Living In The
Blues
The
boat bobbed into the distance shining like a child’s toy. It was a
big boat, I could tell even from this far away; a very big boat that
was sailing westwards into the crimson splendour of this autumnal
evening. A while ago it was moored at this landing, and a while
before that my baby was waiting to get on board. Now she’s gone,
and I don’t know why.
Maybe she met a
new man: taller than me; wealthier than me; funnier than me. No, that can’t be
it. Taller than me is likely, wealthier is possible, even probable in this
Depression hit era, but there's no one funnier than me, nor as modest. There
must be some other reason. Maybe she's fleeing the advances of some other man,
someone from her past. A spurned lover perhaps, or someone she wronged when
working at that bar in downtown Chicago. The bar I rescued her from. To call
that place a dive would be over generous. It was the sort of bar where the
lights are kept low so that you don't know what sort of a bar it really is; the
sort of place where they don't use coasters and the staff don't know your name –
cheers guys; the sort of place where, if you listen carefully, you can sometimes
hear the rats tell the 'roaches to give the bed bugs some according to BB; the
sort of place the cops raid weekly, and bar fights break out nightly; but it was
also the sort of place where every Saturday night a Blues band whipped the
barflies who lounged around the sticky tables all week into an alcohol-fuelled
Rhythm 'n Blues frenzy. Around three in the morning the tempo drops and
an hour or so later the drunkards are sent home with the sound of a slow blues
ringing in their ears, a song about needing your love so bad, or feeling ice
around your heart, or about big boats leaving the landing. It was the sort of
place where I spent every night for two years.
Did I say I
rescued her? Maybe, she rescued me.
Yes, that's the
reason. One of those wasters who can’t take “No!” for an answer has tracked her
from the bar and she's had to get away, and get away quickly. In my mind's eye
I can see her walking along the gangway, dressed immaculately as usual, cloche
hat fixed at a jaunty angle a la Joan Crawford, and a suitcase gripped
tightly in a gloved hand - the gloves I bought her after Little Eddie The
Shoe had tipped me a donkey at Belmont Park that ran like the reincarnation
of Man O' War. We had everything then because we had each other.
Stepping onto
the boat she would not have looked back, not waved to the crowd of well wishers,
nor stopped moving for even a second in case a snitch lurking on the quayside
spotted her and sang out to the grapevine on the promise of a couple of bucks –
a welcome reward when all you have to your name is a nickel and a nail. Yes,
that’s it: she is not swanning around the quarterdeck with some impossibly
handsome man (let's face it, that's the only type of man she goes for), she is
running scared of some alcohol-soaked lowlife. She’s not leaving me, she’s
running from him.
If this were a
movie, right now there would be some type of reconciliation, a last minute twist
of fate: I'd turn and she'd be facing me, the boys in blue having arrested her
stalker seconds before he launched into a merciless attack with gun or knife.
But this isn't a movie, this is a Blues song. In a Blues song there are no
reconciliations, no lucky twists, no final verse that makes it all right; if
your baby is at a rail station she buys a ticket as long as her arm, and if
she's at the landing she rides that boat right out of your life. If you are in a
Blues song then you know you are in trouble, you know you are in for heartbreak,
and you know that, until you get out of it, you have to face those same old
blues every night. Every night. Cue blistering guitar break.
End
