![]() ![]() Down in the coolness of his basement he taught the brothers the blues. The nuns scorched their days with holy threats and Curtis rescued them by night. Curtis wrapped his waxy brown hands around his guitar neck and played the most dangerous blues this side of Robert Johnson. He wore these sinister midnight shades, a narrow black tie and a porkpie hat that he kept pushed back on his head. ![]() ![]() Actually, saved by a gray-haired janitor everybody called Curtis. Even back in the Rock Island City orphanage (that sweaty kid factory with the black windows) Jake and Elwood were saved by the music. It was out there for the taking and Jake could smell it like ozone in damp air. Someday they’d have a penthouse on Lake Shore Drive… float around with bourbons and blonds. He absentmindedly rubbed his Buddha belly even on a diet of jail food and Chesterfields, Jake had gained weight. And the ending was always the same – Jake and his younger brother Elwood cruising out of Calumet City, Ill., with the sun in their shades and a full tank of gas. But this was different it played across his tiled cell wall 24 hours a day. Joliet Jake had always been full of schemes. There had been too many messy gas station holdups with only some green stamps and a case of Valvoline to show for the risk. It was his, the only real one he'd ever had, and he clung to it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |