When children draw pictures of people, they do not populate the eyes. There is a charm to this, especially if the picture contains the usual abandon of the very young. As the artist matures however, these lifeless eyes become disturbing, as in the case of statuary, where the half-orbed stone in the eye socket creates a mask that covers any real identity, leaving only the body to represent the man. For it is the eyes which are the melody of soul, the eyes which great artists strive to capture, and it was the eyes that let me know the man standing in the door was Jefferson Washington.
When I had seen him on the highway he was old, withered, with a quality of aged wisdom. Here, in Neffie's house, with the gentle susurrus of the wind from the open door and the faint firelight dancing about the room, I saw a young man, vital, urgent. The body had changed. The eyes were the same.
"Li says Kweethu called. Another seeker in Quemado. He didn't buy the gizmo." There was no trace of the old man's odd half old-time Southern, half Pakistani accent. He looked at me. "Li's pissed, too. He saw you two drive away together."
Neffie walked over to him and bussed him lightly on each cheek.
"Say hello to Nez. Nez this is Harouk Akeem Ali ... a.k.a. Jefferson Washington the fifth."
Harouk nodded graciously. I even detected a little warmth. I nodded back.
"Li can relax. I have my own life" she continued.
"He wants us in there in an hour or two just in case. Kweethu said this guy was driving slow, kind of lost. Earl gave him the Pie Town short cut but he still hasn't left Quemado. He's driven through there now three times, with the tape playing really loud."
Harouk stopped his train of thought, caught by surprise, and stared at Neffie, as if seeing her for the first time.
"Say. You're in the full rig tonight. I haven't seen that in a while."
My mind was racing. It was hard to accept the size of the scam these two were talking about.
"I was inspired." Neffie looked at me and smiled but I did not smile back. I was discountenanced, feeling a slow and steady anger rising, a free-floating anger, aimed at no one, no thing as yet.
As humans we are so desperate to make sense of the insensible we forget the cautions of science and reason. To hear of this elaborate ruse compounded my disappointment at losing the magical tale I was constructing about the origins of the music and the legends of Neftoon Zamora. Disappointment was turning into anger.
Harouk said to Neffie, "Can you give me a ride to 602?"
Neffie nodded but continued to look at me. She knew something was wrong. She was waiting for me to say something.
"Is this whole thing really that big a con? Is all this really that ... I mean, are you running a, a ..." I ran out of words.
Neffie and Harouk looked at each other, communicating silently. Harouk was waiting for Neffie, obviously looking for a clue about how much to say.
Finally Neffie said, "Well, yes and no."
There was another silence. Neffie and Harouk once more looked to each other. A decision was being made. They had more they could tell, more than what they had allowed me to know already, but it was taking some consideration on their part. Then they decided something. Neffie gave Harouk a slight nod, went back to the fire and sat down as he settled into an easy chair next to her.
He spoke to Neffie. "We don't have much time." Then he turned to me.
"I'm from Mississippi. Chotard. On the river. Pretty place, the river, the Delta lands, if you know what to look for. I'm fifth generation. The tape you have is my great, great grandfather. He made the recordings in Chicago in 1929 when he was in his seventies or eighties. They are Delta blues songs like a lot of people sang then, except for one thing. My daddy told me his great grandpa learned them from his daddy who learned them from Neftoon Zamora. That part is true. The Little Horse Diner and this enterprise Li has set up ... well, it isn't what it seems, that is certain. But the reason Neffie and I are here is the legend of Zamora."
He paused, looked again at Neffie. She gave him another slight nod.
"I met Li in San Francisco a few years ago. He was running a gay nightclub called the Blue Parrot, like in Casablanca. I was in there one night with some friends and for some reason had the tape with me and asked Li to play it over the big disco sound system he had. The place came to a stop. About half the people left, the rest listened hard. No one talked, no one danced. They listened. After it was over someone asked me about the tape and I told them the story my dad had told me. They were all swept away by the legend. Li watched all this and that night after closing asked me to tell him more. We struck up a friendship, and I won't go into all the details of how we got here but we did. Li thought he could make some big play from this, make a lot of money somehow, sold the club and set up the Little Horse Diner. That's the main part of it."
Something didn't seem right. I had many questions.
"I have to get up to the road" Harouk said. "If you'll drive me, I'll tell you more."
The three of us left the house, Neffie jumping astride her great green Harley and heading for the Diner, and Harouk and me in the car.
"Take me back to the dirt road where you found me." As he talked he reached into a bag he was carrying and pulled out a wig of wispy gray hair and put it on. It was almost absurd in its amateurishness and I felt foolish for not seeing through such a poor disguise.
"Can it possibly be Li has invested all this time and money and effort to trick people into buying more Moroccan food than they want? I can't see the payoff in all this." I said.
Harouk was now in his wig and began the shuffling, bizarre accent from nowhere.
"Well suh, see, Mr. Li he sells mo an mo stuff. Gots some jewry and things that can cost plenny, yoo know. Folks comes by n' pend in on whose they is can git mighty hung up on Neftoon things."
"What is that accent? It's, you know, it's weird. Not like ..."
Harouk spoke normally. "I know. I know. It's something I made up. I can't keep it consistent. Sort of a cross between Gandhi and George Foreman and the old man Richard Pryor used to do as part of his act. It fooled you, though."
"Confused me more than anything. Really ... how does the payoff work?"
"When people are on a quest you can sell them almost anything. Doesn't make much difference what the quest is, as long as it takes them over. Born-again Christians. New Age Crystals. Astrology. Quantum Physics. Li set up a system to qualify people, and then if it looks like they are ripe for Zamora lore he feeds it to them in more and more expensive packages. One guy dropped half a million dollars on a ring. Another paid a couple hundred thousand for a pot. Like that."
"Harouk! That's big-time criminal stuff. You guys could ..."
"No, no, no. Nobody tells any lies. Nobody tricks or defrauds anybody. These people are here looking on their own and seeing what they want to see. Li simply charges them for it. The only part that is unbelievable is that they pay."
"You're in a costume. Li told me 'That's Neftoon Zamora, over there.' I mean, of course you're telling lies."
We had come to 602, the gravel road where I had first seen Harouk.
"Here we are. Let me out here. I'll walk up the road."
"But if this guy doesn't come ...?"
Harouk reached into his bag and showed me a cellular phone. The car rolled to a stop.
"I'll call. Those were not lies that cost you anything. They were part of the atmosphere. Part of the staging. When it comes down to it, there is nothing illegal going on."
Suddenly his phone rang. Harouk flipped open the talk panel and spoke in a low voice so I could not hear. Then he closed the phone.
"This guy is still in Quemado. You mind waiting here for a bit? Gives me somewhere to sit."
"You are creating an atmosphere of deceit. Maybe it isn't illegal but it's unethical, immoral. You're stealing trust."
"I won't argue with you about that. I'm getting ready to move on anyway. See my folkses knows that when I comes out here that I be back and theys be waitin' ... besides, I'm fed up with Li. I thought he was OK, but he's a racist pig like everybody else. I was happy in Mississippi until I found out I was gay. It's one thing to be black in this country. Try being black and queer. I ran for my life. Li seemed easygoing, not ... you know, like, like a ... I mean, he ran a gay bar, for godsakes. But when we got out here the real colors came through. I'm going to New Orleans. It's hard there too, but I'll be rid of Li."
With the motor off I could hear the night as it rolled in. The crickets with their low burrups and the irresolute wind singing through the wire fences laid the background sounds at the feet of the sky. The two of us sat there staring through the windshield at the tableau of mesas and stars, at the plains with their yuccas spread out singularly, like tombstones; at a small independent cloud as it bruised the moon, occluded it, then moved on. Harouk flipped the visor down, looked in the mirror on the back of it and primped the tatty wig. His head wagged back and forth, his eyes towards the mirror.
"You know, Harouk, I don't know which interests me more. The story of this outrageous scam, or what you said about your grandfather learning those songs from Neftoon Zamora."
"I can tell you which is the most interesting. It's Zamora."
"So, tell me."
"The tapes were made from some old wax records I found around the house. We didn't have any way to play them so they were just kept around. Mom and Dad treated them like treasure, which they were, and so while I never knew what was on them I always figured they were special. When I went off to school I kept thinking about them and met a guy who said he could make a tape from them without hurting them in any way. When I first heard them I was ... I can't describe it. It was like hearing some basic sound, like a heartbeat or the ocean. It was comforting and inspiring and, well, it was like home. Mom and Dad cried, but I think it was from nostalgia for Grandpa more than anything else."
"Where did you go to school?"
"Started at LSU. Went there for two years. Hated it. Then transferred to UT at Austin and finished up there. Degree in Business, of all things."
"You're very lucky."
"You mean 'cause I'm black? Maybe, but Southern rural living is different from urban living. I missed a lot of problems. Strong family. Dad was good, a real friend, sold farm supplies. Grain. Hay. Seed. Fencing. So I did fine. Missed the plight of the black man. Didn't miss the rage. Got that plenty. Assholes like Li."
"So ... Zamora."
"Yeah, well, it was the sound of the earth and the wind and everything basic. And there was this wail, this cry to it like something from outside the world, somewhere in the stars. I asked Dad if he had ever heard these songs before and he said once, when he was young. He has this blues collection like a white man and listens to the blues all the time but he stays away from clubs and such, doesn't smoke or drink, goes to church, AME Zion. What can I say? Sort of distances himself from them. Me, on the other hand, I want to sing the blues, sing these songs of my people and live like, you know, Elmore James or Muddy Waters or, or ... I get taken over by them. Which is very unpopular now with people my age. Blues? Not today ... too old and forgotten. Problem is, I can't sing."
"Yeah, well that would be a problem" I said.
"Dad told me he had heard the songs and that started him liking the blues and then he told me about Neftoon Zamora. He said it was a legend his dad had heard from his dad and so on, and it was Neftoon Zamora that taught my great-great to sing and play.
"My great, great, great grandfather was an African slave. I mean by that he was a slave in Africa. Slavery was in general practice throughout Africa. One tribe would raid another and steal the children and the women and make them slaves. My people were Bantu and lived in west Africa, south of the Sahara in a kingdom roughly where Nigeria is now, in a town called Wukari.
"The people of this land were warlike and fought constantly, but this particular village was supposed to have been peaceful. My great, great, great grandfather's African name was Aku and he was stolen from there when he was eleven and put into slavery by a nearby tribe.
"Aku had a sister who was taken from him and sent to another village, so he was alone. He was a slave with this one tribe for three years, when the king decided to take the slaves he had captured and trade them to the Europeans.
"The story goes that when Aku was being carried down the river to be traded he saw Neftoon Zamora for the first time. Aku had been raised in a dusty land where there were only little pools of water, but cleanliness was vital to the culture. They used perfumes made from trees that grew there and were quite careful with their daily habits, making sure the village was kept immaculate. The tribe that captured him was filthy and cared nothing for hygiene. They also lived on a river and used boats to go back and forth to the African coast. Aku had never seen a boat or so much water and was terrified when they tied him up and put him in the canoe. On the first night of the trip all of these strange new things came together and Aku's fright turned to hysteria. Zamora supposedly came suddenly from the surrounding jungle and confronted the native chief who was Aku's captor. Zamora was a big man, over seven feet tall, and was lighter skinned than the Bantu, more the yellowish tan of the Bushman, and ... he had this long sandy hair that hung to his waist. Apparently, this scared the hell out of everybody in the trading party. Zamora made the king agree to allow the slaves he had captured to perform the rituals of cleanliness so important to them and that way the slaves became less afraid and a little less miserable. Zamora then went to Aku and told him he would come see him again and not to be afraid. Why Zamora didn't make the king let them go, I can't tell you. But, that's the way the story goes.
"Aku was sold to an English sailor and, to make a long story short, after a few more sales was finally traded to a poor family in Louisiana. I don't want to start on the horrors of slavery, but I can tell you there were three types of slaves. The city slave. These were up in Maryland and Virginia, to the south of the Mason-Dixon line. These slaves were status symbols and were treated well, given good food and good clothes and sort of shown off like a fancy car or furniture or pets are today. Then there were the country slaves. These were the farm laborers and the cotton pickers and ones that usually were part of the work force of a big plantation. Then there were the slaves to the poor folks, mostly in the country, mostly tenant farmers. White trash with slaves. This was easily the worst situation a slave could be in. Usually there were two or three in a household and that was where Aku ended up.
"One day came word of a new arrival. A big man with long sandy hair. People began to tell of his exploits. How he stood up to inequity and would refuse to work without compensation. All of which I figure for nonsense. A slave who refused to work was usually beaten to death. What rang true in the stories, though, was the wisdom of Zamora and the force of his fearsome presence, especially to the white man. Aku was interested in meeting this man because he remembered well his benefactor from Africa.
"Aku finally met Zamora and swore it was the same man he saw in Africa. They became friends and through Zamora's teaching Aku learned to read and write ... and most important he learned to play the harmonica. Aku had been trying out various instruments in an effort to capture some of the music he remembered, but most of the instruments, the guitar and the piano, were not tuned around the five-note scales of his native music. Zamora showed Aku how to play the harmonica in a way so the five-tone scale was easily playable and Aku spent many hours with his 'mouth organ', as it was called, re-living and remembering the songs of his youth.
"One day, when there was a guitar player and piano player playing with Aku, Zamora took the harmonica and showed them something that changed the face of music forever. Instead of playing a harmonica tuned to the same key as the guitar and piano player were playing in, Zamora began to play a harmonica tuned to a different key. We know what it is now, but then, no sound had ever been heard like it. While the other two players played a simple chord progression in C, Zamora played along with a harmonica in the key of F. When they played in G, he played a C harmonica. And so on through every key.
"This kind of playing created a tension between the two instruments and made the major keys sound almost minor, like the third and the seventh of a major scale somehow played flat but not quite. When the guitar player and piano player heard this they began to mimic this strange new scale with their instruments, and the music broke out.
"What all this boils down to is the blues. This 'cross harp' as Dad called this type of harmonica playing, was the beginning of the blues.
"As you also know it was the root of all rock and roll which became the most popular music in the world.
"Aku taught this harmonica style to his son and it was his son who made the recordings in Chicago you are listening to on the tape your friend gave you."
"How did he get them?" I wondered.
"When Li decided to set up the Little Horse we made about a hundred copies of the tape and sent them around, left them around, gave them to strangers ... like that. Like seeds. Just to see what would come up. It doesn't take long or take much to get a legend going. Remember the story about how so and so was supposed to have died from eating pop rocks, or how you can catch birds by giving them uncooked rice and then water so they swell up and can't fly? People tell each other this stuff and the next thing you know it's part of some universal truth. Same with the tapes. Say a few words about Neftoon, play the tape, mutate that a few times through a few different friends of friends and presto! people start showing up in Quemado looking for Neftoon Zamora and the magical city of Chuchen."
Harouk's phone twittered. He answered by saying "Yes?" and then said nothing else until he closed the connection.
"Well, Nez. Time to go. Li really is a bastard, you know. I guess I'll see you later."
He jumped from the car without waiting for me to say anything and ambled down the road, miniature dust devils twirling like spurs behind each scrape of his heel on the gravel. I watched until he turned around a bend and out of sight.
Since it was still early evening I decided to go down the road to Glenwood. Zamora was still the most interesting part of the adventure, but I could not shake the awful feeling of being sucked so easily into such a transparent trick. I wondered how much of it still was a trick.
As I wound my way to Glenwood I put the tape on again. Jefferson Washington II singing the songs of Neftoon Zamora. Whatever else was bogus about all this, the music was real, and every time I listened I loved it more.
I swung into the parking lot of the Blue Front Cafe and crunched to a stop. I could see a pool table through the front window and tables in back. The smell of a wood burning fire was faint, homey. I would eat here, maybe stay the night at the little guest ranch next door. I needed some time to think.
For in the warp and weft of this strange fabric of events was woven a new thread ... or maybe it was only a fold. It was Neffie herself. I could not get her off my mind, our day together in each other's arms. She had caught me unawares with her noble presence and slipped slowly into my heart. I could not shake her image from my thought, nor did I want to. Maybe I was falling in love.
What was it about her? Her physical presence was extraordinary but it was not the compelling element. There was a clarity of thought, of purpose, and insight. It shone through her eyes the first time I saw her and it was with me now, captured in the camera of mind. It was in the commanding look she gave Harouk when he began to unravel the story of Li and the Little Horse diner. It was there as she told me of Zamora. It was a sense, not of the science of things but of the spirit of them, an intelligence, not of the ways of the world but of the ways beyond the world, overarching and encompassing them with a greater knowledge.
As I walked past the local cowboys playing pool and sat at one of the tables, I realized how much I wanted to see her again. I could not let her slip away.
One does not hear sirens out here, the raspy, bleating horns and the electronic wup-wup that murmur in the distance of all big cities, but there it was, approaching fast up the two lane highway outside the door of the Blue Front. And unlike the city, out here we were all connected to the sound, all turning to see. Yet to me the connection was more than community, it was another thread, a link directly to me, sending a chill up my spine. Through windows slick and shiny from the night the red and blue lights strobed, punching harder and harder until a Paramedic van exploded past, its image only a smear, dragging its cry of alarm up the road with it, up the road I had come, the road to Apache Creek.