Chapter 5

Timepiece: 5.

"Did ya like it?" Wendy asked.

"I'm in shock," I confessed.

"They're pretty good," she said. "Now, we're going to see the raw side of music."

She set up her watch, grabbed my hand and wound the stem.

We appeared outside a barrelhouse someplace south of Memphis in the Mississippi Delta, that flat flood plain that stretches from just south of Memphis to just past Vicksburg, Mississippi. The area is a warren of dirt roads and crossroads juke joints. She couldn't or wouldn't tell me exactly where we were ... and I'm not sure she knew but the music coming out the door was raw and heartfelt.

Howlin' Wolf - One Night Only read the hand scrawled poster just outside the door. October 15th 1930 was the date and we stepped inside. I believe that was the beginning of the legend that wrote the song, Black Magic Woman in the late Sixties.

We stayed for the night. She paid with a twenty dollar gold piece up front, one round for the house every two hours. Twenty dollars bought a lot of 'shine in 1930.

She tipped Chester Arthur Burnett a five dollar coin when we left ... it was coming up daylight.

"Mr. Burnett," she did, she Mistered him. "You have a rare talent. Chicago would love you."

He was 19 years old.

We walked out the door and she pushed in the stem. Yup... Black Magic Woman hoodooin' the Hoodoo Man.

Plain sight disappearance.

Back in Pentwater ... at the house on Green Street ... she said, "Take me to bed, we have a lot of catching up to do."

About that watch: It doesn't matter how long you were where you were then ... you come back in the flicker of an eye ... but you were still gone ... doing whatever ... for how long you were then. Time catches up ... the body knows you've been out and about.

Catching up meant sleep ... damn it. She was asleep before I got in the shower.

I was asleep with wet hair ... it was that quick.

"Get up!" she said.

"Wazzit?" I said.

"Daddy is here," she giggled. "You're in deep shit."

I did truly try to go back to sleep ... but her dad rolled me out of bed.

Charles Austin looked like Paul Bunyan to me. I will admit ... I was lying on the floor ... but from there, Daddy didn't look like any lawyer I ever saw. He was a wedge from his knee high lace up brown leather steel toed full grain logging boots, tan Carhartt bibs and plaid long-sleeved wool shirt. His only concession to lawyerdom was his fedora hat ... and it was covered with trout and bass flies.

I'm pretty big ... Mr. Austin was huge and not an ounce of fat on him.

"Breakfast at the DewDrop Inn in 20 minutes," he said. "Her mom wants to know your intentions. 20 minutes. Be late at your peril."

My intentions? I asked myself, Do I Have intentions?

And my third eye said... Fuckin' A straight!

Oh.