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    At The Crossroads
    At The Crossroads
    At The Crossroads
    Ebook169 pages2 hours

    At The Crossroads

    By Bob Pierce

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    About this ebook

    Marcus Jackson is filled with bitterness and seeks revenge for his brother's murder against a New York City gang that had presumed he was a member of a rival gang. Marcus joins that rival gang with an eye toward vengence in a world of drugs and violence. But fate steps into his life in the form of a produce truck bound for a mysterious crossroad in Mississippi.

    Alone at the crossroad, Marcus is tested and tempted by angels, devils and other souls placed there to accommodate his every desire and fear - for better or for worse.

    A pastor puts a blues guitar into the young man's hands and, as he stands on the cusp of manhood, he is suddenly given an opportunity to change the direction of his life. But there are many directions to choose from and he has to discern the right path for himself.

    He can turn left, he can turn right, or he can continue on straight ahead; but the one thing he can't do is go back.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBob Pierce
    Release dateNov 1, 2011
    ISBN9781301477814
    At The Crossroads
    Author

    Bob Pierce

    Bob was born in New Haven, Connecticut and grew up nearby. Since 1989, he has lived in Vermont with his wife, Stephanie. He has played bass guitar since high school and led worship at a church in Littleton, NH. Currently, he plays bass and sings lead for The Kingdom Blues Project and is the morning host for The Light Radio Network in Vermont. He has three grown sons and a grandchild due in the spring of 2012.

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      Book preview

      At The Crossroads - Bob Pierce

      At The Crossroads

      by

      Bob Pierce

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2011 Bob Pierce

      Legal Stuff:

      This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      Introduction - The birth of the blues

      Chapter 1 - Once upon a time in Brooklyn

      Chapter 2 - A hijacking gone wrong

      Chapter 3 - Discovering grits

      Chapter 4 - A Falcon in your future

      Chapter 5 - Jammin' with Jones

      Chapter 6 - Thrill ride

      Chapter 7 - Nancy didn't die alone

      Chapter 8 - The devil made me do it

      Chapter 9 - You could be a star

      Chapter 10 - Jones' story, part one

      Chapter 11 - Jones' story, part two

      Chapter 12 - You gotta serve someone

      Chapter 13 - Giving the devil his due

      Epilogue

      About the Author

      Dedication

      To the Lord who has given me a heart to serve and the talents and resources to do it.

      To my wife, Stephanie, who has been beside me on this road.

      To Bill and Carrie who have been a huge encouragement for many years.

      Introduction

      Robert Johnson was born in Hazelhurst, Mississippi in 1911. In his youth, he was brought up amidst the sounds of the blues in its infancy. He was inexplicably drawn to it as a sailor to the siren song of the sea. As soon as he was able to, he scraped together enough money to buy himself an old, wood-worn guitar and struggled to teach himself to play it. He heard the sounds that played on the radio and discovered what a talented musician could do with a guitar; he longed for such an ability.

      In those days, only a scant few decades since slavery had been abolished in the United States, the rule of segregation was still the law of the land. Johnson, being colored (as the vernacular of the time would label him), lived in a world apart from that of white society. A seperate community within a community with its own neighborhoods, its own stores and social clubs, its own radio stations and its own music. Not until several decades later would white artists like Bill Haley and Elvis Presley bring so-called negro music to the public at large, energize its popularity and finally open the doors for black musicians to reach into the mainstream of popular American music. Johnson listened to local black radio stations that played as much ethnically-specific music as they could get their hands on for a mostly-black audience.

      Much of the music played on the radio then was live and some radio stations had their own recording studios where they would record local artists who would then become well-known as far as the station's broadcast signal might reach. If they were fortunate enough, they'd get heard by scouts visiting from a larger market area who would, in turn, bring their music to an even broader audience. One such musician was Son House who was about as established a star as a black musician could be at that time and, when he came onto the scene in Mississippi, Johnson became obsessed with the man's music and followed him from city to city, wherever House would appear.

      What Johnson lacked in talent he more than made up for with sheer desire and tenacity. He sought out House and convinced him to teach him to play the guitar. Many months and many frustrating lessons later, it became clear that the young man just wasn't blessed with the ability to make whatever shards of talent he might have had work for him and he gave up the lessons with great angst. House was later quoted on his young student's efforts: a terrible racket.

      Johnson was determined that he would not live the life of a poor sharecropper (the only other real vocational opportunity at that time for a young man of color in the deep south). Somewhere, somehow, he got the notion that he would do better persuing his career as a musician in Chicago as did so many others who sought a bright career as blues musicians. At that time, the city had an established black blues culture that, he assumed, would embrace a young, new musician. They also had their own style there and perhaps he could become a better guitar player if he didn't try so hard to be like the guys he heard on the radio at home. The road to Chicago from Mississippi is the many-storied Highway 61 and one day Robert Johnson struck out with a bag of well-worn clothes, his old guitar and whatever he wore on his back to begin hitch-hiking north to Chicago.

      He hadn't gotten out of the state when one of his rides dropped him off at a lonely crossroads somewhere in the northern part of Mississippi. Waiting for him there was the Devil himself. Dressed in a sharp white suit and weilding a silver tongue, Satan laid it all out for the young man. He'd give him the ability to play the guitar like none other; after that, fame and fortune beyond his wildest dreams. The young man struck a deal and was soon on his way to stardom.

      History and legend both lose track of Johnson at this moment of his life. Some say he never left Mississippi and, instead, lived as a recluse in the southern part of the state, playing in speak-easys and at logging camps to develop his talent. Others say that he went to California or Texas to sharpen his talents. The only sure thing is that, when he returned to Robinsonville, Mississippi, he had a finely-honed talent and a suitcase full of original songs that caught the attention of musical scouts from Jacksonville. Johnson cut his first album in a San Antonio recording studio in 1936. He then returned to Mississippi after that. The release of a second album soon followed in 1937, but he found the only real work he could get at home was on the circuit of negro-only clubs throughout the south.

      Perhaps he was trying to run from the Devil by going back home or maybe he just felt more comfortable in familiar surroundings, but for a couple of years, he worked hard at one-night-stands and weekend gigs, hopscotching across the south from club to club, putting the deal he'd struck for his success far behind him and out of mind.

      But then (according to legend), in 1938, he was playing a three-night engagement at a place called The Three Forks in Greenwood, Mississippi. During the show, at a hotel across the street, each completely oblivious of the other, a young wife was having a clandestine meeting with her cheating lover. As Johnson sang and entertained the crowd at the club with his newly-acquired guitar prowess, the two illicit lovers wrestled with their passion in a dark hotel room. As Johnson's show was nearing its end, so too, did the tryst across the street and the two midnight lovers slipped out of the hotel as anonymously as possible. First him, turning one way out the door and then some minutes later, she also, turning the other way as she stepped out onto the sidewalk.

      To the young woman's horror, her jealous husband stood at the street corner and confronted her. He had followed her that night to the hotel and a voiciferous argument ensued on the dark street corner as he insisted she point out the man that she was having her affair with. She cried and pleaded with him for mercy as he brandished a .44 revolver in his right hand, waving it about as his rage freely flowed. Then, innocently, Robert Johnson left The Three Forks and crossed the street to the hotel where he was registered for the duration of his gig at the club.

      In desparation, the young woman randomly pointed to Johnson as he stepped up to the doors of the hotel; when he reached for the brass handle on the door, the woman cried out to her wild-eyed husband Him! There he is! It's him!

      Without a moment's hesitation, the angry man flung his cheating wife to one side, leveled the big handgun at the young musician and instantly changed the future of American music.

      With Robert Johnson's sudden and tragic death, the legend of the crossorads was born as people speculated that Lucifer had caught up with him and cashed in his side of the deal that fateful night in Greenwood … he could run, but he could not hide. The irony of the story is that, though Robert Johnson himself paid the ultimate price with his life, his music lives on to this day. Rock and roll and blues musicians ever since have covered his songs in every style of blues from New York to Chicago to Memphis. Many rock and roll musicians have returned to their roots to record the classic blues songs of Johnson along with those of others who would follow him like Elmore James and Howlin' Wolf.

      Like Robert Johnson, we each have to pass through a crossroads. There are times in each of our lives' journeys when we are confronted with the critical choices that may well change our lives. Each of us, too, are at one time or another faced with that timeless choice that will determine our futures and decide our destinies into eternity. The shortcuts and the easy solutions are tempting, but typically lead down a wide and crooked road to perdition. The straight and narrow road is always the most difficult to travel. Robert Johnson made his choice. Perhaps he relented later in life and tried to turn back, but at the crossroads, he made a decision that brought him notariety and fame but ultimately cost him his mortal life of only twenty-seven years along with his soul.

      In the story that follows these pages, we visit that crossroads. We visit it as it welcomes a young man who is adrift in the world and confronts him head-on with his future and his own mortality. It will force him to take a hard look at himself — alone and naked in the harsh light of absolute truth — to make a life-defining decision. To turn left or to turn right …stepping toward glory or slipping away into darkness. The choice will be his and his alone.

      Chapter One

      Brooklyn's produce warehouses are a busy and hectic place each night. Trucks from all over the east coast, the midwest and deep south roll in nightly bringing fresh fruit, vegetables and seafood for the grocers, fish markets and restaurants of the city and its suburbs.

      There, in that unique corner of the world called Brooklyn, a pair of long, parallel warehouse buildings stretched back from the street the length of a football field like a pair of giant fingers reaching into the neighborhood from the interstate. Each building was lined with rows of loading docks with evenly-spaced roll-up steel doors facing one another across a broad parking lot of cracked, oil-stained asphalt. On that night, as on every night, a constant, night-long movement of trucks rolled in and out, backing up to the docks with an unorchestrated chorus of varied tones of backup beepers that pierced the rumbling din of diesel engines and gruff voices shouting to be heard above the noise with a blend of accents from the deep south, the midwest, New England and the varied boroughs of New York. The sound of forklift trucks added a mid-tone to the symphony as they went about their droning tasks. The light shining out from the open roll-up doors cast a yellow-white glow across the aged asphalt in oblong trapezoinds interrupted by the shadows cast by the trucks and gleamed off of this clumsy, mechanized ballet. The trucks' headlights, red tail lights and orange marker lights added to the colorful light show in this nightly performance of organized chaos.

      The trucks came and went as they had done for decades. Before the sun would rise, these inbound trucks would be unloaded and local delivery trucks would then be loaded and fan out into the city and the communities beyond to distribute the bounty of American farmers and fishermen to the inhabitants of the metropolis who will buy and consume all of the proceeds of this night's work before the sun would rise again. And, so, the nightly scene at the produce warehouses is repeated seven nights a week, fifty two weeks a year, in snow, in rain, in wind and hail.

      Well, I guess that'll do it for this trip, Gabe, a ruddy-faced warehouse manager said to a portly black truck driver as he signed the form on his clipboard and handed it back to him. Have a safe trip back, man. The two men stood on the loading dock in the light of the open warehouse door.

      Thanks, the big man slipped his pen over his left ear as he tucked the clipboard under his arm. Gotta make a detour on the way back this time.

      Extra day, extra hash, the manager joked, slapping

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