Race Music: A Novel of the Mississippi Delta

By Marc Kaplan

Into the newly-settled (in 1910) Mississippi Delta country comes Sam Schwartz, a Russian immigrant, one of the many wandering Jewish peddlers who comb the backwoods of the American South, a man fleeing an oppressive country and a painful past. He experiences an emotional rebirth with Leafy, a black Delta woman. Race Music (the original term for blues recordings) is the story of Sam and Leafy's relationship, of the family they start and of a love betrayed - a betrayal that has consequences that will span fifty years and reach all the way from the Delta to Chicago's South Side. Delta music - the blues - is always in the background. Celebrated figures like Charlie Patton and Bessie Smith and the fabled Robert Johnson are encountered as they create the Delta's truest history and cultural legacy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469177601

Marc Kaplan

Pseudonymous Bosch is the pen name of a Professor of English at a Southern California community college.

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by Marc Kaplan.

ISBN:                     Softcover                       978-1-4691-7759-5

ISBN:                     Ebook                            978-1-4691-7760-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

108484

Contents

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

The big car cut through the Delta flatland. Ahead, Highway 61 lay straight and flat, heading north into Memphis. A black man was at the wheel; his passenger, an elderly white man in a yellow Panama and shirtsleeves, sat beside him. The radio was tuned to a black station out of Arkansas, the one that Schwartz liked. It still played the old-time blues.

The music was interrupted for a newscast. The announcer started with a story about civil rights demonstrators. The driver, mindful of his passenger, reached to punch another station.

That’s all right, said Schwartz. Leave it. Leave it on.

The announcer went on as to how the summer of ’64 had been declared Freedom Summer by civil rights groups. Even now college students were converging on rural Mississippi to launch the largest voter registration drive in history

But now Schwartz had spotted what he was looking for. Pull over up there, he said pointing to a dilapidated white mobile home, set back off the road about a quarter mile ahead. That’s it.

The driver knew the place. Schwartz had him stop here when they went to Memphis just about this time last year. He pulled into the gravel area in front of the trailer. Hand-lettered signs posted in the window read SISTER AGNES—Psychic—Healer—Adviser and Incense—Herbs—Oils.

Won’t be but a few minutes, said Schwartz as he got out. The driver remembered that from last year, too.

Schwartz knocked on the door and a gray-headed black woman in spectacles and an old-fashioned flower print cotton dress, admitted him. The driver shook his head as he watched. Only white folks believe this crap any more, he mused. Black folks got better things to do.

Inside the cluttered office, Schwartz sat with his hat in his lap before Sister Agnes’ big oaken desk. The desk was remaindered school property; Schwartz could see where the wooden surface had been defaced by graffiti carved when teacher was away: initials of lovers enclosed in a heart. Behind it sat Sister Agnes, surrounded by walls covered with shelves, each one crowded with a variety of bottles, bundles of dried plants, and colored candles.

Sister Agnes began to shuffle an old deck of playing cards. Schwartz had known her under a different name many years earlier when she had sold medicinal roots over in Sunflower. Now her gnarled fingers themselves looked like those same roots.

What’s your question? she asked.

Same as always, said Schwartz. Has she forgiven me?

Sister Agnes dealt out a row of ten, face up.

Until the Delta grows mountains. Until the Big Muddy runs bone dry. Even then, she won’t forgive.

Schwartz put five dollars down on the lady’s desk.

They always say the same thing, said Sister Agnes. You might as well as to stop comin’ by.

Might as well, said Schwartz. But I’ll probably see you again in a while.

He fixed his hat back on and went out.

I

The summer sun bounced in waves off the metal roof of the store. Schwartz’s wagon, pulled by a tired, skinny mule, moved slowly up the dirt road toward the porch, where a man and a boy sat playing checkers on the end of a barrel. The older one, his blue work shirt bulging to let pink gut poke through, chuckled as he double-jumped his opponent.

Aww, said the young one.

You never will beat me, said the older one, grinning.

Somebody’s comin, said the kid.

White man or a nigger? asked the father.

I can’t tell, said the boy.

Goddamn it, said the fat man, annoyed at his son. He heaved around to look.

Don’t look like a white man, he said. Not with that goddamn sombrero.

Schwartz wore a big straw hat with a floppy brim, a cotton-picker’s hat. They had told him when he was getting outfitted in Memphis that it wasn’t a white man’s hat, but he told them to go to hell. Let them drive an open wagon through the Delta in middle-July.

Schwartz pulled on the reins to stop his mule. Hello, he said to the checker-players.

The two men rose. The fat man got up slowly, working the tobacco plug in his jaw and squinting. The young one, however, bounced up.

Howdy, he grinned.

The fat man poked the kid to shut him up. He still hadn’t returned Schwartz’s greeting.

I’m looking for Bolivar, Mississippi, said Schwartz, who could tell his accent didn’t please the fat man.

Well, you lost then, ain’t you? said the latter.

Schwartz saw the letters painted on: CUDAHY GENERAL STORE.

I guess I’m in Cudahy, eh?

The fat man grinned. Naw, hell. You in Jesus, Missi’ppi, partner. He pointed across the road to a shabby outhouse. Over there, that’s East Jesus. That’s Niggertown. Dividing line runs through that shithouse. Whites shit on one side, niggers only on the other. The fat man laughed.

Can you tell me how to get to Bolivar?

Hell, you can’t get there from here. The man laughed some more, and his son joined in.

Schwartz saw that he wasn’t going to get any help, so he asked if he could buy a Coca-Cola and the man sent the boy to fetch it. Schwartz knew that it wasn’t just dislike of strangers that caused this surly behavior. He was competition, and even if he minded his manners, things might get ugly. But Schwartz, who was thick-armed and stocky, hadn’t gained a pound since his days in the army, and he felt capable of giving back anything that came at him.

The boy brought the drink. Schwartz felt the sweat on the outside of the bottle and thanked God that the drink was chilled. He surprised himself at the speed with which he drained it.

What’s over there, beyond the outhouse? he asked the storekeeper.

Cudahy plantation.

Lots of people live on it?

A few. Some.

Well, good day to you, sir. Schwartz ch-chucked and prodded his mule into motion.

As he drove off, the storekeeper began to grin. He spat after the departing man and turned to his son.

He gonna have some time selling them clothes to Cudahy’s niggers. Print dresses and ladies shoes. Haw-haw!

The boy laughed, too, and said, Guess what, Daddy. You know that Coke-Cola I brought him? Well… I spitted in it!

That was a good one. The store owner laughed real hard, and the boy began to laugh too, until he shook in spasms and a gob of snot shot out of his nostril and hung on his upper lip, infuriating his father.

Shut up, goddamn it! the fat man said, and whacked his son upside his jaw.

*     *     *

It took Schwartz only an hour or so to realize that he wasn’t going to find any customers on the plantation grounds. He’d never seen poverty like this, not even among the most wretched Russian peasants. At least the peasants had over the centuries built a kind of culture of poverty and ignorance. But this was naked squalor; naked as the youngsters who ran bare-assed through the cotton fields. He had a crate full of ladies’ shoes, but women here went barefoot, or else plodded along in some man’s old worn-out boots. He also had work-shirts, but this time of year the black men worked shirtless in the sweltering fields. He might have stripped off his own shirt in the brutal heat, except that he knew how quickly his pale skin would redden under the violence of this sun.

Schwartz was distracted by the smell of roasting meat. He realized he was ravenous, not having eaten since a coffee and a roll at the train station before he’d set out. Ahead, he saw a tall Negro man, shirtless like the field workers, tending a fire. As he got closer, he could see that the man had spread a bed’s box springs over a hole in the ground. On top of the springs was the whole side of a hog, cut into four sections. The black man had a rag tied around his head to catch the perspiration, but the sweat still made rivulets down his cheeks.

Hot as hell, Schwartz said as he approached.

How long, how long, the black man said. Schwartz couldn’t tell if the words asked a question or made a statement.

The hole beside which they stood was several feet deep. Wood chips flickered at the bottom. The man had a long stick to use as a poker when the flames abated, and a Mason jar full of water, with little holes poked in the metal lid, in order to sprinkle if the fire got too hot. There was a big tin can full of red sauce atop a rock with a brush stuck in it, which the cook used to daub the meat, turning each piece over as he finished. The fire hissed with dripping fat.

Smells good, said Schwartz.

The black man was silent for a second.

I sure do like that hat, he said finally.

Schwartz understood immediately and handed him the hat. The black man put it on his head. Then the cook picked up a haunch from the grill, placed it on the wooden board, and began slicing it. Hell of a bargain for him, thought Schwartz. But Schwartz had other hats, and he was nearly starving.

The black man put the meat between two slices of bread, folded it in a piece of brown wrapping paper and handed it to Schwartz. Schwartz went over under a tree, sat on a stone and unwrapped his purchase.

Though he was famished, he hesitated. The fact was, Shmulke Schwartz had never eaten treyf before, not so that it was recognizable. In the army, of course, he’d eaten whatever was served, but the stuff in the stews, when they were lucky enough to have any meat at all, was beyond identification. In later life, despite the fact that he was a socialist and freethinker, the conditioning from his childhood remained: the tripes, hams and sausages dangling in the windows of goyishe butchers made him queasy.

But Schwartz couldn’t remember having been this hungry in his life, even in Manchuria. He bit off a chunk of the sandwich and was startled by a sweetness like that of a freshly cut tree, and a taste that rose into his nostrils. He thought he’d never had anything quite this good.

*     *     *

A couple of hours later it hit him. He’d gotten reliable directions on how to reach Bolivar, and he’d just passed the Cudahy store again on his way out of town. As he bounced along the uneven road, Schwartz began to hear rumbling noises. He jerked the wagon to a halt and found out the noises were coming from his own guts. Liquids were rushing around his stomach like swollen rivers. Swampy noises came out of his bowels. He felt like a fist was clenching in his belly.

Punishment for eating that treyf. He jumped out of the wagon, bent over with pain. Next to the Cudahy store was the outhouse that the fat proprietor had pointed out earlier. He ran towards it and threw open the door, only to find the fat proprietor himself already seated, jaw swollen with tobacco, facing him with a blank stare.

Go round the other side, said the fat man.

Schwartz skipped around the shed, but the letters on the door stopped him.

It says Colored on this side, he yelled.

Whites can use colored’s in a ’mergency, the fat man yelled back. It’s coloreds can’t use whites.

Schwartz flung the door open, leaped into the seat and dropped his trousers in one move. The fist in his guts squeezed harder. Vesuvius sputtered and then gushed.

Goddamn, man, he heard the fat man say on the other side, impressed. Goddamn.

Schwartz felt as though his bowels were being rolled through a washtub ringer. Everything solid in him had already been voided; now all the fluids were being squeezed out as well. He remembered the cholera epidemic in Manchuria: Sergeant Vukovsky had gone into the outhouse and shitted until he became so small and so weak that he fell through the hole. They didn’t bother to fish him out; just leveled the shack and covered it over with dirt.

The door to Schwartz’s little chamber swung open. Schwartz found himself confronted by a very odd-looking black man. He had blond hair, for one thing, and except for the color of his skin (which was dark, but not very) he looked more like one of these white crackers than a Negro: skinny, long-necked, big-eared.

But the Negro found Schwartz odd-looking, too. You colored? he asked.

White, said Schwartz.

Say, mistuh, this here’s colored folks’ crapper. Whites’ is around back.

It’s used, said Schwartz, making his English more awkward than it needed to be. Said use this.

Goddamn it, said the black man, and he made a move toward something in the pocket of his work jacket. A gun or knife? Schwartz had heard of men being killed for less than a place to shit, both here and in Russia.

But the black man didn’t follow through, and he dropped his hand and said only, How long, how long, just like the barbecue man, and he turned and walked away. Schwartz had no way of knowing that this was Charlie Patton, who may have been the first man to play the true Delta blues, who wouldn’t record for another twenty years, and who was now going through one of his periodic step-overs from itinerant preacher to itinerant bluesman, and the fact that he’d preached just a week earlier might explain why he left without any fuss, though he did let the door slam behind him and Schwartz could hear his curses as he walked away to use the woods.

It was two hours before Schwartz finally reached for the remains of a book—The Last Trail by Zane Grey—that had been left inside the privy, half its pages already torn out. When he stood up, he nearly fainted. His pants had been tight at the start of the day; now they had to be hitched up. He had lost five, maybe ten pounds.

He stepped outside, where darkness had finally fallen. As he walked toward his wagon, he realized that he had lost all his strength. He had to stop after just a few paces to get a breath. Dizzy, he wasn’t even sure he was headed in the right direction. He took a couple of steps and then the road rose up and hit him flush.

He was going to die here. Well, so be it. The fact was, he didn’t give a damn. He hadn’t given a damn about anything since the war—not money, not women, not even the possibility of revolution.

He turned himself over in the road; even that took what seemed to be a huge effort. Better to die looking up. He was so dizzy that the stars seemed to be whirling in motion. He remembered how in Manchuria they’d erected battlements out of the only materials they’d had: the frozen bodies of the dead. When Schwartz had taken his post, he had looked down in horror and seen the face of a still-living man, wedged between some boots and a hand. The man had grinned up at him, stupefied, idiotic.

Now he knew how that guy had felt. He was a husk, a piece of dry straw. He closed his eyes.

Mistuh. Hey, mistuh.

The next thing he was conscious of was something poking at his arm.

Mistuh. Hey, mistuh.

He opened an eye. It was daytime. There was the toe of a shoe. Not a work boot, but a nice brown gentleman’s two-toned wing-tipped brogan. He had a pair something like them in his wagon.

You can’t stay here, mistuh. You got to get up. It was not a man’s voice, but a woman’s.

Mistuh. You hear me, Mistuh?

The shoe prodded some more. Schwartz looked up and saw a young black woman standing above him. He wanted to tell her that it was too bad, but there was no going anywhere for him. He closed his eyes and kept them closed.

Mistuh. You can’t sleep here, Mistuh.

Leafy knew the man was sick, but it would be bad if he stayed there. What if somebody robbed him, lying there so helpless? Or what if he just died there in the road? Either way was bad business that would bring Sheriff Tom Finkes over from Bolivar, and he would damn sure take a nigger or two back with him, guilty or not.

She sighed and went back up the steps of her porch, clip-clopping in her Daddy’s old shoes. She usually only wore them when it was wet, but she needed hard toes to poke this fellow awake. First she thought he was drunk, but then she saw he was really sick.

She sat down on the porch swing and looked at the white man again. So helpless. She would have to get him out of the street before a mule walked over him. She went back down and picked up his shoulders, sliding her arms under his. She tried to pull him, but his legs just dragged in the mud. Schwartz would have liked to help her, but he couldn’t move a muscle. When she let him go, he didn’t even have the strength to break his fall; he just flopped back down on the ground.

Leafy had an idea. It was those arms and legs flip-flopping and dragging that made him so hard to carry. She went inside and got her father’s old trunk and emptied it. It wasn’t too hard to pick the white man’s shoulders up, get his arms over the edge of the trunk and then pick up his legs and see-saw the rest of him in. The man didn’t squirm or resist; he was weak as a little kitty-cat. She closed the lid and was able to work the trunk around, pulling it by the leather handle, angling it up on the first step up to the porch. That was as much as she could do alone. She’d have to wait till somebody came past to get him up the stairs into the house. At least he was out of the road for now.

The first person who happened by was Lonnie Shavers. She didn’t tell him what was inside the trunk. He helped pull the trunk into the house, and naturally he wanted to stick around for a while. Leafy had to run him out with an empty bottle.

She opened the lid of the trunk. The man was curled up like a little baby. She’d assumed he was a white man; now she wasn’t so sure. She’d seen colored men lighter than this, and his curly black hair wasn’t out of place, either.

The thing now was to keep him alive. Here in malaria country, she’d seen people this sick before who’d died, but she’d seen others even sicker who’d pulled through.

First, he had to eat. She got him up in the trunk and spoon fed him grits left over from breakfast, but they came right back up again. He couldn’t even keep water down. She could tell by the looseness of his clothes how much he’d shriveled up from the sickness. If she couldn’t get something in him, he’d die sure enough.

She had a little honeysuckle vine curled up around her windowsill. She plucked a blossom and brought it down towards the man’s mouth. She tore off the green base just like a kid, and when she pulled out the white string a drop came out and fell on the man’s lips. He licked it away.

That seemed like a good sign, so she went over and got some real honey in a spoon, just a drop at first, then more, until he got to where he could eat a spoonful of the honey and drink a swallow of water without puking it all back up.

She propped him up in the box with a pillow, so that he could be fed more easily. He stayed like that for a couple of days. He never even had to go to the backy; seemed like the disease had drained so much out of him that everything that went in now was just sucked up for keeps.

Leafy’s friend Eunice happened by for a visit after a couple of days. Leafy showed her Schwartz in his box in the corner.