he kind of favors one of my boys when he was about his age.
boy, that is bad luck to touch a fellow with a broom.
i came all the way from detroit by bus going to oakland. the bus stopped in los angeles. i had to get off and take a rest. i'll catch the last bus leaving at midnight. i'm just too tired to go on.
my feet have never been on anything that wasn't directly attached to the ground.
i'm worn out but won't you feel like you are taking in a stranger?
well, i don't want to put you out.
well if you're sure, i won't be a bother. oh, i don't sleep on no spring mattress. i always make myself a pallet on the floor.
good evening. it must be all the different time zones i crossed that makes me feel this weary.
no, if i rest any longer, i won't sleep tonight. may i use your bathroom to wash up a bit?
that's awful generous of you. i always ask to keep from wearing out welcome.
where we come from, you had to know how to act right. you had to know how to say yes sir and no sir. you had to know your place.
you remember that boy who lost his mind, joe? you could hear him pitching horseshoes at night in the dark. he wouldn't miss a one. make him mad and call yourself running in the house to be safe. he would pick up a brick and say "go on in there brick and hit somebody" and it would find its mark.
all those places that us coloreds lived, that we used to call bottoms, have all been changed to drives and heights. everything is in what you call it, not in what it is.
i'm going to wash up now. you all please excuse me.
good morning.
next time when i feel a little better perhaps.
oh, i would feel much at home if you let me get one for you. i haven't wrung a chicken's neck in a month of sundays. you know, folks would call my daddy to kill their hogs. that used to be my trade from time to time.
oh, i'm more modern in my ways. i don't believe in sin, though there is good and evil. and evil is a thing you work at.
not you mustn't touch. your mama might not like you handling knives.
i let this rabbit foot do in place of my toby that i lost years ago.
you don't want to be at crossroads without one. it's a charm that old people teach you how to make. i had one for a long time that belonged to my grandmother who had it ever since she was a child. in my travels i misplaced it. i have been looking over my shoulder ever since.
in some things. when we were children, there used to be an old man that came around and would snatch your soul if you didn't have something on you that didn't make a
did you have your child at home?
some folks take that natural stuff too far.
country people got so many strange ways,
that is called a crab apple switch. it's for those bad acting monkeys and just the thing for a mean dog. now i don't know if i actually did what i did or got my life and story mixed in with other folk's stories but i seem to recall that i had to use my crab apple on a boy from back home. i was up in memphis working on the railroad, like your daddy who had an easy job. he would sing a song that had a cadence and we would lay track. anyway i was coming down beale street and i heard this music coming from a saloon. sure enough it was emory. my daddy taught both of us to play but emory was natural at it. got in a blues band and what not. he and another boy had killed a boy named hocker sometime back and they balled the jack leaving town. emory had lost one eye and had a scar running down his face. bad luck i would say. he got to drinking that corn liquor. we went to his girl's room and he wouldn't stop drinking. he started talking about the old days and he went mad. he pulled his knife and i got to mine first. the lights went out.
i don't know what happened to him. he just ran out into the streets. i got some old records i want you to hear. i like the blues sung simply, man and a guitar. or sung by a woman who had bad luck all her life. don't ever let anyone tell you his life's story if it is of a weary life full of sadness. when i was a boy, a man told me a story of how he lost all of his sons and i'll be damned if the same thing didn't happen to me.
how often is your wife called to help delivery?
everything these days is made overseas.
course, it is your business, but i feel obliged to tell you that maybe you have not been fair with the boy.
everyone has to follow his own plough. a man doesn't have to know how to cut a wick and clean a chimney nowadays. city people don't give a hoot and a holler about the shape of the moon nowadays. you don't plant old ways.  .  but, at the end, you find yourself doing what your father did but you have to have the land in you. it's when you want to give the house or farm to the kids and they don't want it. you sell it to a stranger. you worked your whole life, for what? i doubt if people nowadays have knowledge of a victory garden or seen an inch worm. all what we've experienced has no meaning.
you still call him boy. you call babe brother boy in front of his wife and son.
'course, you could be right. your sons are alive. all my sons are dead.
i can sit here and look at train tracks all day. we laid enough of them, didn't we? so many memories are stretched along tracks like these.
we'll go a little farther. the walk will do us some good.
i'll be right there.
girl, do you still sing and dance?
it hasn't been the years; it's been the men in her life.
why run out and close the barn door when the horse is gone? i remember when you weren't saved. that was way back yonder when the natchez trace was just a dirt road.
i know your mother ain't still operating that house of hers.
that is a boy from home, lulla's brother.
you got to know everything, do everything, and be everything.
you can certainly tell how old you are, my dear.
now i was trying to be nice, to make conversation, since we go back some.
"out of weariness, i spoke to my own heart; to leave it all and to die. and i gave my heart to know madness and folly."
my sister, women can get away with so much. i don't have any enemies 'cause i don't live in the past. as pushkin, you don't know him, said, "in the hope of glory and good, i look without fear ahead."
speaking of tappy heads, we ought to have an old fashion fish fry.
we can have it here next week.
oh. i'm sorry. gideon, what do you say?
i already have, my dear.
a woman in family way just reminds of spring and my younger days.
well, you and your husband are special. ya, gideon tells me you do volunteer work to help feed the poor.
how many people do you all feed?
good god almighty, bless your bones. but the problem grows.
of course not. have you ever heard of a man jumping in the river to save five hundred drowning people? no you ain't. you have to take just one and fatten him up. when you spread help too thin, you , you just nickel and dime the situation. if you try to save all, all die but if you save one life, life goes on. you just have to remember, medicine that works leaves a bitter taste.
you just take one; you thaw out the cold and hunger in his bones from sleeping on the bare ground.
oh, i wasn't pointing my finger at you. hey, you have to think of yourself. a lot of them have all kinds of diseases and will cut your throat while you sleep. there are too many bad people out there.
well some folks are still waiting for their comeuppance. don't take me wrong but you can't judge people by how you act. you're a caring person.
ya, but you can't do the shuffle with one leg. you and your wife, in your spare time, work with the less fortunate. now i'm not talking about you and what you do but some folks that always run to help the victim, deep down are attracted to pain and suffering and love to be near the dying.
you never know what's in the heart and just because you can cry doesn't make you human.
take your wife and child home, boy.
i got a surprise for you tonight.
this old buffalo has been in the sun too long.
boy, that is the real south. that is real corn liquor.
you folks excuse me but you know we have a celebrity from out of the past, our own nightingale. if you had any good times in your life, you remember hattie. she use to keep those juke joints steaming. if ma rainey and bessie smith were the stars, she was the sun. let's get hattie to sing something from the old days.
man, i can't talk to you now. i'm filling in the gaps with these folks.
son, you haven't danced with your wife all night.
now who are we talking about?
wasn't hocker lynched?
what difference does it make if it's persimmon, oak tree or huckleberry bush?
strange as it may seem, it might have cleared the waters. sometimes the right action comes from the wrong reason.
i think if anybody had a hand in killing hocker, you ought to ask or you should have asked emory and chick.
those boys never did have good luck.
emory had made a lot of enemies. he had a big mouth.
what's the problem here?
how is everybody?
ah, you young folks don't know how it is. how is gideon today?
i hope that it's nothing serious.
let me earn my keep. i'll go out and get a hen and have it picked and ready for the pot. try to make him some cow tea next time.
you just run along. i'll fix him his soup. he will be all right.
when i came upon the valley of bones, the serpent said, "make this your home. dry as my soul be, heaven is lost to thee." we all got to make way.
a chicken hates to see the preacher coming to dinner.
never play with someone's else's cards. you always get a new deck. look at this card. see anything?
son, i can take everything you got with that deck. it is marked. now i'm going to show you how to make some money in case you get stuck somewhere.
boy, i thought you were about to cross the river.
son, would you do me a favor and see if you could turn off that tap in the bathroom. my hand is too weak. and would you do me another favor? i don't like asking this but would you clean the tub for me? i have trouble bending over.
that smells like fresh coffee.
only if you can spare it.
son, would you get me an old piece of newspaper?
lord if you ain't an angel.
i will leave you something in my will.
how old is that boy?
let's give dry bones a call to see if he is coming or not. okra likes to exaggerate, keep you waiting all night.
let us walk awhile. i grow weary when i sit still too long.
give me your arm lest you fall.
you probably heard the wind stirring up those dead leaves over there.
how is he doing?
i made a fresh pot of coffee. okra and i thought you need a rest. i'll stand guard. okra wants to talk to you anyway.
good afternoon, ladies.
as god is my witness, i have never done anything to that woman.
since she has repented, all she does is throw stones.
i don't make no bones about where i'm going to spend eternity. i have always been wild and you know that. if you are made to feel half a man, what do you think the other half is?
you invited me.
like that boy next door playing that his horn. if he was a friend, he would stop irritating people, but if he stops practicing, he wouldn't be perfect in what he does someday.
okra, m.c. and herman want to go back home with me. suzie, i'm not a bad fellow; i just like to have a good time. m.c. is coming by to pick me up tonight. i'll come back to get my things. well, i hope gideon recovers. you know i have an extra picture of one of my sons that i would like for you to put with those baby pictures over your dresser. it's better than being in my dusty wallet with addresses and names of people who are no longer on this earth.
i'll say my so-longs to gideon before i leave and i truly wish that he will get well.
whose old piece of knife is this?
i don't want to wear out welcome, but you can stay in someone's heart longer than you can stay in their house. come with us, boy. we are going to have a good time.
we are going where the action is. ain't that right, okra? let's play for a couple of bucks unless you want to start off with two bits and work our way up. what would you give to be rich?
i know your mind is on your wife but you should never treat a woman as an equal. you want to get your wife back, get another woman, one of those big hip women that will ride you till you sweat.
double the stakes?
m.c., you ever heard of a real man having one woman?
when one woman puts you out, you have another to take you in. you don't drive around without a spare tire, do you? the more mules you have hitched, the easier it is to plough.
herman, let me borrow a few bucks.
bless you. bless you.
let me share something with you.
hattie is a snake. that woman broke up so many homes and caused a lot of misery and because she calls herself getting religion everything is put right.
it's important to know the difference between the incoming fire and the outgoing fire. as amos and andy might say, "we is the outgoing fire." come with us, son. we'll show you some steaming hot juke joints, steaming hot women.
we will wait for you as long as we can. i got to get my things from your mother's house.
i can't believe what i heard took place.
i came to pick up my things.