Bone Music

by Alan Rodgers

And by and by Robert Johnson come to realize the Doctor man had played a trick on him.

  A trick.

  A nasty, ugly trick like you’d play on a drunk too stupid to see after himself, and the more Robert Johnson thought on that the angrier he got.

  I’m going to die, Robert Johnson thought, and he knew that it was true, and he knew that there wasn’t anything in the world he could ever do to stop it, and as he knew those things he grew so furious he like to burst from rage no body could contain.

  An hour after sunrise the first straight rays of day touched the muddy dregs in the bottom of Robert Johnson’s water pot, and as the daylight struck them the foul things caught fire. They burned brilliantly for a long hard moment, and when the flames were gone the muddy dregs were gone, too — vanished into smoke that left no ash, no scent, no sign that there’d ever been anything inside that pot at all.

  That made Robert Johnson wonder what would happen to him when he was gone, and as soon as he wondered he knew that he’d leave no trace of himself upon the surface of the earth, because he knew that when the Giftie judged him He would surely find him wanting.

  And the more he thought the more he mourned and moaned himself, mourned and mourned till now he could hear three chords from Judgment Day ringing in his skull.

  More and more he thought about Judgment Day, and a vision of the final tumult roiled over him. As he contemplated that terrible apparition Robert Johnson made a mistake more terrible still:

  He mistook his own end for the end of the world.

  Such a hubris had that Robert Johnson!

  Oh, he wasn’t the first to think such a thing, and God knows he won’t be the last. But few before Robert Johnson ever had the gift he had, and no other living soul could ever sing the song he sang; and when he mistook his own doom for the Battle at the End he did a thing no other man has ever done:

  He sang a song to make it true.

  Williamson spent that night in his room in the Greenville boarding house. When he climbed back up to the shack in the morning he found Robert Johnson picking at his guitar, humming bits of a song we all know but none of us want to admit. Johnson looked scared — scared for his life. When Williamson saw that, he knew that Blind Lemon’s hoodoo hadn’t been enough, and that there wasn’t any hoodoo in the world that could save Robert Johnson from his fate.

  When Johnson saw him enter the shack, he broke down crying — piteously, wheezing and coughing, as he wailed, gasping for air.

  “It ain’t working, Sonny Boy,” he said. The wheezing got worse when he tried to speak — it got so bad, in fact, that his voice seemed to harmonize with itself. “The cough is going to kill me.”

  He fished another cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket, lit it, took a long deep drag. Two puffs in he broke into a spasmodic coughing fit. For a moment Williamson thought he was going to strangle on his phlegm and die right there on the mattress, still clutching his cigarette, heaving over his guitar as he convulsed in the sun that streamed through the window of the shack.

  And then he found his wind, and the fit subsided. Or receded, anyway. Not that it mattered; Johnson was dying, and when his cough finally went still they both knew that nothing could save him.

  Johnson took another drag on his cigarette and swore quietly because he didn’t have the voice to swear out loud.

  “They aren’t going to kill me so easy, Sonny Boy,” Johnson said. “I’m going to make them sorry that they ever tried.”

  “What?”

  “So damn sorry.”

  And he started to sing.

  And what he sang was Judgment Day.

  Blind Hoodoo Men

  If either of the blind hoodoo men had thought Robert Johnson could sing Judgment Day, there’s no way either one of them would have left his side before he died. If anybody thought he could, they would have watched him like a hawk, like he was a disaster waiting to happen. Which he was, and had been for at least two years.

  Maybe Lemon would have killed him on the spot. All things considered, it would have been the prudent thing to do.

  Sonny Boy Williamson was still young enough that he scarcely conceived of the song that they call Judgment Day. But even so he knew the music when he heard it. And deep in his heart he had a vision of Gabriel blowing on his trumpet, and he knew just what it meant. His vision told him that the song Robert Johnson sang would end the world — if nobody could stop him. Here and now, this shack on this hill that looked down at Greenville, Mississippi, and the river beyond it: this was the end of the world, and there was no one on earth in that room to stop that terrible song — no one but Sonny Boy Williamson his own self.

  And he tried! He tried to stop it for all he was worth. Tried to dash across the room, seize the guitar from Robert Johnson’s arms, and heave it out the window.

  But it was a wasted effort.

  For Judgment Day transfixes all but the greatest of those who hear it, and hard as Sonny Boy Williamson tried there was no way he could so much as move a muscle. And even if he could have crossed that room it would have made no difference, for not even the guns that blast the field of Armageddon will steal the song from Judgment Day.

  The Lady who the Witches of Isla Beata call the goddess who repented heard Robert Johnson sing. She was an ocean away when she heard him, and there was no way that she could stop his song. By the time she reached him the Eye of the World was already open, crying its Hell-blue tears into the Mississippi River. She did the only thing she could do, then: she grasped the shattering lens that was Eye of the World and held it whole.

  Or nearly whole.

  All six of the Wizard Kings of Hoodoo — Leadbelly wasn’t yet a king among them in 1938, and wouldn’t be until the late 1940s — all six of the Kings of the Delta heard Robert Johnson sing, but they were scattered up and down the length of the Mississippi Valley, too far away to do anything but hear and swear. Each one of them laid a curse, trying to stop Johnson — but it did no good. They were all too far away — all of them but Blind Lemon Jefferson.

  Blind Lemon tried to stop the song. He ran like an athlete through the planted fields below the shack, shouting curses as he went. No one who saw him would have took him for a blind man, unless they looked into his scarry eyes.

  But it didn’t matter how fast he ran. Because even close as he was down in Greenville, he was still too far away.

  Blind Willie

  Blind Willie — who’d spent the night in the same boardinghouse where Sonny Boy Williamson had stayed, and was in his room waiting for the twelve-noon bus that would take him back to Beaumont — Blind Willie heard Robert Johnson singing, too.

  He heard and he wailed and he knew that there was nothing he could do, so he got down on his knees, and he prayed.

  And who can say? He may have done more good than Sonny Boy Williamson, Blind Lemon, and the santa put together.

  Hoodoo coalesced around Robert Johnson as he sang Judgment Day. Later when he went to Hell he told three people how it felt to sing that song, and they carried the tale far and wide, among the living and the dead: Robert Johnson felt the world spin around him as he sang. He felt hoodoo roiling around him, like it was puffy little clouds of mist, and he could feel and hear and see all of the people running toward him, trying to stop his song.

  He heard Blind Lemon curse him, and the cursing made him sad. He saw Blind Willie praying, and the prayer he heard made him even sadder. He saw the santa high above the river, trying to hold the Eye secure; he saw a little girl look back at him from half a century away and ask Why, Robert Johnson, why would you do such a thing? and it made him sad to know he had no answer for her.

  But no matter how sad they made him, it didn’t change a thing. In his own heart Robert Johnson was a dead man, and he meant to mourn himself. That was Robert Johnson for you: no matter what kind of talent he had, he was youn
g and self-absorbed, and when he saw his fate awaiting him he took it for the end of the world.

  And he sang Judgment Day.

  When he saw that there were good, decent, sensible people who wanted him to stop, he sang that much harder — and more righteously, too.

  Clouds boiled out of nowhere, crowding the sky that had shone clear and bright only moments before; thunder pealed as lightning flickered around the shack.

  And Robert Johnson sang.

  Lightning struck, setting the shack afire, throwing Sonny Boy Williamson (still petrified) into the planted cotton below. But it didn’t stop Johnson. There is no force in the world that can stop a man a-singing Judgment Day, not the rain, not the wind nor fire nor explosive force of any tumult. Not even the Eye of the World could stop him, appearing as it did in the clouded sky above them; not even as it opened bloodshot with lens-bursting fractures to reveal Our Lady of Sorrows standing on the lens trying to hold it whole.

  And Robert Johnson sang.

  So glorious, so beautiful, that song! Two dozen people standing near and far could hear him, and they all savored the beauty in the verses, no matter how they swore at him.

  Sonny Boy

  Sonny Boy Williamson lay transfixed, still paralyzed in the cotton, staring at the open Eye, looking through the lens at Hell thick and blue and thriving like a jungle, hordes and hordes of demons struggling against the lens, all of them yearning to be free, and three of those demons saw him watching, and pleaded, begging him to kill the goddess who repented. That was a crazy thing for them to do, of course. Williamson was paralyzed, and they could have seen that if they’d looked. And even if he’d been whole and hale there’s nothing a man like him could do to stop the santa holding whole the Eye — they should have known that, too. But they didn’t know, or they didn’t think, and they raged at Williamson. All three of them marked him, and they bedeviled him for the rest of his natural life.

  Some people say their curses were a blessing, for their attention made Williamson’s natural gift grow thick and hard — like calluses on his soul. But Williamson never thought so. He swore whenever he saw them, from the day they first cursed him until the day he died. When he could, he fought them; when he couldn’t fight he cursed them back, and his curses plagued the devils as hard as they plagued him.

  Blind Lemon reached the shack just before it began to crumble. He stopped before the door and shouted for silence, but Robert Johnson ignored him.

  “I warn you, Robert Johnson,” the Doctor said. “I warn you now for certain.”

  The door of the shack fell from its hinges as he spoke — maybe because it was afraid to stand between Blind Lemon and the fourth chorus of Judgment Day. Maybe because the fire had charred away the frame that held it home.

  Blind Lemon Jefferson raised his cane above his head and started singing counterpoint, trying to break the Apocalyptic melody. He raised his free hand to command the fire which so far had avoided Johnson — it hadn’t so much as scorched his bedclothes. Jefferson pushed the fire toward the singing man, but no matter how he pushed it never touched Johnson.

  And that’s the way it ought to be, isn’t it? When the Doctors sing Judgment Day at the end of time, nothing should harm them, and nothing should impede them. It only stands to reason that the song itself should shield the singers as though it held them in the hand of God — and maybe it does, or maybe it will, but the theologers are uncertain.

  So Blind Lemon abandoned magic the way he should’ve done the day before, and stepped into the burning room, walked into the fire through the embers and the flames to wrap his mortal hands around Robert Johnson’s throat and strangle that man to death.

  It might’ve worked if there’d been time.

  Certainly Blind Lemon’s strangling hands had more effect on Judgment Day than anything else the hoodoo man had done. Three verses from the end Robert Johnson choked and hesitated, coughed and cleared his throat — and started singing again, singing just a whisper, just the faintest hint, a ghost of Armageddon, but the song was Judgment Day and nothing that ever lived could stop it three verses from the end.

  As Robert Johnson sang.

  Flames roared up around them, but the flames didn’t matter. How could they matter? Blind Lemon was dead long since, and fire could never touch him again. Robert Johnson was dying of pneumonia and strangulation, and the fire couldn’t kill him any faster than he was about to die.

  But the flames did steal something real: they consumed Robert Johnson’s guitar, the only mortal instrument that ever played Judgment Day, and that’s a loss so dear the world can scarce afford it.

  Now came the thunder that was no thunder but the Crack of Doom that sounded as the Eye of the World shattered high above them, above the river, above America and the world at the end of time — cracked so wide it like to shatter and it would have burst asunder if the santa had not wrapped her arms around it to hold the fragments secure to one another.

  But she did hold them, and the lens stayed whole no matter what breach might divide it, as the santa held on dear till now with might courage and righteousness she sealed the sundered lens and closed the Eye around it.

  When she was done Blind Lemon Jefferson stood alone in the smoldering wreck that once had been the owner-lady’s shack. His hands still wrung Robert Johnson’s neck, but that made no difference now: Robert Johnson was a dead man, and his body was as light and empty as cotton when it’s blowing on the wind.

  Later Lemon went down to Hell to find that man and make him answer for the destruction he’d wrought against the Eye, the world, and even the santa. But hard as Lemon searched the corridors of Hell, he could not find Robert Johnson in that awful place.

  Our Lady of Sorrows fused the shattered lens of the Eye of the World, but she could not fuse it well enough. On the far side of the lens of the Eye there lies Lucifer’s great chamber-room, the room that holds his throne and lets him rule everything from Purgatory to Damnation.

  As Santa Barbara fused the Eye, ten thousand demons — ten thousand among the horde that always crowd the great chamber, supplicating themselves before the Devil — ten thousand minor devils watched the santa as she sealed the eye. As she worked, they tried to stop her; and when she was done they set out to destroy her work.

  The santa saw them, of course. She saw them and she cursed them and warned them all to flee — but she could not stop them.

  The devils pounded on the broken Eye for years. After a time they wore away the santa‘s handiwork. The santa tried to shore it up, of course — but when she did she found that something deep and fundamental had changed in the substance of the Eye of the World, and nothing she did to the shattering fragments had any effect on them at all.

  Spanish Harlem

  The Present

  Emma went drinking the night after the cancer finally got done with her daughter Lisa. Lisa was eight, and she’d died long and hard and painful, and when she was finally gone what Emma needed more than anything else was to forget, at least for a night.

  The bar Emma went to was a dirty place called the San Juan Tavern. It was only four blocks from home — two blocks in another direction from the hospital where Lisa died. A lot of people who lived where Emma did drank at the San Juan.

  She liked to tell herself she went to the San Juan for the music, and it was true the music at that place was special, music like from down home in the Delta. But the truth about the San Juan wasn’t music at all: the truth was Emma Henderson went to the San Juan Tavern when she needed to drink. And that night she needed something terrible to drink.

  Not that she did it with a clear conscience. Just the opposite: It made her feel dirty to be drinking with her daughter not three hours dead. Twice she thought about stopping, paying up her bill, going home and going to sleep like someone who had a little decency. But the need for succor stopped her. Instead of going home she
drank more and more till now the hunger for tobacco overtook her, and she knew she’d gone too far.

  Just after one in the morning she went to the machine beside the lavatory and bought Marlboros. By then her hands were trembling so bad she ripped three cigarettes opening the pack, and she couldn’t wait, couldn’t wait a moment because she had to smoke now, and she lit her first cigarette from the candle on her table even though that made the smoke taste waxy.

  Emma didn’t usually smoke at all — when times were good she didn’t even like the smell of tobacco. But she got a taste for the stuff when things went bad, and lately she needed it all the time.

  As the night wore on she smoked cigarettes end on end, lighting one from the other from the other, smoking them so hard they almost burned her lips. But they didn’t help. Neither did the wine. When she was halfway through her third tumbler of the cheap red stuff the barmaid served when you didn’t think to ask for something special, Mama Estrella Perez sat down across from her and clomped her can of Budweiser onto the Formica tabletop. The can tottered back and forth a couple of times like it was going to fall over and spill, and for half a moment Emma was sure the can was going to tumble to the floor — but it didn’t.

  Things like that happened around Mama Estrella all the time. It was like there was something in the air around her that made all the ordinary probabilities run awry.

  And maybe they did. Emma had seen the botanica down in Mama Estrella’s store — she’d been there lots of times, even though she’d never bought anything from that part of the store. Emma didn’t need that kind of stuff! She was a Baptist, not some Santeria Catholic! She’d been into Mama Estrella’s store because it was right downstairs from her apartment and most of the rest of it was just a bodega. It wasn’t like she could avoid the place, anyway; Mama Estrella she owned the building, which made her Emma’s landlord. And besides, her bodega wasn’t like most of them. It was big and clean and well lit, and it didn’t really matter that there was a big botanica in the back, because nobody sensible took that stuff serious. So what if there were love potions and strange waters and things she couldn’t figure out because she couldn’t read Spanish very well? Emma always thought it was cute.