Everyone round Hilton done heard tell of Bojack Rivers. Just like they’ve heard tell of that sharp buzz cut he’s always flauntin and those gold teeth and fancy rings he likes to wear on his pinkies. He’s the best bluesman in the Pine Belt, you ask me. Folks say he can master any composition you place in front of him or any record he cares to learn by ear. And at gigs, you best believe he’s totin that ebony Les Paul he calls “Bonita,” going on a long solo, even turning his back to the crowd like he’s Miles. Thing is, though, he’s got a history of falling headfirst into dogshit off the bandstand and I’ve been the one to clean it off of him, whether it’s been lending him a couple hundred cause he had a bad night with the dice. Or pulling him out of one his ole ladies’ houses when they were getting evil with each other. Or even digging his pickup truck out of a ditch on account of the gin he was drinking. Don’t get me wrong: I love him like we came out of the same womb but gah lee. Now I ain’t got no room to judge—Lord knows it—and there’s no denying that Bojack’s managed to get himself and his discipline together in these past four months, but I just caught word that he ain’t show for the lil walk through his bandleader, Miss Josie, wanted to have before the gig they got today. She’s told me in the past that he can be loose when it comes to practicing sometimes, but it ain’t never been like him to be as good as a ghost an hour and twenty before a show.

So now I’m sliding on these blue jeans I pulled from the dirty clothes hamper. My fiancée, Cheyenne, hands me my green Delta State cap and I jam it on hard, hard. Head out the bedroom door.

She asks, “How long you think it’s gone take to find em, E.J.?” 

I keep going down the hallway, knocking over one of them lil toy trucks, not saying a thing. I can’t find an answer that’s worth a damn. She yanks me back so hard her rollers nearly fall from her head. She sure did grow up with some brothers. 

I turn round to her and suck my teeth. Say, “Ain’t no tellin, and you know that.”

Cheyenne lets out an ole hiss. She hikes our boy Jeremiah higher up on her hip; he’s got a half-eaten cheese puff in his lil hand. I liked to cried when he was born.

I look out through the screen door at D-Lo, Bojack’s bandmate, the one Miss Josie sent to come get me. I refer to him as “the Ohioan” when he ain’t round. He’s sitting in his ‘13 Buick with a black pork pie hat on his head and a slim ole suit to match. He comes over to the house with Bojack sometimes to play Crazy 8s and watch some ball games. One time, I said he looked like a knockoff Lester Young, and he ain’t like that.

He honks the horn all kinds of crazy, yelling, “Getting cussed to death by Miss Josie ain’t what I scribbled out on my agenda for the day.”

I yell back, “It ain’t what I had on mine either.”

And it’s true. I planned on using my off day from the lumber yard to put some nice clothes on with my family and hear Bojack and the rest of Miss Josie’s five piece band play. It’s the first live show at The Bluebird in decades. Supposed to be a fancy get-together. Even folks in the Hilton Courier are writing bout it. I know the weight of this here situation—it’s clear as day—so I don’t know why D-Lo calls himself raising his voice as if I won’t wring his neck.

I kiss on Cheyenne’s cheek and head on out the screen door, finishing off the last of the Corona I had set down on the porch railing.

She says to me, “You and these Bojack blues…”

Which is what she always tells me in times like this. It ain’t no different from when I ran out to Casey’s that one evening cause I heard Bojack and another fella got into it over a dice game and pistols were said to be involved. Or like that afternoon Bojack’s ex girlfriend, Liv, left him high and dry on Highway 98 cause he was eyeing some lady at Golden Corral. Or when Bojack called me from a New Orleans jail cause he slapped a club owner for trying to short his pay.

*

Sometimes it just comes down to the principle of things. You show for me, I’m liable to show even harder for you. Just how my heart works. How I was raised. Bojack said he was brought up that same way and he sure nough done backed it up. 

See, bout four years ago, I came up on my daddy dead as a doorknob in his brown leather rocking chair. This was after I had worked a shift washing dishes at Louisiana Hot Spot. He had his hand in a can of those cashews he loved munching on. His mouth was as wide as an O, just like his eyes. Jesus. I reached down and kissed his lips, which were still warm, and called the people to come get him. I was at the bottom for weeks. Barely ate a thing. Didn’t shave or bathe or clean the house. Never left the couch less it was to fetch myself a beer. Stayed there so long I lost my job at the restaurant. Then Bojack came by after he got back in town—this was when he had that offshore job and that lil fro—to see bout me. He sat down next to me on the couch, looking bone tired. First thing he asked was, “Did ya eat?” And I pulled my head from underneath the covers, said, “Naw.” He got up and went through the refrigerator, saying, “Ain’t got a stick of butter in here.” So he went to Walmart, came back with a whole bunch of groceries, put them up in the cabinets too. He made me a pork chop sandwich fresh outta the grease and I ate just a lil half of it. He cleaned up the mess that had been building up since the funeral: the old Papa John’s boxes on the table, all the beer cans crowding round the couch, packs of cigarettes I had smoked through, the pile of dirty clothes sitting up on one of the other couches. Being that I was already half drunk by the time he came by and got even more drunk when he was out getting groceries, I was heaving vomit up out of my throat and right onto the carpet he had just vacuumed. He pulled me from the couch and took me to the bathroom, sat me on the toilet, and wiped my face clean with a rag. Then another round of vomit came shooting outta me and he held my head like it was a jewel while I hovered over the toilet bowl and cursed all of creation. After that, he sat me back on the couch, said he was going out to his truck, came back with his acoustic guitar and said he’d play me any song I wanted to hear. It went from “Spanish Joint” by D’Angelo to “Kiss of Life” by Sade all the way down to “Death Letter” by Son House.

You need folks like that. Folks that’ll drag you up out of that cold and nasty bottom, even out of sticky situations you don’t have no business being in. Hell, Bojack done did that too.      

Bout two years ago, me and Bojack were sitting on the trunk of my Taurus. We were on our break from that wretched engine plant we had got hired at. The pole light in the parking lot covered us like a bedsheet. There were other workers sitting out on the hoods of their cars or on the inside of em, passing weed on the low or stuffing their faces with food. Our hands were stained with oil and cramped up like we had rigamortis or something. Seemed like I couldn’t shake the sound of those conveyor systems from my ears either. Bojack was saying how bad he wanted to get out of the durn place with his guitar and I was going on bout saving enough bread to move up out of my Ma’s guest room. I had been munching on a bag of sweet heat chips when a big ole man with a thick ole beard walked up to us with a gal named Ginny on his arm. She worked cross from me at Module 5, where my main job was to screw spark plugs in and drill em while she pumped oil into the engine. She had a whole bunch of freckles on her face and hair the color of amber; she was looking gold underneath the pole light. She knew how to hold a conversation over those loud ass conveyor systems, so we had been talking bout who our favorite character on The Wire was and how she liked Sinead O’Connor and what high schools we went to. Nothing more than that. Not one time did she say she had a man and not one time did she say it was this broad shouldered joker who drove forklifts at the plant. He had on an Astros t-shirt that was too big for em, an elbow compression sleeve, and dirty work jeans. His mug was mean, mean. “Your eyes is meant for your head,” he said. “Not this one here.” I sucked my teeth harder than hard and the man came up closer to me, breathing all in my face. Ginny was standing there like she ain’t know me from a can of paint. All that time Bojack was quiet, going in his pocket for that switch blade his daddy got him way, way back. All of a sudden Ginny started yanking on the man, telling him to come on but the man ain’t see the blade or the smile coming cross Bojack’s lips. He was too busy staring me off in the eyes. A crowd started forming. “I done spent my whole life dodgin prison,” Bojack said. “And I’d hate to be headin there tonight. But if that’s what the Lord see fit for my life, well…” “You best get gone,” the man said, not even seeing the blade till Bojack flipped it open, smiling harder. Long story short, that man ended up on the ground that night, not due to any deep cuts all over his skin but due to that haymaker Bojack laid on em, making everybody round hoot and holler. 

We got fired behind that mess but again sometimes it just comes down to the principle of things.

    *

Now me and D-Lo are headin down Taylorsville Road. The smell of Mr. Daniel’s spareribs simmering on the grill runs right up my nose as we pass his yard. The sun’s still beaming up there, all round and orangeish, and it won’t be too long fore it’s settin. D-Lo’s got his eyes straight ahead, passin this pack of teenage boys on four-wheelers, poppin wheelies better than I ever could back in the day.

He says, “You ask me, Miss Josie shoulda been dropped his ass. He thinks that lil talent he’s gotten blessed with can keep him doing anything he wants, how he wants. When he wants.”

D-Lo looks at me, like he’s wanting confirmation or something. He gets none. Not Jack. Cause what if Bojack’s just in the thick of some trouble and here he is tootin up his nose?

He keeps on, saying, “He was just doing good these past couple of months though. He brought donuts to practice. Glazed. Jelly. Frosted. Ain’t that some shit? I assumed we really were looking at a changed man then. Guess that ain’t so now.”

I don’t say a word, just keep my eyes fixed on what’s lying on the other side of this here window: these ole bare fields that used to be scattered with Mr. Holman’s cattle, First Baptist Church, the graveyard MoMo Connie was buried in when I was nothing but a lil boy. It’s better for me to hold my eyes to what’s out there. If I turn to D-Lo, I might curse him. Might call him everything but a child of God for speaking on Bojack this way. Yeah, he’s got a point: I can hear some of the truth in the fella’s words, hear it loud as I don’t know what, but the right to let it go from his lips is reserved far away from him. Some folk might call it unfair, might say it ain’t a bit of right, but that’s just how it oughta be. In my eyes, anyway.

Cause, see, me and Bojack done only known this pork-pie-wearing fella for a few months anyway, ever since Bojack brought him round to the house, saying they were now practicing as a part of Josie Collins’ five piece band. He’s from Cleveland, grew up there in all that snow, so, quite naturally, he hadn’t been round much. Hadn’t been round when me and Bojack were looking for a slice of anything to fall into on Rankin Road with our Mongooses: Mr. Jonah’s garden full of cantaloupe, the bras of Tabitha Ingram and Shayla Pittman, those inflatable pools that used to feel as wide as Lake Pontchartrain in Miss Mo’s backyard. D-Lo hadn’t been there when we were sitting out in Lake Hollis with our daddies and our rods and those cans of Budweiser we wished we could chug. When we were pressing our young knees gainst those piles of Jasmine rice on Bojack’s mama’s kitchen floor for causing too much ruckus in her house. 

Naw, D-Lo hadn’t been round for that.

So I turn to him with my lip curled just enough to let him know he oughta tread lightly. He sucks his teeth and puts his eyes back on the road.

“Can you tell me where we’re going?” he asks. “Miss Josie’s texting and calling.”

D-Lo’s eyes oughta belong to a sad puppy’s, the way they’re fixin to well up as he’s waiting.

I say, “Bojack’s got him a friend round these parts. Figure they might know where he’s at.”

“Who?”

“Would tell ya if I knew myself.”

D-Lo’s eyes are facing forward again. His lips are mumbling something. I know he’s thinking I’m lying through my teeth, just tryna give him a hard time, but I ain’t. Some things just take a lil bit too much time to get into.

Quiet as it’s kept, I had heard bits of a “somebody” on Taylorsville Road from Bojack bout four months ago. A somebody who earned a fine ole Master’s degree in English Literature from Fisk University, had a painting of Nina Simone hanging on their living room wall, and encouraged Bojack to read more and drink burdock tea. Other than what they lived in (and where) and that they were new to Hilton, Bojack didn’t say much else bout em, tell you the truth. But I realized after bout two months that that “somebody” musta been why Bojack had gotten himself together in recent months. Coming to practice on time all the time. Leaving the gambling at Casey’s lone. Getting back into the Word a lil bit. Even giving guitar lessons to a couple of kids round town. But Bojack never said for sure when I pressed him bout it, asking who the new gal was.

“I’m keeping it real low,” Bojack had said one of those nights he’d come over to the house. “Cause if I brag on it now, it’ll been done snatched itself way come tomorrow mornin.”

And I picked up what Bojack was putting down, so I left it lone. Trying to yank anything from that fella’s throat only pushed it further down anyway. 

Now I’m wishing I woulda prodded more. Maybe then I’d have a number to call or a Facebook profile to message for Bojack’s whereabouts. 

But at least we’re coming up on this tamale-colored trailer now. It stands at the end of a dirt lane with red brick skirting at the bottom. Whoever did work on it musta been paid real nice for it. Attached to the trailer is a carport with a Nissan Maxima underneath and Bojack’s silver ‘75 Monte Carlo ain’t nowhere near it. Nobody’s sitting on the concrete steps leading to the screen door. Nobody’s standing in the window where I figure the kitchen is either. 

I say, “Turn right here.” 

When we reach the trailer, I get out with my eyes on the front door, hoping some kind of face will show. By the time I reach the top step and knock a few times, I realize nobody’ll be welcoming me. Not a soul. I turn round to look at D-Lo at the bottom step, ready for him to tear me a new asshole for wasting time, but he’s got his eyes scrunched and one finger in the air, walking to the side of the trailer like he’s some detective.

“The hell you going?” I call to him. “Your skull must be feenin for a bullet. Walkin behind somebody’s house like it’s yourn.”

“Ain’t know you were born half deaf,” D-Lo says. He doesn’t even slow his stride.

“What you hear?”

But D-Lo’s gone. 

I wait to hear a couple of bullets or maybe a few curses to ring out. Don’t hear any. So I move to the side of the trailer. Peek round the corner. And D-Lo’s approaching a woman in a white robe. She’s sitting on the steps of the back porch with her eyes on the yard, which is damn near bare with only a picnic table in the middle of it.

“Woulda put two hot ones in y’all if I had my pistol,” she says. 

She doesn’t turn, only rubs her fingers down one of her two strand twists. Her voice is low but loud enough for me to place her thick lilt. A Tennessee woman, she must be. Memphis. 

I say, “Told this one here that. But he’s a city boy. Don’t know nothin bout how to be round these parts.”

D-Lo turns round, tryna hold some evil in his face, but it does no good. I chuckle at him.

“We searching round for Bojack, love,” I say. “I’m sho you know but he’s got a show in an hour, and we can’t seem to find him nowhere.”

“And it must be a felony for him to pick up his phone,” D-Lo says.

The woman turns her head just a bit. “He told me bout you. Showed me your Facebook and all.”

“What he say?” D-Lo asks.

“Not you,” she says.

I step closer. “What’s your name?”

“Dawn,” she says, more like a whisper, really.

I reach for her hand, but she jerks back real quick. 

“Where he at, love?” 

 She stands up and goes towards the back door. She stops bout halfway through.

“He,” she says.

“He what?” 

“And I… Then he…”

“Then he what?” 

Dawn sucks her teeth. “He ran outta here saying he was going to Marion Creek,” she says. “Needed to cool his head.”

“And you just let him go on his merry lil way?” D-Lo asks.

She looks at the both of us like we’re the scum of the earth. Like we ain’t worth two wooden nickels. “He had all that evil sitting up in his eyes when I tried to grab hold of em,” she says. “Told me to leave him be.”

D-Lo sucks his teeth and holds his phone to show Miss Josie calling. I shake my head.

“He… Then I… And then we,” she says, headin to the back door. “Just get the fuck way from my house.”

We don’t move though. 

“Don’t cost a dime for me to call the Law, do it?”

D-Lo takes off for his car. I hold still with my eyes on the door as Dawn slams it shut, locking it just as fast as she opened it.

“Bring your  ass,” D-Lo says. “Point me to the creek.”

*

When we get back on the road, D-Lo says, “Bo must’ve did her dirt.”

I don’t say nothing but he might be right. Much as I hate to let it fester up inside and boil like my MoMo’s grits, Bojack’s probably done started back going over to Casey’s to mess with those dice too much and Dawn probably done got onto him bout all the risks—losing his life or his money or, hell, both—and he just couldn’t stand to hear it. Maybe Bojack had moaned another woman’s name when they were making love like they sing bout in those blues songs. Or maybe he just cut her loose cause he couldn’t stand the commitment. Didn’t know what to do with a woman that good. With two degrees and allat.

I say, “Ain’t no tellin.”

But I reckon it must’ve been bad for Bojack to be at Marion Creek to cool his head. We both hadn’t been that way in a while, but it’s a sack of memories resting there: I can see them now. The big ole cushion of sand we lay on while we chomped down those burnt patties and chicken wings my daddy had grilled. That old acoustic guitar Bojack used to mess round with, playing the songs of Muddy Waters and Jimi Hendrix like a lil savant at nothing but sixteen. That Budweiser bottle I cracked on Wild Bill’s head that one night. That moccasin Bojack killed with his daddy’s walking stick and held up with the kind of pride that carried itself over for weeks. That tussle we had over Pauletta Harris. Those tears we’d cried when we got drunker than skunks off that Taaka Vodka and let out what crowded our insides like sardines in a can: me coming up on my dead daddy in that chair, Bojack losing that music scholarship from Alcorn State, me learning Cheyenne was pregnant with Jeremiah and keeping him, Bojack showing the ring he bought from Kay Jewelers for his first wife.

Now look at me, gah lee. Speedin down this durn road, tryna beat the sun.

*

His silver Monte Carlo is parked on side of the road with the door wide open. Willie Dixon’s crooning “Nervous” on the radio and the engine’s growling underneath the hood. When I lean further into the car, I can smell all the woody sage with one durn sniff. On the passenger seat is Bojack’s billfold and his phone, dead, of course. Bonita sits up on the backseat, her body all worn down, her color faded at her edges; there’s even what seems like a swirling scar curving round one of her pickup switches. I would search round for more, but  D-Lo’s in the passenger’s window waving for me. 

“Not going down there by myself,” he says.

    I close the door and go towards the path leading down to the creek, which is sitting pretty at the bottom of a lil hill I done climbed and slid down since a boy. I wish I could savor what’s round us—the sound of the wind whipping up a quiet song, the leaves on the silver maples whirling about—but Bojack’s sitting at the mouth of this creek, where this  bed of sand is. His black dress pants are pulled up to his knees, his feet are in the water. His mouth is latched onto a bottle of Taaka Vodka, and his body is swaying long to Willie, sending lil ripples through the water. I’m at the bottom of the hill now, passing Bojack’s suit jacket and dress shoes, which are buried in the sand. A shame. All that good money gone to waste. 

“Boy, I tell ya,” Bojack says. He grins and shows his teeth. He’s got those slugs in today. And just one pinky ring on.

“Man, get up outta that damn water,” I say, leaning down towards him. “You drunk as all get out.”

“Ain’t drunk,” he says. “Just cracked this bottle open, swear fore God.” He hums a lil something sweet and low. 

I look back at D-Lo, who’s standing with his arms folded and his head shaking. I kinda believe Bojack though. He’s not reeking of liquor, just sweat from sitting up in this sun.

“Y’all a be somewhere off in the deep, you knew what was twirlin up in here,” Bojack says. He points a finger to his temple.

“Oh, we got an idea,” D-Lo says.

“What?” Bojack asks.

I tug him a lil bit from the water with his dress shirt, and he rises. Tug him some more towards the hill.

“You muhfuckas don’t know the half,” Bojack says.

“We gotta get you changed,” D-Lo says.

“Don’t you know where you gotta be?” I ask. 

Bojack breaks way and stops the three of us. “Know exactly where I oughta be,” he says, plopping back down on the sand. “Shoulda knew somethin won’t right soon’s I woke up.”

I reach down to pull Bojack by the shirt one more gin. We might be tusslin here in a minute. “Come on,” I say.

But Bojack goes on: “I wake up in her bed, she gets to sayin how she’s sick. I look at her. Her hair’s all thick and nice cause she just got it retwisted. She’s lookin good in that lavender dress too. I’m thinkin, ‘Don’t look sick to me one bit. Don’t sound like it either.’ But I just nod cause that’s my lady—or was, or is, or…”

D-Lo winces, steps a lil closer with his face scrunched up. I loosen my grip. Bojack sips from the bottle and swallows the liquor down like it’s ammonia swirling round in there. He keeps his head towards the creek, even though his eyes are someplace else. Far off.

Bojack goes on, “And I don’t wanna cause no fuss with her even though I’m .38 hot cause this evenin’s sposed to be the night I show up with her. Then I get to thinkin to myself, ‘Well, Bo, that’s real selfish for you to be thinkin like that.’ Start feelin guilty then.” 

“I don’t blame you,” I say. “Lord knows I don’t… But Bo.”

I show him D-Lo’s phone, which has Miss Josie calling it.

Bojack waves the phone away. “Damn The Bluebird right now!”

I hand the phone back, sighing, knowing we ain’t gone beat that sun, which is heading down past the horizon where those trees are standing at the end of the creek, looking all pinkish and perfect.

Bojack keeps at it, “So I get on up, kiss her on her forehead, and play with her lips with my finger. She’s got this mole on the right side of her lip that made me quiver when I first saw her round town. Got a brain like Berkeley too; I’m talkin stacks of books in her room soon’s you walk in. Jayne Cortez. Gloria Naylor. Nikki Giovanni. Same thing with her records: Bessie Smith, Memphis Slim, The Vilionaires. Her taste’s better than mine, hell.” Bojack chuckles; so do I, just a lil bit. “Anyway, I put my clothes on and head down to my house. Start gettin ready for The Bluebird. Then it hit me like a 7.62: I ain’t even ask her what I could do for her. Ain’t even ask her if she wanted me to run to the store to get some Tussin, at least. Hell, ain’t even ask her what kinda sick she was. I look round in my medicine cabinet in the bathroom and drawers: ain’t got a thing in there. Onliest thing I got is a can of Campbell’s Soup sittin on the kitchen counter. I snatch it, snatch Bonita too. I jump back in the car, feelin nothin less than a fool. Speed back down the road like I’m fuckin Earnhardt or somebody. I don’t know. I hop out. Get past the screen door, put my key in the latch. I’m bein all quiet cause I figure she sleepin. Naw. She ain’t sleepin. Ain’t sleepin one bit. She moanin. And her moanin’s mixed with some other fella’s moanin. I’m thinkin I done lost my last screw.”

I say, “Unh unh unh.”

D-Lo gets even closer now, still saying nothing. He’s got his phone in his pocket now. 

Bojack keeps his head forward and goes on, “I go out and get my blade from the glove compartment.” He takes the blade from his pocket and stares down at it, runs his fingers over its edges like he’s Rambo. “I go back in the house with this one here, not givin a damn if I’m quiet or not. Then the moanin stops. I haul ass down the hallway to her room. Get to the door, door’s locked. She’s tellin him get gone through the window. So I run back to the front door and guess who I see runnin through the front yard in his durn briefs?”

“Who?” I ask.

Bojack sips from the bottle again. “That pretty somebitch Coach Billups.”

“The lanky dude? High yella? Used to play at Grambling?”

“Damn right.”

I sit down in the sand beside Bojack and see all the hurt sitting in his eyes, waiting to drain itself. “Gah damn, boy,” I say and reach over for the bottle. “Ain’t figure it was this bad.” I sip and grimace. It’s been a while since I done had some liquor.

“And I get to thinkin he musta been sweet talkin her in them hallways up at the schoolhouse cause you know she teaches them sophomores.”

I hand the bottle back. “Naw, I ain’t know that. You ain’t said more than two things bout her to me since you met her.”

“Yeah, well. I told you why. Ain’t like I was hidin her… Took her to Hattiesburg every Sunday and we got all dressed up, went out to eat at Ed’s Diner, Crescent City Grill. All the nice spots over there. Took her to New Orleans too. Congo Square. Ate poutine, listened to some good music. Showed her where I used to live in Algiers. Allat.”

“So what you do next?” D-Lo asks. He sits down but only for a quick while. He stands up again and wipes away the sand from his pants.

Bojack goes on, “Nothin. Couldn’t do nothin, hell. She jumps on my back fore I can even get up outta the house. I’m talkin bout pulls me down so quick, the blade falls up outta my hand. Woulda thought it was Ray Lewis put me to the ground, cept she ain’t got no shoulder pads on or no raven up on her helmet. She’s buttass naked.” The three of us let out an unsure laugh then a looser one that goes and goes and goes. Then a hush comes. It’s nothing left but the quiet tween us and Willie Dixon’s voice, which stretches as long as the Pearl River. “I’m layin there and layin there and she’s cryin and cryin and I’m yellin for her to get offa me and she yellin, sayin she ain’t doin nothin, sayin she gone stay put and I’m a stay put and I’m a listen to her tell me how got dang sorry she is. Then she gets to sayin, ‘Oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby.’ But I throw her offa me and get the blade but the muhfucka Billups, he’s gone outta the yard by the time I get up. I get to thinkin it’s awright cause I know where he stays. I pass his house sometimes—he stays right down the road from her, hell—and I be seein him out there playin with his daughter and son. Jumpin on the trampoline and allat. So I take one step out the door and she pulls me in one more gin and I just start to look at her and look at her and, hell, I get stuck just like that: one foot out the door. Ain’t sayin a word to her now. Just lookin. Then I turn round cause I feel my eyes burnin. Start lookin at that sun: it’s brighter than bright outside but feel like it’s goin down in my gut. She turns me back round and tells it to me just like this, she says, ‘I laid with him. Ain’t no excuse. Don’t want one. Ain’t askin for one.’ She says, ‘I had a taste for him and it hurt so good, hurt so bad to fill it. But it wont nothin but matters of the flesh.’ Then she looks at me deep off in the eye and she says, ‘Me and you, matters of Spirit.’”

“Damn,” D-Lo says.

“Ain’t never had no woman put it to me like that,” I say.

“And then she holds me,” Bojack says. “Holds me tight, like I ain’t got no blade off in my hand, like we ain’t standin in the middle of the front door for anybody to walk on by and see us. I get to thinkin back on her and me. How she’d have me up all night readin those books she assigned me like she was the professor and me the student. How she’d let me cook that shrimp creole for her cause she couldn’t never get it right herself. How’d she helped me get my breathin right, like we were monks somewhere over in Asia. How I just sat and listened to her tell me bout those kids at the schoolhouse while I rubbed her feet. How there’d be times when we’d just be laid up or sittin on the back porch or ridin in the car or sittin at Lake Hollis and not a word, a look, a gesture was needed tween us… So she’s grippin me and grippin me and I’m grippin her and grippin her then all of a sudden I turn her loose. Cause I remember. Member like hell. I try to leave again and she asks me where the hell I’m goin. I give her bout the meanest look I can muster. Tell her I’m goin to the creek and she bet not try to make her way there. So now I’m here.”

“Boy, I tell ya,” I say.

Except for Willie Dixon’s voice still reaching over to us, there’s another quiet at the creek that nobody is fool enough to try and break. Bojack puts the blade back into his pocket and takes another swig of Taaka Vodka, which is only halfway done. He stands to his feet and aims the bottle towards the woods, but it only reaches the middle of the creek, where it splashes and floats when it pops back up. I walk over to him, drop my head on his shoulder, and wrap an arm round his waist to hold us both up. He rubs his hand over the top of my ball cap and lets it sit there. 

I must be bout the stupidest fella in all of the county, doubting him how I was.  A doggon shame is what it is. Feels like I ain’t even worthy of his touch. But even still. We stand quiet, breathing what seems to be the same locked breath.

We don’t turn each other loose till D-Lo stands beside us.

“Didn’t know you were sitting on all that,” D-Lo says. “Had I know that, I…” He looks down at his shoes, frowning. “What to tell Miss Josie?” 

Bojack turns to D-Lo and burps a lil bit. “Tell her we’ll be on the way, hell.”

You’d think he’d be wanting to head home and listen to some more Willie Dixon, but he’s got himself an obligation and that there just comes down to the principle of things.                                     

*

While I’m driving the Monte Carlo, bout halfway to The Bluebird, I say to Bojack, “Worried bout you, boy.”

I look over at him in the passenger seat. His eyes are closed and his head’s leaning back on the seat. 

“I’m a play,” Bojack says. “Know them songs better than anybody in that band.”

“Ain’t talkin bout no music. Talkin bout you.”

Bojack’s quiet now.

“Worried bout you goin back to that old Bo. And you know bout what Bo I’m talkin.”

He doesn’t budge.

I say, “Seem like Dawn got your thick head right, kept you way from that old Bo. Better than I could.”

Bojack opens up his eyes, looks at me hard, hard. 

 “Went and saw her today cause we were huntin you. She told us where you was at. How else you think we found you?”

Bojack burps. “Hell, I don’t know. All I know is this: that gal got me right. Lawd hammercy.”

“You your own durn jigsaw to solve though.” 

Bojack’s quiet again. He looks out of the window with stale eyes, nodding a lil bit.

“Y’all through?”

Bojack sucks his teeth. “Would be a doggon fool if I said I was sho.”

And there ain’t no arguin with that.

*

I’m feeling shame for not having even changed out of my jeans, sandals, and wifebeater when we get to The Bluebird. The fancy people with their ole fancy dresses and fancy hats don’t make my shame any lighter, just like the fancy red drapes and white table cloths. Ain’t never seen this place like this. But at least Bojack has cleaned himself up and got rid of that dust on his suit and dried his feet off. Least he’s walking through the crowds of folks to the side of the bandstand. At long last. 

I see Cheyenne leaving a red booth with our boy and throw a hand up. They come to me at the front door. I got a taste for the catfish frying over in the kitchen and surely would like a piece after all this rippin and runnin.

“Found him at the creek blastin Willie Dixon,” I say. “Damn near had a full suit on.”

“I’ll be damned,” Cheyenne says.

“You ain’t heard the half,” I say. “I mighta been out there too, I saw what he saw.”

“What?”

“Tell you later.”

“Well,” Cheyenne says. She points to a wall beside the bandstand, where Miss Josie sits in a row of chairs with the rest of her band. “She been lookin stressed since I walked through the door.”

Miss Josie’s in a black tinsley dress with a gold cross pendant on her neck. Her eyes are locked on Bojack like an eagle set dead on its prey. She wastes no time in whispering something I just know is cutting into his ears. The ole gray haired bassist, Benny Coleman, steps closer. D-Lo and the drummer, his name’s Travis Kennedy, do the same. But Miss Josie holds one hand up and pauses all of em. I motion to go to the side of the bandstand too, but Cheyenne puts a hand on my gut.

“Unh, unh,” she says. 

And so I stand still, just picturing Miss Josie saying this’ll be the last show he’ll be playing with em. A lost gig and a maybe-lost woman. All in one evening.

When the band gets up on stage, Bojack goes to his spot a couple of steps in front of the upright bass and plops down in the wooden seat set aside for him. D-Lo adjusts the mic, making sure its height is to his liking. Miss Josie sits at her piano and messes round with the keys. The rest of the band get into position with their instruments. The crowd done goes quiet now. Bojack’s planning something as he plugs Bonita into the amp and tunes her: I see it in his durn eyes, see it in the sad grin coming cross his face as he stares down at her strings. Soon enough, the first notes to Jimi’s “Red House” try making their way out, but they’re hushed, timid, really. Bojack tightens his grip on Bonita and secures her on his lap. His fingers move like a group of clever copperheads sure of their way; his foot drums as their heart. Benny, D-Lo, and Miss Josie turn to him, but he’s not looking towards em; his eyes are closed as he slides up and down Bonita’s neck, making her squeal and squall while she makes him sway harder than he would in any pew on any Sunday morning. All of it seems like a private conversation finally made public. A conversation crumpling Bojack’s face, which is holding so much ecstasy, so much hurt up in it, that I can’t even tell which one I see the most of. But I know this much: whatever it is sitting on Bojack’s face is close enough to taste deep off in his mouth. Hell, I can taste it too and, from looking round, so can the crowd. A man sitting right in front of the bandstand grunts at the sound of Bonita’s growl. A woman back at the bar surrenders a hand and waves it real, real slow. Another man leaning on the back wall drums his foot with the same kinda gumption as Bojack’s, like they’re both beating something outta themselves and bent on beating it good. Even Cheyenne’s eyes are closed in concentration, cipherin every one of Bonita’s wails. When the other instruments chime in, I tug her closer to me and let the music take us over into Glory. Bojack raises his head to the ceiling, and I know he’s someplace else now, mining his day into a kind of gold.