The Gutbucket Quest

  And there was Nadine. There was always Nadine. She had to count as a major occurrence in this world’s balance. There was, also, the seeming lack of racial conflict. That was a thing vitally important to Slim. The race hatred in his own world had caused him to suffer in ways most people would never think of or consider, looking at him as a white man. Walking through black neighborhoods to visit friends, and having the people look at him with suspicion and hostility. Even trying to make black friends, all the while knowing he would never be totally and truly trusted or accepted because he was white. For many, that made him the enemy. Or going to see the old-timers, trying to learn the heart of the blues, and being rebuffed because he was white and how could a white boy understand the blues. Trying to play in black clubs, often the only venues in some cities where you could play or hear the blues, and having the audience boo, or laugh at the white fool onstage. Here, in Tejas, his skin color didn’t matter to anyone. It was what he did and was what counted, and that was nice.

  He could find everything he loved in Tejas and, to tell the truth, he had grown dismally tired of his own world, of the United States and its repressive, restrictive laws and morality. In Tejas, there was freedom. It was under attack, certainly, but wasn’t that true everywhere? And wasn’t he right here on the front line, fighting for it? He could make a difference here.

  He liked, also, the idea of living in a world that had a large and free Indian Nation. That had bothered him in his own world. He’d asked Progress about the Indian Nations. The old man had smiled and told him that, after the South had won the Civil War, the Indians had unified all the tribes and kicked ass on both armies, thrown them off the remaining Indian lands and held their territories against all comers. Slim had very nearly cheered to hear that. And when Progress told him that Tejas had made an alliance with the Indian Nations and gone on to kick ass on Mexico, he did cheer. He’d decided he would have to read a little history, but on the whole he liked the layout here.

  As he thought more and more about it, tallying detail after detail, he could think of nothing in his own world, nothing he’d left behind, that he couldn’t find in Tejas. It was, as farfetched as he knew the idea was, very nearly a perfect world. There was violence, to be sure, and a kind of evil. But those things would always exist and, at least, it was a type of evil he was familiar with. All in all, Slim felt that he was finally home, the way he thought of home, the home he’d never had. They said home was where your heart was, but Slim thought most people didn’t truly understand that. But he did, and his heart was here, in Tejas, with Nadine.

  Yet there were those who knew he was here, and knew why, and who sought to kill him or send him back to his own realm. He himself didn’t know why he was here, precisely, but there did seem to be a purpose in it, and not just to find a woman to love. How he wished he knew what his enemies seemed to know: the true nature of his crossing and mission. It was, in part, their very determination to get rid of him that made him sure he belonged here.

  But he knew that their effort had not ended. They seemed to have given up on the Glory Hand; maybe it was too hard to fashion a new one, once the old one had been destroyed. But they had abducted Nadine, without hurting her; obviously that had been a lure to bring him in to them. And they hadn’t killed him when they could have, during that abduction, so maybe they had concluded that killing him wasn’t the answer. Yet they could have captured him at the same time as they captured Nadine; why hadn’t they? Surely death or capture would have dealt effectively with him, as far as they were concerned. Now as he reflected on it, it seemed to him that the man in black he had fought had not really been trying to kill him, or even to wound him, but to back him off. That first knife slash, that had sliced open his shirt without touching his belly—maybe that hadn’t been his lucky break. At any other time, it would have caused him to back off, not risking another such narrow escape.

  So maybe they didn’t want to hurt him, physically. Yet they obviously wanted to be rid of him. What was their strategy? What made sense? There was a missing piece to this puzzle, and he needed to find it, lest it doom him.

  Then he saw a possible answer. He had been told that the Glory Hand couldn’t just be thrown at him; he had to take it. He had, however innocently, to ask for it, to invite it; only then did it have power over him. Power to banish him from this world. Maybe that was the case in other matters, too: they couldn’t get rid of him unless he asked to be gotten rid of, funny as that sounded. Maybe if they killed him, another fat blues player would pop into this realm from somewhere else to take his place, gaining them nothing. So they had to do it gently, by their definitions, and not break the bubble. If he got scared, or thought it was the only way to save Nadine, so he was willing to take the Glory Hand or its equivalent, and be sent back to Texas, then they could send him. So they were trying one thing and another, without success so far.

  So far. But they would keep trying, and now he had a growing foreboding that they would get more cunning as they zeroed in on him, until they found something that worked. He had escaped so far mostly by blind luck and the help of competent new friends. But if he had lost his fight with the man in black, and if Belizaire had lost, and they had been faced with the prospect of being helpless while the men in black tortured Nadine, made her scream in agony—

  Slim shuddered. He had maybe come closer to losing everything than he thought—and it wasn’t over yet, by a long shot. But what could he gain by being terrified of it? Better to put it mostly from his mind, but to be on guard. So as to be ready for whatever else they sent at him. Until he was able to do whatever it was that he was here to do.

  He rolled onto his side, caressed Nadine’s soft-nippled breast, then wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him. The warmth of her skin, the smell of her freshly washed hair against his nose, her toes pressed against the tops of his feet, her breath on his neck, her breasts against his chest, the small sighing noises she made as she slept, all lulled him into a relaxation of mind and body so deep that it seemed like only seconds before he, too, slept.

  When Slim woke in the morning, he found that his arms and legs had become entwined with Nadine’s, and they had slept curled tightly into a ball. They were both sweaty and slick and the skin-to-skin contact felt wonderful. Without thinking, he shifted a few inches and slipped his dick inside her. She moaned and began moving slowly with him.

  There was no urgency, no hunger, no sense of caring whether a climax was reached. Only an intense feeling of closeness, intimacy, and a pleasure that remained indefinable. It was, somehow, beyond lovemaking, beyond anything Slim had ever known. They moved softly together in a timeless rhythm, uncaring of anything but that single moment of shared existence. The orgasm that surprised and shattered them both had them gasping and shuddering and clutching at each other, suddenly wide awake and excruciatingly aware. Nadine bit into his shoulder and he thought it was the sweetest pain he’d ever felt.

  “Wow,” he whispered. “Nadine, you know, I’m starting to think maybe I’ve never really made love before.”

  “I know what you mean,” she said. “Well, maybe I don’t. Maybe it’s because I didn’t for so long—but this—this was so easy, so deep. I didn’t have to do anything, just be.”

  Slim moaned, “I don’t think I can move.”

  “How old did you say you were?”

  “Almost forty.”

  “You don’t act like a forty-year-old.”

  “I know,” he said ruefully. “The secret of my success with women.”

  “Oh, come on, Slim.”

  “No, I’m serious, Nadine. Listen, I worked long and hard to learn how to make love well, how to treat a woman’s body. Every woman I’ve ever been involved with has loved my abnormal sexual appetite. Oh, for a few, it’s been too much of a good thing, too often, but I try hard to find women who would appreciate and enjoy me. Sometimes, though, I think maybe that’s all I have. I mean, sure, I can make love wonderfully, I can turn women into jelly,
but the rest of me’s always kind of a flop.

  “Everybody would tell you what a nice guy I am, how good I can fuck, but you can’t screw all the time. And it’s the rest of it I don’t seem to have any talent for. As far as fucking, I have all the confidence in the world, but just being able to fuck don’t make up for all the rest of it, you know?”

  Nadine grabbed his arm. “Listen, you idiot,” she said. “You’re doing all right with me, so far. Did you ever talk about any of this with those other women you say you failed with, see if they could help you work it out?”

  “No,” Slim said. “Well, a couple of times, you know. But, see, there’s stuff about life I just don’t know. Stuff I’ll never know, but other people take for granted. I need someone to tell me stuff sometimes. But when I’ve tried to talk about it, women just say that I’m trying to avoid responsibility, or if I cared, I’d know, or flat out call me a liar. They’ll say they don’t want to be my mother, and to get my shit together. It’s beyond their imagination to understand how a person could go through life missing such big pieces of common knowledge.”

  Slim looked at her. Her eyes were caring, without anger, and she seemed truly concerned and interested. He held on to her breast for security. “My folks were drunks,” he said. “That way—you just don’t grow up with any sense of what normal life and behavior are. You don’t know about the things you’re supposed to do, you don’t know about love. All you learn is how to repress your emotions, hide and try to avoid doing anything, good, bad or otherwise. You learn to distrust everything and everybody and just survive.”

  Tears were rolling down his cheeks, but he was unaware of them. “A life like that,” he said, his voice breaking, “it cripples you, damn it. And it cripples you in ways nobody can see or understand. There’s so much love and need and want inside you, but you don’t know how to let your emotions out, not without ’em being twisted and turned on the way. And if you do, if you try really hard and do get ’em out to someone, it only takes having them trampled on a few times and all the walls go up again. You try to trust, and you get betrayed and abandoned and there’s more walls. You say or do something unknowingly and the other person gets pissed off and you don’t know why. You try to give help and advice and they see it as critical and patronizing instead of sincere, and they get angry again. You do something or you don’t do something and they get pissed off. You don’t understand why and they won’t tell you because, damn it, you’re supposed to know. But you don’t, and then they abandon you and hate you and you never understand why. All you know is that once again you’re a failure, but you don’t know what you did to fail. After that happens a few times, you’re a wreck. But you never give up because you can’t live alone and survive. You know it’s gonna turn out bad, that you’re gonna get hurt and abandoned, but you need to love and be loved so badly that two months or two years of that love is worth any pain.”

  “Why are you telling me, now?” Nadine asked quietly.

  Slim sighed. “Because I love you more than I ever have anybody,” he said. “Maybe you won’t be able to understand me, like everyone else, but I gotta try.”

  “I’m not everyone else,” Nadine replied. “I’m me. I don’t want to hear about everyone else. I—sort of understand. I can’t promise I will, but as long as you’ll talk to me about it, I’ll try. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Slim mumbled. He was sucking on her nipple and felt safe. He continued for a few minutes, Nadine stroking his neck, then he lifted his head to look at her. “I want you to talk to me, too,” he said. “The deal goes both ways. So talk, now. What happened to you when the Vipers had you? How come you were so weird when we got home, so desperate for sex?”

  “You complaining?” she asked, smiling.

  “No, never. But it was strange. So what happened?”

  “Is this the talent portion of the show,” she demanded, almost angrily, “when you jump to the wrong conclusions?”

  “Stash it, Nadine. You want me to talk to you about stuff. Well, you gotta talk to me, too. Come on, be fair.”

  “Oh, Slim,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him down to her breasts. “Okay. You know what the three-lock box is?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “A player’s thing. Being together spiritually, mentally and physically. Giving it a hundred percent at the gig.”

  “Right. Daddy calls it being a blues outlaw with a six-string gun. Well,” she sighed. “I lost it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I—after they got me, I tried to use the power. Slim, I couldn’t. Nothing happened. I sang my ass off, every song I could think of, but nothing happened.”

  “Did you—damn! I can’t ever ask the right questions. I don’t know enough to know if you did it wrong or did it right. I don’t know what to think. For all I know, maybe it did work. Maybe that’s what helped me to get to you.”

  “I don’t know, Slim, but it was terrible. All these years Daddy’s been telling me about the power, that I had it in me. All I had to do was let it out. But when I needed it, it wasn’t there for me.”

  “Maybe it was all the machines.”

  “Did it stop you?” she said, looking at him seriously.

  “Not from finding you, no. But we didn’t use the power to get you. Belizaire used gris-gris, but most of it was physical.”

  “I guess so,” Nadine said. “Maybe you’re right. I don’t know. But it bothers me.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s not because I want to use the power for gigs. You know, I told you that. That’s got to be me.”

  “Then why is it bothering you so much?”

  “I—for a few minutes, it made me hate you. I was furious at you. You come here and you just have all that power. And you can use it. But you’re just you. He’s my daddy; I should be the one to have it.”

  “But you don’t even want the power,” Slim said. He was starting to understand, but there was still a lot that remained a mystery to him.

  “Right then, I did, I wanted the power. I didn’t want you to come after me. I guess I didn’t think you could do it, and I was afraid you’d get hurt. I wanted to get out on my own. But I was mad at you, too, and it made me feel bad. I mean, I knew you’d come after me.” She looked down at him, her eyes wide. “Slim, how could I be so angry at you?”

  He thought about it for a moment, trying to figure it out. “Maybe it wasn’t you” he said, finally. “You know how their power makes people feel. So down and bad. Maybe it was because of that.”

  “I don’t know. But anyway, that’s why all the sex. I just wanted to sink into you, to become a part of you, and I didn’t know any other way to do it. I felt so bad about hating you for something you couldn’t help. It seemed to me like, somehow, if we could love enough, we could be a part of one another.”

  “We are,” Slim said. “I mean, it’s a surprise to me, but we really are.”

  Nadine shoved at his chest with her hands. “Come on, man,” she said. “It’s time to get up.”

  Slim stood and walked over to where his pants were lying on the floor. He thought of something else he wanted to say and turned around. Nadine was crouched on top of the bed and, before he could react, she leaped on him and knocked him to the ground. Then she straddled him and held him down.

  “What the—?”

  “I thought,” she said, grinning, “that after eight hours of boredom, you might appreciate one moment of pure, abject terror.”

  “Right,” Slim growled. “Just you let me up from here and I’ll thank you.”

  “Nope. I’ve decided I’m not speaking to you.”

  “Well stop not doing it so loud,” he said, almost laughing.

  “Huh-uh. You’re fair game.”

  “Hey,” he said. “I may be fair, but I’m no game.”

  Nadine grabbed a vital organ. “I always thought this thing pointed the other direction,” she said, wiggling it.

  “Depends on which way it’s going,” Slim re
plied. But they both knew which way it was going to go.

  17

  Rhythm is one manifestation of the reign of law throughout the universe.

  —Victor Zuckerkandle, Sound and Symbol

  Who Do You Love? (A-flat)

  (additional verses)

  Crosstown shack and an uptown bus,

  That kinda life don’t give me enough,

  Put me out in the sun and rain,

  And when I die I’ll come back again,

  Got the mojo hand and the monkey’s paw,

  Eyeballs sittin’ in alcohol,

  Come on baby take a little walk

  And tell me who do you love.

  Took my darlin’ by the hand,

  And said ooh ooh darlin’ I’ll be your man.

  Who do you love?

  Who do you love?

  Who do you love?

  Tell me who, who do you love?

  Well, the cat yowled up and the cat yowled down,

  And a big black hearse rolled into town,

  The man in back sat up and stared,

  I ain ‘t dyin’ and I ain't scared,

  Now who do you love?

  Tell me who do you love?

  Got a tombstone hand and a gravestone mind,

  I lived long enough and I don’t mind dyin’.

  So who do you love?

  Who do you love?

  Who do you love?

  Tell me who, who do you love?

  Taking care of business was the business of the day. With Progress temporarily out of it, things fell on Slim and Na-dine to keep up. Though it took them a while to get out of bed, get dressed and get out of the house, after a moderate delay they did so.

  The first thing was to drive out to Progress’ house. Slim picked up some clothes and his guitar, and then they headed back into town, to Charlie’s. Orville, who was glad to see them, took charge of Slim’s guitar. He would intonate it and make sure it was set up properly. Intonation was a process Slim had never quite understood. He knew the bridge pins had to be adjusted and such, but it was a mystery to him how a guitar could be in tune when it was open, and not in tune at the higher frets and octaves. But he could hear it was true when he played the guitar unintonated, and he had faith that Orville would make it right.