�Well, see you back in Chicago,� I said apologetically. �Take care, Joe,� said George. Joe just grunted something and George and I got back in the car and drove away.
A hundred yards or so down the road I turned around and looked back. Joe was there in the road, fumbling with his suitcase and equipment. He was an image from the lyrics of a blues song. or from the cover of a record jacket--Joe with his suitcase and guitar, looking down a hot dusty road, alone.
�George,� I said, �we can�t just go off like this�its like we�re abandoning him or something. We gotta turn around.� And we did. Because, for better or for worse, here was a man of stature. There was a great pride in this man, a great strength in this man.
And there was poetry. He was a poet of the highways, and in the words of his songs he could sing to you his life. And to hear him talk about ROBERT JOHNSON or SON HOUSE or CHARLIE PATTON, to hear life distilled from fifty years of thumbing rides and riding rails and playing joints�to hear of levees and work gangs and tent shows; of madames and whores, pimps and rounders, gamblers, bootleggers, and roustabouts; of circuit-preachers and medicine-show men�well, it was something.
Because to know this man was to know the story of black America, and maybe to know the story of black America is to know America itself.
He didn�t look at us as we pulled up beside him in the road. �Come on, Joe,� I said, �come on back to Chicago with us.�
�No,� he replied, �I want to stay some while longer. You boys go on back to your peoples�you don�t belong here.�
And he was right. I had thought I could be part of his culture and live out on the street with him, but I couldn�t. I was a stranger in a strange land, and it was nobody�s fault but my own, So George and I wheeled around and drove away again, and this time when I looked back, Joe was gone.
Back in Chicago I avoided the record store for as long as I could. But staying away finally got to be worse than any sort of confrontation, so one day I took the subway downtown and headed for the shop. Joe was in the basement, sitting there in old serge trousers and a lime-green shirt with spangles all down the front. The spangles looked like the little things you see on sugar cookies at Christmastime.
He had a bottle of beer in one hand and on the floor beside him sat a six-pack. I stopped a few feet away from him. �Joe,� I said, my voice tentative, �It�s good to see you. How�ve you been?�
�Michael, I been all right,� he said. He reached into the six-pack for a beer and offered it to me. �Have yourself a taste and sit awhile.�
I took the beer and pulled an old metal chair over and sat down, facing him. He picked up his guitar and played riffs from a couple of songs, then held it out to me. I shook my head.
--Finished on page 10
