Five Miles to Paradise

1

Walk five miles to see my Babe

For paradise, I'm bound.

But my sugar, she done left,

'N she ain't comin' 'round.

No, she ain't comin' 'round.

Up 'n left me all alone.

Packed her lovin' in a sack.

Heart 'a mine, jus' break in two,

Babe ain't comin' back.

No, she ain't comin' back.

Got my blade 'n cut her.

She didn't make a sound.

Left her cold, like she left me.

No, Babe ain't comin' 'round.

My Babe ain't comin' 'round.

Undertaker take my heart,

And put it in the ground

'At Devil gonna string me high

'Cause Babe ain't comin' 'round.

For paradise, she bound.

For paradise, she bound.

Walk five miles to paradise,

Baby's gone to heaven.

Walk five miles to paradise,

I'll never be forgiven.

Lawd, I'll never be forgiven.

Roundhead Gumption's famous 1933 cover of Blind Memphis Joe's 'Five Miles to Paradise' kept spinning in his head like a rabid carousel. 

When Heck saw the battered truck parked under the shade tree near the dam at the old abandoned mill, he cut the motor and let the car drift to a stop. He sat there, windows down, surveying the landscape.

"Dag-gone it," he muttered under his breath, letting loose a thick, brown arch of tobacco-laden spit.

The air was damp, but there was no coolness to it. Heck watched as heat lightning silently lit the sky in the far off distance. It will surely be a scorcher, if it don't rain, he thought.

"T-Bone! T-Bone, you hear me? Thayard! Thayard, you out here? You hurt? Where are you? You hear me, T-Bone! T-Bone! Answer me, T-Bone!"

***

Silence.

He knew right away the pickup belonged to the old man. There was just no mistaking that one – a black rust-bucket that had taken a real pounding from its many years of service. 

The truck looked like a flea-bitten, old nag ridden hard and put up sopping wet. As the weak beam from his flashlight danced on the side of the junker, he couldn't help but be reminded of a cheap whore who should have quit the streets long ago. 

The house paint T-Bone had splashed onto the sides to cover the rust, dripped and ran like a hooker's rouge in a rain storm. The few patches of factory paint still clinging on were bordered by dings and dents and some pretty mean-looking holes. 

Some of those 'air pockets,' as T-Bone called them, were the old man's own doing – a miscalculation of distance and speed and the stubborn, mule-headed resistance of the stationary object in his path that refused to budge, no matter how hard he smashed into it.

But in truth, most of the damage came from years of neglect. It was the running joke at the diner that soap never touched T-Bone's grimy chariot. The only water that truck had ever seen came from the sky above or the shallow creeks that occasionally flowed beneath the chassis. 

He'd never even bothered to build a shed to park under and get it out of the elements. Yet, anyone who really knew him had to give the old man credit for one thing. 

T-Bone kept the motor of that old heap purring like a cozy kitten.

And he still had enough of a young man's heart pounding in his chest that a candle lit his knickers when he turned the key and revved the engine. Heck secretly suspected T-Bone left choking clouds of dust snaking through the air on many of the back country roads as he floored the gas pedal and coaxed the clunker to its limits, yelling whoops of joy with reckless abandon. 

That's the picture Heck wanted to keep in his mind as he carefully edged his way closer to the vehicle.