The Cross Road Blues

Stumbling, falling, almost hitting the ground, guitar case held tight. If the world was watching, the world would call him him drunk.

But the world wasn't watching and Bob wasn't drunk. Too late at night – so late it was almost day and the horizon ready to crack the dawn like an egg against the edge of a frying pan. Cocklebur and horsenettle choked the edge of the dusty, dirt road heading out towards the old Dockery House. Estella was back screaming and clawing and throwing things at the wall still, no doubt – angry woman, but now the one woman who wouldn't take him back. Bob left in a hurry, bumping into his friend Willie Brown at the corner and telling him, "If I ever end up dead, you're the one who needs to know." He could hear Willie laughing at him even two blocks past.

Deep into the night and down the country road, Bob thought: How many different ways can I get hurt? Then he brushed the devil-thought off his shoulder and spit through his fingers. But the possibility still swirled.

How long before the ghosts came up on over the ridge in a pickup truck, a stretch of rope behind the seat and pale eyes looking through the windshield for a strong branch to bear the strange fruit? Every sound was a possible engine, rubber tires on a gravel road, carrying either a safe ride to a warm house, or ghosts. The crackle of dried weeds: morning glory, trumpetcreeper. The brush of wind clattering branches. The heart beating harder, faster; the feel of the pulse behind his eyeballs.

It was at the crossroads that Bob fell down on his knees. Rumor at the last juke house he'd played was some poor fool got run down like a rabbit by a couple of big rednecks and strung up in a poplar tree.

Long fingers squeezing each other, head bowed. "Save poor Bob," he muttered. "If you please, Lord, save poor Bob." The rush of blood and panic made the whispered prayer feel like a cry through the fissures of his neck bones, lungs, liver, spleen.

The trust to stand and wait, to try and flag a ride out of this dark spot, was a gutsy thing for poor Bob. And when the first flume of gravelroad dust kicked up at the edge of the land, he held his ground, put his thumb out, and waited.

The first car appeared as dawn broke. It was an old Pierce-Arrow with two dumb-looking white men in it; they blazed by without even glancing at him. So did the family in the Terraplane that passed some twenty minutes later. And the Essex a half-hour after that. It was like nobody saw him. Didn't take long before Bob hefted his Gibson and got a wiggle on.

Next car that smoked by him, he shouted after: "Tell Willie Brown I'm down to the crossroads!" Then he barked a laugh that sounded almost like a sob, startling a bobolink from the ditch into the morning air. Bob crossed into the neighboring field.

As he settled into the shade of a magnolia, drawing the weary L-1 Gibson into his lap, Bob was already humming. No woman up ahead, Estella left behind beating her walls, no ride, almost like he was invisible, and no doubt his friend Willie Brown all poised on his barstool and ready to laugh.

He taught it to me, by the way, the song he wrote on the edge of that gravel road, Bob did – the last time he passed this way through Mount Revere.