Shortly after Robert’s fifth birthday, Julia and her family of four were evicted from their second home for nonpayment of taxes, due once again to the bureaucratic intervention of the three Marchetti brothers. This time she had no choice in the matter. Julia knew she could not afford to forebear the upbring of her children all on her own. In a letter dated June 24, 1916, found decades later hidden next to a bottle in a rolltop desk at a country yard sale, Julia Dodds wrote to Charles Spencer, “I can no longer make right to raise your two daughters and your son. You have a son. His name is Robert. I do not ask for you to accept me to your home. A labor camp in the Delta, where I can put to use the two things that when idle do the devil’s work, will keep me for the season. I ask you to provide for Carrie, who is now eight, Bessie, who is now twelve, and Robert, who is now five. Robert already takes after you.” At the end of this letter, one of the most prized in our collection, Julia’s signature appears extravagantly wrought, loops round and curves smooth, its dark ink accentuated by what seems the mark of raindrops.
Julia put her children in the back of a tin lizzie on a hot, bright day in the middle of August and saw them for what she thought was the last time through a haze of dust, exhaust, and gnats. Along the way to Memphis, they subsisted on boiled peanuts and pickled peaches from roadside stands, played “Spot the Tree Bear” to pass the time, hummed “Farmer in the Dale” to forget the heat, and waved at the other automobiles that became more diverse every mile farther north. The children reached their destination by noon the next day. They set their ashen knuckles to the door and became a part of the Spencer household one at a time, each met by the man two of them had not seen in almost six years. Robert was last.
The true identity of Robert’s father, Charles would claim until he died of a heart attack at age fifty-four, was forever the neighbor of suspicion, doubt, and ignorance. On the day he first opened the door and looked on Robert’s bad eye, its lens opaque at center, its lid slouchy in contour, Charles surely must have known Noah Johnson had never been kicked by a mule. A whistle blew soft in the distance. A cloud brought shadow to the lawn. Charles said nothing to the boy, had an itch at his wrist, and let the door allow for entry.
Chapter Two
Over breakfast Leroy Spencer told his younger brother the gift would have to wait ’til after lunch. It was our husband’s twelfth birthday. At the kitchen table in the split-level tenement on Handwerker Hill’s south side, Robert upheld the appeal to his brother for some kind of hint concerning his birthday present. He asked Leroy, “Is it bigger than a breadbox?”
“Won’t tell.”
“Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”
“You got the wax in your ears again?” Leroy balled his napkin and lobbed it at his brother. “I said I’m not saying. Don’t ask again.”
“Is it in this room?”
Since his introduction to the household seven years back, over which time his mother yet seldom sent word, Robert had been so ignored by his father that the only person who gave him any mind was the oldest of his five sisters and six brothers. Leroy was twenty-seven. He worked days as a millwright at the Sperry Lumber Yard in Germantown and nights as a handyman at the Peabody Hotel on Union Avenue. He could clean the breech of a double barrel with a corncob and he could speak two languages of the Five Civilized Tribes and he could whistle any melody after a first listen. He kept in his closet a pinstripe suit cut slim of fine-grade tropical wool. He had a steady girlfriend most of the time, never drank but a drop, never partook of tobacco, and went to the early service on special occasions. Robert idolized him.
“Got some things need getting done,” Leroy said from his seat at the gateleg table, sopping his plate with cornbread. “You promise to behave, you get your present.”
“Cross my heart. Hope to die.”
“I’ll be back in a few hours.” Leroy walked to the single-bowl scullery sink, lathered his plate, paused at the ledge-and-brace threshold door, settled his hat, and turned the brass knob clockwise by half. “Don’t go running all over town while I’m gone.”
During those early years of his childhood, Robert Johnson, future guitarist, future singer, future lyricist, had known the world of Memphis to be a world at harmony with itself. Teams of horses would clip-clop their heavy hooves down Cotton Row, pulling wagons teeming with the season’s crop. Robert heard them. Merchants would sell their wares, newly improved hand tools and gimcrack beauty products and miraculously curative medicines, with the refrain of “Come and get, folks, come and get.” Robert heard them. On Sundays, the scratch choir at First Methodist Church in the Pinch District would sing the gospel by way of psalms, spirituals, and hymns from the Good Book. Robert heard them. On Fridays, the crowds at the local dog track, half a month’s pay on the line, would cheer their hardscrabble picks. Robert heard them. On Mondays, the lunch counter at Smith’s Rexall Drugs across from the courthouse would brim with tales of famous lawmen dead and promoted to Glory. Robert heard them. The blow of a horn from paddleboats, barges, and flatkeels would echo against the craggy bluffs of the Mississippi, and the whistle of a steam gong would signal the workday at the city’s paper mills, cotton gins, and dairy plants. Robert heard them. The distant susurrus of metal on metal would fill the rich air of Shelby County as Pullman cars stole their way inch by inch across the Harahan Bridge. Robert heard them. In the mornings, he heard thousands of crickets wail their vibrato from the thick leaves of chinaberry clusters. At noon, he heard wind chimes made of bent forks and old knives peal a clarion call from the flower gardens of Elmwood Cemetery. In the evenings, he heard hundreds of locusts scream their falsetto from the brittle branches of sycamore stands. At midnight, he heard the report of Derringers, Colts, and Winchesters burst chaotic from the dark alleys of Beale Street. Everywhere he heard stones in his passway. Everywhere he heard hellhounds on his trail. Everywhere he heard the crossroads at night.
On his twelfth birthday, thanks to the vow of a present, Robert Johnson chose to spend the hot morning hours practicing his chords in the backyard rather than exploring the various neighborhoods of Memphis. His undershirt stuck to his skin and his hands got soggy in the palm as he put the house behind him and strode across the yard. Summer had come early. Although the outdoor thermometer given gratis by the Chero-Cola distributor often reached the vicinity of triple digits—“Cool Yourself Down,” it read, “With a Glass of Royal Crown” —the broad canopy of a live oak strung with a Dunlop whitewall provided the backyard generous cover from the noontime sun. Robert laced the long, slender digits of his young hands and waited for a good, loud crack from each knuckle. He knelt at the base of the live oak, bit the inside of his cheek, and went to work on the diddley bow.
Our mutual husband told each of us about the construction of diddley bows during our respective courtships. He said to Mary Sue, “You hammer four or six nails into the trunk of a tree,” counting on her fingertips. He said to Betty, “You run some fine wire from one nail to another,” with his hands at her hair. He said to Claudette, “You pluck the strings up high near its throat,” with his lips at her pulse. He said to Helena, “You slide a glass bottle down it for tonality,” lifting her A-line skirt. “It’s simple,” Robert told each of us at dawn the next day. “Just like love.”
Leroy got back home at two in the afternoon. He stood his horse in the gravel thoroughfare, looking down on his younger brother. In one hand he held the fraying reins of the best tack he could afford at his pay, and in the other he carried a cumbersome box wrapped in layers of newsprint. Leroy asked his brother how long he’d been at practice.
“Since you left.” Robert dusted his knees and indicated the package. “That my present?”
“Expect so.”
Leroy told his brother to wait on the front porch until he’d taken care of his