Leo was sweating and he pushed the sheet down to just above his penis. He caught the sour smell of the mill from outside, and he knew there was an electric fan in the hall closet but he didn’t want to go get it because then he wouldn’t be able to hear anything but that, and he wanted to keep this ringing in his ears, the quiet of the woods out his window. Soon the morning birds would start up down at the river and he wanted to hear them too, hear them sing and whistle and fly from tree to tree. And he hoped they would wake him in time to swing his legs over the bedside in the near-dark, to be sitting straight and ready as Jim’s alarm went off, and his bedsprings squeaked, and Leo heard his father, coming for him.

Copyright Page

This is a work of fiction. All characters are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 1993 by Andre Dubus III

Cover design by Mary Maurer
Cover photograph by Michael Homer

eISBN 9781466806610

First eBook Edition : November 2011

First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

This paperback edition first published in 1994.

Lyric from “I Got My Eyes On You” by Sonny Terry used by kind permission of Fantasy Record Company, California.

Lyric from “She May Be Yours But She Comes To See Me Some Time” by Joe Hill Louis used by kind permission of Hi-Lo Music, Tennessee.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dubus III, Andre. 1959-

Bluesman / by Andre Dubus III.

p. cm.

1. Vietnamese Conflict. 1961-1975-Fiction. 2. Blues musicians–Massachusetts–Fiction 3. Young men-Massachusetts-Fiction.

I. Title.

PS3554.U265B58 1993
813’.54-dc20 93-12043

CIP