James Burke - Last Car to Elysian Fields

“Just li’l notes I keep for myself, boss,” Junior replied.

“Let’s see it,” Jackson Posey said, fitting a pair of glasses on his nose. He took the bag from Junior’s fingers and studied the words on it, his lips moving slightly as he read. The sores on his arms seemed deeper, more black than purple now. His eyes fixed on Junior’s. “You got Camp Number Nine in here?” he said.

“Yes, suh.”

“Camp Number Nine is us.”

“It is and it ain’t, boss.”

The guard read both sides of the paper bag, then shook a Camel loose from his cigarette pack and slipped it into his mouth. He laughed to himself and handed the song lyrics back to Junior. “I ain’t a big judge of poetry, but I’d say keep this one.”

“Thank you, suh.”

“To wipe yourself with. You never cease to entertain me, Junior,” Posey added.

At morning bell count two days later Andrea LeJeune got out of her Ford convertible at the camp’s front gate, wearing a polka-dot sun dress and dark glasses and a blue bandanna tied tightly on her head, the wind whipping her dress around her legs.

“We’re taking Junior to a recording studio in Crowley, Mr. Posey. Make sure he brings his guitar and his harmonica and a sack lunch. Y’all will follow me in your truck,” she said.

Jackson Posey involuntarily looked toward the big house. “Mr. LeJeune at home, ma’am?” he asked.

“No, he’s not, and I resent your asking,” she replied.

Junior wrapped his Stella in a blanket, tied string around the belly and the neck, and slipped his E-major Marine Band harmonica in his shirt pocket. Before they left the camp, Posey put chains on Junior’s ankles and handcuffs on his wrists, and set the guitar in the bed of the truck. As they drove away Junior looked out the back window at his friend Woodrow flinging a bucket into the bayou on a rope under the gaze of a mounted gun bull.

Then Junior and Jackson Posey were on the highway, driving through a long tunnel of oak trees behind Andrea LeJeune’s purple convertible, the broken sunlight flicking by overhead, the wind cool in their faces.

“You gonna make the big time, huh?” Posey said.

“Don’t know about that, suh.”

“Think it’s coincidence she’s taking you to Crowley?”

“I ain’t following you, boss.”

“That’s where she meets a man I wouldn’t take time to spit on. Castille LeJeune should have invested some of his money in a chastity belt. Know the difference between rich people and us?” Posey said.

“No, suh,” Junior answered.

“They don’t get caught.”

When they pulled into the Crowley town square Andrea LeJeune parked her car next to one of the old elevated sidewalks and went inside the dime store, one with a popcorn machine in front, to use the pay telephone.

Then they drove out into the countryside again, through rice fields that were separated by hedgerows, to a white-painted, flat-top building constructed entirely of cinder blocks that was located inside a grove of cedar and pine trees like a machine-gun bunker.

This was the same primitive studio where a few years later Warren Storm and Lazy Lester would record and Phil Phillips would cut the master for “Sea of Love,” which would sell over one million copies. The equipment was prewar junk, the resonator for Junior’s acoustic Stella a chunk of storm sewer pipe with a microphone on the other end. But each person working in the studio knew who Junior Crudup was, and his identity as both a black man and a convict seemed to melt away as the session progressed.

He recorded eight pieces, the last of which was “The Angel of Work Camp Number Nine.” As he sang the lyrics he looked through a greasy side window and saw her by the front fender of her convertible, talking to a tall white man who had just gotten out of an Olds-mobile with grillwork that resembled chromium teeth. The white man was thin, dark haired, his crisp shirt tucked tightly inside his seersucker slacks. He rested one foot on the bumper of his car and re moved a blade of grass from the tip of his two-tone shoe, then took his car keys from his pocket and inserted his finger through the ring and spun them in the air.

He drove away toward town in his Oldsmobile and Andrea LeJeune followed him. Junior’s voice broke in the middle of his song and he had to start again.

Later, Junior and Jackson Posey rode back through the town square of Crowley, past the colonnaded storefronts and tree-shaded elevated sidewalks inset with iron tethering rings, past the dime store with a popcorn machine in front from which Andrea had made a phone call.

Junior was hunched forward on the seat, his wrists cuffed, the chain between his ankles vibrating with the motion of the truck, his expression concealed from Jackson Posey.

“I’ll show you something,” Posey said, and cut down a side street and out onto a state road, past a shady motor court that featured a swimming pool in back and a supper club in front. Posey slowed the truck so he and Junior could have a clear view of the stucco cottages inside the trellised entrance.

“Don’t need to be seeing none of this, boss,” Junior said.

“There’s his Oldsmobile. There’s her little Ford. What do you reckon he’s doing to her right now?”

Junior stared at the tops of his cuffed hands and did not speak again until they were back at the camp.

But his day was not over. Just after supper Jackson Posey came for him again. “She wants to see you,” he said.

“Wore out, boss.”

He was alone, sitting on an upended Coca-Cola box in the corner of the dirt yard, next to the fence topped by five strands of barbed wire tilted back at an inward angle, his guitar still wrapped with a blanket and tied with string on top of his bunk inside. The sun was only a smudge on the western horizon and the lilac-colored sky throbbed with the droning of cicadas.

“Get your skinny ass up before I kick it up between your shoulder blades,” Posey said. “One other thing?”

“What’s that, boss?”

“You tell her I drove you past that motor court today, I’m gonna take you out to a stump, nail your balls to it, and leave you there with a knife. Ain’t storying to you, Junior. I seen my daddy do it when I was a boy,” Posey said.

But Junior did not get up from the Coca-Cola box. “I ain’t playing no more today,” he said.

Posey raised his fist and knocked him to the ground. “Whup me or put me on the bucket. I ain’t going to play no more,” Junior said.

“I don’t have to whup you. I’m gonna do it to Woodrow Reed instead,” Posey said.

On the way to the house of Castille and Andrea LeJeune, Junior wondered what he had done in this world to earn the grief that seemed to be his daily lot.

He waited on the patio with his guitar and harmonica for Andrea LeJeune to come downstairs and through the French doors. When she emerged she was still wearing the polka-dot dress she had worn earlier. Her face looked haggard, somehow thinner in the evening light.

“I wanted you to know the producer at the studio called to say how thrilled he was. I’m just sorry I didn’t get to hear you perform,” she said.

“I understand, ma’am,” he replied.

“I have to go away, Junior. But I’m going to do everything I can to see you released from prison. What happened to your head?”

“Fell down the steps,” he replied, his face empty.

She gave a long, hard look at Jackson Posey standing by the pickup truck in the driveway. “Come in the house,” she said.

“That ain’t a good idea, Miss Andrea,” Junior said.

She walked to the edge of the drive. “Mr. Posey, Junior is coming into the living room for a few minutes. We’re not to be disturbed,” she said.

“I cain’t allow that, ma’am.”