Stones in My Passway, Hellhound on My Trail

Stones in My Passway, Hellhound on My Trail Summary | Detailed Summary

"Stones in My Passway, Hellhound on My Trail" is T. Coraghessan Boyle's short story about the last night of Blues musician Robert Johnson's life in a bar in Dallas in 1938.

The story begins on a Saturday night in 1938 at a bar called the House Party Club in Dallas where a man named Robert plays the guitar and sings, his voice affecting both the men and women patrons of the club. The House Party Club, owned by a man named Huddie Doss, is dark, dingy, and filled with rowdy field hands and other laborers who slip on the spit and tobacco juice on the floor. Robert sits on a stool at the opposite end of the room from the bar made from a wooden plank stretched across two barrels. Robert lives for his music, traveling around the south, and sometimes forgetting to eat, as he has for the past two days.

The story transitions to a memory of fifteen-year-old Robert, who watches a mad dog tear out its own intestines. Robert works with other men in a field when someone yells that a dog named Loup has gone mad. Robert runs with the other men toward the sound of the howling dog pacing and dragging its hindquarters along the ground. One of the men directs a boy to find a man named Turkey Nason and tell him to bring his gun. Turkey never arrives, though, and the dog begins wildly tearing at its gut with a hind leg. The dog's actions break through the skin and the canine is now free to bite out his own intestines. As the dog's actions increase in intensity, one of the men steps forward and kills the dog by hitting it on the head with a shovel. Robert remembers looking at the bared teeth and pink entrails of the dead dog lying on the road.

The story reverts to the Dallas club where Robert spends time outside with a girl named Beatrice during breaks in his music sets. When Robert returns from one of these interludes, he catches the eye of Ida Mae Doss, Huddie's daughter, who is not happy that Robert has been with Beatrice. Robert smiles back at Ida Mae but is interrupted by Beatrice, who requests a sexually suggestive song. Robert complies and sings the song. Ida Mae begins to dance alone in the center of the floor to the rhythm of Robert's song.

The story moves back in time once more, this time explaining the beginning of Robert's musical career at the age of eighteen. It is not known how Robert obtained a new guitar but one night he enters the Rooster Club in Robinsonville, Mississippi, to listen to a man named Walter Satter play guitar. During Walter's break, Robert tells him that he had heard Walter's record, which taught Robert quite a bit about playing guitar. Satter is flattered and asks Robert to join him in playing the next set of songs. Robert is so talented that Satter eventually leaves the stage to let Robert play solo.

The action returns to the House Party where Beatrice still dances seductively in the center of the floor. Suddenly Beatrice falls to the floor, the glass in her hand breaking as she lands. The room falls silent as Robert stops playing and rushes to rescue Beatrice and move her to a chair along a wall where she falls asleep in her drunken state. When the patrons realize that there is no serious injury, the noise level once again picks up in the crowded room. Robert walks to the bar to speak to Ida Mae, who has a polished guitar pick hanging on a chain around her neck. Robert gets another drink and asks Ida Mae what she has been cooking in the back room and she replies that she has eggs and beans.

The plot reverts again, this time to the prior year of 1937 when Robert had made some recordings for Victrix Records. Robert had been in Biloxi, and a representative from the company, Walter Fagen, sent him train fare to New Orleans to record. Robert was so excited about the money, though, that he spent it on women and liquor and did not make the trip to New Orleans until the man from Victrix sent a one-way nonrefundable ticket. Fagen meets Robert at the train station, deposits him at a boardinghouse, and tells him to come to the Arlington Hotel the next morning. A few hours later, Fagen is called to bail Robert out of jail where he is being held for disorderly conduct. Fagen once again deposits Robert at the boardinghouse giving him thirty-five cents for tomorrow morning's breakfast. Not long after this, Fagen receives a call from Robert requesting a nickel so that he can pay a prostitute who charges forty cents.

Now, Ida Mae works frantically in the back room preparing a plate of food for Robert, who had told her that he has not eaten for two days. As Ida Mae fries the eggs and stirs the beans, she notices the can of rat poison on the shelf overhead.

Robert is now playing his last set and the club is calming down with the late-evening lull, which follows a typical night of raucous behavior. Robert's voice is low and melancholy as he sings a song about a woman, a suitcase, and a train station. The crowd shows its appreciation with clapping and whistles. When Robert begins the chords of his final song, he is suddenly cut off by stabbing stomach cramps. Robert tries to sing again, but collapses to the floor, his intestines writhing in fiery pain. Someone teases Robert about eating too much Mexican food but Robert cannot hear and looks up to snarl at Ida Mae staring back at him and holding the silver necklace.