James Burke: Black Cherry Blues

"I appreciate it, Dave. You're righteous people." Dixie Lee popped open a paper bag and put four bottles of Jax inside.

I took him in an outboard down the bayou, past the four-corners, where the old flaking general store with its wide gallery sat in the shade of an enormous oak tree. Some old men and several Negroes from a road-maintenance crew were drinking soda pop on the gallery.

The wake from the outboard swelled up through the lily pads and cattails and slapped against the cypress roots along the bank. Dixie Lee lay back against the bow, the beer bottle in his hand filled with amber sunlight, his eyes narrowing wistfully in the sun's refraction off the brown water. I cut the engine and let us float on our own wake into an overhang of willow trees. In the sudden quiet we could hear a car radio playing an old Hank Williams song in the shell parking lot of the general store.

"Good God Almighty, is that inside my head or outside it?" he asked.

"It's from the four-corners," I said, and smiled at him. I took out my Puma pocketknife and shaved the bark off a wet willow stick.

"Boy, it takes me back, though. When I started out, they said if you don't play it like Hank or Lefty, it ain't worth diddly-squat on a rock. They were right, too. Hey, you know the biggest moment I ever had in my career? It wasn't them two gold records, and it sure wasn't marrying some movie actress with douche water for brains. It was when I got to cut a live album with the Fat Man down in New Orleans. I was the only white artist he ever recorded with. Man, he was beautiful. He looked like a little fat baby pig up on that piano bench, with a silver shirt on and rhinestone coat and rings all over his fingers. He was grinning and rocking and pounding the keys with those little sausage fingers, sweat flying off his face, and the whole auditorium going ape shit I mean with white broads trying to climb on the stage and people doing the dirty boogie in front of the cops. I mean it was his show, he owned them, man, but each time he finished a ride he'd point at me so the spotlight would swing over on my guitar and I'd get half of all that yelling out there. That cat had a generous heart, man."

Dixie Lee shook his head and opened another Jax with his Pocketknife. I looked at my watch.

"Yeah, I'm sorry," he said.

"It's a problem I got, getting wrapped up in yesterday's scrapbook. Look, I got something bad on my mind. In fact, it's crazy. I don't even know how to explain it. Maybe there's nothing to it. Hell, I don't know."

"How about just telling me?"

"Star Drilling sent me and a couple of other lea semen up to Montana. On the eastern slope of the Rockies, what they call the East Front up there. Big gas domes, son. Virgin country. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars. Except there's a problem with some wilderness areas and the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.

"But that don't concern me. I'm just a lease man right? Fooling around with the Forest Service or Indians or these crazy bastards spiking trees"

"Doing what?"

"A bunch of cult people or something don't want anybody cutting down trees, so they hammer nails and railroad spikes way down in the trunk. Then some lumberjack comes along with a McCul-lough and almost rips his face off. But I don't have any beef with these people. Everybody's got their own scene, right? Let Star Drilling take care of the PR and the politics, and Dixie Lee will get through the day with a little JD and God's good grace.

"But we came back for six weeks of deals and meetings at the Oil Center in Lafayette. So I'm staying at the motel with these two other lease guys. The company picks up all the bills, the bar's always open, and a black guy serves us Bloody Marys and chilled shrimp by the pool every morning. It should have been a nice vacation before I go back to wheeling and dealing among the Indians and the crazies.

"Except two nights ago one of the other lease guys has a party in his rooms. Actually it's more like a geek show. Broads ripping off their bras, people spitting ice and tonic on each other. Then I guess I got romantic and went into the bedroom with this big blond gal that looked like she could throw a hog over a fence."

His eyes shifted away from me, and his cheeks colored slightly. He drank again from the Jax without looking back at me.

"But I was deep into the jug that night, definitely not up to her level of bumping uglies," he said.

"I must have passed out and rolled off the side of the bed between the bed and the wall, because that's where I woke up about five in the morning. The snakes were starting to clatter around in their basket, then I heard the two other lease guys talking by themselves in the other room.

"One guy I ain't using his name says, "Don't worry about it. We did what we had to do." Then the other guy says, "Yeah, but we should have taken more time. We should have put rocks on top of them or something. Animals are always digging up stuff in the woods, then a hunter comes along."

"Then the first guy says, "Nobody's going to find them. Nobody cares about them. They were both troublemakers. Right or wrong?"

"Then the second guy says, "I guess you're right."

"And the first guy says, "It's like a war. You make up the rules when it's over."

"I stayed quiet in the bedroom till I heard them call room service for breakfast and a couple of bottles of Champale, then I walked into the living room in my skivvies, looking like I'd just popped out of my momma's womb. I thought both of them was going to brown their britches right there."

"You think they killed some people?"

He touched his fingers nervously to his forehead.

"Good God, man, I don't know," he said.

"What's it sound like to you?"

"It sounds bad."

"What d'you think I ought to do?"

I rubbed my palm on the knee of my khaki work trousers, then clicked my nails on the metal housing of the outboard engine. The dappled sunlight fell through the willows on Dixie 's flushed face.

"I can introduce you to the Iberia sheriff or a pretty good DEA agent over in Lafayette," I said.

"Are you kidding, man? I need a drug agent in my life like a henhouse needs an egg-sucking dog."

"Well, there's still the sheriff."

He drank the foam out of the Jax bottle and looked at me with one eye squinted shut against the light.

"I'm getting the impression you think I'd just be playing with my swizzle stick," he said.

I raised my eyebrows and didn't answer.

"Come on, Dave. I need some help. I can't handle worry. It eats my lunch."

"Where do you think this happened?"

"Up in Montana, I guess. That's where we been the last three months."

"We can talk to the FBI, but I don't think it's going anywhere. You just don't have enough information, Dixie." I paused for a moment.

"There's another bump in the road, too."

He looked at me as a child might if he was about to be brought to task.

"When I was on the grog, I had a hard time convincing people about some things I heard and saw," I said.

"It's unfair, but it goes with the territory."

He stared at the water and pinched his eyes with his fingers.

"My advice is to get away from these guys," I said.

"I work with them."

"There're other companies."

"Be serious. I was in Huntsville. The Texas parole office don't give you the best letters of recommendation."

"I don't know what to tell you, then."

"It's a mess of grief, huh?"

I began pulling in the anchor rope.

"You're gonna turn to stone on me?" he said.

"I wish I could help. I don't think I can. That's the way it is."

"Before you crank that engine, let me ask you a question. Your father was killed on a rig out in the Gulf, wasn't he?"

"That's right."

"It was a Star rig, wasn't it?"