Night Swimming by Robin Schwarz

back in the twenties and thirties. My husband was a blues man, played a mean guitar. It’s how I fell for him. He used that guitar to woo me like a box of chocolates. But he’s been gone now many years.” She became wistful. “Yeah, he played the delta up and down, up and down. If there was a juke joint within a stone’s throw, then you can bet that’s where my Johnny would be. Jumpin’ Johnny Jackson.”
    Charlotte’s curiosity was pedaling at top speed. “What exactly are these juke joints?”
    “Shacks. You’ll find them all along Route sixty-one. You know ’em when you see ’em. Tin roofs, broken porches. But that don’t matter—it’s what’s comin’ out of ’em that matter. And that’s all the music your ears can hold.”
    This appealed to Charlotte’s romantic side, and it was just the sort of experience she was hoping for when she bade her boredom good-bye.
    “I like the sound of this,” Charlotte said. “I don’t really know blues, but I do know a thing or two about feeling blue.”
    “Then you know the blues if you know that, child. Now, don’t get the jukes mixed up with those low-class lounges you’ll see along the road. Best they can offer is clean toilets, and they’re not all that clean, if you ask me. The music is the thing. The music can set your soul free.”
    Set my soul free?
There was no longer any question as to where Charlotte was going that day. She was going to find music that would set her soul free.
    Now, a fat white lady in a Jaguar is bound to get some attention in the middle of poor, black rural Mississippi. Clarksdale, Mississippi, to be exact. It was there she pulled over to a farm stand glistening with fruit and vegetables. Several children rushed out to see what Charlotte was all about.
    “Can I help ya, ma’am?” The question came from the old black man coming out of the house with a flock of little girls in tow. They looked like half a dozen brown-eyed Susans.
    Placed perfectly in proper rows along worn wooden benches were boxes of berries and beatroot, okra, and onions. Turnips, tomatoes, and sugarcane stalks. There were sweet peas and sweet pies from just-picked potatoes. There was sun tea and cider and hot pepper jelly, corn bread, and honey still caught in its comb. There were pecans and fruit jams and blueberry butter, all set out like a long Southern Sunday picnic.
    “Weez got possum an’ fish out back, ma’am. Fresh fish. Weez got some bream, crappie, and catfish out back if ya want fish, ma’am.”
    “I think I’ll take two sweet potato pies, a piece of honey, and handful of pecans, please.”
    A pickup truck was hiccupping its way down the long, dusty corridor toward the group. It stopped at the stand as Charlotte collected her pies.
    “Nice car, lady,” the man said as he slipped like an adder out of his pickup. His face was thin, and his eyes were slit so that only the narrowest gleam could escape them. His friend stood behind him, not saying a word.
    “What can I getcha?” the old man asked, leaning over to bring up more bags from under the table.
    “Nothing I want from you, but I’d like to see what’s in that poke of yours.” He was talking to Charlotte now and wielding a long, sharp hunting knife. It took her a moment to figure out what was going on. Suddenly, she got it. She was getting mugged in the middle of a beautiful road in the middle of a beautiful day. The old man told the little kids to get back into the house, and they ran like a rush of rabbits tumbling down their hole. Charlotte opened her purse.
    “Five hundred dollars! Wow, Earle, we hit a goddamn jackpot. We got ourselves a rich lady from... from... where you say you from?”
    “New Hampshire,” Charlotte said softly, barely above a whisper. All she could think of was that she was going to die buying sweet potato pies.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Charlotte.”
    “Well, Charrrrrlotte, what else you got in that fancy car of yours? Why don’t you just open the