The Wrong Crossroads

When he was a younger man, Roy Buxtemper took his guitar down to where 208 crosses 84 at midnight one moonless night, and he played Robert Johnson’s “Cross Road Blues” in hopes of remaking himself with the same sort of swap: he’d give the devil his everlasting soul, and in exchange the devil would make him a better guitar player than Eldon Shamblin and more famous than Bob Wills. After his third time through the song without seeing so much as a shooting star or hearing a coyote, a black truck pulled up on the southbound side, and a man he’d never seen before asked him if he needed any help. Since hardly anybody in town ever crosses paths with anyone they haven’t known their entire lives, and since hardly anybody ever has any reason to be on either 208 or 84 after sundown, Roy said, yes, he did need help, and so he got into the stranger’s truck, assuming that what he’d come to the crossroads for was about to take place, but a mile on down the road, the stranger stopped on the shoulder, pulled Roy out by the hair, beat him senseless with his guitar, stole all his money, pulled his boots from his feet, and left him in the ditch. Ever since then, Roy’s seemed fairly content with playing at the Chaparral on Saturday nights with the Odessa Ramblers for all the beer he can guzzle before last call.

Kevin Grauke is the author of Shadows of Men (Queen's Ferry Press), winner of the Steven Turner Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. His fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared (or are forthcoming) in journals such as The Threepenny Review, Bayou, The Southern Review, Quarterly West, and Columbia Journal. He’s a Contributing Editor at Story, and he teaches at La Salle University in Philadelphia. Twitter: @kevingrauke