day and quickly turned an expectant circle, looking in every direction, not wanting to be caught off guard by another lurking spirit. Then he looked again. And again. The sound of crickets filled the air and the moon was starting to creep above the far off magnolias, but nothing else happened.

            Robert wondered if he had done something wrong. Pacing the crossroads, he wondered if he had come at the wrong time, if rum wasn’t the only offer he needed to make, if Legba had lied to him. For a moment he worried that he had never really even met Legba and that he had imagined the whole thing, but the worry passed. It had to have been real, Robert knew that he hadn’t doctored the rum, so it must have been Legba.

            The minutes passed and Robert’s anxiety turned to boredom. He had sat down on his guitar case, lit a cigarette, and was absently drumming his fingers on his knees before he realized that something had changed. The cricket chirps had suddenly and completely ceased and the world around Robert was dead silent. He looked up at the moon and found it inexplicably high in the sky, much further from the horizon than the few minutes he’d been sitting around should have allowed it to be, and it was strangely bright.

            As he looked at the moon it seemed to pulse and swell, steadily growing until it filled the night sky. It was terrifying and arresting and Robert could not tear his eyes from the horrible spectacle until the light it was giving off became painful, and he was forced to clench his eyes and turn his head. What felt like hours, but was really more like a minute, passed and Robert came to the conclusion that he had to get away from those forsaken crossroads, so he opened his right eye to peek around. He howled in pain as the intense light from the moon filled sky burned into his open eye, but he was unable to shut it. He felt like his head was being stabbed with a soldering iron, and he could just barely hear his screams echoing away over the flat terrain.

            Then, just as suddenly and strangely as it had begun, the phenomenon was over. The searing pain in Robert’s right eye became a dull throb, and he was able to open his left and look around. The moon was in its natural place, small and high in the sky, bathing the scene around him in a gentle blue light. Trying to blink away the purple blob that had been burned into his vision, Robert’s eyes fell on yet another horrifying sight.

            There in the middle of the crossroads, standing like a sentinel over the bottle of rum, stood a snarling, slavering black dog bigger than any Robert had ever seen. Its eyes, glowing like a cat’s in the dark, were fixed immovably on Robert, its tongue repeatedly flicked over its bare teeth, and it growled from what sounded like the depths of Hell. Robert was paralyzed with fear, and for a very short time that fear let him forget about the pain in his eye.

            “Now, Baka, I believe you’re frightening our visitor.” Out of the shadows on the side of the road stepped a tall, immaculately dressed dandy of a man, and at his word the dog ceased growling and trotted happily to his side. “I apologize if my canine companion frightened you, but he does carry on with strangers.”

            Robert’s mouth was hanging open, his cigarette dangling from his lower lip. He felt tears rolling from his right eye but he couldn’t move even to wipe them away. He was overloaded by the evenings happenings, unable to process the presence of the white man in the seersucker suit standing before him.

            “What’s the matter, handsome, cat got your tongue?”

            “I-I was more ‘fraid a dog would have it.” Robert stammered.

            A cultured, aristocratic laugh came from the white man, a laugh that quickly declined into a manic chortle. “Mmm, handsome and funny…” A moment of heavy silence fell as the man cocked his head and looked Robert over.

            Finally, Robert spoke up, “I suppose you-…”

            “Kalfu is my name.” The white man said with a smile and slight bow. “What, may I ask, is your name?”

            “Robert Johnson, suh.”

            “Well, Robertjohnsonsuh, are you going to sit on what I’m assuming is your adorable ass all night, or are you going to stand up and talk to me a like a man?”

Robert shot up from his guitar case and took one nervous step toward Kalfu.

“Closer,”

Robert took another step and stopped.

“Closer, now,” Kalfu said in a voice one would use to encourage a child learning to walk, beckoning Robert forward with a finger until they were standing face to face in the center of the crossroads. “There, isn’t that a little better?” Kalfu asked with a calming smile. “Boo!”

Robert jumped back and it send Kalfu into peals of crazy laughter. “Oh, I am every so sorry, Mr. Robertjohnsonsuh, I just could not resist.”

“You scared the bejesus outta me.” Robert had his hand over his heart. “I just come here to ask for help, you ain’t gotta try’n kill me.”

“I don’t huh?” Kalfu crossed his arms and stared Robert down with cold blue eyes. “What if that’s my fee?”

Robert felt a chill fall over him. “Suh?”

“Well, we all have our price, Robertjohnsonsuh. That old day dweller you dealt with today, he charged you some rum and tobacco, but he’s always been more charitable than me. I like to think my services are a little more valuable than a swig of rum and a pipe of tobacco.”

“How much more valuable?” Robert felt his legs tense up, ready to run for his life if Kalfu made the slightest move.

“Oh, just you relax, handsome.” Kalfu picked up the bottle of rum at his feet, pulled the cork out with his teeth, and spat it into the dust. He ran his tongue suggestively up the neck of the bottle and winked at Robert. When there was no reaction to his flirtation he said, Oh well, it was worth a shot.” He tipped the bottle back and guzzled the rum like water, gunpowder, grave dirt, and all.

“Here’s the skinny, Robert. Legba told me what you want and why you want it, and I have to say it is mighty selfish. He wouldn’t touch it, but I’m willing to work with you. See, I like to help deserving folks just as much as Legba does, but he doesn’t seem to realize that sometimes you can help them by making a deal with a selfish son of a bitch like you. So, I can get you playing that guitar, give you the talent to get rich and famous, but only if you use that fame and fortune to do right by someone who truly deserved it.”

“I’m getting’ pretty tired of people callin’ me selfish.” Robert wiped away the flood of tears that was streaming from his moon burnt eye. “I just wanna be good at somethin’, that ain’t selfish.”

Kalfu’s dog bristled and began to softly growl. “Mind that you don’t talk back, Robertjohnsonsuh, Baka hasn’t has a scrap to eat in quite some time, and you look ever so yummy.”

“Alright, I’m sorry, just settle that dog down. Who’m I supposed to do right by if you help me?”

“None other than your friend Ike Zimmerman.”

“Ike? Why? He doin’ OK.”

“Be he deserves to be doing so much better than OK, Robert. The man is one of the best guitar players in the whole Delta, but he keeps working the fields because he wants to be at home instead of out riding the Yellow Dog and barrelhousing. He took you in when you ran away from Robinsonville because Son House told you that your playing wasn’t up to par.”

“How’d you know ‘bout that?” Robert felt his face heat up. He had never told anyone, not even Ike, about his run-in with Son House and how he was told to give up even trying to play guitar.

“We have eyes and ears everywhere, Robert, and we knew something interesting was going to happen after your hero told you to give up. We had eyes on you every night when you were playing in that graveyard with Ike, and when we saw that you weren’t improving we knew it was only a matter of time before you’d come asking us for help. And here you are, and you have your deal. Are you going to take it?”

“What do I have to do for him?”

“That’s up to you. Be creative, be caring, do something huge, or a lot of small things, but make his life better than it is now. But remember, this is not an open ended deal, there is a time limit to live up to your end of the bargain.”

“How long is that?”

“Tell me, Robert, are you at all familiar with the importance of the number seven?”

“How can a number be important?”

“The number itself isn’t all that important, but people have been latching meaning on to it for as long as people have been around. I’m betting it’s something to do with the rainbow, seven bands of color arching across the sky, imagine how magnificent and mysterious that must have been to people who didn’t understand it. Those bands became the seven heavens, which meant there must be seven levels of hell, if there were seven heavens there had to be seven hosts of angels. Seven deadly sins, seven heavenly virtues, even the first steps of Siddhartha are said to have numbered seven. Even your conjure folks here in the South still believe that the seventh son of the seventh son is born with magic powers. I have a bit of a weakness for human mythology, so you can see why I’d like a number with so much pointless significance stuck to it.”

“I see,” Robert lied. He had no clue what Kalfu was talking rambling on about, but there was no way that he was going to question or interrupt with the giant demon dog there.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty years old, suh.”

“You have seven years, Robert Johnson. If you don’t do something spectacular for your friend Ike by the time you’re twenty seven I’m going to send my little boy here to get you.” With that, Baka barked savagely and snapped at Robert, flinging strings of drool from his gleaming teeth.

Robert fell backward into the dirt, trying to get away from the dog’s jaws. “Alright,” he shouted, “you got a deal, please make him stop!”

“I’m not finished.” Kalfu said forcefully raising his voice over Baka’s barking. “It’s not just going to be your sweet little ass on the line, Robert Johnson. If you don’t live up to your end of the bargain, I’m going to send this hound after every musician who comes after you who forgets the people that made him who he is. If you fail me, there won’t be one selfish musician after you who lives to see his twenty eighth birthday, you understand?”

Robert was cowering away from the snapping jaws of Baka, afraid to run, but on the verge of screaming. “Yes, I understand, now just make him stop!”

Kalfu smiled and softly pet the bristling dog to calm him down. “Let me see your guitar.”

Robert scrambled away from the man and his dog and unlatched his guitar case, then stood and held the guitar at arm’s length for Kalfu to take.

Before he took the offered instrument Kalfu raised the pinky of his left hand, an oddly long nail growing from it. He touched the pinky nail to his tongue and Robert was vexed by the hiss and sizzle the action. Holding the mouth of the rum bottle daintily between two fingers, Kalfu gently traced a glowing line around the base of the neck with the red hot nail. The body of the bottle fell with a muted thud into the dust and Kalfu slipped the excised bottleneck on to the ring finger of his left hand and snatched the guitar from Robert, who watched in astonishment as his chipped and faded guitar transformed into a beautiful, gleaming steel resonator in Kalfu’s hands.

He spent a moment picking the strings and played some quick slide notes with the bottleneck before he got to the business of tuning the guitar. He closed his eyes and plucked the E-string, turning the tuning knob until he got just the tone he was looking for, then proceeded to tune the other strings accordingly. We he’d gotten everything where he thought it needed to be he strummed an open neck and the resultant sound brought a smile to his face, but struck Robert as awful noise.

“I think we’re almost finished here, Robert Johnson.” Kalfu handed the guitar back to Robert, who’s face fell in disappointment when it turned back into the same beat up old git-box that Kalfu had snatched from his hand. “Give me your left hand.” Robert did as he was told and extended his left hand to Kalfu, who slipped the bottleneck tenderly on to Robert’s ring finger. “That will give you some new sound to play with. Out deal is done, Robert, you have your wish.”

Robert felt no different, had no new knowledge of how to play. He took up his guitar to play, but Kalfu put his hand over the strings. “Not yet,” he said, “let it all sink in for a while. Don’t you play anything until tomorrow night when you and Ike are in the cemetery.”

“But why, suh? I wanna know if it even worked.”

“Oh, it worked, Robert Johnson. Trust me on that. Now, get your handsome ass out of here before I set my Baka on you.”

Robert held the guitar in one hand and grabbed up the case with the other and started running down the dark road. Whether things had worked or not, he did not know, but he did know that he didn’t want that monster dog after him, that he wanted to do exactly as Kalfu had instructed him to do. So, he was more than happy to wait until the next night to try playing his guitar, and he was more than happy to finally be out of the presence of the strange man and his demon dog. Robert paid no attention to how far or how fast he’d run, but he slowed down and smiled when he saw the distant lights that indicated the outskirts of Rosedale.