If I Don't Go Crazy

If I Don't Go Crazy

David Kirby

              There's a sheriff's car parked near Emerald Mound, 

 and the deputy is looking down at his lap and smiling, 

       which means he's probably doing what everyone else is doing 

 these days, that is, texting, though I think he's knitting a quilt 

              out of the scalps（头皮，战利品） he's taken off travelers like me: 

              a killer has been working these country roads of late 

 with a blue flashing light, pulling people over and shooting 

       them for fun, like the men who lived in caves on the Natchez 

 Trace in the day and who killed travelers for money and then 

              because they found out how much they liked killing. 

              Historian Robert Coates says these men would have been 

 like others if they'd stayed back east, though once they entered 

       the wilderness, they opened their own hearts 

 to the dark heart of the continent, breathed in its perfumed 

              appeal, beheld the terrible flowering of their madness, 

              and revealed by their violence how different they were 

 from other men, and I like this, it makes sense, 

       but I wonder if those men might not have been okay if they'd just 

 had girlfriends. It's one big black and white movie 

              when your baby's not in the picture, that's for sure: 

              promoter Dick Waterman wakes one morning to the sound 

 of blues man Robert Pete Williams playing his guitar 

       and singing softly, and when Waterman says That's 

 beautiful, you should play that at your shows, Williams 

              says Oh, no, that's not music, I'm just talking to my Hattie 

              Mae and telling her I'll be home as soon as I can. 

 What are the blues? A good man feeling bad, say some, while others say 

       it's a man losing his woman or the other way around. 

 If I don't go crazy, says Son House, I'm going to lose my mind. 

              Damned straight: you're working twelve-hour days 

              at the Dockery or Stovall Plantation and can barely get up most 

 mornings and owe more than you earn, but you can play 

       and sing a little, and there's this gal（姑娘，加仑） who looks at you from time 

 to time, and her name is Louise McGhee, and you tell her 

              you're playing at the Honeydipper this Saturday and ask 

              if she'd like to come hear you, and she smiles and says yes, 

 yes, I would, and on the night of the show, you wait for the other 

       fellows to finish and you get up there and say How's everybody 

 doing tonight and you look out into the crowd, and sure 

              enough, there's Louise, your pearl beyond price, your last 

              chance at happiness in a world where a man works like 

 an animal till the day he dies and lands in jail if he drinks 

       too much or looks at the wrong person the wrong way, 

 but she's with another fellow, and it's like she can't keep 

              her hands off him, and you grin and you sing, but inside 

              you're thinking, God damn every goddamned thing to hell, 

 and when you finish, there's some coins in your tip jar 

       and even a dollar bill or two, and a couple of fellows pull 

 their pints out, and you take a few sips, long ones, 

              but on your way home, when you know nobody's watching, 

              you grab your guitar like a baseball bat and swing it 

 against a tree. How do you write the song that gets the girl? 

       If we knew the answer to that one, we'd all have somebody. 

 Ma Rainey is a vaudeville（杂耍，轻歌舞剧） singer in 1902 when she hears 

              a young miss in a little town sing what she later describes 

              as a "strange and poignant（尖锐的，心酸的） lament" about a bad man, 

 so Ma starts doing the song herself, and suddenly America 

       hears the blues. A year later, W. C. Handy is cooling his heels 

 late one night in the Tutwiler, Mississippi train station when, 

              in his words, he dozes and wakes to the sounds of a "lean, 

              loose-jointed Negro" pressing a knife blade to his guitar 

 strings and playing "the weirdest music I had ever heard." 

       Mr. Handy doesn't know whether he's dreaming this 

 or not: "Going where the Southern cross the Dog," 

              says the singer, that is, where the Southern Line intersects 

              the Yazoo & Mississippi, the crossroad, which is where, 

 finally, you have a choice, because you thought you were 

       going one place in your life and now you see you can go 

 left or right or even back home, if you want, but no, 

              you want to go someplace new, someplace you haven't 

              been before, even if it's way the hell out in the country, 

 out there by the cemetery, the one so old they don't even 

       bury folks in it these days, and the wind's picking up, 

 and a man steps over a fallen headstone, a big man, 

              and he has something in his hands, and you don't know 

              if it's a rifle or an axe, something he could hurt or even kill 

 you with, and you can't see his face, but he holds out this thing 

       he's carrying, and it's a guitar, and he says, "Here, 

 I tuned this for you, take it," and you know if you do, you'll be lost, 

              but you'll do anything to get that woman back, 

              anything at all, so you rest that guitar on your knee 

 and you run your thumb down the strings, and a thousand birds 

       cry at once, and the smell of lavender rises from 

 the hard ground at your feet, and you think you see a line 

              of people against the sky's last light but you can't tell 

              where they're going, and you glance at the trees, and their 

 branches are thick with slave ships and Spanish galleons, 

       and you say "Who the hell are you?" and the man shakes 

 his head and points, and his mouth doesn't move, 

              and a voice you never want to hear again says, "Play."