Fiction by M. Elaine Wilkins

M. Elaine Wilkins holds an Ed.D. in Education and is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Lindenwood University. Her work has appeared in 101 Words. She writes Southern family sagas and personal essays.

The Blues Is Hard on Your Feet

I remember. 

When Daddy took me to Beale Street, we walked the full length of it.  

He only held my hand here. I heard him singing Just a Closer Walk with Thee. Of all Daddy's songs, this was the hardest for me to sing. I was always one note behind him, but I refused to stop chasing that note. 

Peering through dirty boarded-up windows, he pressed his free hand against the planks. I heard him sigh and whisper a word. Yesterday. 

No matter how long it took him to walk Beale Street, I walked with him and never complained. Always trying to match his step in those shiny Florsheim shoes. 

Daddy had three pairs of shoes, but he wore the same shoes to Beale Street and to church. 

Sitting in church, wearing his Florsheim and nylon socks, he was the only guitar-playing pastor in The Church of God in Christ. He heard and played every song the saints sang.

I asked how he heard the music. 

He said, “I walk up and down the guitar neck until I find it.” 

Handing me a guitar pick, he said, “You can start by carrying this.” 

I did more than carry it. Lifting the insole of my left shoe, I placed the guitar pick there. 

Every third Saturday, I dressed in my best church dress, combed my hair, and put on my patent leather shoes with my pick under the left sole. Daddy said I was born special because I was left-handed, and I believed him. I shifted my weight to make sure the pick was in the right place where it wouldn’t hurt my foot.

I sat in the kitchen and watched Mama pack food into a cardboard box. Fried chicken wrapped in aluminum foil, cabbage sealed in Mason jars, fried corn in old margarine containers, sweet potato pie, fresh biscuits. 

I wanted to know where this food was going. Mama always said, “Children need to stay out of grown folks’ business.” I never asked again.

The Saturday I turned eight years old, Daddy asked, “Do you want to go with me?”

“Yes sir.” 

Daddy asked, “Why are you so dressed up?”

I looked at him. He had on his church suit, Florsheim shoes, silk dress socks, and straw hat.

“Because we’re going somewhere important,” I said.

Mama said, “She’s quick.”

“Nothing gets past her,” Daddy said.
“That’s why you better tell her before she meets him,” Mama advised.

We headed to the car with the food. It was a 1954 red Pontiac with the face of a man on the hood. My friends teased me about it, calling it the Wilkins’ Gospel Fire Truck. I didn’t care. 

Sounding like a grumbling cat, the engine started. Daddy pulled into traffic.

He cleared his throat, the way he did before he stood in the pulpit and opened the doors to the church. I was still.

“I wasn’t always a man who chased God’s word. Once I was a man who ran after blues  music. With me was my friend Furry Lewis. In our 30s, we thought it would last forever.”

He turned his head to make sure the next lane was clear.
I looked at him. Daddy had a friend I didn’t know. 

“Promise me. No matter how far you go in this life, you can’t forget a friend who  shared their last with you. Or stood with you no matter the storm.”

I frowned. Then I smiled. “Like when you drive me to school because it’s raining hard and the sky is dark.”  

He only smiled back at me.

We stopped the car in front of an apartment building. Fourth Street. I looked around. We had only been in the car for maybe fifteen minutes, but Fourth Street was scary. Tall grass. Cigarette butts. Beer cans. Nothing like McLemore Avenue where we lived.  

I waited for Daddy to take the food out of the car. He didn’t. Instead, he took his guitar out of the trunk.

In front of one of the apartments sat a short man. One of his pants legs was empty from the knee down. He had a rough beard, and a guitar leaned against the wall behind him. He looked up.

He grinned and called out, “Well, if it ain’t Timmy Wilkins come to check on me.”

We walked toward the porch.
Looking at me, Daddy said, “This is Mr. Furry Lewis.” He turned to Furry. “This is my granddaughter. Me and my wife’s last baby.”

One thing Mama taught me was that it was a sin not to have ‘respect-of-person.’ I didn’t quite know what it meant. Mama said it meant you speak and you smile. The two Ss.

Walking up on the porch, I smiled and said, “Hello, Mr. Furry.”

He nodded. “Cute and with manner,” then, turning to Daddy, he added, “Must be all that churching you’re doing now.”

“The church has to have something to work with,” Daddy smiled at me. “She’s a good girl.” 

Furry grinned and said, “See you brought your ‘git-tar’.” 

I never heard it pronounced like that. 

Daddy nodded and asked, “How you doing Furry?” A look of concern crossed his face. 

Mr. Furry reached down and smoothed the empty pants leg. “Tolerable. Leg still hurts like it’s whole when the weather gets ugly.” 

I turned my head slightly so Mr. Furry would not catch me staring at his empty pants leg. When I lost baby teeth, it did hurt, but the holes healed and new teeth grew. I didn’t know why the missing leg still hurt him.

Taking off his hat, Daddy looked at the empty space where Mr. Furry’s leg should’ve been. “What is it you always say, ‘bout that rail car?” 

Laughing out loud, Mr. Furry answered, “If I could find the rail car that took my leg, I would set it on fire. Then dare folks to put it out.” 

Reaching behind him, Mr. Furry picked up his guitar.
He struck a chord. I cringed on the inside. That ‘respect-of-person’ again. Mama said I  had to learn to control my voice and my face around folks who were different.

I couldn’t let it show on my face that the guitar was off. How did I know? I sang in church with Daddy. When the instrument was out of tune, it sounded like mice scratching.

He was playing with a whole nest of mice.

Mr. Furry hummed until he caught the sound of the guitar. 

I leaned forward and watched Mr. Furry as he caught that note the guitar was making. It was the look on his face that said, “I got it right.” I wanted to feel that look the day I grabbed the note in Just a Closer Walk with Thee.

Mr. Furry’s words sped up and found his run-away guitar. As the song came out, I heard it.

Daddy said there were two kinds of singing. One was for the choir songs, and it came from the gut right below the heart. The other was for a man with just a guitar. This singing started in your throat, and you pushed it out of your nose. Mr. Furry sang like a man with just a guitar. 

He played and sang, “Trying to quit me and baby you don’t know how…” 

Daddy ran a couple of chords on his perfectly tuned guitar. He played and sang, “Don’t you let nobody turn you around…” 

Daddy sang from his gut. Furry sang from his throat. As I heard them together, putting notes and words on top of each other, I understood why I couldn’t catch the note. It was because Daddy mixed his gut and his throat together when he sang, Just a Closer Walk with Thee.

Mr. Furry’s blues called out. Daddy answered with God’s words. 

When they finished playing and singing, they sat still and quiet. I eased down on the top step. The world stopped. 

After a long time, like waiting for recess on a spring day, Mr. Furry said something. 

“I know why you quit the blues, Timmy, but I don’t gotta like it.”

His eyes darting between me and Mr. Furry, Daddy said, “My wife sent you some food. Let me get it.”

I stayed on the porch beside Mr. Furry. He said, “Your granddaddy always was the best of us.”   

Daddy walked back with the food. He set it in the chair and shook his hand.

“See ya’, Timmy. Tell your wife I appreciate the cooking.” 

“She already knows, Furry.”

We stepped off the porch.

In the car, I kept my eyes on Daddy’s feet and asked, “Daddy, did it hurt your feelings when you quit the blues?”

He glanced at me. For a moment, with the sun dancing across his face, I could almost see the wrinkles smooth away.

“Baby, it was all I had to give up. Mama was sick. The doctors said she was dying. I met God where the tough grass pushes through the sidewalk, and I made a deal. I would never sing the words to a blues song again if He let Mama live.”

The pick in my shoe pressed against my heel. 

I rolled down the window and turned my face toward the wind. The sidewalks flew by, but I could see the weeds trying to get out of the cracks. Coming up from my gut, I could feel tears. It was sad thinking about Daddy without Mama.

Sitting beside him in the car, I sang. “Just a closer walk with thee. Granted Jesus if you please.” 

The note Daddy always lifted between thee and granted slid over my voice.

I caught it and held on. 

Daddy said, “Uhm.” 

I looked down at his polished shoes. 

“Daddy, I’m glad you stopped singing the blues.” 

“Why?” 

“The blues is hard on your feet.”