The road dust was golden on the cuffs of his pants. Chickens were pecking for seeds in the drainage ditch. Crows were squawking in the birches. Bare-chested black men in straw hats were shucking ears of corn in the shade of a flatbed truck, then roasting them over a fire. The truck was loaded with bales of cotton. A white man in a plaid shirt was drinking whiskey from the bottle behind the wheel of the truck.
Franklin paused beside a shallow creek, under some willows, trying to cool off. He wore a baseball cap and a work shirt with rolled-up sleeves. On his back there was a knapsack that contained a change of clothes, soap, and a straight razor. In his left hand he carried a portmanteau from which Archie peered out, blinking. The night before, they had slept out in the open—under a peach tree— and the night before that in the back of a truck that took them into Alabama from Starkville, Mississippi.
Also in Franklin’s knapsack was the photograph of the woman on the bridge; while her expression never changed, sometimes she seemed to be looking out at him differently (with intensity or utter detachment) depending on his circumstances. He’d seen this in Buenos Aires, and before that in his bunk on the Mariana. At first it unsettled him, but now he was used to it, the variations reflected in her eyes like the shifting luster in a gem or precious metal—an object he might carry, like a talisman. When he held her image before the light of his campfire the previous night, she gazed at him with particular clarity—even curiosity.
Now he picked up a ride in a truck carrying two hundred baskets of pecans. The driver had allowed Franklin aboard, only making him promise that he wouldn’t eat too many nuts. Franklin reciprocated by buying the driver the blue-plate special dinner— pork chops and stewed okra—at a roadhouse. Franklin himself ate fried eggs with thick slices of ham. They sat at a wooden table on a low porch buzzing with flies.
Over strong chicory coffee they got to talking. Then the driver, a thin man with wispy brown hair named Martin Perry, had invited Franklin to ride up in the cab, Archie in the portmanteau asleep at his feet. From negotiating back roads, turning his big steering wheel, Perry had developed massive forearms for a man his size. He had a scar at one corner of his mouth that, when he smiled, made it look like a grimace. And he chain-smoked, rolling his own with one hand while he drove, then lighting the cigarettes inside his cupped hand while the wind whipped through the windows. The road was rutted and the headlights danced in the foliage bordering it whenever they rounded a curve. Twice when Perry clicked on his brights Franklin saw a deer skitter off the shoulder.
Perry said, “So, you’re from down here originally.”
“South Carolina.”
“You sound like you been living up north.”
“Not for a while.” But it was true: from college on, the harder edges of Franklin’s native accent had gradually been sanded away.
“And you’re coming from where—Texas?”
“Farther south.”
“Mexico?”
“Argentina. Before that, Antarctica, which is as far south as you can get.”
“Yeah? What were you doing down there?”
“I signed on to a ship’s crew.”
“Sailor?”
“Ship’s carpenter. I made minor repairs. Built the captain bookshelves. Fixed up the galley. Then we went down in a storm. He and I were the survivors,” he added, nodding toward Archie.
“Yo-wee. Is that a true story?”
“It’s true.”
“Worked on a lot of ships?”
"Uh-uh. Before that, I worked for an inventor.”
“Where was that?” Perry said.
“New York City.”
“A government job?” he said suspiciously.
“No.”
They passed a chicken farm and Archie’s ears went up as dogs ran down the dirt driveway, barking after the truck. Some leaves slapped onto the windshield, and Perry flipped on the windshield wipers to sweep them away.
Then he started rolling another cigarette. “So what did your boss invent?”
“Those,” Franklin said, pointing at the windshield wipers. “Among other things.”
“Now you’re puttin’ me on.”
Franklin shook his head.
“Must be a pretty smart man,” Perry said, lighting the cigarette.
Franklin rolled down his window. Dinner was all right, but now he was tired of talking to this man.
“So you got shipwrecked,” Perry said a few minutes later. “And now?”
“Just moving around. I might do some inventing myself.”
“Like?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be hitching rides.”
Perry chuckled.
They were rounding a curve when a man darted out of the shadows into the road.
“Look out!" Franklin cried.
But it was too late. There was a thump, then a muffled cry and squeal of brakes as the truck lurched to a stop.
“Oh shit,” Perry said.
Franklin jumped out and ran back about ten yards. The woods were dark, crickets clattering, frogs croaking. At first he tried to see by the glow of the taillights. Then he heard a moan to his left. Parting the high grass, he made out a crumpled form in the mud.
Perry came up behind him with a flashlight. He cast the beam into the grass: up a man’s overalls, his bare back—bleeding all over—and then his head, twisted to one side. His cheek was bloody and swollen. It was a young black man.
“Fuck,” Perry said.
Franklin kneeled down and felt the man’s neck. “He’s still alive.”
“Even worse,” Perry muttered.
“What do you mean—worse than what?”
Perry stepped back, lowering his flashlight.
“Hey, I need the light,” Franklin cried. “A blanket would help, too.”
“I got a blanket in the truck,” Perry said.
“Hurry, then.”
Franklin lifted the injured man by the shoulders and right away his own hands were soaked in blood. He couldn’t understand how the man’s back could have gotten so bloody so fast. Then, while wiping the mud off the man’s face, he saw that he was not only shirtless, but also barefoot, and his feet were cut.
Behind him, Franklin heard a grinding of gears and the roar of the truck’s engine.
“Son of a bitch,” he said, jumping up and running after the bobbing taillights. Pumping his arms, he thought of Archie: a few more seconds and he might never see him again. As Perry shifted into second gear, Franklin reached the truck’s cabin, flung open the passenger-side door, and leaped onto the running board.
“Stop!" he shouted.
“Get the hell off my truck,” Perry cried, slamming on the brakes.
Franklin clutched the open door and barely avoided being hurled onto the road. When he looked up, Perry was leveling a pistol at his chest.
“I mean it,” Perry said through his teeth. His eyes were wide and his face looked red enough to be on fire.
Franklin caught his breath. “But why run? It was an accident. I’ll swear to it.”
“You! Don’t make me laugh. What are you, anyway—a federal man?”
“What?”
“You don’t think I believed all that bullshit, do you? Shipwrecks and windshield wipers—I know why you’re down here. But that’s beside the point now. You think I’m gonna get mixed up in that?” he said contemptuously, jerking his head to the rear. “What do you think that is back there?”
Franklin just stared at him.
“I mean, obviously it’s a nigger. But how do you figure he cut up his back like that? Shaving? You don’t know what you’re messing in, fella. Now, get the fuck off my truck.” He threw Franklin’s knapsack out his own window. “I don’t have no more to say to you.”
“My cat,” Franklin said.
Perry cocked his pistol.
“I want my cat.”
“Then take him, damn it.”
Franklin grabbed the portmanteau and jumped off the running board. With a low meow, Archie ducked his head down.
“You were never with me and I was never here,” Perry said, throwing the truck into gear.
By the time Franklin gathered his things and hurried back to the injured man, the hum of the truck engine had disappeared.
Franklin thought he’d flag down the next car or truck and get help. For ten minutes, no one passed, and by then he was rethinking his decision.
The black man had been beaten and whipped not long before, not far from that spot. In all likelihood his attackers were cruising the area, searching for him. Franklin had no doubt that if they found him, they’d kill him—kill him, too, he thought with a stab of fear. He realized that he could either leave the man there and go for help, or carry him away. Really no choice at all, he decided.
The logistics of carrying the man seemed impossible: Franklin had his knapsack, Archie, and a deadweight about his own size— 175 pounds. He was in good shape, but that was awfully complicated baggage to transport in rough country at night. He closed his eyes and imagined several ways of assembling it all. Then he got it.
He fastened the knapsack around the injured man’s waist (on his back it would have been soaked with blood) and strung Archie’s empty bag to his leg. He ran another string from Archie’s collar to his own belt, so the cat could follow him on foot. Then he hoisted the injured man across his shoulders and started into the woods.
It took Franklin an hour and a half, with frequent rests, to walk a half-mile through thick forest and then another half-mile, over a stone wall and up a winding dirt road. Low branches and underbrush scratched his face. Mosquitoes bit his arms. Archie only complained once: when Franklin had to cross a brook along a series of stepping stones, lay down his load, and come back for him, nearly slipping into the water on the return. Just after midnight they arrived at a farm with a long dirt driveway.
When Franklin staggered up to the old farmhouse, a woman rose calmly from her chair on the darkened porch, her cigarette ash glowing. A white woman.
“Lord help us,” she murmured. “You’re a walking nightmare: a half-dead colored man on your back and a black cat trailing you.”
Franklin was trying to catch his breath.
“You must have a map of Hell in your back pocket, young man.” She dropped her cigarette into the coffee can she had been using for an ashtray. “Come on. You’re lucky you came to this farm and not the others on this road.”
She was middle-aged, wide hipped, with dark hair and deep crow’s-feet. She was wearing a faded blue dress and flat heavy shoes. She led him into her kitchen, a large room with a blackened fireplace. The table and chairs, utensils, and plates were all worn down, chipped at the corners, but everything was clean. Franklin felt the presence of other people, sleeping upstairs—a husband, children, grandparents maybe—for whom this woman obviously spoke. Even if they were around, he thought, she would be in charge.
“If you’d gone to one of those other farms, you wouldn’t look much better than him,” she continued, indicating the young black man, laid on a torn blanket on the plank floor. “And maybe you’d be dead.”
She and Franklin got down on their knees and cleaned the black man’s wounds with alcohol. They sponged his face and chest. He moaned continually, but never opened his eyes. His lip had been cracked and he had a nasty black eye. There was dried blood in his nose. But it was his back the woman concentrated on, swabbing on iodine and affixing a bandage cut from strips of cloth. Franklin tried to imagine him without his injuries: a good-looking man, muscular, with a workman’s hands.
He winced, seeing the man’s arm twitch involuntarily. “Jesus, they flayed the skin right off,” he murmured. “Who—”
“Who do you think?” the woman snapped. “And don’t ask me why. There were two others last month. But I know this boy. Known him since he was small.”
“You have a sheriff around here?” Franklin said.
“I can tell from your face,” the woman said pointedly, “that you’re too smart to ask that question. Sheriff wouldn’t touch this— unless he had a part in it to begin with.” She stood up and took a dark bottle out of the cupboard. “Anyway, more than anything he needs a doctor,” she said, pouring Franklin a juice glass full of whiskey. “Drink it. It can thin paint, but it’s the best we got around here.”
Franklin took a long sip and felt his stomach clamp up. “Thank you,” he said. “My name is—”
“Don’t tell me your name,” she cut him off. “And never mind the thanks. I’ve done what I can. You can’t stay here and you can’t tell anyone you’ve been here.”
“I don’t even know where I am,” he said, downing the rest of the whiskey.
“Good. You did a decent thing, but a dangerous one.”
Franklin looked at her. “I guess that goes for you, too.”
“I can’t say I’ll make a habit of it.” She recapped the whiskey bottle and put it back in the cupboard. “You were movin’ through this country, mister—keep movin’.”
“Do you know a doctor who’ll help?”
“My brother will take you where you need to go. That’s him now.”
Franklin heard an engine sputter to life across the yard, near the silhouette of the barn. A pickup truck backed over to the kitchen door.
Franklin and the woman carried the black man to the truck and laid him in the back. A short man wearing a plaid shirt and a straw hat was behind the wheel. He didn’t once look at Franklin or speak to him.
“Now you get in the back, too,” the woman said. “Lie down and stay down until you get where you’re goin’. You’ll be there shortly. After that, good luck and God help you.”
Franklin laid his head on a burlap sack and clutched the portmanteau, feeling Archie curled up within. The truck drove fast, bumping over dirt roads, and when it stopped finally, he saw by his watch that they had traveled for thirty-five minutes.
They were in pine woods now, before a much smaller house. Franklin could hear a stream nearby. An owl hooting. A dog ran up to the truck barking and Archie glared at him, his eyes glowing like emeralds.
Peering over the side, Franklin watched their driver walk up to an old black woman who came out of the house. Wearing a white nightdress, she had draped a coat around her shoulders. The driver talked to her in a low voice for about a minute. Then she hobbled over to the back of the truck and the driver got behind the wheel again.
When Franklin sat up staring at her, she didn’t blink.
She was studying the injured man’s face. “That would be Louis Talman,” she said in a voice like sandpaper.
She had a narrow, wizened face and yellow, heavy-lidded eyes. To Franklin, the weight of those lids seemed enormous.
A hunched-over man and a small boy came out of the house. The boy was still pulling on his clothes. The man hurried over to the truck.
“Help Corliss, please,” the old woman said to Franklin, and he and the man lifted Louis Talman from the truck. “And you, Henry,” she said to the boy, “go fetch Narcissa.”
The boy was gaping at Louis Talman.
“Go by the fields, stay off the road—and be quick,” the old woman ordered him, and pulling on a green cap, he disappeared into the darkness.
Franklin and Corliss had not even carried Louis Talman into the house before the truck turned around and sped off in a cloud of dust.
The inside of the house smelled of cloves. Dried peppers and garlic hung from hooks in the window. A kerosene lantern was lit in the corner. They laid Louis Talman facedown on a straw mat by the fireplace.
“You know what I need, Corliss,” the old woman said, and he went into another room. Then she turned to Franklin. “I heard what you did. Do you want to lie down?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Have you eaten?”
“I had dinner.”
“Like some coffee?”
“I can wait.”
“What for? Have it on the porch, if you don’t mind.”
An hour later, having drunk two cups of coffee and watched the moon rise through the clouds, Franklin was rolling his second cigarette when he saw headlights bobbing through the trees. He braced himself: all this subterfuge, he thought, and they’d found them anyway. It was a black sedan, and the dog ran out barking again as it pulled up.
Henry, the boy in the green cap, jumped from the car and Franklin let out his breath. It hadn’t occurred to him that Henry wouldn’t return on foot. On the driver’s side, a young woman emerged. She was wearing a black dress and high, lace-up shoes that clacked loudly on the porch’s rickety steps. A black cotton shawl was draped over her shoulders. She walked into the dim light cast by the single outdoor bulb, eyeing Franklin closely. He stood up.
“I’m Narcissa Stark,” she said, without breaking stride.
“Franklin Flyer,” he said, and with a nod in his direction, she entered the house.
Franklin had never seen a more beautiful woman. She had large eyes, with irises the color of topaz. The lines of her face were like an inverted triangle, geometrically precise, with lovely cheekbones and chin. Her skin was like mahogany lit from within, with a reddish tinge; as she breezed by him, Franklin was sure she had left a faint afterglow in the damp air.
Five minutes later, she came out and stood before him, grim faced, arms folded tightly across her chest.
“Why did you do this?” she asked softly, but in a firm voice.
“He was hurt.”
“I know that. But why?”
Franklin shook his head. “He was hurt.”
She looked hard at him, the light refracting in her eyes. Then she nodded. “All right, then. There’s nothing more for me to do here.” She jerked her head toward the interior of the house. “When Mama Sola’s done, they’ll take him to a doctor in the next county. He needs more than faith healing and herbs on that back of his. And he needs to get away from here. Same goes for you. You were hitching, right?”
“Yes.” Franklin began gathering his things. “Can you tell me what the next county is?”
“Madison.”
“And this is …”
“Right now you’re midway between Arab and Morgan City, in Marshall County.”
“I’d appreciate it, then, if you just drop me by the main road.”
“You had no place you were planning to stay around here?”
“I was hoping to be in Chattanooga tonight, Knoxville tomorrow.”
She took out her car keys. “Come on, then.”
The black sedan was a Buick, a recent model. She drove it fast along the winding dirt roads, through a pine forest. In small clearings, the moon cast a milky glow over the tall grass and saplings. Insects clotted the headlight beams. In the darkness of the car Narcissa’s scent was sweetly pleasant. Franklin studied her fine profile, the flash of her eyes from the side, her deft fingers on the steering wheel and the gearshift. With her long legs and small feet, she worked the gas pedal and clutch smoothly.
“You understand you could be killed for what you did.”
“Sure, I understand.”
“What, then, you just love Negroes?” she said sharply. “Or are you some kind of saint from up north?”
“No more than I love anybody else,” he retorted, “and I’m no saint. Look, I grew up around black people near Charleston. And I’ve been down in South America, working alongside all kinds of men—brown, Indian, Chinese, you name it. It doesn’t mean anything to me. Would you leave a man to die by the road?”
She looked at him. “Maybe. And maybe I’m even crazier than you—having you in my car right now like this.”
They both fell silent.
"Well, you did good,” she said suddenly. “But I got to tell you—the man you saved, he’s no good.”
“What?”
“You think you know what happened to Louis Talman—but that’s not what happened. It wasn’t the Klan, it was another Negro who horsewhipped him. A man named Will Satter. Louis Talman is a no-good man. Always has been. Steals other men’s wives, chases down young girls. He’s been shot at more than once by an irate husband or father. He fooled with Satter’s daughter—she’s fourteen—and Satter caught him out tonight.”
“What did Talman do to her?”
“He didn’t force her, if that’s what you mean. But she’s pregnant.”
Franklin shook his head.
“Don’t feel too bad,” Narcissa added. “My husband took a bullet out of Talman’s arm two years back.”
“Your husband?”
“He was the doctor around here, for Negro folks. That’s why they came for me tonight.” She braked for a dog crossing the road. “He’s dead now.”
“I’m sorry.”
She pursed her lips. “Talman got away from Will Satter somehow, and he’s damn lucky you found him.”
Franklin was staring at the road ahead. He took out his tobacco pouch. “Mind if I smoke?”
“I don’t mind.”
He rolled a cigarette.
As they crossed a high wooden bridge over a waterfall, Narcissa said, “I was listening to the radio at home. You’re too old to have been named after him.”
“Who?”
“Where you been? Some of us around here don’t vote,” she said acidly, “but there was an election today. We—you—somebody’s got a new president of the United States.”
“Won big.”
“Well, that’s good news. No, I wasn’t named after him. I was named after a train.”
And for the first time, he heard her laugh, light and clear from the back of her throat. “Nothing to be ashamed of there.”
They finally reached the paved, two-lane road, the same one he had been on with Martin Perry. Narcissa drove along it for a couple of miles. Once when she spotted a truck ahead, she doused her headlights and slowed down until it was out of sight. Then a car sped up behind them and started to pass.
“Get down,” she whispered to Franklin. “Now!”
The car, with three white men in it, roared by. Two of them scowled at Narcissa, and the third, leering, licked his lips; but she kept her eyes straight ahead.
Another mile and she made a sharp left, onto another dirt road. She drove through more woods, over two more bridges, until they reached a neat white house set back from the road.
“Chattanooga’s eighty miles away,” she said, switching off the car engine. “It’s nearly two o’clock. You stay at my house tonight.”
He hadn’t expected this. He searched out her face, her eyes glittering, the trace of a smile on her lips.
“You’ll be safe here,” she added softly.
The house was as neat inside as out. Muslin curtains on the windows, a large kitchen, a living room with an oval rug. Franklin was surprised to see sheets covering most of the furniture.
“I’m leaving here in a few days,” Narcissa said simply. “I’m still packing.”
Franklin was studying two photographs that had been left on the mantelpiece. One was of a tall balding black man in a stiff collar and a dark suit, a leather bag in his hand. He looked about forty-five. The other photograph was of Narcissa in a summer dress, with the same man, in a different dark suit, by the gate to that house. She looked about half his age.
"That was Charles,” Narcissa said, pouring Franklin a glass of brown cider. “This is the same proof as whiskey, so sip it slow.”
“It’s smoother than whiskey,” Franklin said, settling back on the sofa. Archie was already asleep in an easy chair across the room. In his time, Archie had seen his share of troubles—and used up a few of his nine lives—but even for him this had been a brutally tense night. As for Franklin, over the last six hours he had alternately been drinking equal parts black coffee and hard liquor, to the same effect—as if they were canceling each other out. Closing his eyes for a moment, he seemed to become one with the air, one of a million particles of light. He was exhausted, but had pumped so much adrenaline in so little time it seemed as if he would never be able to sleep. Nor was he sure he wanted to. He felt more scared now, looking back on what he had been through, than at any other time that night. When Martin Perry waved a pistol in his face, it had seemed unreal; not so, anymore.
But being with Narcissa made up for plenty. Just watching her cross the room, draw the curtains, bend to refill his glass, he felt himself pulled back into his body. His blood quickened, there was a flutter in his abdomen, a tingle of anticipation on his lips. Even from a few feet away, he took in the heat she sent off, the glow that radiated far beyond him. He kept trying to read her, to align the different angles from which she had come at him in such a short time: from outright suspiciousness to relative ease, and now, the intimacy that came of sharing, and escaping, danger. He thought back over the circumstances that had brought him to her house. Little had he known when he got into Martin Perry’s truck that he was hitching a ride which would significantly shape his life.
“Roosevelt promises he’ll repeal Prohibition,” Narcissa said, sitting beside him, “so maybe people won’t be making their own.”
“What happened to your husband?” Franklin asked.
“Brain tumor. Started with a tickle in his cheek when he shaved. Then a kind of burning in his skull. Finally he got blinding headaches.” She sighed. “He went very fast. We drove down to
Birmingham. They couldn’t operate—couldn’t get to it without killing him. We were set to travel to Atlanta for another opinion. But it was too late. In the end, he stayed right here, gave himself morphine, and let Mama Sola work on him, too, to ease the pain.” She drank some cider and refilled his glass. “There’s nothing for me here now. Charles and I had no money saved. There’s a mortgage on this house, a loan on the car. I have no other family. I was a girl when I married, I’m not trained for anything, and I don’t plan to become a field hand or a domestic.” She leaned forward and smiled. “There is one thing I can do well, and that’s sing,” she said, drawing out the word. “I’m going to Chicago to sing.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh yeah.” She clinked Franklin’s glass and wet her lips. “Chicago.”
“Chicago.”
“Man named Ferret Hawkins from Silver Blue Records passed through Birmingham four years ago, just before I got married. He heard me sing in a contest at a medicine show. Which I won. Son House and Skip James played that same medicine show. Hawkins gave me his card and said if I came to Chicago, he’d record my voice. I wrote him a letter in June, and he said the offer stood. Four years is a long time, but I’m going. If I hadn’t married, I would’ve gone back then. And you?”
“Oh, I’m not much of a singer.”
She laughed. “No, where are you heading?”
“Dayton, Ohio—eventually. To see a man myself. But I’m not going in a straight line, I’m zigzagging. Started off in Miami. I took buses at first and got bored. So I started hitching. Seeing parts of the country I’ve never seen before.”
“Well,” she snorted, “you’ve seen all you need to see down here.”
They drank more cider. He told her about Argentina. About snakes and lizards half the size of a man. And a sun so hot the sand can catch fire beneath your feet. He told her how the mountains shine so silver at dawn it hurts your eyes. Which is why the Spaniards thought the whole country was run through with silver, veins of it the width of rivers running for miles underground. Argentina, they called it: the Land of Silver.
Narcissa played him some blues records on the gramophone. When she sang along, he was stunned by her voice: deep and clear, as resonant as if she were singing in a cathedral.
“So just how much you willing to zigzag on your way north?” she said, recorking the jug of cider.
“As much as it pleases me, I guess.” The space between them seemed to be disappearing, as if they shared it completely, as if they had already embraced.
She laughed and touched his cheek. “We can please each other, too.”
Franklin leaned over and kissed her and drank in her scent, like rose petals when you rub them between your fingers.
“If I was a believer,” she murmured, “I’d have to believe that’s why God put us here at all.” She slipped her arms around his neck and kissed him again. “Isn’t that right, Franklin Flyer, named after a train?”
They rose together and she led him up the stairs to her bedroom where the wind through the cypresses was blowing cool into the open window.
Two days later, in a blinding rainstorm at dawn, Narcissa and Franklin crossed the state line from Alabama to Tennessee. Alternating behind the wheel, they drove her Buick from Chattanooga to Nashville, where they checked into a Negro hotel by the train station. The next day they kept off the main highway after twice being pulled over by Kentucky state troopers. Then they spent the night in a Negro boardinghouse outside Fredonia. The car broke down there and took two days to fix. And afterward kept losing oil until they had it fixed again in Owensville, Indiana. Meanwhile, they were driving through towns with names like Beersheba, Cynthiana, Cadiz, Palestine, Cerulean, and Oblong. Past run-down farms and shuttered factories. Sprawling shantytowns swirling with dust and smoke. Men selling torn-up crates for firewood by the side of the road. Women boiling weeds in black pots. Children with makeshift toys scratching in the dirt like chickens.
Whenever they stopped for gas or food or to rent a room— a white man and a black woman in a late-model car—they got plenty of stares, catcalls, and worse. In Providence, Kentucky, two white men cornered Franklin in a roadstop restroom and said they would beat him to a pulp; go ahead, he said, kicking one in the balls and decking the other with a blackjack he’d bought in Nashville. In Salem, Indiana, a hotel desk clerk, a huge black woman missing her front teeth, told Narcissa she would wring her neck; Narcissa flung the guest register to the floor before wheeling out the door.
Nevertheless, and despite bad food, worse roads, and foul weather, as they made their way north Narcissa sang. It was her singing, the hard fire burning deep down—which more than matched her ardor as a lover—that made the dangerous obstacles they encountered seem as nothing to Franklin. He only wanted to return her fire with his own, his passion for her which night after night in bed was restoked. He didn’t care who or what they encountered: he’d grown up with racism, watching his Aunt Vita defy it, seeing it poison so many others, and he wasn’t about to let it stop him now. Narcissa started singing in Tennessee and kept it up, mile after mile, whether she was behind the wheel or sprawled out in the backseat. Franklin was thrilled to hear her entire repertoire—blues, blues, and more blues. “What else would I be singing?” she said to him one night as they lay naked in a cramped room in a motor court, the moths ticking at the window screen. A lot of songs by Charley Patton and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Songs that together were like one long song—"a kind of history lesson,” Narcissa called them, “which no historian is ever going to write.”
Room Rent Blues, Death Cell Blues, Killin’ Floor Blues, One Dime Blues, Rattlesnake Blues, Western Union Blues, What Am I To Do Blues, and a song so blue it had a blueless title: I Just Can’t Make It.
On November 12, Franklin and Narcissa entered Chicago at twilight and drove directly to 9291 Macon Avenue on the South Side. It was a squat brick building with a record store and a florist on the ground floor. And in a second-story window a blinking neon sign that read SILVER BLUE RECORDS, beside the image of a quarter-moon stuck in the branches of a tree.
“Damn,” Narcissa smiled, and started singing a song she would soon record in that very room, seated before a microphone big as her open hand—one she had written herself in Alabama called “Broken Mirror Blues.”
Got a ten-dollar bill torn in two,
Five for me,
Five for you.
Got nothin’ to show for all my pain,
Just rain in my pockets
And ice in my veins….