Hell from Highwater
Lev Johnson was barefoot. His skin was cracked, dark, and weathered as the black leather of his guitar case, both with their own unique patina developing in sunspots on their flesh. He was born in 1976 somewhere in the South with claims to Georgia or Alabama or South Carolina depending on his mood. He was approaching 50 but stood at the aesthetic crossroads between ‘looking good’ for 65 or possibly a ‘matured’ 40. Nobody knew exactly where he came from nor how he made ends meet. He was what you would consider to be ‘homeless’ and from what it seems, that has always been his occupation. His face, ‘onry and mean, didn’t seem to mind anything at all. The inability for things to affect him gave him this mysterious sort of distance from the worldly. No less exemplified by the worst hurricane—even worse than Katrina—in half a century that now besieged a Texaco gas station in rural Northern Louisiana.
Lev: God Dayyum! (Lev turned his shoulder and shouted as a razor’s storm of wind threw the front doors open to the gas station, seemingly ripping them off their hinges. He was standing at the cashier’s desk, impatiently tapping his wet bare feet on the dirty tile.)
Lev: Come on now! It just a little rain! I needs my newports! Gimme da hundrids! N’ two ten-k scratchers! (Incredulously, the two cashiers, one young mexican girl named Delilah, and a middle-aged white woman named Carla, looked up from their refuge under a desk.)
Delilah: Uhhhh sir! Don’t you want to take cover.
Lev: Fuckk all dat! I done been through worse, dis water ain’t shit. There be Hell from Highwater over on Mississippi. Dis just a little rain. What y’all be afraids of huh? You musta not done been thru nuthin. Now, two packs of dem Newport One-Hunnids, uhhh, maybe one of dem cheap packs black n’ milds, n’ if I spent that much, y’all should give me three free lightahs? Aight? Dat good?
(Delilah, wishing to get things over with, ran over to the cash register to help the customer. Carla remained seated, paralyzed by fear. She was flushed pale and sweating, with corresponding chills. She wanted to throw up. She wasn’t paid enough for this, no pay to her in fact, would willingly prompt her to do this. She was a fearful soul, always anxious, but such are women that always seem to be pregnant by a carousel of possible men. She had four kids already, from three different men, consequently with each child looking distinctly different from one another; she unknowingly had a fifth in her womb at the moment.)
(The sky thundered overhead, and in the glass panels of the wind, a blue flame of lightning pierced the barrier of sound to strike only thirty yards from the gas station, cutting down a massive tree. If not for the torrent of rain and near flooding of the nearby soil, a wildfire would have started from the point of recent timber. As the tree came crashing down however, it fell and seemed to roll its way towards the gas station.)
Lev: Well look at dat! Lord been angry wit us! Too much whorrin goin’ on round here.
Delilah: Sir please! Its not safe!
(The tree began rolling more towards the front door of the gas station. Lev rested an elbow on the counter now, watching indifferently. At this point Delilah tried to grab his hand, to pull him back to a fictional safety behind the counter, to which he yanked his arm back to himself)
Lev: Who tha hell you think you is woman? Only woman that can touch me, is my mama n’ my missus. You don’t looks like my mama nor my next missus. So fuck off!
(The tree crashed against the windows, with its green branches straining like veins on the flesh of panes. At the same moment, lightning struck besides the station, releasing a loud boom that sent Delilah to the floor. Lev’s head simply tilted back in response, then resumed its spot, as he rested his elbow on the counter again.)
Carla: Oh my god! Oh my god! We’re gonna die!
(Carla screamed as she placed her hands over her ears, curling into a ball like a child would.)
Lev: Shut up bitch! Bring me my newports!
(Another gust of wind seemed to pick up the tree like the hand of god, crashing it through the windows with renewed force, breaking one at the distant end of the store)
Lev: God Dayyum!
(At this moment, Lev, finally toppled over, and fell on the side of the counter, further wind sent a gust of water and some branches his way, one whipped him on the face, but he didn’t seem concerned, rather, he tucked his guitar under him, shielding it with his body.)
Delilah: Let me help you sir!
(She grabbed him by the shoulder, pulling, and the wetness of his holed jeans and his flesh made him glide across the wet tile with ease, Delilah was amazed that a man this slippery could even stand, let alone walk around in this condition, he felt extraordinarily light—she had no idea that Lev’s only meals this week have been a mixture of rye whiskey, cigarettes, and bits of moldy cornbread mixed with water. This time, similar to Carla, Lev remained silent.)
Delilah: Sir! You’re so cold, please you have to warm up.
(She then ripped open a plastic bag that protected a beach towel—an odd artifact of the gas station that had not been sold for forty years, likely due to the 150 mile distance from the ocean that was far beyond the range of anyone in this town. Delilah draped it over his shoulders. He remained silent still.)
Delilah: So uh, sir, what is your name? Is that a guitar you’re carrying?
(The rain began to pick up, but the thunder and wind died down, adding some calmness to the situation. Lev seemed to be in a trance, broken only by the mention of his precious.)
Lev: Uh yessuh missy. Its me ol’ grand pappy’s. He done named her Jezebel. Cuz he done knew dis damn whore he loves wuz gonna get him killed n’ she did. Juss like Robert Johnson, juss like Hank Williams, dis damn guitare, damn liquor, damn women. . . done killed him. Salut!
(Lev reached up to grab two Fireball shooters that were seated on top of the counter, he opened one up and shot it down without hesitation handing the other to Delilah.)
Delilah: Uh, thanks, but I’m only 20.
(Carla, snatched the shooter out of Lev’s hand and finished the liquor without hesitation. Lev, began rubbing the guitar through the case)
Lev: My pappy likedid to drink, I likes to drink too. Only diffence, is my pappy was a mean ol’ dog. Wrath of the lord in his flesh. Ya know, he worked with leather, my mama done told me the smells, the chemicals, the oils, the boiling of skin, made him crazy. Got to his head. Then the liquor, well, dat just broke his chains. Ya know, he wanted to sell this here guitar. I done know that he wouldn’t listen. He’d sell it for liquor money. So I done took him for a case he made for some rich fella, took it and ran with dis here guitar at 12 years old ya hear!
(Delilah nodded along empathetically. She ran away from home in San Antonio when she was 16, escaping a Father who abused her and liquor. Only to live with an older boyfriend who abused her and liquor. But she, a tender heart, still looked after him for years, until he disappeared one night and never returned. She had been alone since then. She was amazingly ignorant of the cycle she repeated, but alas, for some good hearts, it is best if their faculties do not come to development—luck often seems to bless them.)
Carla: Do you know any music?
(Lev turned to her, in abject disbelief. He was the homeless one, and he never had pretensions about his intelligence. Lev couldn’t read or write, but he could talk well and he could remember words and chords, and that’s all you need to play the Blues. Nevertheless, it seemed in many of his travels, he would meet far dumber people again and again—drawing his ire and disdain for their too often lack of taste. Lev pitied nobody, but he seemed always angry at the world and life itself.)
Lev: Of course I can play! Why da hell you think I’d carry this around wit me for thirty-somethin’ years!
Delilah: Can you play us a song? I think it can help us calm down a bit.
(Lev didn’t really want to play for such a crowd, he preferred strumming to himself and practicing the twelve songs he’d verbalized and memorized and the twenty-two he picked up from listening on the radio, but his pride could hardly let him refuse a request. His mother also made him promise, before he left her and his seven siblings, that he would learn a new song every year, and play proper blues. He was meticulous in his mastery of the guitar, singularly driven to play and he played well.)
Lev: Alright missies, one song. Now listen and learn! Imma singin’ here.
(Lev turned to a chord reminiscent of You was Born to Die he preferred the Curly Weaver version over the Blind Wilie Mctell, but both men were his supposed uncles in Georgia as his stories told. Nevertheless, sometimes lyrics and chords blended in his mind, so much so, that he was beginning to forget which belonged to which. The first dozen songs he picked up, were difficult, the next 22 easy to learn by ear, but the real trouble was mastering any one song, and remembering exactly the lyrics he liked. A problem, which even if he was neurotically cognizant about, wouldn’t really matter to him nor most others. Blues were largely a dead form of music anyway and the remnants who listened and played acclaimed a universal propagation, a service to the art itself.)
Lev:
Ain’t nothing ‘fraid of
No pressure
Or sound
I gots to play
A beautiful round
You gots to remember
You was born to die.
(Carla screamed at this last line, as she burst into tears.)
Lev: Ahh—you!
(Lev was about to call her a dumb bitch again, but seeing her tears, he felt a semblance of hesitation. He instead sighed. Looking to Deilah if she wanted to hear more.)
Delilah: That was nice! But, uh, can you play a happier song? Possibly not one about death. Or drinking or being sad.
(Lev looked at her, once more in disbelief. He shook his head. But then nodded.)
Lev: Its called blues for a reason. Cuz life is sad n’ hard, n’ some of us, gots long memories. But aight, for dis woman, I’ll sing a good rain song.
(He began humming first, then playing again, this time Let the Mermaids flirt with Me By Mississippi John Hurt. He was one of Lev’s favorite guitarists, he regarded his strumming as more melodic, smooth, hypnotic, soothing than anyone else in the Delta or even Piedmont sounds. Instantly the guitar changed the atmosphere.)
Wandering blues
My blues is to be in motion
Blues all in my hair
Can't stay here no longer
I got too much pain to bear
When my earthly trials are over
I want you to look long and hard at me
Say? Is that the blues picker?
That you always seem to see?
I do no work for pleasures
Earthly peace I'll see no more
The only reason I play at all
Is to drive the reaper from my door .
When my earthly trials are over
I want you to look long and hard at me
Say? Is that the blues picker?
That you always seem to see?
My papa done drove me out my only home
A sweetheart I can not find
The only thing that I really own
Is a troubled and a worried mind
When my earthly trials are over
I want you to look long and hard at me
Say? Is that the blues picker?
That you always seem to see?
Blues all in my body
Another darling has forsaken me
If I see her again
I’ll put her in the bottom of the sea.
When my earthly trials are over
I want you look long and hard at me
Say? Is that the blues picker?
That you always seem to see?
My blues is to be in motion
Blues all in my hair
Can't stay here no longer
I got too much pain to bear
When my earthly trials are over
I want you to look long and hard at me
Say? Is that the blues picker?
That you always seem to see?
…
FIN