In Search Of Chopsticks.

Part One.

I’m driving, as ever, on the wrong side of the road. And I’m listening to Howlin’ Wolf. And the Carolina sun is sweet and warm. And she’s with me.

We pass Wendy’s and Biscuit King and Taco Bell and a sign that says, simply, ‘Vote’, and I think – because it’s the kind of thing I’ve done since long before Carol Barnard told me on an eighteenth birthday card to ‘stop worrying about Afghanistan’ – about Tolstoy’s question, his ‘simplest, unanswerable question’: “What will come of what I am doing today or shall do tomorrow? What will come of my whole life?”

I’m asking that question and I’m driving down towards Uwharrie Forest, searching for the soul of John ‘Chopsticks’ Nelson, the man who wrote ‘Greensboro Blues’, the man who may or may not have had a relationship with Nina Simone, the man who once wrote, in a letter to Woody Guthrie, “In the end, all we have are our parents’ histories and our children’s futures.”

At Horneytown there’s a tight cluster of shops – shacky, wooden, a little tired and worn. I stop there, jump out, go into the general store, buy two bottles of water. Nelson mentions Horneytown (and the small townships of Erect and Climax) in his notorious ‘No Fuck NC Blues’, the song that broke him (in all meanings of the word) back in ‘72. But there’s no sign of him here, no sense, no memory, no dream, so I ignore the dogs barking at me, the flag fluttering proud across the road, the kid doing community service picking up trash, and I head south again, Emmylou still there, vague, in the passenger seat, gently singing ‘Women Walk The Line’ and then ‘Love Hurts’ and then ‘Boulder To Birmingham’ and then – typical! – refusing to sing anymore for me until she’s drunk all the sweet tea I’ve brought with us.

We pass through Welcome and Silver Valley and a few miles on – I knew she would – she asks me to drop her off at the New Jerusalem Church, says she has something to give to Gram. I turn into the car park, stop, look for a few seconds at the names on the gravestones in the small, lost cemetery. Emmylou says nothing, gets out. I watch her walk up to the front of the church, open the door slowly, turn to me briefly, turn back, walk in. The door closes behind her. I know I’ll never see her again.

White and pure and light-drenched: I take a picture. of the church and I think about the snake preacher who died down the road last week, the man whose own father had himself died thirty years before, bitten as he too put his trust in the God of all our ancestors. I get back in the car and I feel a rush of cold, sharp darkness from the empty passenger seat and I turn the radio on but there’s nothing but big-hair rock music and news of fire and blame.

I drive. And drive. Just before Healing Springs, I see an old man, his thumb out, a bowler hat on his head, standing by the side of the road. For a moment I think it may be Nelson, but he’s too smooth, this man – too calm, too long-past-suffering. I decide I need him. I stop. He gets in the car. He has a long, groomed white beard, a waistcoat, and a voice like Tom Waits.

‘You going to Jump Off Rock?’ he says, and I tell him, ‘Yeah. I’m hoping to meet someone there.’ He laughs, leans over, turns the radio on. ‘Greensboro Blues’ is playing. I turn to look at him. He’s staring straight ahead, soundlessly singing along, a quiet smile on his face.

To be continued.