El went to jail for the first time in 1953, after he’d been an addict for nearly a year. His band had just left the stage after their first set at a tavern in Louisville when the police raided the place for liquor law violations. In the process, the cops happened upon a thriving heroin sales operation. Back then, customers purchased the drug in capsules that were wrapped in aluminum foil. When the police burst in, squares of foil were tossed from pockets and purses throughout the tavern until the floor was covered with what looked like a shimmering silver carpet. When El was searched, it was discovered that he had neglected to get rid of an empty capsule he had tucked into his shirt pocket. The other band members had been more thorough than El, so he was arrested while they were all released.
There hadn’t been enough heroin on him to make a possession charge stick. But the district attorney’s office kept him locked up as long as they could, hoping to sweat him until he gave up his dealer. His one-night Kentucky gig turned into three months away from home.
The police had been sure that Bubba, the band’s sax player, was the dealer. Bubba fit the cops’ image of a pusher. He was black. He wore flashy clothes and carried himself with the smoothness of an outlaw. Between his attitude and his size, he was the kind of man who could stroll through a crowd of tough characters with cash bursting from his pockets without the slightest fear that anyone would dare to touch him. But Bubba was far too busy juggling his dangerous women to handle the demands of a drug business.
El’s foster brother Harold had been dealing to the band and all of the other users at the Pink Slipper since he was a high school junior. Unlike Bubba, Harold didn’t look the part. Long-limbed and hulking, Harold was already losing his hair at twenty. His round, pink face always shone with perspiration, and he had a country way about him that he could crank up to a higher volume when it suited him. Good ol’ boy Harold could run right past a phalanx of police with a pile of white powder in his cupped palms and the cops would suspect only that he was a harried farmer rushing home to bake bread. The police interviewed everyone in the band after raiding the Louisville joint, but they never once asked about Harold during those interrogations or during El’s weeks behind bars. They were interested in Bubba and didn’t want to hear about anyone else.
Even if the cops had been willing to suspect someone other than Bubba, El wouldn’t have given up Harold. They weren’t as close friends as they’d been when they were kids. But they were brothers. El couldn’t snitch.
Also, Harold had become the band’s manager in early ’52. Drug dealer and band manager were one combined position in lots of bands back then. It made things easier. Only Lily and Bubba abstained, so most of the band’s money was going to drugs anyway. This way, they skipped the middleman. Harold had turned out to be a pretty good manager. He had a head for numbers, and he was more ambitious than any of the musicians in the group. After taking the reins, he booked the band in blues clubs throughout the middle third of the country.
It was Harold who set up the gig that turned Marcus Henry into El Walker. They had gone to Chicago to play at a little South Side place called the Blues Pot. The club paid their performers next to nothing, but the word on the street was that record company executives regularly showed up there. The rumor about the record execs turned out to be entirely untrue, though El and the other band members didn’t know that at the time. For three nights, El, Lily, and the rest of the musicians gave the club’s audience their very best.
The Blues Pot was one of the nicer places on the circuit. The outside walls were sky blue. A huge guitar-shaped white sign with a robust 1930s-style, blues-shouting woman painted on it hung above the front door. Inside, there was a beautiful oak bar and a minuscule but well-lit stage. The seating area was small but comfortable. Unfortunately, the Blues Pot sat just yards away from Chicago’s famed elevated train tracks. Every time the “L” passed, it created such a racket that nothing else could be heard until the train was gone.
The band was performing the first song of the set when the “L” came by. Lily surrendered and stopped singing as the metallic roar grew. But because they had been near the climax of the song, El refused to be outdone by the clatter of the train. He battled on, increasing the volume of his voice until the thundering train was only the second-loudest sound in the room.
At the end of the set, the club owner came to the stage and slapped El on the back. “You outsang the ‘L,’ son. That’s a first here.”
Calling Marcus Henry “‘L’ Train” became an inside joke among the band members. It was eventually shortened to “El.” The surname Walker came a few years later, courtesy of another band manager who thought El’s guitar-playing style was similar to T-Bone Walker’s. T-Bone was still riding high with “Call It Stormy Monday,” and El’s manager thought they could create some confusion and make a few bucks off it. No one mistook El for the more famous Walker, but—unlike Marcus Henry—no arrest warrants had been issued for El Walker. So he hung on to the name.
When El was finally set free from the Louisville jail, his first stop back in Indiana was the Pink Slipper. He walked into the club in the late afternoon and found the place occupied by a few of the usual early drinkers and daytime hustlers. As El had expected, Harold was there, doing business at a booth in a back corner. El stopped at the bar and put a shot of whiskey on his tab. Then he headed over to see his foster brother.
El sat down across from Harold in the booth and said, “Hey.”
“Hey,” Harold replied, not looking up as he scribbled into a black book. “I didn’t know you were out.”
“Just got back in town. I haven’t even been home yet.”
Harold continued writing. “We’ll see you onstage later, right? It hasn’t been easy on the band since you got locked up. Forrest’ll want to let his regulars know you’re back.”
“I’ll be here. I’m just gonna go home and clean up first.”
Harold muttered, “Good. See you tonight.”
El was hot-tempered in those days, and few people infuriated him more than his foster brother. He slapped his palm down on the tabletop and shouted, “Three months, you asshole! I could’ve walked out of there on day one if I had given ’em your name, but I sat in that damn jail and kept my mouth shut. I expected to see some kind of gratitude!”
El waited for Harold to yell back at him. The two of them had hollered at each other for years at the foster home and battled over assorted business matters at countless band rehearsals. Harold lifted his gaze from his black book for the first time since El had sat down with him. He carefully rested his gold fountain pen on the table between them and reached into the breast pocket of his jacket. “Here’s some gratitude,” he said, tossing two small foil packets across the table toward El. “Thanks for your help.” He turned his attention to his ledger.
El thought of a thousand things to say. He could remind his brother that he had been the one who’d founded the band, and that his music was what kept it going. He could say that people were whispering behind Harold’s back that too many years living with his crazy mother had messed up his brain and that Harold was getting more like her every day. But somehow the act of tucking the heroin into his pants pocket drained the fight out of him. El stood and left the club.
The two heroin packets whispered to him all the way from the Pink Slipper to the front door of his home. The drug’s call grew in volume like an oncoming train. But when El stepped inside the house, the demanding voice of heroin was temporarily blocked out by the sound of his son’s voice shouting out, “Daddy!”
Little James launched himself at his father, and El lifted his child into an embrace. El buried his face in the four-year-old’s hair and inhaled as his son squeezed him with all of the strength in his small body.
Ruthie was less welcoming. She stopped several feet away from El and stood watching as he continued hugging James. El stepped forward and attempted to kiss her, but Ruthie turned her lips from him, offering only her cheek. “Your son missed you,” she said.
Immediately angry and defensive, El said, “It wasn’t easy on me either, you know. I wasn’t in Louisville on some kinda vacation. James’ll forget all about this. I’m the one who’ll remember sittin’ in that jail and missin’ my boy and thinkin’ my wife was missin’ me.”
A junkie will always offer an excuse or an accusation instead of an apology, El would later understand. And true to form, that night he gave Ruthie an addict’s response. Fully committed to his vision of himself as the victim, he used her failure to offer him sympathy to reinforce his belief that he had been wronged. El’s righteous anger was made even worse because, with James against his chest, he couldn’t say what he wanted to say. Or at least he couldn’t say it as loudly as he wanted to.
He cupped a palm over James’s ear and pressed his son to his heart, so James couldn’t hear his words. He hissed, “This is no kinda way for a loving wife to welcome her husband home, not after what I been through.”
“Nothing has changed since the last time I saw you. Nothing will change until you’re done with that stuff for good.”
There it was. They had spent the week before his ill-fated trip to Louisville arguing about the addiction that she felt was ruining their lives, an addiction that he insisted did not exist. Now they were at it again.
“Well, you’ll be happy to know I’m clean. Three long months in a jail cell will do that for you.”
Ruthie eyed her husband with a twisted mouth and a raised eyebrow. “You’ve been clean before.”
“It’s true this time. Maybe it would’ve been true before if you hadn’t been on my back about it every damn day.”
Ruthie reached out and took James from El. She set her son on his feet beside her and said, “It’s time for his dinner.” As she left the room with James at her side, she called over her shoulder, “Welcome home.”
The reunion with Ruthie that El had imagined repeatedly during his weeks in Louisville had been romantic and pornographic. It had definitely not included Ruthie nagging him with her accusations of drug addiction. In his bedroom, undressing for his bath, he thought of the heroin in his pants pocket. He pulled out the foil squares and opened one, just to reassure himself that it wasn’t empty. He touched the four powder-filled capsules with the tip of his finger, rolling them back and forth in his hand. It would serve Ruthie right if he shot up right then. No, she’d know he was high and would throw it in his face. It was better if he waited.
He went to the bedroom dresser and hid his stash at the back of his underwear drawer inside a tin with his needle, his spoon, and a tiny quantity of heroin he’d bought just before his jail stint. He smiled as he thought about how much he would enjoy the look on Ruthie’s face when he showed her the little foil squares a month, maybe two, from now. He would wave them in front of her nose and say, “Who’s hooked, Ruthie? Who’s a junkie?”
He talked a lot through dinner to show Ruthie how sober and alert he was. He discussed some new songs he had written while he was away. He described some ideas he’d had for the band that he’d be presenting to everyone later that evening. By the time he left for the club with his guitar strapped to his back, dressed in his best high-draped, pin-striped pants and a crisply ironed white dress shirt, he felt that he’d made his point to Ruthie.
All of the band members, except for Lily, were at the Pink Slipper when El arrived that night. They began the first set without her. It would have been better with Lily, but the other band members were so happy to have El back that they all played their best. Bubba was on fire. He danced across the stage with his saxophone as if he were gliding over the floor with one of his many ladies. Leroy’s fingers were a blur as he attacked his bass. The drummer had the audience rocking in rhythm.
El was glad to be back at work, but he kept looking for Lily to show up. El and Lily were each good on their own, but together, they were special. While he’d been locked up, El had gone to sleep each night thinking about the music he and Lily would make with the band. It was the only thing that quieted his mind long enough to allow him to rest.
Lily and Harold walked into the Pink Slipper just as the first set ended. They made their way through the crowd and headed for the small greenroom behind the stage. At the sight of Lily, El began planning the playlist for the second set. The other band members hurried to the bar as soon as the applause died down, but with the late-set songs in his thoughts, El parked his guitar in its stand and rushed to the greenroom.
Harold was dressed up that night. Once he’d started dealing, he’d bought a suit every month. He wore each ensemble for four straight days. One day to show off, the other three to prove to everyone that Mrs. Taylor no longer forced him to return his new clothes to Clancy’s Department Store.
He was decked out in a violet-and-gold plaid suit that was as much a country boy’s fantasy of how a wealthy man dressed as Forrest Payne’s yellow tuxedos were. His purple shirt and shiny gold tie squeezed his thick neck, and his hair was slicked with pomade in the fashion of the mobsters he’d seen in Louisville and Chicago. Somehow it all came together in a way that made Harold look even more like a shitkicker than he had before his style transformation.
Lily didn’t look up at El when he came into the greenroom. She sat slumped in her chair with her chin resting on her chest, playing idly with the leopard-patterned scarf draped across her shoulders. The scarf had been a birthday gift from El and Ruthie, a little something special so she would match his spotted guitar.
When Lily finally raised her head, El knew. He didn’t have to roll up her sleeves and look for tracks. He could see it from across the room.
On shaking legs, El walked to Lily and knelt beside her. He asked, “Lily, honey, what did you do?”
She squinted at him, trying to bring him into focus, though he was just a few inches away. Lily smiled as if she were surprised by his presence. She said, “Is it time to sing?”
El stood and glared at Harold, who was admiring his reflection in a full-length mirror on the other side of Lily’s chair. El tucked his hand into his pants pocket and touched the straight razor he kept for protection when he was going to be paid in cash. “I should kill you,” he said.
Harold flicked his fingers at his ear as if he were chasing away a gnat. “You ain’t got it in you to kill anybody, and we both know it.”
El rolled the folded blade in his palm and tried to imagine that he was another kind of man, a tougher man who could lash out in defense of his precious sister. El squeezed the razor for several seconds, before releasing it and admitting to himself that Harold was right. He didn’t have it in him.
Harold said, “You should watch how you talk to me. I’m gonna open up a club in Chicago, and if you behave yourself, I might let you play there sometime. It’s gonna be a real nice place.”
“What the hell are you talkin’ about?”
“The Blues Pot. I bought it. I’m gonna fix it up and make it better than this dump ever thought about bein’.” He stroked Lily’s hair. “I’m movin’ to Chicago, and Lily’s comin’ with me.”
“Lily can’t go to Chicago. We’ve got a whole bunch of gigs comin’ up. We’re gonna make a record this summer. If you want to move to Chicago, fine. But Lily is staying here.”
Harold said, “What kind of man would I be if I left my wife behind?”
“Your wife?”
Harold grinned like a gambler laying out a royal flush. “We got married last week.”
“You’re lyin’.”
Harold turned to Lily. “Sweetheart, show him the ring I bought you.” Lily slowly lifted her left hand and showed El a wedding band. Harold said, “We accept your congratulations.”
“You could never get her to look at you twice, so you got her hooked. That’s as low as a man can go,” El said.
Harold’s jaw flexed, and he balled his hands into fists. He stomped over toward El until they were nearly chest to chest. “Since you and my wife are friends, I’m not gonna kill you for sayin’ that. I want you to remember this day, though. I want you to think about how I came out on top for once. Me, the man whose own mother you turned against him.”
“What the hell are you talkin’ about?” El said.
“Like you don’t know, you damn snake. From the second you walked into my house, you made my life harder, always grinnin’ and suckin’ up to Ma the way you did. She threw you and your songs in my face every day.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it, Harold. Your mother beat the hell out of all of us. Nobody came out of that place on top. That bitch was insane.”
Bits of spittle hit El’s face as Harold shouted, “Shut the hell up! You don’t get to say that about her. She’s my mother. Only I get to say that.”
El watched as Harold began to pace behind Lily’s chair, speaking louder and faster with each step. He waved his hands in the air as he became more agitated. El thought, Shit, if he had a Bible in his hand, I’d hardly be able to tell him apart from his mama.
“From the day you showed up with that guitar, I got the worst of it. I’m not forgettin’ how you tried to steal Lily from me from the moment she got there, neither. But she’s mine now. I’m the one she married. Remember that. I won.”
Harold stopped in front of the mirror and adjusted the lapels of his jacket. He loosened his gold tie and unfastened the top button of his too-tight shirt. Some of the red left his face now that his neck was less constricted. Echoing El’s words from that afternoon, Harold said, “I expected to see some gratitude. We didn’t have to come by to see you. I’m bein’ nice, lettin’ her sing with you one last time.”
Lily asked again, “Time to sing?” She looked at El through droopy-lidded eyes and smiled as if she’d heard a joke that no one else was in on.
Exhausted, El took a seat in an empty chair next to her. The chair’s worn-out springs wheezed as he fell onto it.
Harold placed a hand on Lily’s shoulder. He said, “Baby I’m gonna go out and get a seat up front, so I can cheer for you.” He bent down and kissed her on the lips. Then he left the room.
El and Lily sat listening to the jukebox music that filtered into the room from the tavern. Soon the sound of the crowd grew louder and they could hear Bubba honking out a few notes on his sax. El extracted himself from the chair and walked to the sink in the corner of the greenroom. He poured a glass of water and brought it to Lily. He knelt beside her as she drank slowly, taking tiny sips. By the time she’d finished the glass, she was more awake.
El said, “Why would you marry him? You don’t love him.”
“Harold loves me. He always has. And I don’t want to be on my own. I can’t be.”
“Don’t go, Lily. Stay here and sing with me and the band.”
She shook her head. “I’m tired of being alone. I want a husband. Maybe some kids. I want what you’ve got with Ruthie.”
“Please, just stay here and sing with me.”
Lily rose unsteadily to her feet. She patted El on the top of his head. “I hear Bubba warming up. It’s time to sing.”
They sang, and it was as good as it had ever been. They performed every tune in their repertoire. When they finally ran out of songs, Lily hugged El and said, “Good-bye, brother.” She stepped off the stage and left with Harold.
Three hours later, after shooting up with Leroy in the parking lot and downing half a bottle of Old Crow, El confronted Ruthie in the living room of their little house in Leaning Tree. He had returned home with his mind thoroughly scrambled, wanting nothing more than to drift further away from reality. But the compact tin box he had hidden away at the back of the top right dresser drawer was missing. Ten minutes after the ensuing argument with Ruthie began, El was waving his razor in the air, unaware that little James was running toward him.