



Written February 2018





1.

Vincent wrote to Marie while in prison. All the letters concerned distant cities, old Blues. He said he enjoyed Otis Rush and old Muddy. She said she was an insomniac, she liked to leave her records running through the nights. They married soon after he was home from Lakewood Penitentiary. They were younger then. In the evenings, touching her, he swore they’d leave town and play the big Blues Clubs out West. A year later she had his son. The day the kid was born, all his promises were forgotten. She didn’t let him sell the guitar.





Vincent began driving a private cab for his cousin Frankie. On the dash, he kept all the things Marie had given him. Postcards, Rosary beads, the Mother Mary in Pink celluloid. Some nights he parked in the alley of a massage parlor, and waited to take the girls home. Through the dark, the distant sound of Chinese opera, neon burning softly in the rain. They would get into the back of his cab speaking Cantonese. He played his Blues loud and drove them to the slums in Denby Hill or Wilshire with TV sets abandoned in the rail yards and old sneakers hanging from the trees. Scarred hands warmed by oil drum fire. Roadside memorials and signs for lost dogs and the smell of burning from far-off. By dawn, he stood beneath the super highway smoking, thinking of the kid.





He often drove people to poker games, or rusted trailers left out in the woods. Some nights, outside the massage parlor, he picked up a thirteen year old in a padded bra and lipstick for her bruises. Her name was Missy. She had blue eyes, and she said she liked the music he played. He said nothing. He looked ahead to the road as he drove her. Took her to a dark motel room herded with naked girls and off-duty policemen drinking whiskey from a Styrofoam cup. Driving in, he saw a Cuban boy stood watching him from the curtains, his face twitching, listening for sirens- Todo despejado, Seguir.





The passengers never saw his face. Some remembered him by his knuckles, scarred like black breccia. By the music he played through the nights.













2.

He never said goodbye to his old band mates. Some nights, he still got calls from Blues clubs around town, asking if he’d play a gig.





You really should, Marie told him one morning, after he’d come home from work.





Who’s got the time? He said, sitting at the kitchen table with a beer.





Who’s got time. You’re always watching the goddamned TV. Who’s got time.





You work this job.





She sighed and walked over to pick up the kid in both hands.





You get any sleep last night? He said.





No.





Sorry to hear that, baby.





What you sorry for?





I got to say something, you know? Jesus. He smiled at her. She smiled back.





How’s Nick? She asked him.





Alright. I heard he got that record deal.





That’s good.





I never heard of the guy producing it though.





She sat at the kitchen table and turned the baby to face her.





Holding the beer, he walked over and stood by her chair.





How’s he doing? Vincent put his hand on her cheek, He sleep okay?





He slept okay.





Give me him.





Be careful of your stubble. It hurts him.





He’ll be fine.





He picked up the baby and held him against his chest. The kid started crying.





What I tell you?





He didn’t say anything. He walked across the room with the crying baby in his arms. Vincent swayed him a little, and soon he was sleeping again.





This apartment had once been his mothers, a small place by the overpass. Vincent sat on the couch, and laid his sleeping son over his belly, the small body rising with his breaths. A Neil Young record played from the kitchen. He touched the boy’s forehead, and watched the boxing matches on mute. Sometimes, looking down at his son, he tried to recognize something of home. A brother in prison. A father, buried long ago in the hills. He raised the boy in his hands and watched him. How would he throw his spiral? How would he clench his fist?













3.

In the nights he drove private dicks, young dealers, and car salesmen looking for dates. He began to see the girl Missy more often. He took her down to the motel in the outlands, beyond the factories. Sometimes she would try and talk to him, but he never answered. Sometimes she cried quietly in the back of his cab. There were nights he saw her pimp, Raymonds, a tall black ex-cop. Driving them out to the edge of the city, he watched as smoke rose beyond the waste fields, an ashen gray, the shade of mourning doves.





One night he left them outside a house by the bottle plant. Watched them walk away as he sat there, smoking a cigarette. Raymonds had told him to wait. About a half hour later, the girl got in the car again, this time with a man in work overalls. Missy told Vincent, Just go, just go, go anywhere. He nodded and took her and her client in circles around Wilshire and stared ahead all the while. That morning, over breakfast, Marie asked why he was so quiet. He touched her hand and ate his cereal.





He would get home at five in the morning. When he opened the door to his apartment, Marie would be sat at the kitchen table. He’d take off his trousers, sit across her, and then they’d be quiet together. All dark but passing sirens, the light of the TV screen.





He didn’t play much anymore. In the evening before work, he carried the kid in his arms, and led Marie to the park outside. A boy in counterfeit sneakers stood by the benches- You like cars? You like smoking? Black girls or white girls? White girls or dope? Vincent stared at him and brushed Marie to the side. She smiled, touched Vincent’s cheek with her hand. They wanted to show the kid the lake before winter. It was coming to December. Soon, the fields would be frozen, ice misting over in the grass.





Vincent kneeled down in the pitch, tried to make his son stand. The kid looked down at his feet, frowned, and shook his legs in the air.





He ain’t having none of it, Marie said.





Vincent slung the kid over his shoulder and listened to his laugh.





Look at his hands, Vincent said, after a moment, He’s got such big hands. Like my old man, you remember?





Yeah.





It’ll be good for when he plays.





She smiled and reached for Vincent’s arm.





I been thinking, you know, I probably wouldn’t teach him myself.





Why not?





I mean I have to find somebody’ll give him a real hard time about it, you know?





Really teach him. Hell, I don’t know if I got it in me to do that.





You don’t think so?





Nah, look at him. Maybe when he’s older and uglier or something.





Who’d you get to teach him then?





Jim, maybe, or maybe Eddie would be better. I mean Jim’s real good, but I don’t

see him teaching or nothing.





I was just going to say, yeah, couldn’t see Jim doing that.





Yeah, Eddie’d be real good at that kind of thing, I think, I mean with a kid and everything. You got to have someone like that. Look, my old man for example, he was good at playing, but the way things was, he hadn’t have nobody to teach him or nothing. I don’t think he really even considered it a job, but I could see him playing professionally. He had rhythm. And you know, if you had some who taught him or something, I could have seen him as a bluesman. The way he was I really could have. One of his buddies, a guy did time with him, he told me dad used to play guitar in prison and everything. That he was real good.





Vincent put the kid down beneath an oak tree.





You’re getting heavy, he said.





The baby across him, he leaned against the oak. Cobwebs twined its darkened branches. In the wind they would crumble, dusting the bare leaves like frost.





That Stratocaster we saw the other day, that could be a good first guitar for him.





Or that Blueridge Red could be a good starter too.





Blueridge Red, yeah. I mean, I guess I just been worrying about things like this a lot, as in what to do with the kid you know? Maybe too much. First guitars, first car, things like that. I just been thinking a lot about all that.





Yeah?





Yeah, I mean I worry a lot more than my old man did. I mean, to think about it now, he just made us do all these things as kids and I don’t know if they was the right things. Like him putting me and my brother into boxing and all that when we were so young. Too young, I think. We were just kids. And don’t get me wrong it was good, I’m happy he made us do it, it was good for how we’d become, and I got to put the kid in all that just the same. But, hell, I don’t really know if I could watch him do it, you know? I don’t know if I could really see him hurt like that.













4.

One of those nights he saw Missy. She was stood outside the bodega, smoking. The girl thin, ravaged, smiling like a childs lost doll. He parked out by the curb, listened to his radio, and then left soon after. He went to a record store and bought some new cassettes, musicians he thought she’d like.





By now he was working six times a week. Driving through Wilshire, he would listen for a sole gunshot, the laughter of children somewhere. This was widow country. Hear Cathedral bells, see cinders dark with rain. If you didn’t have the money for drugs, you’d fight or break something. All along the road the windows were shattered, their fissures deep, diverging like the claws of glass spiders. Far off a woman called her daughters name.





Some passengers he would always remember. The man with a missing ear, lost in a game of poker. The two blacks, their faces gaunt, tattooed, like the painted skulls of dead tribesmen. They were dealers from out in California, it was said. Others were Domino players. Cubans. Coronas resting on their knees, they spoke of God and boyhood in Havana. Some kissed their pendants before they played.





He would have liked to think Missy was untouched, different. But she wasn’t. Some said she was from the Midwest, another girl found by Raymonds, and rented out to the men with the stamp collections, scout badges they never threw away. Mornings he’d clean up after them and their clients. He kept lye for the blood and cum. Milk jugs of peroxide under the seats.





These girls died slowly and simply. A head in the oven, a quiet overdose. Like all passengers they disappeared eventually. Some left town, and turned fugitive in Alaska, or the highways down South. Others, he liked to think, went back home, or found something better. But he didn’t think about it too long.





It was a Friday he drove her and Raymonds to a motel on the edge of the city. Raymonds in a gray sweat suit and gold chain, playing with cigarette papers. Slowly, he burnt the streaks of dark esparto, and killed the soft flame with his hands. Missy was doing her makeup beside him. Vincent could see the bruises along her temple. This was where Raymonds kissed her, her head pulled in close to his chest.





You alright baby? Raymonds said.





She lowered the lipstick and looked at him, Yeah.





Good, Raymonds said, How’s that room by the way? I been meaning to ask you. Shayna good?





Yeah she’s good.





She get fresh with you again you tell me, okay baby? I’ll give her a talk.





She’s alright, baby.





Shayna, she’s a good girl when she wants to be, Raymonds smiling, Gets a little fresh. But, look, I don’t want you two screaming and bitching at each other all the time. You girls is always bitching at each other.





She’s alright.





Vincent drove past the factories. Outside, beneath the power lines and carbon dusk, women wandered with sleeping bags over their shoulders, searching the curb for half burnt cigarettes. They were all along Davis Street. A few rested by the roadside, their blankets laid over their bodies, and their possessions beside them. Paper swans and motel bibles. Shower caps for their shoes. It was said they had their own Church, beneath the old highway. Their own rites, their own atonements. After dark, when they were sleeping, some thought they were dead.





Missy bit down on her knuckle and watched them from the window.





She don’t got this shit where like this she’s from, Raymonds smiled at Vincent, and then looking at her, he said, Do you baby?





I seen it plenty.





Vincent looked at one of the women. She was wrapped in hunting jacket, holding a cigarette. One side of her face was dried out and pale like bleached snakeskin. Burns from a decade ago. Vincent watched her through the rear view mirror, muttering, smoking, pacing out by the curb.





Man, that’s something, Jesus, Raymonds said, his arm over Missy’s shoulder. She looked up at him.





Hey, Raymonds said after some time, That kid come down to see you yesterday? White boy?





Yeah.





He still writing you letters and shit?





Yeah, Missy said, Yeah, he is.





Good, good, Raymonds said, Shit, kid like that, he don’t even know you got him by the balls.





Mhm.





Kid like that. Make me glad I didn’t fall in love young.





She dropped her lipstick back into her fake leather purse.





You seeing Bug tonight ain’t you, baby? Raymonds said.





Wallace.





Wallace, yeah, yeah, baby you keep him coming back.





After a moment he scratched her head with his fingers, You’re beautiful, you know that.





Stop it.





Real beautiful, He said, and then, Hey man, just drop me off round here by this pizza place will you? You take her down to Wilshire, to the motel.





He began getting out of the car, before turning back to her, Slim be there tonight, okay? You get any trouble and you tell him. See you later baby.





Vincent began driving out towards the I-14. Looking ahead to the road, he turned on the radio and played an Otis Rush cassette. In the rear view he could see her hands tapping, her head against the glass.





You like this? He said.





Yeah, She said, It’s nice.





This here’s Otis Rush. This the guy got me into the Blues.





Oh, She said, then after a while, Do you play anything?





Yeah,Guitar. How about you, kid? You play anything?





I used to learn the piano.





You any good?





Nah, not really I guess.





No? He looked at her in the rear view mirror.





I was alright I guess.





Where you from?





New York, She lied, You?





Just around here, He said.





What’s it like being a cab driver?





Not bad, He said, I ain’t doing it long, you know. Actually I used to play music.





Were you good?





Yeah, He said, I was good.





You don’t play anymore?





Not really, no.





For a few moments he said nothing. Then, as they drove towards Wilshire, he opened his glove box and showed her a picture of his family. She looked at it for a while. By the time she handed it back to him, she was smiling.





You got a real nice baby.





He smiled back at her. Turned up the stereo and drove out beneath the descending skies. Beyond the far hills, it was coming to morning, the shadows dissolving like ash in the sun. Looking out to the highway, he drummed his fingers, began to tell her about fatherhood, prison, his year in the army. About his gigs from long ago, loading a car up with instruments, and driving out to the bars in Philadelphia. About the men he’d jammed, and the women who’d never forgive him. About playing old records for his son.





She was looking out the window as she listened to him. He was driving across the bridge, now humming an Otis Rush song. Past the rail yards and water towers, she could see dogs hunting among the burnt over stretches of sunlight and rust.





How long you know Raymonds? He said to her.





She didn’t look at him, Not long.





He do that to you? Vincent said, looking at her bruise in the rear view mirror.





She was quiet.





He do that to you?





She was looking at her feet.





He was still staring at her in the rear view mirror. After a few moments, he nodded, looked ahead to the road. Within twenty minutes they were by the parking lot of the motel.





Have a good one, He told her.





She tried to smile and left.





Driving home, he knew the kid would be sleeping. He took the long way round and drove in circles around Wilshire. Leaving the highway, he turned off the stereo, and thought of the burnt woman. He remembered seeing her face in his rear view mirror. She’d had one eye left. It was blue.