Who is at the Door, Mitchell?

Mitchell O’Malley was reading one of his school books when a dark man came knocking at our front door.

“Who is at the door, Mitchell?” His mother, Patsy, called to him from the back room where she was sitting at her table darning torn clothing.  She always said Mitchell was pretty rough on his school clothing, but Mitchell would say, “When you are as rambunctious as I am, you tend to wear them out from the inside.  That’s what my daddy always said, but my daddy is gone, you know. He told me what rambunctious is and believe me, that is for sure who I am.” 

Some of the folks in town call the O’Malley’s white trash.  He had never heard such a thing, but Patsy would wash his mouth out with soap if she caught him saying it.  Him or any of his ten brothers and sisters.  He had three sisters and seven brothers.  Some of the fine folks in town say these children were dirty and no account, but Patsy always did her best to dress them for church and school.  

“Some colored man.” He answered.  The colored man stood on the sagging porch asking for shelter from the rain.  It seemed as if the rain never stopped in early summer, just before school let out.

“Name is Robert Johnson.” He said in a gentle voice, smiling as he spoke. 

“He says his name is Robert Johnson.” Mitchell  called out over his shoulder. 

“Robert who?” Patsy comes into the front room. “Can I he’p ya?”

Quickly glancing at the big man standing in the doorway, she checks him out from head to toe.  He was so tall he barely fit on the porch and probably would have bumped his head if the wood wasn’t sagging so much.  Patrick, Mitchell’s daddy,  put in the porch when he was just a baby, but that had been a long time ago.  Mississippi springs and summers were hard on good wooden floors. 

“I was wonderin’ if’n I could stay in your barn for the night on account of the rain.” His voice was gentle and soothing like the lullaby I sang to my younger siblings to get them to sheep. 

“Robert Johnson?  I can’t honor that request.” She shook her head.

“Please ma’am.” He removed his hat.  It was then Mitchell saw the guitar slung across Robert’s shoulder. “There is some bad men out on the road who mean to do me harm.”

She clenched her teeth and stuck out her chin like she did when one of her children was misbehaving. 

“One night?” She hissed.

“Yes’um.” He nodded politely. 

“And no breakfast.  Y’all be gone early in the morning light?” She affirmed. 

“Yes’um.” He nodded again. 

“Why are you traveling?  Y’all know there is laws against a colored man travelin’ by hisself?” She put her fists on her hips.

“Yes’un, I knowed, but I got me a callin,’ tellin’ me to go norf.” He pointed north just as lightning flashed across the ebony night sky. 

“You are taking a risk, sir.” She shook her head, smiling in disbelief. Then she turned to me, “Mitchell, you go and make sure he get settled in the empty stall in the barn.” 

“But mama, that ain’t been cleaned yet.” He shrugged. 

“Do as I say, young'un.  I ain’t here to argue.” Her voice was stern and Mitchell knew she meant business.  He would not argue.

“Come with me, Mr. Johnson.” Mitchell said as he put his coat on and walked out into the yard.  The rain was falling freely from the big heavy clouds above.

“I can’t thank you enough.” He tipped his hat as he followed Mitchell. 

“Do you play guitar?” Mitchell asked as his feet sloshed through the mud on the path to the barn.  

“Yessah.” He smiled.  Mitchell liked his smile, pearl white teeth contrasted by his rich dark skin. “I usta play in the honky tonks.  Negro music.  Kinda lively.” 

“I wanna go to one of them places, but mama would have me washed in the River Jordan to save my soul.”  Mitchell shook his head. 

His crack of laughter caught Mitchell by surprise, but it was warm like his daddy’s laughter used to be and it made him smile. 

“This is the empty stall.” Mitchell held out my hand on the only space left in the entire barn. “Sometimes the water drips in that hole up there.” 

“Better than trying to sleep in that rain out there.” He nodded. 

“Does have an odor.” Mitchell held his nose.  The former occupant had left his share of droppings in the hay that covered the barn floor.  The sweet scent of urine and earth scent of droppings hung in the damp night air in the barn.  Once you got used to it, you could find a soft place for slumber. 

“You live here all ya life?” Robert removed a hand rolled cigarette.

“No, Robert, my folks don’t want no one to be smoking in the barn.” Mitchell warned him. “But yes, I’ve lived here all my life.” 

“Oh sorry.” He stood up and walked out the back door where the cows were let out into the pasture in the morning. There was an oak tree that provided some protection from the falling rain. “I didn’t mean to break the rules.” 

“You didn’t know.” Mitchell  smiled.  There was something about him that made him want to smile.  He hadn’t done a lot of that after his daddy died.

“If ya don’ mind me askin,’ what happened to ya poppa? His face got very serious.

“I don’ mind.” I shook my head. “He got consumption.  He was only forty when we put him in the ground.” 

“I am so sorry.” He puffed on his cigarette. 

“Me too.” He sat on the milking stool a few feet inside the barn. 

“I los’ my popa, too.  Lynched by the night riders.” He bowed his head as he tossed the cigarette into a puddle.  It made a hiss when it was extinguished by the puddle. 

“Night riders?” Mitchell was puzzled by this.

“Yessah, they is the KKK and they ride at night.  If’n they come to ya home, they’s gonna be trouble.” He tried to smile, but his kind face couldn’t quite do it. It was then I noticed his fingers were long, perhaps the longest fingers I had ever seen on a human hand. “Mitchell, is it?” 

He nodded. 

“What say I play you a honky tonk tune?” He chuckled.

“Would you?” Mitchell asked.

“Least I can do for your hospitality.” He coughed as he walked back into the barn.  He picked up his guitar and plucked a few strings.  They sounded tinny.  “I gots to get me some new strings once I get me a gig.” 

“A gig?” Mitchell questioned.

“Uh-huh, going norf to Chicago.  Play me some jazz.” He smiled as he plucked a few more notes.  This time there was music starting out as a low growl and building to a crescendo where his fingers seemed to be everywhere on the fretboard as the notes colored the entire area of the barn. “Called Po’ Lady’s Blues.” 

“Blues?” 

“Blues be the color of my people.” His tone was solemn and his eyes seemed very sad. “Jazz is more lively and makes people feel good.” 

“I want to come hear you play in Chicago.” Mitchell said.

“Ah boy, y’all can’t be followin’ me ‘round.  It ain’ right fo’ a white boy to be following no colored.” He raised his eyebrow considering the consequences of such an act.  He had seen what they could do when a colored man crossed the line and he saw that while slavery here had ended, that Jim Crow was still flying high.  “I’m goin’ to Clarksdale and catching a train in the mornin.’ Ain’ gonna be first class.  No sir, just a box car be enough for me.” 

Mitchell sat with his arms across his bent knees in the straw and hay, his eyes wide at this new superman who had just crossed into his life.  

“They be sayin’ that I’m no good at this guitar, but I’m gonna show ‘em.” He winked and Mitchell chuckled.

“Gonna meet the devil at the crossroads.” He laughed, “He be out there where the highway crosses in Clarksdale.” 

“Mama tells us not to be reckoning  with the devil.” Mitchell gasped.

“Where am I to go?  Ain’ nobody want me around.” Johnson leaned against the stall wall and sighed. “I figure I just keep movin’ along ‘til I can find me a place to hang my hat.” 

Mitchell bowed his head.  He had heard his own father say such a thing while he was around.  It was hard to believe there were so many souls looking for a place like his daddy and Robert. 

“I will find my place.  I swear that will happen.” He closed his eyes and tucked his hands behind his head.  In a few minutes, he was snoring constantly and Mitchell bade his exit unnoticed.  As he walked in the rain, he could see his mama’s shadow in the front window.  

Until Robert had shown up at the door, Mitchell had never seen a colored man before.  Living on the family farm just twenty miles south of Clarksdale, Mitchell felt as if he had been isolated from the rest of the world.  His daddy had bought over forty acres on a special program from the government after the boys returned from the war in Europe.  His father had been in that war and ended up with this farm in the delta of the Mississippi River.  He worked hard and made his children work hard trying to get the farm to show a profit. The loan had to be paid and mama worked on other people’s clothes to earn enough money to make payments.  Many times they had to do without.  Many times they had to butcher one of the cows so they could make it through the winter.  They buried Patrick O’Malley in the family plot on the back acre of the farm marked by a single headstone next to one of the children who had died in childbirth. 

Mama, or Patsy O’Malley, took her brood to the local Baptist church down in the valley near the edge of a stream where Reverend Jason Haskett would remind them of the wages of sin in sermons that could run almost an hour. 

“Patsy, you are looking quite fine this fine day.” Reverend Haskett would comment as they left the church.  It was common knowledge that he fancied her which made Mitchell, who had turned fifteen and was becoming acquainted with the ways of the world, very uncomfortable. Reverend Haskett would regard the rest of the tribe as savages who needed constant interventions in order to save their souls. 

“You certainly spent a lot of time with that Negro.” She said when he walked in the front door dripping from the rain.

“He played his guitar.” Mitchell said with excitement.

“It is the instrument of the devil.” She shook her head. “I forbid you to listen to that music.” 

“It’s the blues.” Mitchell said disappointed that his mother was condemning his love of Robert’s music.  

It was good.  It did not remind him of the devil.  Reverent Haskett’s leering at his mother reminded Mitchell of the devil more than the notes Robert played. The blues was about a sadness so deep that it hitchhiked through his soul. It wasn’t the devil who was touching his soul, it was the syncopation of the notes that had left a mark there. 

“I don’t care.  You will do as I say.” She stomped her foot.  It was late and she headed toward her bedroom, “You need to wash up and go to bed.” 

He did as he was told.  He walked into the dark bedroom where his seven brothers, all younger, lay in their beds asleep.  His bed was nothing more than a mattress placed in an empty space in the room.  When the morning came, it often became overcrowded and hard to move freely.  Getting ready for school was a challenge, but tomorrow was Saturday and Mitchell was hoping he could wake up early to say goodbye to Robert. 

When he woke up in the morning, Mitchell ran down to the barn.  The ground was still soggy and wet, but he splashed through the puddles until he came to the main door.  When he looked inside, his heart sank into his shoes.  The stall was empty.  There was nothing left of the bluesman except a depression where he had slept.  He felt the tears stinging at the corners of his eyes.  

He had fallen in love with the blues and the man who made those songs come alive. 

“What’s the matter, Mitch?” His seven year old sister Hazel asked, carrying a bucket filled with milk.

“I wanted to say goodbye to Robert.” He wiped his eyes. 

“You mean that Negro man?” She asked.

“Yes.” He sniffed. 

“I saw him.” She replied, “He was getting up when I came in to milk old Reba.” 

“Did he say anything?” Mitchell asked hoping that he left saying something meaningful.

“Nope, he saw me and skedaddled.” She shrugged and walked toward the house where one of her older siblings would prepare the contents for churning butter.  

He stood there trying not to cry until his tears were so heavy they began streaming down his cheeks. He hadn’t shed so many tears since his father was buried up on the hill.  

With his guitar on his back, Robert Johnson made his way to Clarksdale where as legend would have it, he met the devil at the crossroads. After swapping his soul for musical talent, he would go on to record some of the best blues music in recorded history.  Many famous and talented musicians would fall in love with his songs and record them many years after he met the devil at the crossroads. Robert Johnson would die in 1939 under mysterious conditions after recording his own songs in Arkansas in 1938.  

Mitchell would never find out about any of this after Robert left their barn in 1934. He would marry soon after finishing school at age sixteen to a young lass named Leslie, who would die in childbirth just before he shipped out to join the army.  

He would go to Europe as they stormed the beaches in Normandy on June 6, 1944.  He watched many of his company die in the sea-washed sands.  He returned home where his mother handed him his only son, Arthur who was about to go to school.  Dressed in his army uniform with some ribbons hanging off his left pocket, Mitchell walked Arthur to his first day of school after which he would return back to the farm where he would stand at Leslie's grave and say a few prayers.  

My dad never talked about the war that much, but he was more than willing to share that glorious night he spent listening to Robert Johnson play the blues on his guitar.  He would always say that the whole story about Robert and the devil was all made up, because he would tell me, “Old Robert was about the best dang guitar player I’ve ever heard.”

My dad got a position with the Veterans Administration up near Albany, New York, helping some of the disabled soldiers get readjusted to life.  He would bring a couple of them home for dinner.  My stepmother Lucy would always prepare her famous stew that they would polish off before the end of the evening. Dad would always play a copy of that record Robert Johnson made before he died and no matter how many times he played that record, it would always bring a tear or two to his eyes before it ended. 

When he passed away, I played that record over and over.  Then I got on a bus and traveled to Chicago.  I went to all of those places where they played the blues even though my mother warned about bumping into the devil.  I never did, but that music was heaven sent.  I could almost feel my dad’s presence as I sat and listened to it.  I closed my eyes and felt the notes caress my heart and my soul. 

He never wavered on his belief that Robert Johnson was the best guitar player he had ever heard.  He should know since he went to Woodstock in 1969 and heard Jimi Hendrix and Carlos Santana of whom he said, “Them boys  was pretty decent, but they could not hold a candle to Robert Johnson.  No siree.”