SOURCE: "Last Fair Deal Gone Down," in Michigan Quarterly Review, Vol. 30, No. 2, 1991, pp. 323-33.

In the following essay, Junger offers an account of his research into Johnson's life in Mississippi.

The drug dealer is my age but broke and black and missing two fingers. He wants to do business but I want to hear about growing up poor in Greenville, Mississippi; we end up just driving around town in the heat of the day. After a while he says he owes too much money to be just sittin' around talking. I don't believe him—who ever heard of a broke drug dealer?—but I take him to his old neighborhood to pay off one of the debts. The kid he owes spots him a block away and chases the car on foot down the street. I pull over and my friend jumps out and hands over nine dollars...