“What do you need five dollars for?”

“None yo’ business. You got it?”

Henry started to walk back to his Explorer, then took out his wallet and handed the kid a one-dollar bill.

“Shit. Gimme that wallet, too,” the kid said. “I need that wallet.”

Henry put his foot on the running board of the Explorer.

“I said gimme that goddamn wallet!”

Henry turned, half expecting to see a pistol, or at least a knife. But all he saw was the enraged face of a ten-year-old kid who wasn’t going anywhere but jail or an early grave. “You can’t have it,” he said gently. Feeling like Albert must have felt so many times, he said, “Go home to your mama and stay out of trouble.”

“Fuck you, old man! Go home to yo mama!”

“I wish I had time,” Henry said, feeling a stab of guilt. His mother was ill, and probably wouldn’t be with him much longer.

He shut the door and started his engine, his mind filled with memories of Viola Turner, an emaciated woman wearing an oxygen mask, her eyes filled with urgency, righteous anger, and concealed fear. Henry had known that Miss Viola was dying, but somehow her actual death seemed counterintuitive. Impossible, even. She had not been ready to die, he was certain of that. But she was gone now. Another witness silenced.

“But how?” he murmured. “By time? Or human intervention?” He supposed Shadrach Johnson would tell him when he reached Natchez.

Henry switched on his CD player as he drove past the Arcade theater, and the wail of Little Walter’s overdriven harmonica filled the Explorer. After listening for a few seconds, he shook his head and hit the next-track button. Robert Johnson began sawing at rusty old guitar strings with his slide. Today Henry heard only death and sadness in the sound. He hit next again. This time the a capella opening salvo of Kansas’s “Carry On Wayward Son” shattered the oppressive silence. It might be cheesy, but Henry didn’t give a shit. He was old, he was white, and he needed something to stoke the hope that still smoldered in the darkest recess of his heart. One of the beauties of digital technology was that he could replay the crystalline opening harmonies a hundred times if he wanted to, with one touch of a button. No rewinding, no guesswork. He laid his forefinger on the replay button and hit it one millisecond before the band’s instruments kicked in, again and again, all the way to the highway.

“Swan,” he whispered, wishing it was still 1964.

CHAPTER 7