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just look at you and play a little thing, and you'd know how he was feelin'."
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"Do you sound like him?" Slim asked.
Progress laughed. His laugh and those shining gold teeth still made Slim feel good. Maybe
because it never sounded as if Progress was laughing at him.
"Nope," Progress answered. "Or only a little. It's both, or leastwise it's mostly not. Them were
crazy days. We used to have us a Nash Rambler to drive to the gigs. Zero to sixty in twenty-eight
seconds. Fake whitewalls that would fly off like flat donuts anytime you got over forty. But while
we'd drive, Rosie'd talk about women and the blues. And he spent a lot of time tryin' to show me how
to find my own groove and not be jumpin' into his.
"You do take somethin'," he continued. "You get an idea or a groove from somebody. You don't
necessarily got to hear them play, right there. You knows what they play like and just bein' with that
person give you a little thing, so that when you pick up your own guitar again, you might could come
up with somethin' different. That's 'cause you got a different feelin' in your body about bein' with
someone. You catch a vibe from someone and you goes back to the shed to find out what it is.
"Oh, I knows there's some people who try to take on another player's groove, steal his riffs and
all. But the music ain't real that way and you can't take someone else's power. The music got to be an
expression of your state of bein', not just somethin' you done took on."
"Well," Slim said. "I feel like I got my own thing going. I always thought that was important.
See," he continued, blushing a little, "I was kind of famous once, myself a long, long time ago. I
didn't know what I was doing. Still don't, I guess. But at least I have an idea of when to stand forward
and when not to."
"You've got some attitude," Nadine said.
"Nah. I gave up attitude a long time ago. See, what I'd do was practice in my bathroom with the
door closed. I'd turn it up and when my balls would vibrate I'd know I had it right. The hair on my
arms would stand up and I'd hear that air movin' and I'd just scream. But when I played, and I played
good, I'd feel like somebody, I'd feel all together."
"That's the power," Progress said.
"Yeah, I suppose. It's nothin' like it is here, though. I was doing good just getting up on stage and
making sure whatever I was wearing was funnier them my body, and going out after the gig for fifty-
two ribs and left-handed cigarettes. But, see, I always felt I was missing something. That's why I
moved here er, where I was before I came here. Trying to find it."
"How did you start out?" Nadine asked him. She seemed more than routinely curious, but Slim
wasn't sure that her interest was really in him. It was almost as if she was trying to ascertain something
else, something to which he was only peripheral.
"Huh? I started out with nothing. Still got most of it left, too. No, okay, okay. I grew up in this
dinky little farm town called Ducor. It was real close to another little no-horse town called Pixley.
There was this minister's son, named Roy Buchanan, used to come around my house. His dad didn't
like the school in Pixley or something, so he went to the school in Ducor. I was younger than he was,
so I don't know why he let me hang around, except my dad had horses. He'd been playing guitar for a
while, and he started teaching me. The blues.
"He moved away a few years later, to Canada. He started playing with a top band, making his
name, but he'd gotten me started and it was something I loved. I kept on playing, started a band in high
school and we made it big, real big. But what with the women and the drugs and the money, I got all
fucked up, so I put down the music entirely for a long time."
"Why are you back playing, now?" Nadine asked. Still it seemed that she was after something
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else, as if Slim were carrying some hint of a larger mystery, some more important thing behind
him she was trying to see.
"A few years ago, I just got hungry for it, so I picked up my guitar and started playing. Side gigs,
sessions, jamming. I thought about getting in touch with Roy again, and I'd just gotten ahold of his
address when I heard that he'd died. After I heard that, I knew I had to play again. It was like I'd be
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