Crawlin' Chaos Blues by Edward M. Erdelac Page A

slide?” he asked, slappin’ his guitar.
    “Naw. I blow a little harp.”
    “Who don’t?” he held out his hand. “Name’s King. No relation to Martin Luther. Yeller’s what they call me. King Yeller.”
    I shook. I figured he was awright, long as he didn’t ask for nothin’. I ast him was he playin’ here tonight.
    “Mm hm,” he said. “Want in? It ain’t but a buck, but you look like you could use all the bread you got.”
    It wasn’t no lie.
    He got me past the doorman like he said he would. Pretty soon we was settin’ in one of them smoky corners at a booth with a little candle in red glass and a couple cold Blue Ribbons in front of us, watchin’ some sweet browns wrapped up tight as candy, slow draggin’ with they mens across the floor. Crammed into the corner with a jumpin’ band was the man hisself, Howlin’ Wolf, all three hundred pounds of him, black as pig iron and sweatin’ like a steam engine, crawlin’ on all fours, rollin’ his eyes, and flickin’ his tongue like a snake. He was singin’ Evil, and he sure looked like a man possessed by a devil. He was too big for the place, so goddamned big when he put his harp between his hands and blew he looked ‘bout to swallow it whole.
    “How you like it, country?” Yeller hollered at me.
    I just nodded my head, grinnin’. Seein’ the Wolf in action was a sight to take a man’s words.
    When the set was up and the folks stopped grindin’ up on each other long enough to clap the band down, Wolf come to stand over our table, moppin’ at his forehead with a cocktail napkin and starin’ at us through some black-rimmed glasses he took out his shirt pocket.
    “You up, Yeller,” he said. He had a different way ‘bout him once he was off the stage. You hardly thought he was the same man. Up there, he’d been like a wild dog. Now, it was like lookin’ up at your daddy.
    “This my boy Harpoon, just come up from Quinto, Mississippi,” Yeller said, getting up with his guitar.
    “Quito,” me and Wolf both said at the same time.
    I looked at him.
    “You heard of it?”
    “Yeah, I heard of it,” Wolf said, takin’ a beer bottle off a girl’s tray and settin’ down in Yeller’s spot. “It’s offa the Seven, ain’t it? South of Mosquito Lake.”
    “That’s it,” I said.
    “Been fishin’ down there,” he said.
    Wolf sipped his beer and looked at me.
    Over his shoulder, Yeller set up, smilin’ out at the crowd before twiddling into a song I’d never heard, what I guess was his own:
    I’m in love with a damn fool woman,
    She got a heart as cold as ice,
    Said I’m in love with a damn fool woman,
    She got a heart so cold like ice,
    Why can’t I find a woman, who will love and treat me nice?
    It was awright. He sorta fumbled with that National, but nobody was sober enough to notice, ‘cept maybe Wolf, who squeezed his eyes thinner every time Yeller hit a bad chord. Them big-legged women kept on dancin’ with they men, clawin’ hungry-like at they behinds like they was ripe fruit in them bright, tight dresses. Yeller did have a good voice though, raw, and mean, like Elmore James.
    “I like you, Harpoon,” Wolf told me, after he’d sucked his beer down and raised his hand for another. “You listen here. Stay away from that high yeller boy,” he told me, thumbin’ at Yeller over his shoulder. “His uncle, Destruction, used to play piano for me. He wasn’t nothin’ but a fat mouth rounder, and Yeller ain’t no different. His mouth get you killed you ain’t careful.”
    Yeller had picked out one of them biscuits in the crowd and was singin’ straight at her. She was that devil-eyed type woman lay her business on you, make you forget your own name, how much money you got in your pocket. She seent what Yeller was ‘bout right off and she smiled at him over her man’s shoulder. That gap in her two front teeth let you know she liked to get her jelly rolled. He played Come On In My Kitchen at her, and then One Way Out, and by