Toreador

The only place He wanted to go was the desert. No matter how hard he tried otherwise, the only place he could guide himself, the only place his steering wheel and the cogs and gears and tubes of his car would take him was the desert. Somewhere he would be able to take his shirt off and lay out across a rock that would burn his back and leave blisters. Where the sun was unforgiving and could force him to confront himself in ways he didn’t dare on his own. He wanted to be a mouthpiece wandering through the chaos only to realize that the message he’d been hearing all his life was his own. He desperately sought a place where sin, degradation, and evil could be baked to dust and blown away on a hot wind, instead of dripping from his shoulders and hair like a living slime. A place where the impurities could be smelted down to something much simpler, and much more valuable. A place where a center could be found, and eventually abandoned once he realized that no center is needed in lives like ours.

 

 The sun was a hot rain falling on the car, turning it to a tin oven and baking Him soft and hollow. The desert air roared through the open windows but he couldn’t hear it over the thoughts fighting for space in his head. Lives like ours..

 

 His mind was scarred with possibility and possibilities lost and he had no clue as to where time would lead him. Maybe it wasn’t time leading him at all but just a vague sense of escape. A feeling of running away from the losses and rejections of the past. The air in the tires must be expanding in this heat, He thought as his eyes squinted down the highway. I wonder if one will explode.

 

 Joshua Trees flew by the open windows, a landscape cutting around the car at eighty miles an hour. Just keep driving. If a tire blows, walk. Run. Like a desert dog. The two lane road rolled out to the horizon, flat and straight, calling to eternity and letting eternity call on anyone desperate enough to drive this forgotten stretch. Eternity slithered down the highway and crept into his mind to crawl around and make him crazy, but retreated as quickly as it came, frightened by the chaotic, jumbled musings of desolation and angst. As close as is possible to imagine a snake limping is how eternity made it’s way back down to the horizon. Back to some kind of voiceless void. Run, desert dog.

 

            He shook his head against the weariness that was taking over his eyes only to realize it was the heat haze steaming off the road that was blurring his vision. He pulled to the side of the road and cut the engine and quiet fell. The engine no longer rumbled, the wind through the open windows died away, even his thoughts faded out for a moment. He got out and leaned against the car, the hot blue metal stinging him through his t-shirt. He stood in the stillness and quiet that had dropped around him and looked to the horizon. The heat was so intense in this place that it had burned the blue out of the sky, leaving it a bleached gray, only slightly lighter than the enormous and vague thunderhead gathering far off to the east.

 

 He lit a cigarette as he walked around the car and down a small embankment at the road’s edge. He pulled drags at the cigarette as he stood taking a long leak on the desert floor, thinking of the puddle he was making, Maybe something will grow there. And next week it will be dead from heat and thirst. As he zipped his jeans he thought he heard the crunch of footsteps on sand and gravel over his shoulder. He bounded back to the car and looked up the road in both directions but saw nothing. He finished his cigarette and flicked it to the middle of the road and listened hard. For a brief moment he was sure he could hear footsteps, but the barren echoes of the desert confused him as to where they were coming from, but then the footfalls were wiped away entirely by the sound of a car coming up the wilted distances of the highway.

 

            He sat in the passenger seat looking out over the desert, listening to the sound of the approaching car, which never seemed to get any closer. He couldn’t tell if it was the approaching car that was stuck in some kind of highway limbo, or if it were himself, but he didn’t care. He could have pulled off the road into a rip in the universe and he was sure it wouldn’t have bothered him in the least.

 

            A rattling pick-up truck crested the horizon, wavering like a dream from the past in the heat from the road. He wasn’t sure that the heat and lack of sleep and water wasn’t making him hallucinate so he regarded the truck with a suspicious half-attention. Bouncing back at him from rock walls he couldn’t find were echoes of the truck’s tires on the road that interfered with the actual noise of the truck reaching his ears. The result was a disorienting ripple of sound that throbbed in the furthest back part of his brain. He smiled.

 

            The truck looked as if it were going to speed past him, but at the last moment came to a near screeching halt before him. Out of the window leaned a face that looked like it was made from and old suitcase. A smile formed on its lips, stained off-white pearls set against skin the color of the desert itself, with the same texture. “You having car trouble?”

 

            “No,” He squinted against the sun reflecting out of the driver’s eyes. “Just taking a break from driving.”

 

            “OK, then, just making sure.” The old man leaned further out the window, conspiratorially lowering his voice. “Between you and me, there’s a good looking girl walking down the road back there a ways. I offered her a ride, but no such luck. Maybe you’ll get luckier.” The old man winked.

 

            “Maybe,” He laughed politely. “But that’s the last thing I want or need right now. That’s kind of why I’m out here.”

 

            ..That’s too bad,” said the driver. “She’s a looker.” He looked over the desert and a seriousness came about his face. “Big storm building over that way. Lots of storms are born out here, and I’ve seen ‘em all.” The driver became silent, staring.

 

            “You live out here?”

 

            The old man came back to the present. “Me? Yeah, over fifty years. You might call me something of an old desert dog.”  He looked back down the road and pointed. “But here comes your girl. I better get going.” He laughed and waved, pulling forward slowly. “Good luck, boy.” The truck rattled away to some desolate homestead.

 

            He lit another cigarette as he peered down the road, just barely seeing the silhouette of a girl walking out of the heat shimmer. He leaned against the car, listening to the crunch of the girl’s footsteps coming down the side of the road. The cigarette was almost done when she arrived at his car, carrying a duffle bag over her shoulder. He kept his eyes to the ground, letting the hot wind carry the smoke away from his face in contorting whirls. She stopped in front of him and stood in silence for several tense seconds before he glanced up at her face.

 

            “Hey, can I get a ride?”

 

            “But I’m going the same way you just came.”

 

            She smiled like a lifelong friend. “That’s all right. That means I don’t have to look at the scenery and I can get some rest.”

 

            “I don’t have air conditioning.” He offered.

 

            “That’s all right.” She walked around the car and presumptuously let herself in the passenger door. He nervously slipped in behind the wheel and brought the car back to life, easing it back on to the highway. “So,” she said. “What’s your name?”

 

 

 

He’d learned to carry himself with a certain loner-mystique, and people had drawn parallels between himself and James Dean. I don’t really know much about him was almost always his reply.

 

            “When I saw you standing by the car smoking I thought you looked like James Dean.” She spoke with her head leaned back and her eyes closed. “Like his ghost was wandering around out here in the desert or something.” Her hair flew in the wind and he thought it looked like arcs of black electricity crackling around her head.

 

            “I guess there are worse people I could remind you of.” He smiled and turned his eyes to her, really looking at her for the first time. He was amazed that she hadn’t ended up as some kind of statistic on this lost highway. He wasn’t absolutely certain that he wouldn’t yet turn her into one. This is a thing of mistakes and wonder, he thought. “You’re beautiful,” is what he spoke. “Like Natalie Wood.”

 

 She turned her brown eyes to meet his, but he was watching the road again. She smiled to herself and repeated, “Like Natalie Wood.” She closed her eyes and seemed to fall asleep.

 

 A thing of mistakes and wonder. One leads to the other and vice versa. She’ll get close and I’ll get hurt. He gently turned the wheel to avoid the carcass of a desert jackrabbit that was splayed out across the road. The rabbit’s innards were a mess upon the asphalt, but, even at the speed he was traveling, for a split second he imagined he could see life in its eyes. Like a pleading, a begging for release from the peace of death. He drove through the heat haze not knowing where he was going, or where he was taking Her.

 

 

 

She took a rolled up twenty out of her pocket and paid for his cigarettes. “Here, let me cover it.” She handed him the change. “Fair’s fair, since you paid for the gas and all.”

 

            “I’d be paying for gas even if you weren’t with me. The cigarettes, too.” He folded the bills and slipped them into her pocket. “Thanks, though.”

 

            As they pulled away from the gas station he asked, “What are you running from?” He lit a cigarette with a match, the flame of which hardly even wavered in the wind rushing through the car. “Or to?” He added.

 

            “I don’t think I can be sure on that, anymore. I’m just kind of running. Away from a lot. Toward a lot. Toward everything, I guess. I’m just running away like I’ve wanted to since I was a little girl.”

 

            “Can I run away with you?.” He asked. “I’m pretty certain I went nuts today and I’m running away from that, among other things.”

 

            “Since we’re both running I don’t see the harm in running away together.”

 

            “OK,”  He said. “I’ll keep driving, you just tell me where to go. Maybe we’ll find something worth stopping for, eventually.”

 

            “Maybe,” She said. “And, maybe we could keep driving like this forever. Watch the scenery and the world change around us, and we could always stay the same.” She smiled a smile that betrayed an insecurity, a weakness of façade. She put a hand on his knee and said, “Tell me again that I’m beautiful.”

 

            “You’re beautiful.” He mirrored her smile. “Like a movie star trying to disguise herself as the-girl-next-door.”

 

 “But I am the-girl-next-door.”

 

            “Not anymore. You’re the girl who ran away.” He said.

 

            A genuine smile crossed her face this time. “I am, aren’t I?” She suddenly leaned across the car and kissed Him, a deep kiss that took him so off guard that he couldn’t stop himself from blushing. She put a hand on his crotch and commanded, “Pull over.”

 

            “Pull over? But there’s no-…”

 

She broke him off with another kiss. “Pull over.”

 

 

“Having lived through the last month I know I can live through anything.” He said, seated atop a boulder about a hundred yards from the highway. “I’ll always be able to call on some kind of strength to get me through any kind of despair. But if I were ever to commit suicide it would be at this time of day.”

 

            “Why?” She was sitting in a natural seat that had been worn out of the base of the rock over unknown millennia. He thought it different and strangely refreshing that they had just had sex and she was sitting so far apart from him. Two worlds that had met and then parted again.

 

            “Look at the sky. It only turns that color when the weather is just right, and when it does it only lasts for a few minutes. And I’ve only seen that exact shade here in California.”

 

 She looked to the sky, away from the brittle blade of desert grass she was twirling in her fingers. A narrow range of purples blended from horizon to horizon, the bruise left by a blazing sunset before night falls totally. “That’s a good last color to see.” She blew the grass from her open palm. “Why, though? Why kill yourself to that color?”

 

            “Hope, I suppose. Ever since I was a kid that color sky has seemed so beautiful to me that it fills me with some kind of hope. Like, if something that beautiful can exist then there must be a god. But it’s a hope and a god so remote that it makes here and now seem so desolate and lonely.”

 

            “Like an exile.” She said. “And not matter how close you get to anyone-…”

 

            “You’re still alone.” He finished her thought. He looked down at Her, but could only see the back of her head. “And we’re still alone, aren’t we?”

 

            “More than ever.” She affirmed. A silence came between them and held on for the eternity of a few seconds. “It’s the rain for me.” She finally said.

 

            “What about it?”

 

            “I’m from where there are lots of forests, big pine trees. When it rains in the forest everything seems to take on extra color against the gray of the clouds. The pine needles are a deeper green, roads look like mirrors, like they’re made out of obsidian. Everything seems so alive and connected. Then there’s me.”

 

            “Separated?”

 

            “Yeah. I mean, it’s a wonderful thing, and it feels so good to let the rain drench you to the skin, but I don’t feel like I’m a part of the whole.”

 

            Like you’re a piece apart from god, He thought. She struck him as something forgotten and marooned ages from home and grace, crushed with a nameless faith, the weight of which was misleading and empty, and strength was failing.

 

            “But, it’s not like I’m simply out of place, like I haven’t found a niche or something. It’s like life is this enormous puzzle with all these intricately interlocking pieces and I’m a speck of dust on the surface of the puzzle, not even a piece.”

 

            He slid down the rock and quietly seated himself cross legged on the desert floor at her feet. She hugged her knees to her chest, looking with unfocused eyes at a hairy little spider clambering across the rock near her. “So,” She continued. “I’m not just out of place, I’m something totally separate. Not only that, but I’m intruding, I feel guilty because I may be detracting from the beauty of life and the world by just existing, that, somehow, I make life around me ugly.”

 

            “You’re beautiful, though. You know that, right?” He asked, trying to reassure her.

 

            “Yes, like Natalie Wood.” She jokingly flipped her hair and batted eyes that He could see the beginnings of tears in.

 

            “That’s not what I meant, toreador, but thanks.” He forced a smile at her Rebel Without a Cause reference, but she had turned her eyes to the horizon trying to hide her forming tears.

 

            “What do you mean, then? Tell me.”

 

            For the first time she looked him dead in the eye and he felt his breath catch ever so slightly. Her brown eyes were swimming in a veil of tears that had yet to roll away, rain washed windows to an assaulted soul.

 

            “I hurt people.” She told him with her eyes locked on his. “I hurt people, I hurt people, and I keep hurting them.” She pressed her fingers to her eyes, but one tear escaped and rolled down her face, fell from her chin, and splashed in the desert dust. Maybe something will grow there, He thought. A miracle pine tree that catches rain and never dies.

 

            “I hurt anyone who loves me, it’s like my love for them runs out and I force them away. I keep taking and using peoples’ love and break their hearts and the guilt is crushing me.” Tears were streaming down her face and she was on the edge of sobbing. He looked up at her, enraptured by the damaged wonder sitting before him. She was an emerald with a dark history steeped in blood and betrayal. Those in love with her would murder to have her, but they could never hold her long.

 

            She did what she could to wipe the tears from her face. “Your suicide sky is gone.” She said, pointing to a sky that had gone dark with the onset of night.

 

            “That’s OK, I wasn’t using it. The stars should be really bright out here tonight, so it’s worth having not killed myself.” He pointed to the first visible star which was appearing in the sky next to the silhouette of a lone Joshua Tree. “Venus,” He said.

 

            “Venus,” She repeated. “She’s a bitch on wheels. And Cupid’s even worse.”

 

            “They keep sending people to love you and you hate them?” He laughed, attempting to cheer her up.

 

            “Exactly,” was her reply. “They keep sending all these people to love me, but they forget to send what I need to love them back.”

 

            “It’s just mythology.” He said. “Just mythology and stars.”

 

            “Things were so much simpler when stars were just the holes to heaven, toreador.” He looked up at her with fascination. She was a flawed diamond. Something so pure she shone, but with the taint of depression and hurt about her.

 

            “Things are as simple as they’ve ever been. Holes to heaven, constellations of gods and goddesses, distant suns, it doesn’t matter. Nothing’s changed between people.”

 

            “Something has to change, eventually. Our bodies will keep on living, but all our souls will die.”

 

            He took her hand in his and said, “It’s already happened.”

 

            “This loneliness is awful, toreador.” She was back on the verge of tears.

 

            “What can I do to help?” He asked.

 

            “Nothing. Nothing else, at least, you’ve already done enough.” She squeezed his hand tightly. “Even considering as close as we’ve come in such a short time, and that we’ve slept together, never tell me you love me, please.”

 

            He closed his eyes in the dark of the desert night. “I can’t promise that.”

 

            “Then there’s trouble on the breeze.” She said.

 

 

 

The night passed without dreams or speech, just two people together in loneliness sleeping in the backseat of a car in the desert. He woke in the pale gray of dawn and slipped out of the car to stretch, doing his best to keep from disturbing her. All traces of the distant thunderstorms of the day before had been wiped from the eastern sky and in their place were the soft pinks and purples that are born just before sunrise. A weak imitation of the suicide sky, He thought.

 

            He sat in the front looking back over the seat at her sleeping face. It was difficult for him to get a grasp on the emotions he’d experienced over the last day with her, but he knew what was forming. And he knew she wouldn’t like it. In the quiet of the car, in the calm of the soft desert morning he whispered, “I love you.” under his breath. She stirred slightly but didn’t wake.

 

 The heat of the day was upon them like a tiger when he pulled into a gas station. It was an oasis that would have appeared more appropriate back down the highway in the suburbs that He’d come from. Farms of some kind were baking in the early sun on both sides of the highway, brave patches of green clinging to life in the barren hopelessness of the desert.

 

            He gently nudged her awake and asked if she needed anything while they were stopped. “No, I think I’m OK for now.” She said.

 

            He leaned over and kissed her. “I’ll be right back, then.” Walking across the parking lot he felt a pure asphalt heat burning over him and he could swear it was the heat he’d been seeking when he started driving the day before. He stood still for a moment and closed his eyes, feeling his guilt and hurts begin to cook away. With the right eyes he could imagine someone being able to see the vapors of negativity escaping him. He opened his eyes and went into the mini-mart for drinks and snacks, smiling brightly at the clerk as he left.

 

            Walking back to the car he noticed a small dust cloud being kicked up a way down the road. Her green Converse were kicking up the desert dirt as she walked back down the highway in the direction they had come from. The hot wind tossed her hair as she shifted her duffle bag from shoulder to shoulder, and she turned back once to glance behind and their eyes connected briefly. She turned her gaze back to the horizon of the past and kept walking.

 

            As he leaned against his car watching her and lighting a cigarette he felt the hot breeze turn its attention to him. He felt everything he’d been running from come blowing back in his face. Loss, sin, desolation flowed back to him, air rushing back into a vacuum that has lost its seal. Starting the car to follow her He found a note in the passenger seat written on the back of an old receipt.

 

I told you shouldn’t have said you love me, toreador.

                                                       Because I love you, too.

 

            The car idled softly to itself, a musician playing to the emptiness of a sleeping audience. He lightly rested both hands on the wheel while he stared out at the strange desert fields in a kind of prayer. He noticed for the first time how unpleasant cigarette smoke rising into his eyes could be, a sting that reminded him of the distant memories of tears. He flicked his cigarette out the window hoping it would land in a thicket of dried grass. Maybe it will start a wild fire, burn this whole desert and allow it to start over from scratch.

 

            He crept back on to the highway and let speed gather around him as he watched her disappear in the rear view mirror and thought, Just keep running, faster and farther. He held the note she had written to him tightly in his fingers out the window and let the wind whip at it. He let go and watched it flutter like an origami bird come alive and gone insane. He ran his fingers through his hair and briefly closed his eyes, pushing his foot to the floor and driving like a man pursued by something evil while his most recent shot at salvation walked away into another world.

Intro and Chapter One

This is not for you.

 If you think every story has a happy ending, you’re crazy.

If you want to read about people you can sympathize with, this may not be your story.

If you think there are redeeming qualities in everyone, you are wrong and have no reason to continue reading.

If you think, despite all the weirdness some people have to deal with, that they can come out on top if they just stay strong, you’re an idiot.

Stories with happy endings only have them because timelines never run long enough. Thanks to convenient timing people aren’t allowed to see how everything falls apart and decays, how absolutely nothing is ever perfect and nothing good will last forever. The story that ends with the perfect kiss doesn’t go on to show how the man ends up giving the woman bruises she’ll have to make excuses for, or how the woman can smile and kiss him hello fifteen minutes after fellating the gardener. The story that ends with the hero riding into the sunset never shows how he spends the rest of his days pathetically defining himself by his one shining moment before dying, drunk and alone.

Some people deserve no sympathy, but that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to be heard. Sometimes the people who have been through most challenging situations have the most to say, even if you’d never want to hear it from them face-to-face. Some people cannot be sympathized with, simply because some people go through things that can’t even be imagined by outsiders. Some people get sucked down by their weirdness, beaten down to never, ever get back up again.

If I wanted to tell the story of my life and give it a happy ending I’d wrap it up somewhere around age twenty-two. Granted, that’s kind of young but it would leave whoever decided to read it cheering me on, wishing me well, and seeing unlimited potential in my future, because that’s what I saw. It would show me overcoming adversity, it would be a soaring testament to the human spirit, and it would be a glaring sin of omission to anyone who knows better.

I’m going to start this part of my life story on my twenty-seventh birthday, in a gym on Sunset Boulevard. I’m going to end it on my twenty-eighth birthday in a camper van on the side of a highway somewhere in Washington. I don’t expect any kind of sympathy or understanding, I just want the story to be told, and I think the screaming gibberish from the pilot would be a more compelling account of a flaming tail-spin than that of someone watching from the safety of the ground.

Chapter One

I always liked using the chest press machines at my gym. They were located directly in front of one of the ceiling height mirrors that lined the back wall and it afforded me a great view of myself as I worked out. I spread my towel on the seat and sat down, watching how my forearms rippled in the mirror as I adjusted my grip on the handles.

      I began steady breathing, preparing myself for ten reps at my new goal weight. As I strained against the resistance of the machine I counted my lifts in my head, silently reciting a personal motivational mantra as I did so.

      One. I want the perfect body.

      Two. I want the perfect job.

      Three. I want the perfect car.

      Four. I want the perfect toys.

      Five. I want the perfect hobbies.

      Six. I want the perfect house.

      Seven. I want the perfect friends.

      Eight. I want the perfect wife.

      Nine. I want the perfect children.

      Ten. I want the perfect life.

      The weights clanged down as I relaxed back in the seat, looking at myself in the mirror. If I were to examine it closely enough I would have been able to find plenty of minor faults that I didn't like about my body; the odd mole here or there, the thin stubborn layer of fat that still slid over my abdominals despite tens of thousands of sit-ups, the birthmark that looked like third nipple below the left. But my reflection, dressed in its tank top and shorts, was solid, lean, smooth muscle.

      I finished up my work out and headed out into the pounding morning heat of summer in Hollywood. It was nine o’clock in the morning, the sun hadn’t even risen high enough to shine past the tops of the buildings to the streets yet, but even the shade was a miserable mix of left over heat from the day before and the exhaust fumes that settle windless between the buildings.

      Sitting in the one beam of sunlight cutting through the surrounding buildings, the interior of my car was a sweat lodge and cranking up the A/C did nothing but force hot air against my face. The BMW M3 was the stand-in for the perfect car I planned to eventually own. I got it cheap and used, a little worse for wear, but I put dozens of hours and hundreds of dollars into that car to make it clean and flawless, but the air conditioner was still a little touchy. I knew that one day I'd be able to afford an M3 brand new off the lot and that would be my perfect car, but until then I was going to love my used beauty, cold air or not.

      Windows down, I drove across town to do something that I found a way to do every year on my birthday since I was eighteen. It was something I'd never told anyone about and some years I had to sneak away to do it, but that day it was easy. I actually had the day off and my trip to the gym had me covered for being away from home for a few hours. I didn't need to be where I was going for a long time, just a few minutes like every other year.

      I reached into my gym bag and felt around for the folded up piece of paper that I'd stashed there before I left the house. My fingers came across the age softened slip and pinched it tight, but I didn't remove it from the bag. I drove down Sunset Boulevard, through the tourist traffic that was just getting ramped up for the day, with one hand on the steering wheel and the other absently fiddling with the paper in my bag.

      The street I finally turned on to was residential, lined with immaculate gardens and lawns in front of mansions that had been recycled through ninety years of celebrities and moguls. That was the street that Lucille Ball had lived on. Nelson Eddie and both Gershwins had lived on that street. There was a young couple with a map to stars’ homes wandering up the sidewalk as I passed. Check the map, give a little gasp, snap a quick picture of the house that Jack Benny had lived in and move along. Check the map, give a little gasp, snap a quick picture of the house that Jimmy Stewart had lived in and move along.

      Tucked off between the glitzing, mansion flanked avenues were side streets with smaller houses. Houses with smaller floor plans, smaller price tags, and smaller histories. Among them was a squat two story craftsman style home with gables and a black front door set back behind two towering eucalyptus trees, and that was my destination.

  

     I don't want to go into details, but when I arrived in Hollywood as a seventeen year old runaway with no plans and precious little money I quickly learned that Hollywood proper was not the kind of place to live on the street. Not that there is a great place to live on the street, but it was dirty, violent, and downright scary and it didn't take me more than a week to migrate west to the quieter streets of Beverly Hills. Sometimes it can be surprising how easy it is to hide in a place where no one else thinks they can hide. Beverly Hills, with its security cameras and house alarms and two minute police response time was seen as much more trouble that it was worth to other street people, but I was able to hide in plain sight. I posed as a tourist and walked the streets during the day and was able to find hidden little places where the police would never find me to bed down at night. Eating was never a problem, no one at any of the ninety nine cent stores that I stole from ever seemed to notice, and if anyone did they didn’t give a shit

      Doing my daily time killing walk I passed a family getting out of their car on the other side of the street. In the two weeks that I had been bumming around Beverly Hills I had not once seen a family. I had seen sharply dressed men coming and going in beautiful luxury cars, nipped and tucked women in sport utility vehicles that would never be used for anything sporty or utilitarian, and privileged kids cruising by in sports cars with over powered sub-woofers, but never a family.

      I pretended to examine the star map that I had stolen the day before to make my tourist front more convincing, but I was really watching the family across the street. Families were a novelty to me, happy ones doubly so, and that one looked happy. The man and woman, father and mother, were still youthful, maybe in their mid-thirties, and the two little girls could have been twins they looked so close in age. The girls jumped out of the car, one chasing the other around the trunk of a eucalyptus tree before the father ran over and scooped the girl being chased, laughing, up into his arms. The girl that had been doing the chasing wrapped herself around her father's leg, sitting on his foot and weighting his leg down like a giggling ball and chain. His pretty wife kissed his cheek and took the squirming girl from his arms. With the other girl still hugging his leg, the father hobbled up the steps of the front porch, unlocked the black front door, and they all went in and out of sight.

      I walked to the corner and sat on the curb. I knew that I had missed out on a normal childhood, whatever that was, but that quick scene drove home how much I'd missed out on by not having a family. Sitting there on the curb I took a pen from my backpack and began writing on the back of my star map.

 

      I parked across the street from the house with the black front door and got out, still holding the piece of paper from my gym bag. Standing in the same spot that I had been when I saw that happy family almost ten years before, I began unfolding the star map that I'd been pinching between my fingers. It had been folded and refolded so many times over the years that it was weak at the creases, the little yellow stars that indicated celebrity addresses faded to an almost white.

      I flipped the map over and read, for the who-knows-how-many-th time, what I'd written on the back while sitting on the curb;

        The Perfect Life

          I want the perfect wife and kids. I want to live in the perfect house and drive the perfect car. I want to have the perfect job. I want perfect friends and to have perfect fun.

      And written in a different color ink below that;

           And I want the perfect body.

      Two weeks after I wrote that, after I saw the happy family go into their happy home with the black front door, I had a job. A month later I had a room in a cheap motel. That was followed by enrollment in a GED program, and that by a flea bag apartment, that by junior college. Every year I made it back to that perfect house, my life was a little better than the year before. Every year I wanted to knock on the front door and introduce myself to the happy family, tell them who I was, where I had come from, what my quick glimpse into their life had meant to me and show them how far I'd come. I wanted to show them my car, a picture of my fiance, tell them about getting through school and landing a job with a law firm and working toward the Bar exam. I wanted to say to them, "This is because of you! You drove me to a better life, toward my perfect life, and you didn't even know it."

      While contemplating whether or not that was going to be the year that I actually knocked, a sudden and mysterious sense of misgiving cropped up in the back of my mind. I folded up my star map and walked across the street, unsure of what to make of that new worry. I crossed the neat lawn between the eucalyptus trees and slowly mounted the steps of the happy home's front porch and steeled my nerve to knock on the door.

      I raised my hand to knock and the source of my new doubt resolved itself. Every year when I thought about knocking on that door and meeting that family I had something new that I'd be able to tell them about. That day was the first time that I had nothing to tell them about that I wouldn't have been able to tell them about the previous year. There had been no huge bounds in my life that year, and realizing that momentarily scared the hell out of me. I dropped my hand, jumped down the steps and jogged back to the safety of my car.

      My perfect car. My almost perfect car. It was an accomplishment, but with room to improve. I knew that I had been improving, but the fear that maybe I had plateaued, that the entirety of the past year had been personal stagnation began to send vines through my brain and I couldn't put them down.

      I had to get home. Turning the corner I saw the young sight-seer couple again and briefly wondered if they were homeless and hiding out in Beverly Hills.

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.