The applause was still slapping, people even
stomping the floor, when the guitar man lit into some stomping blues and
snatched the people still sitting out of their seats. “Them cats could dance,”
Jerry Lee says. Men leaped into the air, impossibly high, like they were
flying. Women shook things he had believed were bolted down; some jumped onto
the tables and danced up there. “They was throwin’ each other over their
shoulders, throwin’ each other over their heads. And I was in seventh heaven.”
This, he knew, was what had been missing. This was the spice, the soul he’d
been looking for. Please, God, don’t let Haney catch me now, he thought—and
just then a big hand closed around the nape of his neck and lifted him like a
doll from under the table and then high, high up off the floor, till he was
looking Will Haney in one red, angry eye.
“Jerry Lee?”
He just dangled. Everyone in Ferriday knew
the boy. Most little boys, born to overalls, did not strut around like him,
like they owned every mile of dirt they walked. But Haney also knew his Uncle
Lee and his Aunt Stella, and had business with them.
“What you doin’ in here, white boy?” Haney
asked.
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