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“I don’t know nothing about politics.”
“You’re a star on the Barn Dance. People will listen to you.”
“Who else is going on the show?”
“Everybody in the band except Troy.”
“What happened to him?”
“He’s in a hospital. He was taking heroin. I never knew anything about it until he came out on the stage so jazzed up he couldn’t remember his lines.”
“I didn’t know he was on it.”
“When can you come back?”
“I’ll take the afternoon train.”
“I can wire you some money.”
“I don’t need none.”
“Are you still hot about that run-in we had before you left?”
“No.”
“Because we have some big things ahead of us, and we don’t want anybody to mess it up.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” J.P. said.
“Is something wrong? You don’t sound very interested.”
“I’m interested. See you in the morning.”
He put down the receiver and went to his room. He called the railroad depot and made reservations on the three o’clock train. He opened his suitcase on the bed and packed. The porter came up for his bag. J.P. had an hour and a half before train time. He took out his guitar and thumbed the strings to pass the time. Oh the train left Memphis at half past nine. Well it made it back to Little Rock at eight forty-nine. It was a blues song he used to hear the Negroes sing around home. Jesus died to save me and all of my sins. Well glory to God we’re going to see him again.
He took a private compartment in a Pullman car. He had the porter make up his bed, and he slept through the afternoon. The train moved down from Nashville into southern Tennessee, rolling through the sloping fields of winter grass partly covered with snow. The land became flat as the train neared Memphis and entered the Mississippi basin. The river was high and yellow under the winter sky. The train rushed southward into Arkansas, and the land was sere and coarse. For miles he saw the board shacks of tenant farmers, all identical, with their dirt floors and mud-brick chimneys and weathered outbuildings, which were owned by the farming companies, along with the bleak fallow land and the rice mills and cotton gins and company stores.
He changed trains at Little Rock and arrived in Louisiana the next morning. He checked into the hotel, shaved, and went to Hunnicut’s room. He met Seth in the hall.
“The Live-Again man is inside with Virdo now. They’re waiting for you,” Leroy said.
“I come straight from the depot. I couldn’t get here no faster.”
“Do you know about the show?”
“Virdo told me over the phone.”
“We’re going all over the state, and Lathrop is picking up the bills. He give me a two hundred dollar advance for pussy money.”
“What’s this about Troy?” J.P. said.
“He’s in the junkie ward. They had to strap his arms down when they took him in. The doctor said he’s a mainliner. Shooting it in the arm twice a day. The last time he was on the show he come out on the stage and started cussing in the microphone. They had to cut us off the air. I think April got him started on it. Her and that quack that comes in to lay her every Sunday.”
“What do you know about it?” J.P. looked at the pockmarks on his face and the reddened skin and the coarse brown hair that was like straw.
“That’s how she pays her bills, spreading her legs for Doc Elgin. He comes up here every Sunday morning to collect.”
“The hell he does.”
