HELLHOUND ON HIS TRAIL (flash fiction)

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Greenwood, Mississippi. Around 1934.

When I heard what that knucklehead musician was up to, there wasn't any way I was letting him go to those Crossroads alone. It was the night he supposedly sold his soul to play that thing he used as he hoboed across the country.

He didn't see me following but it didn't matter, he was as drunk as the day was long. But I didn't think he was serious and moreover, I couldn't believe what I was about to witness.

# # #

I was about 14 or so and couldn't get enough of what my father called 'The Devil's Music.' You see, part of our plantation was positioned along a wooded embankment that, after a few twists along a hidden dirt path, you'd find Smitty's, a backwoods juke joint that featured some of the best negro music throughout the Delta.

Since I was so young, Smitty allowed me to sit with him behind the bar, provided I sneak in a bushel or two of corn every now and again. Plus he said I needed to make myself useful and help him serve beer and whiskey when weekend crowds overflowed onto the front porch.

Smitty's was a scene. Itinerant field hands by day and masters of a new musical genre by night, I'd see the likes of Willie Brown, Son House, Howlin’ Wolf, Pops Staples and Honeyboy Edwards. It was history being made. Smithsonian stuff.

But then there was Robert Johnson. He was tall and lanky and for the life of me, I couldn't understand why he was such a Casanova. Sure, the ladies thought he was charming but dammit if he wasn't a cockeyed bastard. Plus he couldn't play the guitar worth a shit. And while he knew it, it didn't stop him from taking to the stage at Smitty's. The poor guy got booed off just about every time. He just didn't know the blues.

One night he was particularly ornery and threw his guitar clean into the corner.

"Damn, boy! Is you crazy?" Smitty screamed. "Better get your ass outta here before I crack that shitty guitar over that block head of yours and make your sorry ass play better."

Embarrassed, the young musician ran out. I told Smitty that i would see him soon and ran after Johnson who, by now, was up the road a piece.

I heard him weeping and moaning, praying for an answer. He stopped in the middle of the road and picked at his guitar once again. It was plum awful. He weeped some more.

When I saw him bite the cork off his whiskey pint and spit it into a nearby puddle, I knew what he was about to do. Word on the grapevine all night at Smitty's was that Johnson was headed for The Crossroads.

When I asked Smitty if he thought Johnson was serious, he replied, "Sheeeet, that boy don' know what he's gettin' into over there."

I had heard stories about The Crossroads. It was a place where your dreams came true for a price and if the waking world was more important to you, any deal could be made. But you better be sure.

I followed him and as we got closer, I prayed to my maker that the lore of the famed intersection was just all a Faustian myth instead of a gateway to his doom.

# # #

While the soot of hell was in the air, ashen and thick with humidity, the Earth was as cold as the dead slaves who years before had helped nurture the cotton fields surrounding us.

As I hid behind the only tree in sight, I watched Robert Johnson stand motionless in the middle of the intersection. Time had stopped. There were no cars in sight and the moon had gone black.

I heard the howling of a beast nearby and saw in front of me a hellhound whose eyes were blood red. He growled demonically over what I believed to be footsteps along the gravel road.

My eyes followed the footsteps to the intersection where a large black man stood in front of Johnson. He looked to be around nine feet and dressed to the nines.

A trepidatious Johnson handed the man his ratty guitar and the giant proceeded to play that thing unlike anyone I've heard in Smitty's.

After a minute or two, the shadowy man handed Johnson his guitar and kissed him on the cheek as his long fingernail traced the outline of Johnson's chin. And then, within seconds, the hellhound was gone and so was the man.

When I rushed towards the road to see if Johnson was alright, I saw that he, too, had vansihed.

There I stood, alone in the Crossroads, cold and hot at the same time as smoke and fog rose from the gravel.

# # #

No one at Smitty's saw Robert Johnson for two or three years until one night he returned, took to the stage, and played his axe like no one before him or after.

"Dayummm," Smitty just kept repeating. "Gotta book that boy soon. He'll sell all my liquor."

I agreed but knew this wasn't the innocent from a few years ago. This new Robert Johnson was hard-drinking all the time. He womanized practically as a religion and even though he'd recorded just about a dozen tunes, he still used many an alias to hide from jealous husbands whose wives fell victim to Johnson's wizardry.

# # #

One night after Robert Johnson performed to a packed house at Smitty's, I heard the same demonic Hellhound growling I heard at The Crossroads years before. It was coming from behind the stage and I was certain all of us in Smitty's were doomed.

And there I saw him. Johnson, on all fours, barking like a dog and foaming at the mouth.

"Hellhound's on my trail, son," he said. "Can't run no more."

To this day, no one knows how Robert Johnson died. One myth says he was poisoned, possibly by tainted moonshine. Another has him a stabbing victim from one of those jealous husbands.

But I know the truth. I saw it at The Crossroads. When people tell me that the Devil doesn't exist, I just laugh and play a Robert Johnson record.

Then I go to church.