My recently completed novel, "Boogie: A Devil's Life," is fiction, but begins with one true incident from Bluesman Jerry "Boogie" McCain's life. As a little boy, and way before he was a great blues player, he offered a blackbird some food from his hand, and the bird landed on his hand and started eating out of it... and they became "friends." He talked about that happening, is in his own words, as published by Grover Brown, who graciously gave me a copy of that book, "The Life and Times of Jerry "Boogie" McCain."
But the story of the novel "Boogie" begins even earlier than learning about "Bill, the Blackbird."
About a week before Boogie suddenly died, he was in the post office in Gadsden, Alabama and I asked him if I could interview him someday, and he said sure. But I didn't hurry to do it, because it seemed Boogie had always been around and always would be.
I was wrong.
After he died, I was very sorry I missed the opportunity to talk with him. I went to his funeral, and wrote an article for the Reporter about it, and also about what little I knew about Boogie's life in the past.
But after the funeral my mind would not let go of Boogie - and especially of that blackbird eating out of his hands.
I could see Boogie as a little boy, about four, and that blackbird coming to him. Then I saw his momma come out, see the blackbird eating out of his hand, having a heart attack... and dying. Why? Because she knew that the blackbird... was the devil - because he had been there when Boogie was born.
From that point on, all the characters in the book told me to what to write - and they told the story the way they wanted to. The story took off on it's own, until it became a short story, called "Blackbird: A Young Boy Meets the Devil For the First Time."
When it was done I thought that was it. I was wrong.
The characters kept talking to me, telling me they weren't through telling the story yet, until finally, it became a full length novel it is today.
But what is the novel actually about? It is about racism, discrimination, and segregation, told through the eyes of Boogie, as he grows up in the segregated city of Gadsden, Alabama, a place where black people were not welcome past certain streets... and I suppose still aren't.
It is also about the same things he sees on a national level when he has to leave town or get lynched, and begins travelling the world as a blues harp player, and meeting everyone from JFK and Dr. King, to Dr. King's murderer.
Boogie pulls no punches. It takes on a lot of the things black people have had to deal with - and still deal with - like the fact that when some white woman got caught in a situation white society thinks she shouldn't be in - they often blamed a black man and screamed "rape!" to save themselves... at the cost of destroying a black man's life.
Boogie is not just the story of the struggle against racism, but also about the struggle between good and evil that is constantly going on within people, both black and white.
For you see, Bill the Blackbird, is not just a blackbird, he is the devil, and he is always trying to get Boogie to sell his soul, in exchange for fame, fortune, and women.
Boogie is about everyone who struggles not only to be successful for ourselves and for our families, but who also struggles daily, just to do the right thing, when there are so many temptations and opportunities to do otherwise.
In that sense, Boogie's life represents all of our lives...
As our lives rarely go the way we would like them to.
In the end, Boogie returns to Gadsden, and has to deal with the fact, that not only is he still getting short-changed as a black man - even by his own home town as well - but has to also realize that he's getting old, and his life may soon be over.
But that doesn't stop Bill the Blackbird Devil from continuing to try to get Boogie's soul until the very end.
Does he succeed?
If you went to the grave with Boogie, as I did on the day he was buried, you know the answer.
If you didn't, you'll have to read "Boogie: A Devil's Life," to find out.
Finally, you may still be left with one more question...
And that is, who the hell am I - a white man - to write about Boogie, or about any other black person for that matter?
It is a legitimate question.
Up until I was in my early twenties, I was just another redneck, who loved the rebel flag and believed all the propaganda about the so called "glorious" lost cause, the Confederacy.
I guess you could have described me as a "Heritage, Not Hate," person - because I had not yet realized our heritage IS hate. For you can not love your neighbor and keep him or her in slavery, or segregate them because of their color, or their lack of education which our ancestors would not permit nor tolerate them to have.
But lucky for me, I had a mom who didn't care about all that in the past, but only about what a person was like inside, now, in the present.
She worked as a nurse and had a black friend who was also a nurse, a Mrs. Williams.
This was in Florence, in the Northwest corner of Alabama, in the early seventies.
One night my mom came home very distraught - because police had broken down the door to Mrs. Williams house and shot and killed her husband when he jumped out of bed to protect his family. Just as anyone would do...
As happened then - and which still happens with too often regularity -
The police were at the wrong house.
If this had of been a white family, all hell would have broken loose.
But because this was a black family...
There was no apology, and no investigation (to my knowledge).
All there was was a family left broken and devastated:
A mother, and a son, about my age, left to go on alone, without a good, loving, father.
Years later, when my mother died, Mrs. Williams came to her funeral, and told me how much she liked my mom and what a good woman my mother was.
That was the beginning of my transformation.
In the beginning I didn't really know anything at all about what blacks have had to go through in America.
Now I do know some.
And it is not good.
And I know that not only is it still continuing,
It is currently getting even worse.
As a nation, we're currently going backwards.
The forces of ignorance and racism are digging in...
And buying every gun they can get their hands on.
As someone that writes, that writing is all I can personally do, to try and make things right.
Or at least a little better.
And so I do.
I have written about "Boogie: A Devil's Life," not only to take you on a journey through Boogie McCain's imagined life,
But through part of the struggle all black people have to go through.
I most certainly do not know it all.
But I have done the best I can.
And I hope that in some small way...
It opens the eyes of some still blind white people.
Those who believe they are better than others...
based on their skin color alone.
In the end, "Boogie: A Devil's life," is not just a battle over one black person's soul.
It is the battle for the white man's soul, as well.
The novel is just one small step,
in the right direction.
But like is said in the novel:
Every step forward counts.
I think Boogie would have been the first to tell you...
That he was no angel.
I am not either.
But I stand before you
Trying to carry on the tradition my mother instilled in me:
Treat people according to what is in their heart...
Not the color of their skin.
Will Bevis
May 5, 2014