Black Marks on the White Page Read online

  Nobody knows exactly where Robert Johnson died. Some people say he died out at the Star of the West plantation, north of Greenwood. There is no plantation house out there anymore. Paige at the Greenwood Convention and Visitors Bureau thinks it fell down, or was torn down, many years ago.

  The Star of the West plantation was named after a Union steamship captured by the Confederates and sunk in the Tallahatchie River. Some people say it was sunk to avoid recapture. Some say it was sunk to block a Union flotilla headed for Vicksburg.

  Nobody knows anymore exactly where Robert Johnson is buried. His death certificate said he was buried at Zion Church. Someone erected a grave marker near Payne Chapel Missionary Baptist Church in Quito, south of Greenwood. Some people say that the last place he performed was at Three Forks in Quito.

  Some people say that the Three Forks where Robert Johnson performed for the last time was a club west of Greenwood, not south. We drove to the intersection of Route 49 East and Route 82 where the juke joint once stood. It’s very close to Wal-Mart. Some people say it wasn’t called Three Forks. It was just a juke joint around the back of Schaeffer’s Store and was probably destroyed, along with the store, by a storm in 1942.

  In 1991 Columbia Records placed a marker at Mt Zion Missionary Baptist Church on the road between Quito and Morgan City. They thought this was the Zion Church listed on the death certificate. But nine years later an old woman named Rosie Eskridge said her husband was the person who dug Robert Johnson’s grave. He was a field hand on the Star of the West plantation. She said he dug it under the pecan tree near the Little Zion Missionary Baptist Church. This cemetery is just north of Greenwood, across the Tallahatchie River.

  At the graveside of Robert Johnson, I was stung on the neck by a bee.

  Halloween. I stood reading the historic marker at the cemetery just north of Greenwood. On the other side of the road: a field of stubby cotton. The ground was muddy, waterlogged around the pecan tree. It had poured with rain the night before, when I was doing a book-signing in Oxford. I wore a long chain around my neck — silver, dangling a silver globe. Something touched my throat, something that wasn’t the chain. I reached up with one hand to brush it away. A piece of fuzz, I thought, until I registered the pain of the sting. The red welt kept growing and throbbing. I was having an allergic reaction. We had to drive to Wal-Mart, on the west side of town, to get antihistamine cream. Robert Johnson sent a bee to sting you, said my husband. You stood too close to his grave.

  Nobody knows anymore exactly where Robert Johnson is buried.

  At Wal-Mart, a woman approached my husband and asked him the kind of question someone asks a pharmacist. He is a white man, like the pharmacist. At that moment, in the pharmacy section of Wal-Mart, he was the only white man anywhere in sight. She seemed to think he was the actual pharmacist. I wondered when the red welt on my neck would stop growing and itching and hurting. We had to drive to Jackson for another book-signing at four. The book I was signing is a ghost story. It was Halloween.

  The gravestone at the cemetery just outside Greenwood may not mark the spot where Robert Johnson is buried. Even if he is buried in that cemetery, he may not be buried under the pecan tree. He may be buried near the historic marker where a bee stung me on the neck.

  At Wal-Mart, my husband approached the pharmacist behind the counter and asked if we were buying the right kind of antihistamine cream. The pharmacist said that we could just buy meat tenderiser instead and make it into a paste. This would draw out the sting, and it would be cheaper. But we had lingered at the cemetery where Robert Johnson may or may not be buried, and then we’d driven around looking for a pharmacy. It was too late for the paste to work. We had waited too long.

  Robert Johnson lay dying for three days.

  Nobody knows exactly where Robert Johnson died. Some people say that he was carried from Three Forks to a house in Baptist Town and that he died there. Some people say that he was carried from Three Forks to a house on the Star of the West plantation and that he died there. Some people say that he was carried from Three Forks to the house in Baptist Town and later to a house on the Star of the West plantation. His death certificate reads: Greenwood (outside).

  Robert Johnson lay dying for two or three or four days. He died on August 16, a Tuesday. Elvis Presley also died on August 16, a Tuesday, thirty-nine years later. Like Robert Johnson, Elvis Presley was born in Mississippi. He was three years old when Robert Johnson died.

  There is no birth certificate for Robert Johnson. His half-sister said he was born in 1911. The State of Mississippi was not required to keep birth or death certificates until 1912.

  Robert Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi. Hazlehurst is the county seat of Copiah County, once the Tomato Capital of America. Like Greenwood, it used to have an opera house. Without realising it, we have driven past his birth site many times. The house was moved to accommodate a ramp leading to I-55, on the east side of the highway. The house had to be moved in the 60s, when the highway was built. In 2009 it was moved again, into downtown Hazlehurst. The house was falling down. Trees and vines were growing in it. The roof had collapsed. Only two original rooms are left.

  Things I wrote in my notebook at the graveside of Robert Johnson: Pale blue sky. Muddy hollow. Scattered graveyard. Puddles of water. Pine trees. Pecan tree, rusty leaves. Water in the grooved ridges of the field. It hurts to get stung in the neck by a bee.

  Nobody knows exactly where Robert Johnson died. It was August. It was hot. He had to stop playing at the juke joint because he was violently ill. He’d drunk bootleg whiskey, the same as everyone else there. He wouldn’t have been carried to the big house on the Star of the West plantation. He would have been taken to one of the shacks, where someone he knew lived. Some people say it was a shotgun house. Some people say the man living in the shack was known as Tush Hog.

  The gravestone in the cemetery outside Greenwood quotes Robert Johnson’s song ‘From Four ’Till Late’: When I leave this town/I’m gon’ bid you fare, farewell/And when I return again/You’ll have a great long story to tell.

  On the other side of the gravestone the engraver has reproduced the handwriting of Robert Johnson. These lines are not song lyrics. They are words Robert Johnson wrote down on a piece of paper ‘shortly before his death’. They read: Jesus of Nazareth King of/Jerusalem. I know that my/Redeemer liveth and that/He will call me from the grave. Some people say that the piece of paper was found in the shack where Tush Hog lived.

  Paige at the Greenwood Convention and Visitors Bureau says Miss Rosie Eskridge’s house is still there, on what used to be the Star of the West plantation. But nobody can go there anymore, because it’s private land.

  At the graveside of Robert Johnson, I was stung on the neck by a bee.

  The road to the cemetery north of Greenwood is called Money Road. We passed a small white house on the edge of the cottonfields. A sign on the house read WABG 960 KH. We tuned the radio. The station was playing the blues.

  Money, Mississippi is eight miles north of Greenwood. It used to be the Woodstock plantation. It still had a cotton mill in the 1950s, but now so few people live there it’s not a town. Its official designation is Populated Place. In 1955 Emmett Till, a black teenager from Chicago, was there visiting his uncle. It was August. It was hot. At Bryant’s Grocery he whistled or said something to a white woman. Several days later her husband and another man took Emmett away from his uncle’s house. They beat him up, fracturing his skull and his legs and his arms. They gouged out one of his eyes. They shot him. They used barbed wire to fasten a cotton-gin fan around his neck. They threw him into the Tallahatchie River. When his body was fished up three days later, Emmett Till could only be identified by the ring on his finger.

  This was 1955 — not that long ago. My husband was a little boy. He was growing up in St Louis, further up the Mississippi River. His parents would have heard about Emmett Till on the TV news. They would have read about Emmett Till in the St Louis Globe-Democrat.<
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  In ‘Hellhound on My Trail’, Robert Johnson sang: I got to keep movin’/Blues fallin’ down like hail.

  Nobody knows exactly how Robert Johnson died. Some people say it was strychnine poisoning. But strychnine is hard to disguise, and it wouldn’t have taken days to kill him. The poison might have been made from boiled mothballs. It might have been made from arsenic. He was poisoned by a jealous lover, or — more likely — by the husband of a jealous lover. Maybe the husband didn’t mean to kill him. He just wanted Robert Johnson to leave town.

  Robert Johnson got sick at the juke joint. He had stomach cramps and then maybe he got pneumonia. Maybe he had some underlying condition that was triggered by the poison. Some people say that Robert Johnson had Marfan Syndrome, a genetic disorder. No cause is listed on his death certificate. The only thing written in that column is: No Doctor.

  In ‘Preachin’ Blues’, Robert Johnson sang: The blues is a low-down achin’ heart disease/Like consumption, killing me by degrees.

  At the graveside of Robert Johnson, I was stung on the neck by a bee. The bee flew onto my neck because it was attracted by the sun glinting off the silver chain. It stung me because I tried to brush it away.

  Robert Johnson may have sent a bee to sting me on the neck because I stood too close to his grave.

  Robert Johnson may have been called from his grave and transformed into a bee. When I brushed him away, he stung me, and then he died. I may have killed Robert Johnson.

  During his lifetime, Robert Johnson was not diagnosed with Marfan Syndrome. Signs have been deduced by examining one of the three extant photographs. One of his eyelids seems to droop; his fingers are very long and thin. Another sign is joint flexibility. Maybe this is why his playing could sound like two performers, two guitars. Some people think that the violin virtuoso Paganini had Marfan Syndrome as well. It can result in aortic dissection. One of the symptoms of aortic dissection is severe, stabbing pain.

  Nobody knows if Robert Johnson made a pact with the devil. People said that about him, because he played so well. The same thing was said of Paganini. The Archbishop of Nice wouldn’t allow Paganini a church burial. Paganini’s embalmed body lay in his house for several months before city officials insisted that it be moved. For a while the body was on public display. Paganini wasn’t buried in Parma cemetery until 1876, thirty-six years after his death. Some people say Paganini was poisoned.

  Some people say that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads of Highways 61 and 49 in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Some people say that this intersection did not exist during Robert Johnson’s lifetime. Some people say that the crossroads in question is in Rosedale, where Highways Eight and One meet, or further south on old Highway Eight, where it crosses Dockery Road, or somewhere south of Tunica, known as the cross-town road, or somewhere else in the old cottonfields outside Greenwood, or any number of other roads in the lush green Mississippi Delta.

  The juke joint where Robert Johnson performed for the last time was on the crossroads of Route 49 East and Route 82. It’s very close to Wal-Mart. In Greenwood these roads cross in more than one place. Even if you’re at the right crossroads, the crossroads have changed. These are big roads now, highways. They’re not the same as the roads in the 1930s. We pulled over and wandered the grass verge where the juke joint may or may not have stood.

  Robert Johnson wrote a song called ‘Cross Road Blues’ but it does not mention selling his soul to the devil. Robert Johnson wrote a song called ‘Me and the Devil Blues’ but it does not mention a crossroads.

  Some people say that the reason Robert Johnson is so desperate in ‘Cross Road Blues’ to flag a ride is that it was dangerous for a black man in Mississippi to be out alone at night.

  Another Johnson, Tommy Johnson, born around 1896, claimed to have sold his soul to the devil in return for the ability to play any song. Another Johnson, Robert Johnson, born around 1582, wrote the music for a song in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. The song was ‘Where the Bee Sucks’.

  Crystal Springs, Mississippi is ten miles north of Hazlehurst. Crystal Springs was once known as the Tomato Capital of the World. It is the home of the Robert Johnson Blues Museum, although Robert Johnson was from Hazlehurst, not Crystal Springs. Tommy Johnson, the blues musician who said he sold his soul to the devil, lived in Crystal Springs. He died in 1956. He is buried in a cemetery outside Crystal Springs, but nobody can go there anymore, because it’s private land. He has no gravestone.

  Robert Johnson had two known recording sessions, the first in San Antonio and the second in Dallas. Robert Johnson had two known marriages, the first to Virginia Travis and the second to Calletta Craft. There are two known photographs of Robert Johnson, one taken in a photo booth and the second in a studio. He may have made other recordings, an audition record. There may be another photo, of Robert Johnson and Johnny Shines. There may be three or four or five photos of Robert Johnson. There were many other women in Robert Johnson’s life, but no more wives.

  Even if Robert Johnson is buried in that cemetery, he may not be buried under the pecan tree. Rosie Eskridge was 85 or 86 years old when she told that story. It was 2000. Robert Johnson died in 1938. She says that Noah Wade, who owned the Star of the West plantation, told her husband to dig the grave. Rosie went to the cemetery to take her husband some water. She pointed out the spot in 2000, when she was 85 or 86 years old. She may have remembered the correct spot. She may have been confused.

  I can’t remember things that happened last year. I can’t remember if we drove around Baptist Town before we went to Wal-Mart or afterwards. Maybe this was why we were too late to make a paste with the meat tenderiser. My husband had to remind me about the pharmacist suggesting meat tenderiser. I had forgotten this part completely. I didn’t write it down in my notebook.

  Things I wrote in my notebook at the graveside of Robert Johnson: empty whiskey bottles, crushed can of Red Bull, Howard County library card, condom packet, Mardi Gras beads, rain-soaked flattened straw hat.

  In ‘Me and the Devil Blues’, Robert Johnson says: Baby I don’t care where you bury my body.

  Nobody knows exactly how Robert Johnson died. He was married twice, but he moved around a lot — Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas; Memphis and Chicago — and had liaisons with a lot of women. He may have been poisoned by a jealous husband. The night he was taken ill at the juke joint, the jealous husband was Ralph Davis, known as Snake. His wife, the one Robert Johnson was sleeping with, was named Bea.

  Everything in this story is true, apart from the things that are wrong, and the things that are lies, and the things that are misremembered.

  Halloween in Mississippi. Cemetery on the road to Money. Pale blue sky, stubby cottonfields. I lingered too long at the graveside of Robert Johnson, and Bea stung me on the neck. She didn’t want to kill me. She wanted me to leave town.

  POULIULI: A STORY OF DARKNESS IN 13 LINES

  SELINA TUSITALA MARSH

  ‘The Blacking Out of Pouliuli (1977)’

  Al,

  I’ve taken a black vivid marker

  pressed it against your page

  and letter by letter, word by phrase

  inked across your lines

  streaking pouliuli pathways

  wending in and out of the Void

  Al,

  the black ink on black font crack open lines with lava tracks that frack the land of your story, hijack meaning, ransack intention, back-packing on your own invention, hacking into, wise-cracking about the side-tracking and bric a brac-ing of lines till back to back black on black makes pouliuli on the night’s page shoot stars that light up windows of words through which we peer into pouliuli.

  KE KĀHEA: THE CALLING

  A steampunk story

  BRYAN KAMAOLI KUWADA

  The Tutua

  THEY ALWAYS COME ON the highest tides of the year.

  When the pull of Hina is strongest, the leviathans lumber forth from the depths. Some look like armored whales w
ith tree-trunk legs made for walking the land, others have great sprays of spines on their backs and light, speckled underbellies; they drag themselves forth with flukes and flippers, awkward and ungainly out of the water. More yet are living coral islands, vibrant with color, sidling from the sea, craggy backs carpeted in algae and ferns.

  We call them Tutua.

  Most of us have glimpsed the leviathans from afar. We watched from hilltops and distant valleys, our legs trembling with the desire to run. The Tutua have been coming for long enough that we know what to expect. They are drawn to our heiau and burial caves, the places where our chiefs’ bones and carved god-images call out to them.

  And the Tutua destroy them. They devour the black basalt stones of the temple walls and suck the burial crypts like marrow from caves. The leviathans leave nothing in their paths, not even dust or fragments of ancient bone. The same every time.

  Moon. Tide. Tutua. Destruction.

  The first handful of Tutua came ashore several years ago near Kekuanohu Fort in Honolulu. They were drawn to towering Kūka‘ō‘ō, a heiau deep in the broad and fertile bowl of Mānoa Valley. Gun defences bristled from the fort’s walls like the spines of its scorpionfish namesake, but the tutua shrugged off the fire from steam-powered chain guns and clockwork repeaters. They advanced in a slow and inexorable march, leaving a line of rubble and flames leading up to the terraced walls of the green valley.

  The fort fell, the Tutua fed from the heiau. When they returned to the blue depths off Honolulu, an entire complement of soldiers lay among the rubble of the fort and hundreds of others in the Tutua’s path had gone to join the soldiers in the sleep of ages. Steam from the gigantic boilers below the fort hissed quietly as if exhaling their last breath. Huge swathes of the nearby city had been crushed under foot and reduced to piles of coral blocks, broken wooden shards and shattered gearwork.