Scrawled on the letter, in pencil, was the name Amethystine. I slumped down on the floor next to the recently murdered man. The wail of Atwater Soupspoon Wise, the Topanga bluesman, came back to me then. I was dressed like a sharecropper and those words sang to me. The twelve-bar blues washed over blood spilt, blood coming from wounds of work and war, wear and tear, and senseless, drunken brawls. And it wasn’t only blood. There was pigs’ fat
