Winston’s voice was shot from singing five nights a week, so this night he was just playing guitar. Floyd Christian’s clientele didn’t seem to mind, which was all that really mattered to Winston. Christian seemed like a good guy to play for; he paid Winston up front in cash—much more than Cephus ever had—and came across as a decent cat. The kind of cat you’d show up and play for even if your voice was nothing but a wheeze.
It was at least one thirty under the spots. Winston switched to a slide and plucked at the strings with fingers too slick with sweat to grip a pick.
As he sometimes did, Winston closed his eyes and let his thoughts roam. He thought about the previous night—he’d only been scheduled for the first set and had spent the rest of the night outside the shanties with about a dozen other Samedi cats who’d taken on the task of guarding the Community against the crazy ofays who wouldn’t leave well enough alone.
It was spooky, standing in the flat no-man’s-land outside the shanties, watching the men melt away into the shadows under a purple sky spattered with high, red clouds; watching the man they sometimes called Glélé and sometimes called Samedi walking around like a goddamn puppet, the strings being pulled by the lwa himself. Winston could call up the essence of what he had felt in Glélé’s presence, a feeling of supernatural confidence—of invulnerability. It puzzled him, this feeling. He was not superstitious, not even particularly religious given his upbringing. But he sensed something with these Uhuru Community gods, something different from what they had preached in his church down South. More like ghosts. Not that he really believed in ghosts, but he’d seen how the Community people felt about the lwa, and they were in a better position to judge than he was. He saw no reason to dismiss their beliefs, especially since he saw the evidence for himself in the Square and in Samedi; more evidence than he’d ever seen of his mother’s God.
He could feel as much as hear the screaming that he was coaxing from his guitar, and the feeling conjured the sensation of Samedi’s presence—the presence of the lwa.
Last night, a car rumbled through—a DeSoto he thought, though he was not good with those things—packed with white kids. He’d experienced the action with a kind of hyperclarity, like a slow-motion dream or looking through aquarium glass. The car stopped and the kids got out, holding bottles with something sticking out of the tops. Lighters flared. Winston watched what the boys couldn’t see—shapes of men emerging out of the shadows, advancing silently on the car. When the white kids had their bottles lit, a wild ululation came from somewhere—Winston guessed Glélé—and the Samedi men, Winston among them, ran at the ofays.
Winston now worked the slide violently, his fingers frantic on the strings, howling coming from the amp.
The boys panicked, throwing their Molotov cocktails wildly. The Samedi cats closed the distance quickly, but the first boys had already made the car. One took the wheel. A bottle exploded with a pop. Another. The car began moving, four boys inside, two more running alongside, hands on the open windows. More pops; more bottles exploding. Winston ran at an angle to intercept the car and thought he might have a chance to jump on the hood or get his arm in a window. The fifth boy was pulled inside the car by his shirt and the sixth was halfway in, his legs dangling out the window as his buddies tried to pull him in. The car accelerated. Winston cocked his stick back as he ran and then swung it as hard as he could as the car swept past. He made contact with something that made a sound like a tree branch being snapped over someone’s knee, then heard a scream.
Winston’s right hand now dropped away from the strings and he massaged a few last whimpers out of the fret with the slide, then let that hand drop, too. He opened his eyes to the smoke and the half-seen faces in the crowd. There was a silent moment, then the cheers came hard.