Red Hot Blues by Rachel Dunning Read Free Book Online Page B

I
needed to hit someone after Dad told me I was a “no good sumbitch
for lettin your country down, son! This country was built by
men who went to war! Heroes!”
    I’m not a military man. But my dad is. And so
was his dad. And so was his. My damn family rocks it all the way
back to the Confederate Army. Not my game, but it’s daddy’s game.
And as his only son—two girls and one boy—I’m a disgrace to him.
I’m not keeping up the Family Tradition. My poor father almost had
a fit when he’d heard I was playing the guitar; and then not to be
playing country music on top of it! I still remember his face, red
and angry. And that vein, popping up on his head.
    And his belt, as he removed it slowly,
quietly, always glaring me down. “Don’t you play that nigger music
in my house, boy! Don’t you dare!”
    And then he belted me. And punched me. I
remember his fists. The crunch on bone. I remember going to the
good ole Southern Virginia doctor, a proud Confederate man like my
father, and my father saying to him behind closed doors, thinking I
couldn’t hear him, “Nigger music, can you believe it?” And the good
Southern doctor saying, “Sometimes you just gotta take it to em
like the Good Book says, Logan. A firm hand and high discipline.”
And daddy: “You’ll keep this between us?”
    “Of course.”
    And then a chuckle—a good, southern, hearty,
fried-chicken chuckle.
    My ribs were broken, my eye was blue, my lips
were swollen to the size of my nose.
    I was eleven then.
    I didn’t play that night because it hurt too
much to play. But two weeks later, I got my guitar—Josephine was
its name, given to me by my friend Aaron Johnson, farmhand for my
father since he was sixteen, born and raised on the farm—and I
hauled up right under my dad’s window, outside, on the grass. And I
fucking played so he could hear me right and good. I played John
Lee Hooker. I played B.B. King. I played Elvis. I played Jimi
freakin Hendrix (not very well; I was eleven, remember?) I played
until my dad was furious and he came down the stairs in his pajamas
and he beat me again. And then, two weeks later, I played again. He
beat me another time, harder. It took four more weeks to recover
that time. And when I did, I played again. And again.
    And again.
    Eventually, he stopped beating me so often.
Because he knew he couldn’t stop me. I won by carrying on. I’d
won.
    So, instead of hitting me, he started
drinking. But when he got drunk, he did something else. And after
he started doing that, I did stop playing. At least in front of
him.
    Because when he got drunk, he beat my mom
instead.
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    It went on for years.
    Aaron kept my guitar at his place, a small
bungalow house about a mile away from the main house on the tobacco
farm. I know what you’re thinking: Slavehands. And you’re right to
think that. Aaron’s ancestors were indeed slaves in this state,
maybe even for the Travers family. I often asked him why he didn’t
leave my father, and he’d say to me: “He treat me well. He feed me.
He feed mah family. Where else I goan go ? An unejjucated man
like me? I’m happy here, boy. I got all I need. My girls are goin-a
school. They can read. They goan make summin o’ their lives.”
    I didn’t get it at first. But I realized
later that my father treated Aaron better than he treated me, or
than he treated my mother.
    To water down my father’s wrath against my
mother, I’d escape the house and go and play with Aaron so my
father wouldn’t hear. Aaron never said anything to him, and pops
knew not to push Aaron too hard because Aaron’s a good worker. And
Aaron don’t take no shit. Aaron, in my eyes, is my real father, the
one who taught me to stand up for myself, to be a man. To have
pride. To stick up for what I believe in.
    One night, when I was sixteen, after a night
of playin it up with Aaron, I got home and heard my momma
screaming. I ran up the stairs and found my pops on top of her.
    Raping her.
    Or getting