Piers Anthony - The Gutbucket Quest

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Piers Anthony and Ron Leming

The Gutbucket Quest

...the blues transcend conditions created by social injustice; and the attraction is that they

express simultaneously the agony of life and the possibility of conquering it through the sheer

toughness of spirit.

—Ellison, Shadow and Act

Born for the Blues (G-flat minor)

Some folks are born with a soul full of trouble,

And some are born just too poor to choose,

Me, I know, my time is on to comin',

'Cause this boy here was born for the blues.

My daddy left before my life was seen,

My momma saw me as one more way to lose,

Doc said, "This boy a-comin' in blood and screams,

I know this here boy was born for the blues."

Poor man got no justice and rich man got no heart,

If you find somebody lovin', life tears you right apart,

When you just sit there a moanin', then you know you got to choose,

'Cause that's when you know you was born for the blues.

Folk say the road to hell is paved with good intentions,

But a poor man got no time to pay that much attention,

When you have to fight to live you either die or lose,

But you have to keep on fightin' bein' born for the blues.

The main color of the creek was green. Willow thickets closed and hid much of it, the water

making only a small, narrow tunnel through the thin, knotted leaves and branches. Clumps of

cottonwood grew spaced apart all up and down the bank, and catclaw bushed out in any place that

wasn't filled with something else. Nature, Slim Chance thought, was odd and wonderful.

One of his first tasks, when he had settled here, had been to build a run of steps down the

cliffside to the creek. Shaky, but fundamentally sound, the stairs had held up well, and he smiled as he

hitched the guitar up on his shoulder and started down. He got nearly to the bottom, then paused.

Something felt wrong, like a memory trying to surface. He started to look up at the sky, but then he

knew.

There was nothing at all he could do to avoid or escape the bolt of lightning that exploded from

the ground beneath him. It caught him fair and square and blew him up into the air. It hurt like hell, it

scrambled his brain and nerves, but he twisted in his flight, trying to make sure the precious guitar was

above him, so that he wouldn't land on it and shatter his dreams.

Then he hit the ground. He landed on his back, the guitar clutched to his chest. His head hit hard,

and though he tried to avoid it, unconsciousness closed him into darkness.

When Slim woke, he was looking up at an old black man with a mouthful of gold teeth. His face

was metallically black in the sunlight and he was smiling broadly, compassionately.

"What the—!" Slim mumbled.

"You all right, son?" the man asked him.

"All right?" Slim answered. "No, I don't think so."

"Why? Is you kilt?"

"No," Slim said. "I think I may be maimed, though."

"What about that guitar?" the old man asked. "Is that okay?"

Slim, becoming more and more conscious with every word, sat and held the guitar close,

examining the body and neck. No new dents or scratches, and the neck was straight and tight; it

hadn't been hurt.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, s'okay."

"Good, then." The man held out a delicate, white-palmed hand. Slim took it and stood up,

surprised at the old man's deceptive strength pulling at him.

"That's a fine-lookin' guitar, son. I bet it plays real nice, too. You mind?"

Before Slim could object, the old man took the guitar out of his hands and proceeded to play the

slickest, cleanest, smoothest B-flat blues riff Slim had ever heard. Even without an amplifier, he could

tell it would sound true blue and beautiful as hell.

"Whoo," the old man huffed. "That maple neck's right nice. Never cared for 'em my own self,

but you got a good one. Put some work in on it I 'spect."

"Wait just a damn minute," Slim said, frustrated. "Who the hell are you?"

The man laughed, his gold teeth flashing in the sunlight. Sunlight? Slim wondered. What had

happened to the storm? The one whose lightning had launched him here.

"Me?" the man said, holding out his hand to be shaken. "Progress is my name. Progress T.

Hornsby."

Slim took the proffered hand. "Pleased to meetcha," he said. "Did you see what happened to

me?"

The man scratched his head. "Well now," he said. "I did and I didn't, you might say. Ain't sure

atall. I was just goin' back to the house and bang!, there you was, flyin' through the air off my stairs,

holdin' that there guitar."

"Yeah, I—hey, wait a minute. Your stairs? No, man, those are my stairs. I built those!"

Slim turned to point to the stairs, but they weren't there any longer. Instead, he saw a flight of

well-poured concrete steps blended into the bank of the cliff. "What the hell?"

"Look here, son. I gots me a feelin' about you, somethin' I purely likes. Whyn't you come on up

the house with me. I think you're more hurt than you maybe thinks."

"Yeah," Slim said, quietly. "Sure, whatever. Thanks." He followed Progress up the steps,

jumping up and down on each one, just to make sure they were real and not the product of his

scrambled brains. He'd almost started to feel halfway normal when they got to the top of the trail and

he looked down at the house. "No," he moaned. "Oh no, that can't be." It was like his house, but it

wasn't. The shape was the same, but the adobe walls had been stuccoed and painted sky blue. Bricks

had been laid in the walkways and instead of raw dirt and weeds for a yard, there was grass and a

small garden. The deep wash in front of the house was filled with water and a quiet pump connected

the water to the house. And there were real oaks surrounding the house. Not small, new oaks, either,

but mature, double-trunked oaks that cast shade in all the right places.

"I do not believe this," Slim said.

"Believe what, son?"

"This was my house, man. I mean—it was before I went down to the creek and the lightning got

me. It was nice. Well, it wasn't, but it was gonna be. I hadn't finished it. It was just adobe. No real

yard or anything. No trees except for a few cedars. No pond. But this was just the way I thought I

was gonna do it. Just like this."

Progress looked at Slim closely, looked deeply into his eyes, at his confusion, but he remained

silent.

"Progress—"

"Yeah, boy?"

"Where the hell am I?"

"I ain't at all sure that's a question I can answer, son. But as far as here, you're at my house."

Progress pointed south over the hill. "Over there, that's the city of Armadillo. And all this here is a part

of the great nation of Tejas."

"Nation?" Slim said weakly. "Tejas?"

"Yep. Problem with that?"

"Oh no. No problem. Just that before I walked down to the creek, that city was called Amarillo,

and this was the state of Texas."

"Texas?" Progress said. "What's it in a state of?"

"The United States."

Progress laughed. "You're foolin' me, ain'tcha? The United States? That's just a little ole country

clear on over to the east coast. Nowhere near here."

Slim opened his mouth to say something, but nothing intelligible would come out of his tightened

throat.

Progress laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Son," he said, "come on down to the house. They's

somethin' happenin' here, but I don't know what it is."

Progress led Slim down the trail, through the yard, to the house. They went through the painted

front door. The jarring, the dislocation, was total. The house was just enough like his own to throw his

sense of existence completely out of whack. The walls were plastered and painted a clean white.

Instead of the dirt floors he was used to, there was concrete and thick, brightly colored rugs. The

furniture was wildly varied in style, but all of it was good stuff. Though different, a stereo and TV

cabinet stood in the same place he was used to. There was a big, handmade table against the same

wall he'd had his own. A different collection of stands and guitars stood beneath the same window his

guitars had stood under.

"Nice," Slim said, trying hard not to act nonplussed. "It must have cost you a little bit to fix it up

like this."

"Mmmm. Wouldn't have cost so much, but I did most of the work myself."

That made Slim laugh. He was overly familiar with the costs of self labor.

"That's better," the old man said. "You maybe got a hard shot here, but long as you can laugh I

'spect you be okay."

"Oh, man, Progress. This can't be happening. But it is happening. What am I gonna do?"

"What you mean, son? Do about what?"

"This isn't my house. This isn't even my whole world, I don't think. I don't know if I'm dead or

crazy, but this just isn't where I should be. Where do I go? What do I do? I got a life I gotta try to

live!"

"You any good with that there guitar?" Progress asked.

Slim shrugged. "Sometimes I think I am. Sometimes I feel like I'm not for shit. Depends on the

day."

"Yessir, I hears that. We all like that. But do you have it inside you?"

"I think I do."

"Shore, son. I thinks maybe you do, too. I see me a man flyin' through the air, more careful

about his guitar than his own ass, that there's a man I think maybe got hold of somethin' and tryin' to

find out what it is he's holdin' on to. So I tells you what. You just come on and lives here with me

awhile."

"Really?" Slim smiled. The offer, and the old man, made him feel better than he'd felt in a while,

not just since the lightning, made him feel mighty good inside.

"Oh, shore. Look here, it gets pretty danged lonesome out here all alone. And I guess it's about

time I took me on an apprentice. I ain't gettin' any younger, or so they tell me."

"Apprentice?" Slim was puzzled. "Apprentice to what? What do you do?"

Progress moved to the kitchen, not answering. He filled two glasses with ice, and then with

brown-gold sun tea, and brought them back into the living room, handing one to Slim. Then he

laughed. It was a deep, throaty sound mat carried an honest joy. It had been a long time since Slim

had felt so welcomed or liked by another human being.

"That's right," Progress said. "I forgot you ain't from around here. I s'pose you needs a proper

introduction."

Progress walked to the stereo cabinet and turned on the power to the receiver and the turntable.

He pulled an album from the shelf, pulled the disk out and placed it on the turntable. The needle hit the

grooves and a raucous, sexy, beautiful twelve-bar blues song came from the speakers.

"Well, I woke up this mornin', to a rattle in my bed,

Said I woke up this mornin', to a rattle in my bed,

It was the loose shell blues, runnin' all round my head."

The voice was what Slim thought of as whiskey-soaked, full of the kind of pain and sorrow only

the blues expressed. The electric guitar accompaniment was loose and slick and dirty-good, like a

heat wave.

"Well, I shook and skivered, till I nearly cried,

Yes I shook and shivered, till I nearly cried,

Tighten me up, mama, give the good man a try.

My bones may rattle, but my mind is tight,

Say my bones may rattle, but my mind is tight,

And if I know one thing, it's where I am at night.

They tell me not to be impatient, every dog will have its day,

Say don't be impatient, every dog has its day,

But with these armadillo blues, I'm runnin' every which a way.

People talkin' 'bout hard times, tell me what they all about,

Talkin' 'bout hard times, tell me what they all about,

Hard times don't bother me, I was there when they started out.

I been boobin' it and noobin' it, I can tell by the way I smell,

Yes boobin' it and noobin' it, I can smell that smell,

So come here, mama, put some oil on this here shell."

It was a straight twelve-bar blues in E, but it went a long way down the road, was almost exactly

what Slim himself wanted so badly to play.

The record went on to a slow blues and Progress motioned Slim over to the stereo cabinet, to a

shelf filled with a short row of albums. Slim started pulling them out one at a time to look at them. Fat

Tuesday, Livin' Blue, Hook and Line, Two Finger Blues, Standin' Hard, album after album. He

counted: there were thirty-seven and Progress' name was on all of them.

"Wow!" Slim said. "You're a star. I mean—you must be a star."

Progress shook his head, smiling. "Some folks say so," he said. "I expect it's maybe true if I sit

down and think on it. But it ain't what I thinks inside me. I ain't sayin' I don't enjoy it. I do. But here,

where I live, I'm just an old man been around a while. Time has a wonderful way of cutting away the

trivial, and you gives a person long enough, they can get to doin' most anythin'."

"But you're great!" Slim protested.

"Oh, come on here, son. You ain't listened to but a couple of songs."

"No, it's there. I can hear it, feel it. You're playing what I'd about give my left nut to be able to

play."

"Come on, now. I bet you could play it without havin' to give up any body parts."

"Yeah, sure," Slim said. "I could play it. I can do okay. Technically I'm okay. But the feeling isn't

there for me, somehow. I'm missing something."

"Well, son, like I said, you just stay on here with me for a while, I'll do my level best to teach

you what I know, and we'll see can't we do somethin' about whatever it is you think you missed."

"Really? I gotta tell you, I'm pretty much a total idiot sometimes."

Progress laughed and clapped Slim on the back. "We all is, son. Every damn one of us is idiots

in our own way and time. But you can learn to get beyond it most times. You stay on here. Like you

say, you gots no place else to go to, so you just makes yourself at home."

Then Progress made Slim clean up and rest for a while, because he was dirty and bruised from

the lightning strike and his fall. It was clear that the man didn't think any less of him for it, and indeed,

was intrigued by the manner of his arrival here, but knew that Slim needed a bit of time alone, just to

get his head halfway together.

And while Slim washed his face and arms, and brushed off his clothing, he thought about what

had happened. He realized that he had somehow changed worlds, but had no notion how or why. So

he forced himself to focus not on the moment of the strike, but on the hour before, when things had

been normal.

...I want to suggest that the acceptance of this anguish one finds in the blues, and the

expression of it, creates also, however odd this may sound, a kind of joy.

—James Baldwin, The Uses of the Blues

It all began on one of those blistering days when the Texas plains pant like a dying coyote, when

the red dust lies heavy and the air seems to scorch the flesh it touches. The white colleechee road lay

like a straight wound through the grass and mesquite green on the hillside. Slim Chance walked slowly

down the slope to the unfinished adobe house he chose to call home.

Slim was, perhaps, average. Yet, there was a certain distinction about him. He was nearly six

feet tall, but chubby, so that in actuality he appeared shorter. His gray-smeared brown hair reached to

the middle of his back, matching the swiftly graying beard that hid much of his face. Metal-framed

glasses, sad gray eyes and a particular swing or sway to his walk were details that added up, in some

definitive way, so that an observer, seeing Slim for the first time, would say, "There's a child of the

sixties. An artist or a musician. Whatever, a misfit." And the observer would be right. The only detail

missing was the thinning hair, or even the baldness that Slim had escaped, unlike so many of his

contemporaries.

It was another day with no mail, no messages, no communication. A very dissatisfying sort of

day, so Slim walked and studied the well-known side of the road, hoping for a glance at something

new. A snake, a dust-brown tarantula, a bright wildflower, anything out of the ordinary half-mile sights

he saw on his daily walk to the mall and back.

He took the walks, though his nature was to drive even the short distance, because he told

himself it was good for him. If he could lose weight, he could have a better shot at getting work. No

one loved a fat musician. Not out in front, anyway, where Slim wanted to be. He'd been there before,

back when. But he'd been young and pretty, back when. Life and time and sadness had served to rob

him of the strong, clean lines of face and body he'd once been blessed with. So he walked, waiting for

the fat to go away, playing his guitar, planning, working when he could.

But he hadn't had a gig in more than a month. Even the welcome, if infrequent, royalty checks

were getting thin. It just didn't seem to be the season for the blues. Not for playing them, at least. So

he'd spent the empty time studying the wild Texas plains environment, trying to soak it in, make it a

part of his playing, as if just by being there he could turn its existence into a sound, a style he was

looking for.

He'd come to the plains first in winter, dug in against the chill and the snow and constant

brownness. It had been worth the wait and the trouble. Spring hadn't sprung, it had exploded. It had

been as if he'd woken up one morning to a world turned suddenly green. The land had been more

alive each day that passed. The mesquite, the salt cedar, the cottonwoods and willows grew from

skeletal barrenness to startling verdancy.

Quail hunted small prey in his front yard and the Godawful ugly crane that lived up the creek

flew close to the house. Horned toads scattered from the paths his feet took. Millions of ants built

their sand castles in the red dirt, hauling what were, to them, massive pieces of wood and branch to

cover and conceal the entrances. The tarantulas were comfy in their holes awaiting unwary beetles

whose empty shells were scattered on the excavated dirt like wilted lettuce leaves on a midden.

It wasn't until later, near summer, that Slim had seen the glittering black tarantula wasps that

preyed on the beautiful, dignified spiders. They were flying black widows, parasites, poisonous and

evil, in Slim's eyes. Over the course of the season, he had rescued several paralyzed tarantulas from

their hideous fates, from the devouring wasp larvae.

His cat, Minnie, had, in her proper time, climbed up onto his bed at two o'clock in the morning,

clambered onto his lap, panting, and presented him with three grand-kittens. Then, once the kits were

weaned, she had run away. Even the stupid-looking snake he had found and played with had escaped

and was living behind the stereo cabinet where it seemed content to stay, maintaining a curious,

uneasy truce with the rambunctious kittens.

Slim was most fascinated by the wolf spiders, the friendly, beautiful, fearless wolves that lived in

nearly every window, nook and cranny of the house. He loved spiders, always had, but the wolf

spiders were almost like a species apart from any others he'd known. They were frighteningly

intelligent and, from observation and testing, he knew they had eyes that could see movement, at least

up to ten feet away. He'd watched their stillness as they'd watched flies, their slow creeping and

stalking, the massive leaps and pounces when moves were finally made on the unknowing flies. And

he'd watched them eat, daintily, unselfconsciously, wondering at their sentience. They were the only

spiders he'd ever seen that stalked and hunted, and he wondered if that activity was the cause of their

obvious intelligence.

Slim had been absurdly excited when, one day, he'd spied a reclusive newt scurrying across a

bare patch of dirt. And he'd been delighted, on his frequent walks down to the creek, to usually find

an old box turtle or two to say hello to and pass a little time with. He was thrilled the first time he'd

seen a dozen or more Fuller's hawks on their wild mating flight, and there was a deep contentment in

witnessing the high, silent flight of the eagle that lived in the rocky cliff down the creek.

He knew that when outstaters thought of Texans, his part of Texas, they thought only of dust and

desolation, rednecks and rifles, oil wells and Alamos and flags. He'd been surprised, himself, upon

moving there, unprepared for the wild beauty, the hundred-mile horizons. He'd also been unprepared

for the savage glory of the Texas lightning storms, the rumbling travel of the thunder.

He'd moved to Texas to play the blues. Not the popular blues; homogenized, synthesized and

zombilized. The real, down-home, gutbucket blues that caught hold of the primal skill and power the

blues could hold in the right hands. But, in his ignorance of Texas, he'd ended up in a place so blue it

didn't even have a blues scene, didn't have any respect for the music or the players.

"Damn!" he said out loud, tossing a rock down the road as he turned into the driveway of his

house. "I wish I could get inside something for a change. Wish I could find a way just to play the

music."

He truly didn't think he was asking so much. It had been so easy, back then, in the old days. It

had come so fast he hadn't even had time to realize what was happening. He'd started the band in high

school and, after graduation, had quickly gotten recording contracts, money and fame. They'd been

San Francisco's own bad boys, even in the wild days of the sixties. Managed by a Hell's Angel, they'd

been said to have the longest hair, the biggest amps and the baddest attitudes in the business. Named

after a kind of LSD, they were the loudest band in history. Their first album had been recorded on a

pier, the studio unable to contain the chaos of the blues they'd played. The only band to have been

barred from the Fillmore for excessive volume, people said the music started shaking their guts blocks

away from the halls and arenas.

But the money, the fame, the women had twisted his life and he'd left the business to try to be

"respectable." But the women he loved always left him, no matter what he tried or did, and each time

his heart broke it let more and more of the hunger escape. The hunger to stand onstage and sway to

the music, to climb on the strings and lose himself in the sound and fury. Each crack in his seldom

repaired heart let the hunger grow and begin to consume him.

After his last lover had left him—money, as always—he'd started taking side gigs he wouldn't

have considered before, getting money together, planning his move to a Texas that had assumed

nearly mythic proportions in his mind. A Texas where he thought he could find his blues, maybe even

find himself. Perhaps find a love he could hold on to. But the hunger wasn't assuaged and the blues

weren't to be found. Slim wanted to feel—well, he didn't know what he wanted to feel. There was

just a brightness and a breathlessness inside him that didn't belong and often caused him to feel inept

and ignorant.

He wanted to do something grand, something huge and heroic, wanted to pour his feelings, his

loves and pains, his life, his small victories and little deaths into the thin silver strings of his guitar. He

wanted to touch the magic of the blues and he wanted to love someone who would love him back the

same.

But something was missing. There was something he didn't have a handle on. He didn't know

what it was, he only knew it was there.

He was entirely alone, except for his animal friends, and he was dying of it, he felt. Twenty-some

miles from town, he'd been unprepared for the isolation, the loneliness, the alienation of living that far

up the country. Sometimes he wanted to scream from the hurtful need to touch and hold someone, to

make love, to have someone else there; to, for God's sake, talk to somebody. It was a summer of

dreadful speculations, hopes and realizations. It was a summer of painful discontent and restlessness,

a summer of hunger, a summer like no other he had lived.

Once inside the house, back in the coolness, Slim wondered what to do with himself. While

thinking about it, he fixed a glass of ice water and petted the cats. He could sit down and work.

Groups like Cities in Pain, Boots 'n' Jeans and the Oscars were all waiting with what he visualized as

signed, sweaty checks for the songs he was supposed to be writing for them. He had a talent for

songwriting that at least helped support his life, but the puerile rock-and-roll material the bands

wanted didn't fit the mood he was in. He had, as he often did, the blues.

He loved rock and roll, sort of. But it didn't have the feeling, the emotional content of the blues.

Rock and roll could make you dance, but blues could make you sweat. Rock and roll could talk

about the pain and joy of loving, but blues could make you feel it. A good blues player could, with

just his fingers and strings, express the sound of falling tears, the ripping of a broken heart, the poverty

of being alone. A blues player could create the sound of hot, liquid sex, the swing and sway of a

woman's walk, the curve of a breast, the tickling laughter of a feminine voice. And Slim hoped,

someday, to be a good enough player to begin to find the voices he needed and wanted so badly, the

voice it felt as if he'd spent most of his sad life searching for.

The sound of far-off thunder caressed the sky and Slim went outside again to look. Clouds were

swiftly moving in, but it didn't look or smell like rain. A dry storm. Good. He went back inside and

grabbed the black, maple-necked, Ibanez strat that was his favorite guitar. Then he headed down to

the creek.

Slim had a dream. Or a fantasy, perhaps, though it seemed more possible of realization than a

fantasy. He wanted to learn to play the lightning and the thunder, to capture on guitar the flash and

crack and heat, the instantaneity of a close lightning strike, the rumbling rolling threat of the thunder as

it moved from cloud to cloud.

He'd watched the lightning, loved it, studied it with the dedication of a scientist. He felt he knew

things about the lightning that no one else in the world could know. Scientists had said for years that

lightning actually started on the ground and flashed up to the sky. Most people didn't believe it, not

really, and scientists, like everyone else, were too afraid of death to stand out in the light to actually

study the phenomenon. But Slim had seen it, had truly seen it move upward, reaching to the angry

clouds, a fern-frond of light and heat and potential destruction. And he knew, because of the massive

Texas horizons, that it wasn't half the time, it really was all the time. Because he knew, he'd seen that

lightning started on the ground and arced through the sky to strike downward at the Earth, ten or

twenty or thirty miles away.

And he could look up at the giant sky cloaked with black thunderclouds, and he could feel

where the next strike would be. It was a kind of magic, he thought. Testing himself, he had once stood

within fifteen feet of a massive strikedown. He had felt the unbelievable heat, had been shaken and

deafened by the bomb-blast of the sound, had seen, in aftervision, the ball of energy and radiation that

had formed for an instant where the lightning had touched and moved through the Earth. It had almost

knocked him over, and it had scared the shit out of him.

He could feel the pressure of the clouds above him as he walked down to the creek. Over what

he thought were hundreds or thousands of years, the small creek had dug a respectable gully on his

side of the bank. It was, in fact, the beginnings of a cliffside. But on the other bank, the land was flat

and gently sloping. If one walked a little way down the creek, it took an odd twist and the cliffs grew

on the opposite side, so that if one were to travel the creek from beginning to end, cliff and flatland

would alternate sides.

And suddenly it had happened: the lightning strike. It had launched him not into death, not into

the next county, but into what seemed to be another aspect of reality. And he still had no idea what to

make of it.

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PiersAnthonyandRonLemingTheGutbucketQuest 1...thebluestranscendconditionscreatedbysocialinjustice;andtheattractionisthattheyexpresssimultaneouslytheagonyoflifeandthepossibilityofconqueringitthroughthesheertoughnessofspirit.—Ellison,ShadowandAct BornfortheBlues(G-flatminor)Somefolksarebornwithasoulfu...

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Piers Anthony - The Gutbucket Quest

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