His next ride took more time but was worth the wait. Jack struck gold when a battered old pickup eased over and clanked to a stop. The elderly black driver motioned for Jack to toss his things in the truck bed. "My name be Cleotis Porter and I be goin’ Clarksdale fo’ feed," the old man said as Jack climbed into the dusty cab. "Where you be headin’?"

"I’m going over toward Clarksdale, too. Want to see what I can find out about Robert Johnson." The old man laughed at that.

"Lawd, you must be a book writer or a geetar player then," he said. "They all comes here lookin’ for the ghost of Robert Johnson. Mostly they don’t find nothin’ but hard times and the gamblin’ casinos up the road though. They leaves without they money or the ghost." He laughed again.

"No, I’m not writing a book and I have no money to gamble away," Jack replied. He did not bother to add that he was an unemployed reporter. "I’m a bongo drummer and I’d just like to know what it is that went down here way back then. It’s sort of like a mission."

The old man grinned then, exposing the few teeth he had left. "Well feller, I tell you what. I takes you to a man what knows it all, but I ain’t promisin’ he talk to you. If you a book writer I wouldn’t haul you there ‘cause Claudie shoot bof our asses. He done plumb wore out talkin’ to Yankee book writers ‘bout the old days, fo’ sho. But I reckon he might talk to a music man, even one what plays ‘em little ol’ bitty drums."

Cleotis explained to Jack that Claudell Longwood, Jr. had been one of Robert Johnson’s best friends back in the old days. Claudell was born in 1912, just a year after Johnson, and they were raised about a mile from one another. Word was that Claudell, who was a picker and singer himself, had the opportunity to make a deal with the devil before Johnson did, but could not bring himself to do it.

According to local legend, he had then told Johnson what happened and Johnson, wild and drunk, had gone down to the crossroads and made the deal for himself. He had gone on to be famous but had to pay the price finally at a young age; whether dead by poisoned whiskey or syphilis, he had to clear his account with Old Scratch.

"Anyhows, that’s what Claudie says and I do believe him," said Cleotis. "Said the devil wanted to tune his geetar fo’ him but Claudie knowed better. Robert wanted fame anyhow he could get it. Onliest thang that boy craved was whiskey, wimmens and fame. He got ‘em all, but he gots a early grave to go ‘long with ‘em."

Looking at the flat, hot countryside with its cotton and soybean fields, Jack wondered about the kind of men who decided to take root in that steamy delta in the first place. He had wondered the same thing the first time he ventured into the Imperial Valley in Southern California: who was the first genius traveling west that said to the crew, Hey, this looks like a good place! Let’s stop and put down roots here. Certainly those initial decisions had little to do with the people who came afterward, those who were born to the land, no matter how inhospitable it might be. To them, it was simply home.

"We gonna turn right here," said Cleotis. "I run you down there and we’ll see if’n Claudie’ll talk to you some. Then I gotta get on to the mill, but it ain’t too far from here to town."

Cleotis turned the old pickup down a dirt field road. It bumped along through deep, dry ruts bound on both sides by a fair stand of cotton. Down a ways, Jack could see a structure of some kind sitting right in the middle of the field. He knew from the drive thus far that it was another old sharecropper shack and no doubt the abode of Claudell Longwood, Jr.

Drawing closer, Jack could see two men sitting on the porch. An old man clad in khaki pants and a long sleeve chambray shirt sat in a rocking chair, rocking slowly. A younger man wearing bib overalls sat on the edge of the porch. Jack could see a guitar leaning against the front wall of the house. Several dogs and chickens ran around in the bare dirt yard. An old seventies model Oldsmobile, marred by rust that had eaten away most of the two-tone green paint, sat beside the shack.

"You wait here, lemme go talk to Claudie first," said Cleotis.

Jack realized Cleotis had a bad leg once the old man climbed out of the pickup. His left leg appeared to be several inches shorter than the other and he rolled and flopped as he walked toward the porch. Jack saw the old man in the rocker throw up his hand and the younger man smile. He could not hear the conversation.

Jack just hoped he could talk to the man who knew the scoop on Robert Johnson. He did not know why it was so important, but now it seemed to be the most important thing in the world.

Shortly, Cleotis turned and motioned to him. "Hey, c’mon over here!" Jack climbed out of the truck, but left his things for the moment. If the old man would not talk to him, he would have to ride on into town with Cleotis and then thumb out from there. To where, he was not sure. Not that it made much of a damn.

"Hello," Jack said as he approached the porch, nodding to the old man in the rocker and the young man-who, Jack now saw, looked retarded. He had a strange grin plastered on his face and drool ran from the corner of his mouth. He nodded back shyly, and then ducked his head.

"Hidy do," the old man growled. His voice was raspy, but strong. He seemed tall, though seated in the rocker, and his long white hair was straight and combed back on his head, spilling over the collar of his shirt. He was coal black, but his features were as sharp as those seen on paintings of ancient Egyptian royalty. "Cleo tell me you wantin’ to talk to me. He tell me you ain’t no book writer nor music history man. If you ain’t that, good, but if you is I get my gawddamn shotgun in a hurry."

Jack could not tell if the man was joking or not. He was not smiling. The old man picked up a pint bottle of J.T.S. Brown bourbon from the floor beside his chair. It was about three-fourths full. He uncapped it and offered it to Cleotis, who waved it off. He then offered it to Jack. "Have a drank?"

Jack took the bottle, unsure of protocol. Although he had drunk out of other’s bottles before, he was not too hip to the idea. However, he did not want to insult anyone by wiping the top either. He turned the bottle up and took a little jolt, then handed it back to the old man.

Claudie grinned at him, and then rubbed his palm around the opening before talking a sizeable swallow himself. The old man laughed, a guttural cackle erupting from his throat.

"Man ain’t ‘fraid to drank after a nigra without wiping the jug can’t be too bad folks. My name be Claudell Longwood, Jr. and I be pleased to meet you, boy. You can call me Claudie, everbody else does."

Jack took the offered hand and gave his name. Claudie nodded at the man sitting on the porch. "And this here be Breezy Joe. Breezy a little off in the head, you know what I mean, but he a good boy. And he got mo’ rhythm than a herd of wild hosses. Listen here. Hey Breezy, play us one, boy!"

Breezy’s grin stretched wider. He reached into the bib pocket of his overalls and extracted two big tablespoons. Breezy turned the handles so the bowls were back to back. He then commenced to rap the spoons on his thigh, shifting off occasionally to the palm of his left hand for a few strokes, or sometimes rapping the spoons against his chest. Jack had never heard anything like it, that clacking rhythm.

"Clog it out, Breezy boy!" old Claudie yelled. Breezy jumped up off the porch and began to do a clog dance in rhythm with his flying spoons. His clodhopper shoes bopped at lightning speed on the bare yard, raising spouts of dust. The action and sound reminded Jack of the time he had seen the late John Hartford with his fiddle clogging on a plywood board-except Breezy had Hartford beat all to hell when it came to laying down the foot rhythm.

"That’s amazing," said Jack. "Hell, makes me want to throw my bongo drums in the ditch, ‘cause I sure as hell can’t play like that."

"Ain’t nobody beat Breezy Joe on them spoons," said Claudie. "I seen the best for more’n 90 years and ain’t nobody come close to touchin’ him. The Lawd made up for what he taken from Breezy by givin’ him that. But some jokes that Breezy musta sold his soul down to the crossroad!"

Breezy seemed to lose the rhythm all of a sudden. He stumbled and jerked several times, then fell over on his back in the dirt. He was jerking and twitching and his eyes walled back in their sockets so that only white showed. Thick foam came to his lips and spilled out.

"He done gone in a spell!" yelled Claudie, trying to get up from the rocker. "Get the spoon in his mouff, Cleo!"

Cleotis grabbed one of the spoons that had fallen into the dirt. He got hold of Breezy’s head and, forcing his mouth open, shoved the big tablespoon inside it. "That keep the boy from gnawin’ off his tongue," Cleotis said, turning to look at Jack. "The boy have fits when he get too excited."

Jack had never before seen anyone in the throes of an epileptic seizure. He had a friend as a child who had the petit mal type seizures-Benny would simple freeze for a moment and tremble, his eyes sometimes rolled back-but he did not fall to the ground and convulse like poor Breezy. It was a frightening sight.

"Should you call the ambulance?" asked Jack.

Claudie shook his head. "Nah, boy be good like new in a few minutes. He don’t need no ambulance," he replied. "Breezy boy been like this all his life."

Sure enough, within five minutes Breezy was up off the ground. He looked a little sheepish over the whole thing; probably embarrassed because it had happened in front of a stranger, Jack figured. Indeed, he was good as new. He grabbed his spoons up and began to dance and clack again just as though nothing had happened.

"He fine," Cleotis grinned. "He go down he come back up and do it ‘gain! Ain’t no ways to keep Breezy down, nosiree!"

Claudie reached over and took his old battered guitar from its prop against the house front. He strummed it in an open chord and listened to the sound. He turned a couple of the tuners and strummed it again. Jack could see that his old fingers were bent and gnarled by arthritis. Surely, he could not play much, not with hands like that.

But he could. He slipped into a loping blues beat, the guitar whining in that odd tuning. All the old blues men had their own tunings and it was certain Claudell Longwood, Jr. had perfected his. The notes bounced and rocked out of the scarred brown body of the Gibson and tore into the hot air surrounding the shack. Breezy took the cue and shifted to a slower rhythm with his spoons. Jack smiled.

"Get them li’l ol’ drums of your’n and join in boy," Cleotis said. That was all it took. Jack rushed to the pickup and got his bongos. Back on the porch, he sat down on the edge and stuck them between his legs. He tried to follow the guitar and spoons and, after a couple of false starts, came close. Claudell grinned, going down to a roll lick low on the neck of the Gibson. "Yeah, you cookin’ now boy!" he said to Jack. Then he commenced to howl a song:

"Lawdy, that take me back," Claudell said, putting the guitar back against the wall. "Back to them young days when me’n Robert’n all them boys was runnin’ wild with music and wimmens and whiskey. Damn, we sho had ourselves a fine ol’ time, we did!"

"I’d like to hear about some of it if you got time to talk to me," said Jack. "I got plenty of time myself and I’m interested."

Claudell picked up the bottle, took another swig and then handled it to Jack. "You gots money fo’ to stay in town?" he asked.

"Naw, I’ll find a place and throw down my bedroll," Jack said. "Sort of light in the wallet right now."

"Hell, you can stay in the tool shed long’s you want," said Claudell. "We gots greens and poke so we got us supper. It ain’t no Holiday Inn, but it a place to lay yo’ head if’n you ain’t ‘fraid of rats and snakes. They won't bother you I ‘spect, no how."

Jack was not fond of snakes or rats, but what the hell. It was a free place to sleep and it fit right in with his plans-or, maybe, lack of plans. That was the good thing about living as he was; plans were unnecessary. Money was unnecessary for the most part, too, although he still had a few bucks. Maybe he would buy them a pint or two of that cheap bourbon and he would learn what it was he had come to learn. Whatever that was. He could not put a name on it, but Jack knew he would know it when it came.

"I’ll take you up on that, and thanks," he said to the old man.

"Well, you can wash up at the hydrant over ‘side the house," said Claudell. "My niece Janetta be comin’ to cook supper after while. Maybe tomorrow night Cleotis come back and we all go over to the crossroads late, see if’n we can get a glimpse of the devil."

"I can do it," said Cleotis. "I’s goin’ afishin’ tonight, but tomorrow night I run y’all over there."

"You catch any brang me a mess, heah now," said Claudie. "Big ol’ catfish or drum or carp, I don’t gives a damn which. Jus’ brang it on and we fry it down and we eat like the Lawd in Heaven."

"I do it fo’ sho’," said Cleotis.

Jack got his bag and bedroll out of the back of the pickup. He thanked the old man for the ride and for bringing him to where he was.

"Claudie done taken up with you," said Cleotis. "He ain’t never ast nobody they wanna sleep in his tool shed ‘fore." He grinned. "Better watch that Janetta, she be on yo’ bones, boy! She a pretty one."

"Oh? She come out here much?"

"She do all Claudie’s cookin’ and cleanin’. She out here all the time." He winked. "She like doin’ it what I hear tell. ‘Course, most of them does."

"I don’t want to wind up getting shot," Jack replied, laughing. "I’ll watch my step around her."

"Hell, ain’t nobody shoot you over that here," Cleotis replied. "I’s you, I be gettin’ me a l’il piece of that sweet pie! It sho look sweet and fine."

Lugging his stuff over to the shed, Jack thought about that. Truth is, Matilda was the first black woman he had ever had. In the sex department, all women were essentially the same, he decided, irrespective of their race or color.

He thought of Becca and what it was that he had possibly missed last night. Damn. But then, maybe it was best it ended up as it had.

Everything is a potential complication, he thought. That was what made life interesting: the complications. Without them, everything was just the bland sameness of passing time.