The dark stranger steps up to the half-step stage with an unslung Martin Dreadnoughti n his hand, a lipstick tube on one finger, and sets up on a stool and starts the steel strings whining like sunlight on black water....

Trouble, trouble in mind
I'm blue
But I won' be blue always
Cuz that sun gonna shine
Shii-i-ine in my back door some day...

Guess I'll go down to the river
Take a ong my rocking chair
Let those blues and sorrows
Rock me down from there

The tube leaps to the strings and a shrill, clean rattling whine of clear unmitigated blues curls through the room, calming tempers and settling good whiskey down in the blood.

He fades the song, runs an instrumental through one time, and ends it, wrapping his beloved Martin in silk and laying it gently down into its battered case. The strap jumps to his hand, and he walks gently to the door, stopping long enough to whistle up the little monkey who has been cavorting int he corner with a possum. The door swings behind them and the rumble of a mighty Indian rumbles wetly through the night and down the road....