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“There are legends of people born with the gift of making music so true, it can pierce the veil between life and death, conjuring spirits from the past and future.”
Two months after Rice’s death, Delta Slim returned to the Clarksdale Railway Station. His spot by the step, right under the overhang, was empty.
Abandoned.
For two months.
It was a prime spot. Right where everybody stopped to wait for the next train to arrive. And it was a sign of respect for him and for Rice, that the other hustlers hadn’t fought for it.
Slim hadn’t gone to the funeral. He couldn’t stand to sit there listening to Rice’s mother and sisters wail while a preacher encouraged them to pray. Offering up prayers to the same god who’d allowed slavery for four hundred years.
Some good that would do.
His best friend was dead and no amount of prayers would bring him back.
It sickened him.
Rice had always been a very religious man and yet he’d known exactly what Slim’s beliefs were, and still befriended him. When they’d first met, 25 years ago, he’d asked Slim to come to his church on Sunday for a service. Slim had let the man know exactly how he felt about religion right then and there. But that was the thing… Rice didn’t care. And instead of focusing on their differences, they’d bonded over the shared experience of being Black in Mississippi and they’d found a common ground in music.
Delta Slim was known as the meanest piano player in Clarksdale and every other town in the area for miles. And he’d mastered the art of the harmonica too.
But Rice? Rice was a banjo player.
By the 1920s, banjos were going out of style, taken over by the guitar, but Rice refused to give his up.
“I was born to play the banjo, I grew up playin’ my banjo, and I’ll die playin’ it,” he’d told Slim once.
When he played, the twanging sound of the chords was bright and resonant, and it carried and would make people stomp their feet in time with the rhythm.
Over the years, the two’s friendship had grown, along with their music, and people would come to the railway just to hear “Slim and Rice” play. Eventually, they started a sort of band with some of the other musicians that hung around. Slim was never happier than with a drink in one hand, his harmonica in the other, and Rice right at his side.
When the cracker who owned the shed he lived in upped his prices, and the new rent meant he couldn’t afford liquor, Slim made his choice and started sleeping, not just playing, at the station. Rice slept right next to him. When he got arrested for vagrancy and thrown in a cell, Rice was in the cell next to him. When he was taken to a mansion on Homewood Plantation and ordered to play for his freedom, Rice was playing with him. And Rice was there to calm his friend down afterward, when Slim threw a bottle at the wall, shattering it and shaking in anger, because those people had pearls and pocket watches, gowns, tailored suites and mountains of wasted food while Negro children starved not five miles from them. The greedy bastards lived in a white three-story house built off the scarred and bleeding backs of his people.
They’d played and played for those white folks who stomped their feet and danced to music they would never understand. The crackers didn’t care for the harmonica, but by god they loved the piano. The band was paid and they were let out of the jailhouse, and then Rice had told him about his plan to build that church, settle down and finally start a family. Slim had been happy for his friend, and they’d done one last gig together in their favorite bar before Rice had packed up his things, took out all his money, and headed off.
~
The smoke hung heavy in the bar, that last night with Rice. Slim had splurged and Rice and him were drinking one of the finer whiskeys offered. They sat at a small table in the back, cracking jokes and reminiscing bout old times.
Slim lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair, exhaling smoke towards the ceiling.
“You really serious ‘bout this church mess?”
Rice took a sip from his drink. “It ain’t mess.”
“You gon’ waste good music singin’ hymns for old ladies.”
“Ain’t wasting nothin’. Music’s music.”
“Nah,” Slim muttered. “Them church folk always want you to cut pieces off yourself till there ain’t nothin’ left. You’ll see.”
Rice shook his head fondly, reaching for his banjo case. “You too stubborn to understand God.”
“And you too smart to still believe in him.”
For a moment, neither spoke. It was a conversation they’d had countless times with no real resolution.
Rice cracked open his case and lifted out his banjo with the same care some men handled newborn children. The wood was worn smooth from years of use, edges darkened by sweat and fingerprints. Slim watched him tighten one of the strings.
“You know,” Rice said quietly, “first time I heard you play, I thought you was possessed.”
Slim scoffed.
“I’m serious.” Rice smiled to himself. “Man don’t make sounds like that unless somethin’ bigger moving through him.”
“That liquor talking.” Slim took another drink. “So what happens when you get yourself a wife and babies?” he asked. “You just forget the rest of us?”
Rice laughed under his breath. “Can’t forget your ugly ass even if I tried.”
“Mm.”
“I’ll come back through sometimes.”
Slim didn’t answer.
“You mad at me for leaving?”
“No.”
“You a liar.”
Slim took a long drag from his cigarette. “Ain’t mad.”
“What then?”
Slim picked up his harmonica. “Just tired of watchin’ good things disappear.”
He blew the first note.
Rice watched him for a moment, then lifted his banjo, joining in.
~
Rice never made it to Little Rock.
He was murdered in the middle of the train station by savages in white hoods.
They had taken his banjo, the banjo that he loved so dearly, and smashed it onto the ground again and again.
When Slim learned that those white men had lynched his best friend in the very train station where they’d played together so many times, he drank till he couldn’t remember his own name. Then he woke up the next morning and sobbed - tears of grief, tears of anger, tears made up of a lifetime of hurt.
~
Now, Slim sat down on the cold step, watching the world around him. People bustled around - luggage and greetings and hurried goodbyes. Two months had passed and the world was still moving, but he was stuck. Stuck in the same place, but a different time. The instant where he had someone sitting right beside him, strumming a strong wooden banjo.
Delta Slim lifted the harmonica to his lips, sucked in a deep breath, and released his first note into the air. He slid the harmonica side to side, mouth shifting over the metal holes. His hands shook and the reeds quivered with the notes of the bittersweet melody he struck. The tune had no words but it spoke of friendship and brotherhood, of memories and loss, drinks shared in a bar, lovers separated by a great divide, of men shaped by dark times, and children born to bright days.
Slim played like he’d never played before. His eyes were closed as he tapped his foot to the rhythm. He didn’t notice the crowd that gathered around him, transfixed by the music. Didn’t notice his hat fill with more money than he’d ever made in a day. But in the midst of his pain, as tears formed behind his eyes, Slim could’ve sworn he heard the familiar strumming of a soulful banjo harmonizing, and he could almost sense his longtime friend playing right along with him.
~
Delta Slim spent the rest of his life playing music for the Black folks in that station and at his regular bar. No matter the money offered, he vowed that he would never play for the white man again. They didn’t deserve his music, and they didn’t deserve the magic of the blues. At the end of each day he bought corn liquor with the money he’d made and drank till his pain was dulled.
It wasn’t a great life, wasn’t even a good life, but it was all a Sinner like him could ask for.
In 1932, Delta Slim left with the SmokeStack Twins to play for Club Juke, and he was never seen at the railway again.
“It’s magic what we do.
It’s sacred.
And big.”