Catch the blue train

It was another hot one, the kind of heat that clings to you like a guilty conscience. The city stretched out in front of me, a red neon sign flickering in the distance like the breath of young lovers. It was the kind of night that made you feel like an outsider, even if you’d lived here all your life. The air had a weight to it, like it was trying to push you somewhere, somewhere you didn’t want to go. It was too damn hot to sleep, but what else was there to do?

I found myself walking past an abandoned Chevy at a levee, the sound of a jukebox bleeding into the street. Some tune from the past, something scratched and worn, like the last bit of hope left in this town. Then I heard it — whistling. It was close, too close. I turned around, and there she was, stepping out of the shadows like she had all the time in the world.

“How come you always end up down at Nick’s Café?” she asked, voice like honey and smoke and petrichor.

“Uh, I don’t know, the wind kinda pushed me this way.”

I wasn’t sure if I believed it myself. I didn’t want to know why I ended up there. The place was full of ghosts. The kind that lived in cheap whiskey, vacant stares, scabrous smiles and insipid conversations. Street toughs, layabouts and the unpalatable draught of mortality. Aging good old boys drooping like mellow fruit over the cigarette-holed red terrycloth of destiny.

“Hang the rich,” she muttered, and the words hung in the air.

I didn’t know what she meant by that, but she wasn’t waiting for an answer. She turned and started walking, her heels clicking against the pavement. I followed her, the neon red bleeding into the darkness like a terrycloth bloodstain that never quite fades. It was beginning to dawn on me that there were no rules here. Only decisions.

“Catch the blue train,” she called over her shoulder, her words drifting back like a warning. “Take it to Kokomo, wherever the hell that is. You’ll find me down there, somewhere on the crazy river.”

Crazy river.

I still had no idea what she was talking about, but the way she said it, I could almost taste the madness in her voice. I wouldn’t presume to advert to her manners, but the way she walked had a way of making you believe in things that didn’t make sense.

I followed, the night swallowing me whole. The path returned me to the old, abandoned ‘59 Chevy, rusted and forgotten like everything else around here. The back seat was empty, except for the echoes of a Little Willie John song, fading away as if time itself had decided to stand still. I couldn’t tell if I was dreaming or if this was real. Hell, I didn’t care anymore. The music was dead and the levee was dry.

It felt like everything was pulling me towards something, something I couldn’t see but could almost feel. I thought about Madam X — she’d read my mind for a price. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what was floating around in there. Maybe I’d go, let her tell me something that would make it all clear. But then again, maybe I didn’t want clarity. Maybe I wanted the chaos, the fever, the kind of confusion that made everything taste just a little sweeter. 

Anyway, that voodoo stuff don’t do nothing for me. I’m a man with a clear destination. I’m a man with a broad imagination.

I caught up to her again, just as she stepped into the fog, our faces fading like two silhouettes on a shade. “You don’t get it, do you?” she asked, her voice thick with something I couldn’t place. “You gotta stop being afraid of it.”

I said, “No, I like it. I like it, it’s good.”

“You like it now. But you’ll learn to love it later,” she said, turning her back.

And you know that she’s half crazy but that’s why you want to be there. And she fed me tea and oranges that came all the way from China. We both kicked off our shoes, also made in China. Man, I dug those rhythm and blues.

Later on when the crowd thinned out, I wasn’t sure if I was walking down the crazy river or if the crazy river was walking me. Either way, it didn’t matter. There was no going back now. She was gone and the ghosts were all around me, in the streets, in the jukebox, in the soft whistle of the wind that seemed to guide me deeper into the dark.

I been spellbound. I been spellbound. I been spellbound. The kind of spell that makes your soul itch and your skin burn. Maybe it was her, or maybe it was the place, but it didn’t matter. It was too late to turn back.

I followed the river, wherever it would take me. And that’s when I spotted the floating body of Billie Joe McAllister. A guy with only a union card for identification helped haul him out of the murk.

Another case solved, somewhere down the crazy river.