I wasn’t invited. The party was out under the cold sky, with a view of the bridge. At the time this story takes place, the bridge was called the Bay Bridge, and it connected San Francisco to points east, where the country was originally founded, except during rush hour, when it just clutched cars in a long, metal standstill. The air was thick and no fun to stand around in. I stood around Phil Needle, who met my eyes only for a moment as he said the thing nobody could believe. “We are pirates,” he said, and his glance scuttled away. “It’s an American story, really, with an outlaw spirit. Leonard Steed, starting out in his private railway car, riding through someplace, when out the window there’s a cotton gin rusting in a field just outside a tiny black town. He has the train stop. He walks into town and negotiates it, because of ‘Cotton Gin Blues.’ You know that song?” Phil Needle didn’t pause long enough for anyone to answer but himself. “Legend has it the Devil came for Belly’s soul and Belly looked at the cotton gin and wrote ‘Cotton Gin Blues’ right on the spot and won it back.
