When I Left Home by Buddy Guy Page B

you happen to know?”
    “If it’s where I think it is, I might be able to find it. You best get off at the same station as me. They call it Dorchester Station. From there I could help you.”
    “I’d be much obliged. Is everyone in Chicago nice as you?”
    The man looked me in the eye and said it straight: “No, they ain’t. For the most part, they cold as ice.”
     
    It was late when the train pulled into Dorchester Station. I grabbed my stuff and followed James out the train. The night was cool, but not cold.
    Chicago! I thought to myself. I’m in the great city of Chicago!
    The air smelled different than it smelled in Lettsworth or Baton Rouge. There were smells I didn’t know.
    “You smelling the steel mills and the slaughter houses,” said James. “They be running twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You see shit coming out those smoke stacks night and day. You get used to it. Where you say you need to go, Buddy?”
    I was holding that piece of paper with Shorty’s address so tight that my fingers was hurting. If I lost that, I’d lose everything. “Kenwood,” I said, “4719 Kenwood.”
    “We on 63rd and Dorchester now. That’s down around 47th. We got us a little walking to do. You don’t mind walking, do you?”
    “No, sir.”
    As I took my first steps on the concrete streets of Chicago, I could hear music in the distance. Didn’t know whether it was coming from a radio, a record player, or a club. The closer we got to the sound, though, the more I knew it was live music. And suddenly I saw it—right there, across the street from where we was walking—a nightclub with the door open and the music blasting out. It was guitar music, guitar blues, and my heart started racing, my blood started boiling, and it took all I had not to run over there.
    Feeling what I was feeling, James smiled and said, “Hey, I know you wanna get with the music, but you best settle in first and learn the territory. I don’t know the clubs around here, and that could be a rough one.”
    “I been in lots of clubs back home,” I said.
    “They different here, Buddy. They a lot different.”
    As we kept walking, the stinging guitar sounds faded away, but I couldn’t help but wonder whether it was Muddy Waters in there. Wouldn’t it be something to tell my daddy that my first night in Chicago I heard Muddy Waters?
    After a while we came up on 4719 Kenwood.
    “Okay,” said James. “We here. I’m gonna wish you all the best.”
    “Can’t thank you enough for your goodness.”
    Just as James was leaving, though, I looked at the door to the apartment building and saw all these buttons. Didn’t know what they were.
    “James,” I said. “Could I ask you one more favor?”
    “Sure thing.”
    “What are these buttons?”
    “They’re just door bells. They’re buzzers that buzz to the apartment where you want to be going. Look for your friend’s name and there should be a button next to it.”
    “What do I do with the button?”
    “You never seen a doorbell before?”
    “We don’t got ’em back home.”
    “You press it. Press the doorbell and it buzzes the man’s apartment.”
    I felt stupid not knowing these things.
    “Sorry for bothering you again, James.”
    “No problem, Buddy. You’ll see lots of things here you ain’t never seen before.”
    As James went off into the night, I pressed the button, not knowing what to expect. Nothing happened. Waited three or four minutes, and then I pressed it again. Still nothing. When I pressed it the third time, I kept my finger on it for a while.
    “Who the fuck is down there?”
    The voice came from an open window on the sixth floor.
    “That you, Shorty?” I asked.
    “Who you?”
    “Buddy. Buddy Guy from back home.”
    “Buddy Guy? That really you?”
    “In the flesh,” I said.
    “Come on in. Sixth floor. Apartment 634.”
    I walked in the building. Smelled like cats had pissed all over the floor. I climbed up the stairs, looking at these doors