Johnson
by Simon King

 

 

Johnson hauled himself over to the hospital, coughing and sweating profusely. He had contracted malarial fever and no hospital would treat him, but Johnson thought that he would persist with the whole travesty. Despite being blind, he knew his way around the town and he could arrive at the hospital with no assistance.

He dragged his feet over to the foyer of the hospital. The tawny walls had cracks, several nurses pushed mobile beds across the corridors and the whole building was so dilapidated that one felt that it might crumble at any moment. Johnson crawled over to the reception, where he encountered a stern secretary. She had grey air, glasses and wore a white coat.  

‘Please, please, let me see a doctor,’ Johnson vociferated with his hoarse voice.

‘The doctor has denied you treatment several times,’ she said.

 ‘Please!’ he cried out, as he fell on the floor, crying.

The principal doctor came over. He had short brown hair, bushy eyebrows and green eyes. ‘What’s this?’ as he observed Johnson lying on the floor in agony. ‘Look, I told you, sir, that we won’t treat you. You are a vagrant, a blind-man and a nigger. Now, please, will you leave?’

Johnson crawled across the floor, as he continued to sob. He rose up and stumbled across outside. ‘Now, don’t come back!’ the doctor roared.

Johnson continued to sob, and walked in the sultry weather. It was summer, he was ill and he had been afflicted with bad luck. As a matter of fact, he had been unlucky his whole life.

Johnson continued to walk across the street with desultory movements. Indeed, to those around him he was just another penniless vagrant, a nuisance, a parasite, a swarthy irrelevance. They clearly had not heard any of his songs.

Johnson arrived at his house. It had been destroyed by a fire a few months before but, with nowhere left to go, he continued to live in its ruins. He was destitute, bankrupt, ill and on the cusp of death. The ceiling and the walls had collapsed, so he slept on the debris, kneeling his head on the remnants of the walls. Tragically, his guitar had also been destroyed.

His wife Angeline came into to the ruins. ‘Willie?’ she said. She carrying a guitar with her.

‘W-what?’ Johnson gently asked.

‘I’m carrying something with me,’ she said.

‘What could that be?’

‘A guitar. I bought it at the pawn shop,’ she said as she handed it over to him.

Johnson broke down in tears. ‘Oh, thank goodness.’

‘Did you try going to the hospital?’ Angeline asked.

‘No matter how much I tried, they won’t treat me. They keep refusing treatment. I have gone to several hospitals and they keep refusing treatment,’ Johnson answered. ‘I’m shivering, I’m hot, I can’t get a meal, I can’t get a bath, I feel like I’m dying… As a matter of fact, I am dying.’

‘Well, can’t you write a song about it?’

‘I cain’t… I cain’t’ Johnson  answered, sobbing. ‘I… I… at least have a guitar now again… I need to start performing in bars and in churches again… Maybe I might start making money again… But I’m too ill to perform. Maybe I need to leave Texas and start performing in other states, but I cain’t,’ he said, as he dropped the guitar and its noise resonated across the ruins.

‘Have you tried praying?’ Angeline asked.

‘I… pray every day. As a matter of fact, God is the only one gettin’ me through this,’ Johnson uttered.

Tears welled up in Angelina’s eyes. ‘Can you try playin’ somethin’?’

Johson plucked and mauled the strings and bellowed out, in his cracked and hoarse voice, ‘Nobody’s fault but mine.’ He continued to groan as he strummed the guitar. He played a few more passages before he gently uttered ‘Cain’t Nobody Hide from God.’

Johnson leaned the guitar on the remnants of the charred wall. ‘I am gonna die… I might as well play some songs.’

‘Play Jesus is Coming Soon, play God Don’t Never Change, play Praise God I’m Satisfied,’ Angeline said.

‘I’ll play all of them, I will’ Johson plaintively muttered.

A black man walked into the ruins of the house. He was wearing a suit and a bowler hat. ‘Good grief, what’s happened here.’ It was Colin Jenkins, the owner of a saloon in Texas.

‘The house burned down,’ Angeline answered.

‘And you still livin’ here?’ Colin asked.

‘We cain’t afford to live anywhere else,’ Angeline answered.

‘Well… Willie… Can you perform in my saloon again this Thursday,’ Colin enquired.

‘I’d love to get the money for that… I’d love to perform, but… I cain’t. I’m dyin’… dyin’ of pneumonia,’ Johnson replied.

‘What… Shouldn’t you be at a hospital?’ Jenkins asked, taken aback.

‘The hospital won’t take niggers, blind people or vagrants… I’m all three,’ Johnson stated.

Jenkins adjusted his hat. ‘Well, I’ll be damned.’

‘Nobody’s fault but mine,’ Johnson sang, in his gruff voice.

Jenkins walked through the pile of rubble, his face perpetually startled. ‘How on earth can you live here?’ he asked, bewildered.

Johnson played several licks from his songs and sang, wordlessly, along with them. Alice continued to sob in desperation, as Johnson continued to play and sing. Jenkins strode over to Johnson, knelt down and placed his bowler hat on his head. ‘Take my hat, chief. Good luck.’

Johson kept playing and singing, with the hat on his head. Jenkins walked away from the ruined house as Angeline wept and wailed in desperation. Jenkins resolved to forget about the incident, so he walked with swagger towards his next business meeting. However, in the burned ruins, chaos, death and sadness reigned.

 

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