Bob White’s lumber camp, c. 1921
Ain’t no way around it. That boy was messin’ where he shouldn’a been messin’. I’m out there drivin’ that mule, haulin’ lumber for Mister Bob White, and I come back to find out he givin’ money to my wife. What he givin’ her money for? Georgia Skin game, bullshit. So I wait till they’s all in bed, and I go out to that man’s tent, gonna show that boy not go messin’ where he don’t belong. I found him out there in an old tub, just lyin’ in the water like I wasn’t even standin’ there. Told him, “You stay ’way from her, understand, ain’t got no business with her. You best keep your distance else I’ll beat the hell outta you.”
Then he says “Well, you have your privilege; you got the advantage over me.” And damn right I did, and he had a good beatin’ comin’. But he just sit there, lookin’ at me like he’s waitin’ for it, and I look around outside the tent, see if anyone around, and when I look back in that tent he got the biggest damn gun I ever seen, pointin’ it right at me. I’m lookin’ right down that gun barrel, but then, I don’t know what happened, but I can’t see so well. Like it got dark all of a sudden, even though it was dark already. And then I feel it. Like he’s stickin’ his fingers in me, pushin’ right through my skin, and pushin’ right out my back. Can feel his fingers pushin’ my bones outta the way, trying to get through me, out into the darkness behind. But he’s still sittin’ in that tub, ain’t even a drop spilled out, and his face ain’t changed one bit. Still lookin’ at me like I ain’t even there. Nothin’ changed but the smoke spillin’ outta that gun. And then I feel the warm blood gettin’ in my shoes, and I’m real tired. He gone stuck six fingers through my body, and then he pulled ’em out again, and now I’m on the ground, his damn clothes next to my head. And I’m tryin’ to tell him to stay way from my wife, stay the hell away, but ain’t no sound comin’ to me, just a warm liquid risin’ up in my throat. And I see him getting’ outta that tub, pullin’ his clothes from under my head. Pushin’ my head outta the way with his bare foot.
“You blame me?” he says. “Man wanna beat me up, and I’m buck-naked?”
Notes
Devil Got My Oscella Oscella Robinson, in 1928, was the sixteen-year-old daughter of a local Bentonia minister. The two married in that year. Calt’s take on the relationship is that much of James’ violent misogyny was due to his experience with Oscella, but also that his early days, working barrelhouse frolics and making most of his money from pimping, inspired in James a view of women as predatory and dangerous. Women, to James, although necessary for sexual gratification, were to be controlled, or discarded. The fact that it was Oscella who left James, according to Calt, inflicted on James the worst imaginable insult and injury: a woman beating him at his own game.
Arthur Laibly Years after James recorded his 1931 sides for Paramount, he still believed Laibly to be behind the missing royalties he’d been promised, the absence of which was actually due to each of the record’s dismal sales. It was not, in fact, until 1965, a year after his rediscovery, that James would have an opportunity to record for a legitimate recording company (Vanguard). Even in this exchange, however, James’ previous experiences conjured a paranoid suspicion of Maynard Solomon, Vanguard’s co-founder. Solomon, James believed, “was merely a front man for Arthur Laibly” who, James was sure, “had absconded with Paramount’s funds, and was working incognito for Vanguard” (Calt, 301). Although obviously fictional, much of this portrayal is based on James’ own account, as represented both in Calt’s biography (3-6, 144-7) and in Bruce Jackson’s article (28).
Bob White's Lumber Camp, c. 1921 After leaving Bentonia in 1919, James worked a variety of manual labor jobs in towns surrounding Yazoo County. First on a road-construction crew near the Delta town of Ruleville, James then worked as a dynamite blaster in the small towns of Drew and Doddsville, eventually learning timber-cutting from Yank Griffin at the latter’s lumber camp outside Flora. Soon after this he left to work at Bob White’s camp in Rankin County where he entertained the crew and practiced his gambling skills after hours. Here James would experience the first of his many violent exchanges to come. After loaning the wife of a crew mule-driver eight dollars during a Georgia Skin game, the husband, thinking the exchange of money had a sexual design to it, confronted James late one night in his tent. According to Stephen Calt, the latter was
sitting in a cast-iron bath tub. He listened stoically to the man’s tirade, and then volunteered the claim that he had loaned the money with the intention of receiving it back. The driver, however, was unmollified. “He started performin’, cussin’, and goin’ on; see, he was one of those tough ones, too…. He started sayin’ that he wasn’t gonna pay me a damn thing, and she wasn’t, neither, and that he was gonna beat the hell out of me.” “I say: ‘Well, you have your privilege; you got the advantage over me.’” “….He stepped over inside the tent. When he made the step, I was lookin’ for it in a way… He ought not to have done it.” In a moment James was aiming the .38 he kept concealed beneath the pillow on the bed beside his wash-tub. “I kept a gun all the time,” he recalled. At point-blank range, he pumped six bullets into the man. “Could you blame me?” he later asked. “Man wanna beat me up, and I’m buck naked?” (59)
Works Cited Calt, Stephen. I’d Rather Be The Devil: Skip James and the Blues. New York: Da Capo Press, 1994. Jackson, Bruce. “The Personal Blues of Skip James.” Sing Out! Volume 5, Number 6 (Jan 1966).
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