"Your Sweet Man"

Published in the Chicago Blues Anthology, Bleak House Books, 2007

Excerpt

"Who's Gonna Be Your Sweet Man When I'm gone?
Who you gonna have to love you?"
—Muddy Waters

1982: Chicago

Calvin waited for the man who'd been convicted of killing his mother. Outside Joliet prison the July heat seared his spirit, leaving it as bare and desiccated as a sun-bleached bone. Sweat ringed his arm pits, grit coated the back of his neck. Almost noon, and not a shadow on anything.

He extracted a Lucky from the crumpled pack on the dash and leaned forward to light it. The '74 Chevy Caprice never failed to start up. As long as he kept enough fluid in the radiator, the engine ate up the highway without complaint. Even the lighter worked.

He took a nervous drag. He hadn't seen his father in fifteen years. His granny had made him come when he graduated high school to show him that Calvin had amounted to something, after all. Calvin remembered clutching his diploma in the visitors' room, sliding it out of the manila envelope, edging nervously up to the glass window that separated them. He held it up against the glass, hating the sour smell of the place, the chipped paint on the walls, the fact that he had to be there at all. He remembered how his father nodded. No smile. No "atta boy—you done good." Just a lukewarm nod. Calvin imagined a yawning hole opening up on the floor, right then and there, a hole he could sink into and disappear.

Now, the black metal gates swung open, and a withered man emerged. Calvin was still wiping sweat off his face, but his father was wearing a long sleeved shirt and beige canvas pants. Even from a distance, his father looked smaller than he remembered. Frailer. The cancer that was consuming him, that had triggered his early release, was working its way through his body. He walked slowly, stooped over. His skin, a few shades lighter than the rich chocolate it once was, looked paper-thin, and he blinked like he hadn't been in sunlight for years. Maybe he hadn't. His father looked around, then spotted Calvin in the Caprice. He nodded, took his time coming over.

All content © Libby Fischer Hellmann.