Black Troubadour

JOE MOSS is a harp-blowing black man. When he bears down hard on his two-bit harmonica he can make trouble leave your weary mind, set your tired feet to stomping, bring Sweet Jesus to your backsliding soul. Joe Moss is a one-harp, two-harp, three-harp-blowing man. Sometimes on hot nights in summer when folks are sitting out on the front porch catching air, talking, or sleeping on a mattress stuck in the front doorway to get the benefit of the draft blowing through the open back door and at the same time to deep the dog from leaving the house, Joe takes a stand on the corner of Redbud Street and Cately Avenue. He draws a harp out of the belt that holds up his red corduroy trousers and slowly eases up on the blues just like a lonesome man sidling up to talk to a lady who has a mean and jealous husband.

The first notes of the long, lonesome, mournful tune scarcely seem to disturb the stillness of the night. They merge with it. For a little while you are unaware that anything new has come into the night; that music must always have been there. It must always have been part of the dusty road in the moonlight; of the smoky coal-oil lamps in the shacks; the querulous whine of mosquitoes; the howling of dogs lost in the anguish of mating under the street light at the corner; the slow, reptilian crawling of crayfish in the muddy ditches; the pools of shadow between the close-packed shotgun houses; the broken picket fences and the fecund sunflowers heavy with dust and seed; the quiet voices talking, giggling; the sweaty hands, seeking, searching; the black, oily clouds scudding past the moon; and the faroff rumbling of the Cannon Ball train rounding the curve up above the oil mill. Joe bears down harder and harder. The notes of his harp tremble sadly on the air like a weary sinner laying his head at last on the bosom of Sweet Jesus. Gawd, save us sinners on Judgment Day.

Joe Moss is a rambling, rolling, trainriding, harp-blowing man. They know him on Rampart Street in New Orleans; in the hot-cat parlors and dice dens of Beale Street in Memphis; in Natchez, Vicksburg, Greenville, Helena; in all the river towns up to Cape Girardeau; as far west as Dallas, Texas. Winter and summer, fall and spring, Joe rambles the land, a sweat shirt and red corduroy trousers covering his nakedness, and a ragged hat on his nappy head. It ain’t no need to work. It ain’t no need to have no one woman and no one home. A man with music in his body can win hisself a woman and a home wherever he lights. A nigger ain’t gonna have nothin’ nohow, so it ain’t no need to try to have nothin’. And it sho’ ain’t no sense to stay in no one place ’cause when yo’ foots itches to travel they’s trains goin’ whichever way you wants, and somebody, white or black, to feed you when you’s hongry.

Joe was born to be a harp-blowing man, but he did n’t know it until he was past twenty-one and the Albino Preacher told him right, out in church before all the folks that he had the gift of song and music. Up to that time he had worked on Deep Snow Plantation just like any common man, chopping cotton, hoeing grass, ditching, clearing land for the white people, never going farther from home than Greenville, fourteen miles away, and living with only three women from the time he was fifteen years old until he became twenty-one. Nowadays Joe laughs when he sees people chopping cotton in the hot sun; picking cotton on frosty mornings in the fall; felling trees in icy swamps. He rares back and laughs when they flash by him as he crouches on the blinders of that Pan-American train leaving out from New Awleens for Birmingham, Alabamer; when he rides that Manifest Freight from Memphis to Fulton, Kentucky.

As Joe plays the lonesome blues, up and down Redbud Street folks stop talking. Across the road in the jailhouse prisoners come to the windows of their cells and stick their heads close to the bars to drink in the music lingering on the air. Two high-yellow young couples driving down the street in a V-8 Ford automobile, on their way to the Chinaman’s store to get something t’ eat, pull up and stop. By this time everybody in the neighborhood knows that Joe Moss, the harp-blowingest man in Mississippi, is back in town. Suddenly Joe sticks the harp in his belt and begins to sing in a warm, rich barytone that can be heard two blocks away: —

Up and down the street women cock their ears to catch every word, every note, every tiny evocation of sound. Men listen, too, their souls wooed by the song, their hearts touched with jealousy and vague, uneasy stirrings. The song ends. The night is given over again to the whining of mosquitoes, the brittle crashing of heavy-bodied insects against the dazzling street lamp on the corner, the howling of dogs, and the rumbling of the Cannon Ball as it moves slowly through New Africa on its way to the near-by station. The air is heavy with heat. There is a ring around the moon. Gwine rain to-morrow sho’. Lawd Jesus, he’p us. We’s heavy laden.

Then Joe pulls two harps out of his belt. Once, long ago, when he was a fatherless chile and got religion, he promised the Lawd that he would quit blowing the blues and play nothing but church songs. But Joe is a man who is messed up in his weary mind, and he can’t always remember what he promised the Lawd and what he did n’t promise. But shucks. If you blows the blues now and then and plays church songs now and then, the Lawd sho’ ain’t gwine be vexed with you.

He stands now under the street light, two harps gleaming silver in the great black gash of his mouth, and blows like Gabriel on Judgment Muwnin’. Tiny rivulets of sweat chase one another through his kinky hair and roll down his neck and throat to merge in little streams lost in the sea of his broad back and thick chest. His torso moves in slow circles on his hips; his feet tap time in the dust; his neck moves in convulsive jerks while his hands tremble on the harps, and the pupils of his eyes dilate until they become spots of black in pools of cream-white. Jesus, come take me home.

Across the street in the jailhouse, Mankind Armstrong stands with an ear hard against the iron bars of his cell listening. He knows that Joe is singing the gospel truth. His mama told him it was the truth long ago when he was a little boy on Sunup Plantation. Reverem Green, the pastor of his church, told him it was so when he was baptized in Possum Slough. Even the white folks — and they ain’t got much sense no matter if the Law is on they side — believe you’re going to Jesus when you die. Now Mankind is on his way — on his way to know the truth beyond all dispute; on his way to Jesus; on his way unscarrcd from his life on earth except for a tiny dislocation of his vertebra? that will occur when he drops through the trapdoor of the newly erected gallows that stands in the back yard of the jailhouse. Mankind listens to Joe Moss blowing on his harps, laughs out loud, and shouts to the prisoner in the adjoining cell: ‘Nigger, ain’t dat do beatin’est, harp-blowin’est man you ever has heerd?’

Once more silence falls on Redbud Street as Joe’s song is ended. Then the Law walks up on him out of the darkness — the white-faced Law in a sweaty shirt, dust-stained shoes, gleaming badge beneath sagging suspenders, and blackand-silver pistol stuck in a sweat-stained holster.

Joe takes off his hat as the Law approaches and holds it respectfully in his hand. It was n’t no need to run, and besides Joe had n’t done nothin’.

‘Good evenin’, Cap’m,’ Joe said.

‘Good evenin’, Joe,’ the Law said.

‘ Boss Man, how come you knows my name?’ Joe asked.

‘’Cause every nigger in New Africa say they gonna kill you if you keep comin’ around here blowin’ them harps and monkeyin’ round with their women.’

Joe smiled complacently. ‘Cap’m,’ he said, looking at the ground, ‘I’m a man don’t never kick in no other man’s stall.’

‘Well, maybe you do and maybe you don’t. That ain’t no skin off my teeth, and if you get killed messin’ around here that won’t be nothin’ new. Anyhow, it ain’t gonna be to-night. You been givin’ me the creeps with them songs you been singin’. Now let’s hear somethin’ lively.’

‘ Yassuh, Boss,’ replied Joe energetically, a note of vast relief in his voice. This was not the first time he had played for the Law, but it was the first time as a free man. Once, down in Natchez, Joe had been arrested and had blown himself clean out of police court. Judge Patterson had asked him to play a tune to see if he was just a jackleg musician, and then had kept him playing all morning long while the other prisoners awaiting trial joined in the singing, and when it was all over the Judge told Joe to come back to see him whenever he was in town and gave him a dollar bill to boot. It ain’t no way on earth to tell what white folks will do even if you’s a two-headed man. And here Joe was facing the Law again under novel circumstances. ‘Cap’m,’ he said, ‘how ’bout a mess of dem “Saint Louis Blues”?’

‘Go ’head,’ said the Law, as it whittled a match into a toothpick and began to explore the cavities of its teeth.

Joe took three harps out of his belt, put them in his mouth, and began passionately to celebrate the immortal fame of that Saint Louis woman who tied men to her apron strings. Up and down the length of Redbud Street the music ran. Up and down the length of the street bare feet, shoed feet, stockinged feet, black feet, brown feet, chocolate feet, tan feet, café-au-lait feet, smooth feet, splay feet, flat feet, calloused feet, began to beat time. Up and down the length of the street bodies swayed. Fat bodies, thin bodies, fecund bodies, sterile bodies, old bodies, young bodies, flat-chested bodies, full-breasted bodies, swayed with the music. Bodies moved closer to bodies; lips to lips; chests to breasts; legs to legs; thighs to thighs — moved closer, swayed, beat time. Up and down the length of the street, children stirred in their sleep; stirred, awoke, and crept to the front door sensing rather than hearing something strange in the night. Up and down the street, women hissed to their children to git back in bed ’fo’ I busts you wide open. Up and down Redbud Street, old men and old women dreamed of their hot lost youth when they could have talked under their clothes with the strongest in the land.

The harps stopped blowing. The Law walked away, moonlight on its badge, moonlight on its black-and-silver pistol, moonlight on its dusty-silver shoes, moonlight on its wet shirt sloping over rounded shoulders. The hot air pressed closer on Redbud Street. The ring around the moon pressed closer on the moon. Frogs croaked in the stagnant ditches; an automobile coughed in the far distance and was suddenly still. From the river came the mournful wail of the whistle of the Tennessee Belle as she backed out into the stream bound down for way landings and New Awleens. Silence and heat and moonlight lay heavily on Redbud Street.

Then doors up and down the length of the street began to bang. Doors popped, screeched, slammed, and boomed as they were violently shut. Porch swings, suddenly deserted, swayed for a moment or two and then were still. Mattresses vanished inside the shacks. Soon the street was deserted save for old men and women who remained rocking in their chairs catching little puffs of breeze that came up from the river, and slapping with weary hands at the mosquitoes that sang about their ears and legs.

Joe Moss stuck three harps into the belt that held up his red corduroy trousers, and walked slowly over to Mee Hop’s café on Nelson Street to get him a can of sardine-fish and crackers. Chinermens was funny. Funnier even than white folks. They would n’t give you nothing for no music if you blowed yo’ lungs out. But it might be some niggers there and them sardine-fish could be turned into a mess of chitlins.

A few minutes later the chitlins were frying on Mee Hop’s stove, and Joe sat smoking a Two Orphans cigar, voluptuously sniffing the rich, satisfying, mingled aromas of fat entrails and tobacco. Around Joe clustered a little group of his admirers. He took the cigar out of his mouth, spat on the floor, and laughed. ‘I swears to Gawd,’ he said, ‘de way dem niggers banged dey doors sounds like de time Wetherbee’s Hardware Store caught on fire and fawty thousand shotgun shells went off at de same time. I does n’t keer where de niggers at or who dey is, when Joe Moss tears off a piece on his harps de mens shuts dey doors and tells dey wimmens to stay way back in de kitchen to I done passed by.’

‘Hit’s sho’ de truth,’ said Virgie Mae Jones, as she put twenty cents on the counter and Joe Moss lifted a forkful of steaming chitlins from the plate.