originally published January 17, 2008

this writing
is in the chapbook

Long Gone Blues
by Sam Martin

(a Down in the Dirt chapbook)

this chapbook is also available for sale for $3.50 (+ $1.00 shipping and handling per chapbook)

this writing is in the collection book Decrepit Remains (PDF file) download: only $9.95 (b&w pgs): paperback book $18.92 (b&w pgs):hardcover book $32.95 (color pgs): paperback book $75.45 (color pgs): hardcover book $88.45

Blue Mesh

Sam Martin

    “They all gone.”
    Stick had asked the old black man about the bluesmen so commonly seen at one time on the corners of this (or any) small town in South Texas. The old man’s look had turned inward before he responded, and Stick suspected he sought words to match his images.
    “You ‘member any uv ‘em?”
    “Sho’.” He spat tobacco juice.
    Stick decided to be equally reticent, so he just waited. I bet he’s thinkin’ ‘bout encounters he had with the white man when he ‘uz as young as I am now. The old man shifted in the metal chair under the porch roof of “Rudy’s BBQ Shack,” a former residence set slightly back from the main street of WÉÉ, where (Stick mused) his father might well have rocked on a baking hot evening, imagining a cooling breeze generated by the trains speeding through the middle of town.
    Stick had returned to WÉÉ this “summer-after-Mama-died,” to confirm his memories. On their last visit, he and she had found the family-owned General Store shut down. The notice on the door announced that the final remaining family member had died. Ironically, the walls on both external sides of the huge corner building looked freshly repainted in Red, White and Blue (a somewhat delayed gesture of respect for the Bi-Centennial), in apparent anticipation of another hundred or so glorious years of operation. Anyway, Stick couldn’t believe the decision to close hadn’t been reversed, for the sake of, if nothing else, the pepper-laced hot-links, sustenance of the local poor for decades. It hadn’t. That’s why he had stopped at “Rudy’s BBQ Shack,” to search for the missing hot-sausage links.
    “Little Tinnie Mann.”
    “Tinnie??”
    “Yeh. He played on a old steel-body Broadcastah.”
    “Aah. Did they call him ‘The Tin Man’?”
    “Huhnn?”
    “Oh, nothin’.”
    “Yeh. He played the dances on Sat’idy nights at the ‘Honey Drippah.’ Fo’ they got ho’ns. Fo’ they got fancy. The mens useta go down theah justa watch the gulls dance.” He chuckled.
    “Yeah, I know whatchou mean.” Stick said. “I hate this modern stuff. I just like a plain old guitar, maybe a harmonica. Some rattle-bones.”
    He looked a little surprised. “You know them?” He worked his tobacco wad around.
    “I sure do. I even like a tappin’ board. Like Bull City Red used.” He added, “I drum a little; they call me ‘Sticks.’”
    He reached out to the side and spat. “You know some.”
    “Thank ya. Yeah, this modern junk aint nothin’ but a perfession. Make money.”
    They quit talking for a while. Stick was finishing his Big Red, and tooth-picking the sausage gristle out from between his teeth.
    But the old man had something to say. It was both a true story and a philosophy of truth.
    He started out, “The Lawd makes doubles, y’ know.”
    “You mean twins?”
    “Sometimes they is.” He paused. “Tinnie had a brotha’. Wadn’t no twin. He ‘uz older. He played the guitah betta’n Tinnie did. Made his own songs. But the peoples didn’t like ‘im. He finely gave up and went in the Ahmy. Lef’ Tinnie his name and his guitah. After the Wah he went ta Chicago. Played in clubs.”
    Stick decided to wax eruditic. “I’ll wager people detected a tinge of modernism in his offerings. His very being was devoid of blue mesh.”
    “What’s ‘at?”
    “He ‘uz a fake. He didn’t have the blues, so he couldn’t sing ‘em.”
    “You right.” He paused. “The Good Lawd said they had to be a Tinnie Mann, so he made backup. God cain’t trust people to do the right thing. “

“Where’d jou get that idea?”
    “’Bout God not trustin’? From the Good Book.”
    “No, I mean about backup.”
    “Huhnn. I seen it.”
    “Well, believe it or not, I saw the same thing.”
    He didn’t respond, so Stick continued,
    “I come from the Rock ‘N’ Roll era, you know, Elvis?The King. He had a still-born twin, Jesse Garon; he also had imitators?The Blonde Elvis, The British Elvis, The Elvis Voice. God decreed there would be an Elvis, so he made extras.”
    (Stick started to bring up Nietsche’s Theory of the Eternal Return, but he wouldn’t have known what he was talking about.)
    The Old Man stood up. “I betta go.” While he was replacing the chair, and brushing off his pants, Stick asked him,
    “Where ya goin’?”
    “I’m gon’ visit my little brotha’s grave.” He ambled off, but just before he got out of ear-range, Stick hollered,
    “What’s your name?”
    The Old Man laughed loudly, and hollered back,
    “Big Tinnie!”
    Dam’n! He was a fake. Oh, well, Blues is solitary, but the tellin’ art needs ears.
    Stick just stood there, watching the Old Man. Rudy walked out and Stick asked him,
    “Who was that old man?”
    “What old man?”
    “You didn’t see ‘im?”
    “I didn’t see nobody.”
    Stick sauntered down Main Street toward his car, looking for somebody to askÉwhat, he wasn’t certain. But for sure, nobody had ever heard of Tinnie MannÉor any other bluesman in WÉÉ, until one middle-aged black man said, “Wait!” “Uncle Ivory!”he called, then walked up to an ancient black man with cottony hair and talked a few minutes with him . He returned to Stick. “Uncle Ivory say they wadn’t but one ‘Tinnie,” and he died a long time ago.”
    Stick sighed.

    As he pulled his car away from the curb, he noted the anachronistic hitching-rings still anchored in the tall, cement-sidewalk steps, and his mood darkened in sympathy with the sudden cloud-cover, portending at least rain, perhaps a rare summer storm. Just before he reached the corner, to turn right and head for the big city, he recalled the “grave-covers” he’d noticed on his way into town (he had at first concluded the coffins were risen partway out of the earth, until he realized the covers were composed of cement), and he jerked the wheel to the left instead, in the direction “Big Tinnie” had taken.
    Despite the sheets of rain, Stick found the cemetery and pulled into its turn-around at the front gate. At that instant, a glaring flash of lightning illuminated the entire burying grounds. Atop one of the grave-covers lay a figure apparently playing the guitar and singing, although Stick had to exit the car to hear the notes, and the words: “Please keep my grave swept clean.” Another ferocious strike of lightning so frightened Stick, he jumped into the car, spun briefly in the mud, caught some gravel and sped away. He looked back so quickly he wasn’t sure he even saw a grave-site, much less a human form. I better go back his heart said. You better not his mind countered.
    He did return, though, a year later to the day, found the grave, and tidied it up, a trip and task he undertook annually for the next twenty-two years. Sometimes he brought his wife with him; it was she who pointed out the grave was gradually sinking. Health problems kept him from his annual pilgrimage two years running, and, sure enough, on the next visit, they found the grave-cover hidden by neatly-mown grass and wildflowers. Early one morning, a few months later, Stick choked to death on the medley of pills the Doctor had prescribed to keep him alive.

NOTE

    DEAR MRS. DRUMGOOLE: WE’RE SORRY ABOUT YOUR RECENT LOSS. REGARDING YOUR QUESTION: THERE WAS NO TOMBSTONE, BUT THE OFFICIAL REGISTRY SHOWS THE GRAVE HOLDS ONE “TINTERN MANNUS—1902-1942.

    COUNTY RECORDS OFFICE

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