So Smiley ain’t out of town half a day before I takes me some liquor and flowers and make my visit on little Ida May. She’s a young thing, ain’t much for drinkin liquor, but once I tells her that ol‘ Smiley done got hisself runned over by a train, she takes to drinkin like a natural (in between the screamin and cryin and all, and I had my own self some tears too, he being my partner and all, God rest his soul). And before you know it, I’m givin’ Ida May some good lovin to comfort her in her time of grief and all.

And you know when Smiley get back, he don’t say a word ‘bout my sleepin with Ida May. He say he sorry he can’t find the man with the guitar, gives me my ten dollars, an’ say he got to go home ‘cause Ida May so happy to see him she been doing him special all day. I say, “Well, she done me special too,” and he say that okay, her being sad and me being his best friend. That boy was greased to the Blues, and they just wouldn’t stick to him.

So I borrowed a Model T Ford, drove over to Smiley’s, and done run over his dog, who was tied up in the yard.

“That dog was old anyways,” he say. “I had him since I was a boy. Time I get Ida May a puppy anyways.“

“You ain’t sad?” I say.

“Naw,” he say. “That ol‘ dog had his time.”

“You hopeless, Smiley. I gots to do some ponderin.”

So I ponders. Takin me two days to come up with a way to put the Blues on ol‘ Smiley. But you know, even when that boy standing there over the smokin ashes of his house, Ida May in one arm and his guitar in the other, he don’t do nothin but thank God they had time to get out without gettin burnt up.

Preacher once told me that they is people who rises to tragedy. He says colored folk gots to rise to tragedy like ol‘ Job in the Bible, iffin they gonna get they propers. So I figures that Smiley is one of them who rises to tragedy, get stronger when bad things come on him. But they more than one way to get the Blues on you. Ain’t just bad things happening, sometime it good things not happenin—disappointment, iffin you know what I mean?

So I hears that down Biloxi way, round ‘bout one of them salt marshes on the Gulf, they is a catfish big as a rowboat, but nobody can catch him. Even a white man down there will give five hundred dollars to the man bring that big ol’ catfish in. Now you know people be trying to catch him, but they don’t have no luck. So I tells Smiley I got me a secret recipe, and we gonna go get that catfish, get that money, and go up to Chicago and make us a record.

Now I knows they ain’t no catfish big as a rowboat, and iffin there was, he’d be caught by now, but Smiley need him a disappointment iffin the Blues gonna jump on him. So I spends the whole ride down there buildin up that boy’s hopes. Cadillacs and big ol‘ houses ridin on the back of that catfish. We ridin in that ol’ dog-killin Model T Ford, two hundred feet a rope and some shark hooks in the back with my secret catfish recipe. I figure we get us some bait on the way, and sho‘ nuff, I accidentally run me over two chickens got too close to the road.

‘For dark we down on the bayou where that ol’ cat spose to live. Them days ‘bout half the counties in Mississippi got signs say: NIGGER, DON’T LET THE SUN GO DOWN ON YOU IN THIS COUNTY, so we always plan to get where we goin’ ‘for dark.

My secret recipe a gallon jar of chicken guts I keep buried in the backyard for a year. I takes that jar and punches some holes in the lid and toss her out in the water. “A catfish smell them rotten guts, they be there lickety-split,” I tells Smiley. Then we hooks up one them chickens and throw it out there and we sits back and has us a drink or two, me all the time talkin trash ‘bout that five hundred dollar and Smiley grinnin like he does.

‘For long Smiley doze off on the bank. I lets him sleep, thinkin he be more disappointed if he wake up and we ain’t caught that catfish. Just to be sure, I starts to pull in the rope, and ’for I got it pulled in ten feet, somethin grab on. That ol‘ rope start burning through my hand like they’s a scared horse on’t’other end. I musta yelled, cause Smiley woke up and goes running off the other way. “Watch you doin?” I yells, and that old rope burnin through my hands like a snake on fire.

Well, that it, I think, and I lets go of the rope. (A Bluesman got to take care of his hands.) But when the rope come to the end, it tighten up like an E string and make a twang—throw moss and mud up into my face—and I looks round and see Smiley crankin up that Model T Ford. He done tied the rope on the bumper and now he drivin it back out the bayou, pullin whatever out there in the water as he go. And it ain’t comin easy, that ol‘ Ford screamin and slidin and sound like it like to blow up, but up on the bank come the biggest catfish I ever seen, and that fish ain’t happy. He floppin and thrashin and just bout buryin me in mud.

Smiley set the brake and look back at what we catch, when that ol‘ catfish make a noise I don’t know can come out a fish. Sound like woman screaming. Which scares me, but not as much as the noise that come back out the bayou, which sound like the devil done come home.

“You done it now, Smiley,” I says.

“Get in,” he say.

Don’t take more than that for me, cause somethin risin up out the bayou look like a locomotive with teeth, and it comin fast. I’m in that Model T Ford and we off, draggin that big catfish right with us and that monster thing coming behind.

‘For long we got us some distance, and I tells Smiley to stop. We gets out and looks at our five-hundred-dollar catfish. He dead now, dragged to death, and not lookin too good at that, but in a full moon we can see this ain’t no ordinary catfish. Sho, he got his fins and tail and all, but down on his belly he growin things look like legs.

Smiley say, “What that?”

And I say, “Don’t know.”

“What that back there?” he say.

“That his momma,” I say. “She ain’t happy one bit with us.”

Seven

It has the soul-sick wail of the Blues, the cowboy tragedy of Country Western. It goes like this:

You pay your dues, do your time behind the wheel, put in long hours on boring roads, your vertebrae compress and your stomach goes sour from too much strong coffee, and finally, just when you get a good-paying job with benefits and you’re seeing the light at the end of the retirement tunnel, just when you can hear the distant siren song of a bass boat and a case of Miller calling to you like a willing truck stop waitress named Darlin‘, a monster comes along and fucks your truck and you are plum blowed up. Al’s story.

Al was drowsing in the cab of his tank truck while unleaded liquid dinosaurs pulsed through the big black pipe into the underground tanks of the Pine Cove Texaco. The station was closed, there was no one at the counter to shoot the bull with, and this was the end of his run, but for a quick jog down the coast to a motel in San Junipero. On the radio, turned low, Reba sang of hard times with the full authority of a cross-eyed redheaded millionaire.

When the truck first moved, Al thought he might have been rear-ended by some drunk tourist, then the shaking started and Al was sure he was in the middle of the bull moose earthquake of the century—the big one—the one that twisted cities and snapped overpasses like dry twigs. You thought about those things when you towed around ten thousand gallons of explosive liquid.

Al could see the tall Texaco sign out of the windshield, and it occurred to him that it should be waving like a sapling in the wind, but it wasn’t. Only the truck was moving. He had to get out and stop the pump.

The truck thumped and rocked as if rammed by a rhino. He pulled the door handle and pushed. It didn’t budge. Something blocked it, blocked the whole window. A tree? Had the roof over the pumps come down on him? He looked to the passenger door, and something was blocking that one too. Not metal, not a tree. It had scales. Through the windshield he saw a dark, wet stain spreading over the concrete and his bladder emptied.