He played Blues piano.
Jazz, jump, boogie, moan - everything on a tinny slapping carnival upright.
He liked to play for small, packed, dark, smoky rooms that grew too hot to stand still, but he got his power from playing alone.
He would often come out after the third set when everyone had gone home.
His home was on the battered wooden bench on the darkened stage.
His huge body made the furniture groan, but his fingers were long, thin, and weathered taut.
He picked up in the middle of a crested wave of feeling in his head, tossing the plucked notes into the blackness around him like flipping single poker chips off a pier into the ocean.
Red, blue, yellow - each turned slow motion in high perfect arcs, catching reflected light for just an instant before disappearing into the unknown night of the soul.
It was something he needed to do.
He was born on the Blues Highway.
His life followed a weathered rut moving with the raised grain of a gray plank high on the side of a dusty barn.
The board warped apart from its studs, trying to cover its pain as it pulled the nails away.
The rain still catches in the furrows and makes them deeper, smoother, like drops of blood in the groove of an old, scratchy Chess 78 on a dime store turntable.
- D. Scott Foshee
Copyright 1996, All Rights Reserved
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