Bone Music

by Alan Rodgers

  And maybe he was insulted, and maybe he was enraged. But whether he was or not he didn’t say or do anything to her.

  In some ways that scared Emma most of all — because she could feel how mad he was, and she knew he meant to do something, and the more he waited to retaliate the worse it had to be.

  Or maybe not. Maybe he just forgot. Emma waited and waited for him to come to her and ravish her in her sleep, but he never did; and when he woke he treated her well enough, no matter how he wasn’t friendly.

  The deadman yawned, sat up in his bed. “Wake up,” he said. “We got to take you downtown for a presentation.”

  Emma shivered as she rubbed her eyes. “I still don’t understand,” she said. “I come down here looking for my little girl. What the devil has that got to do with presentation?”

  Leadbelly rolled his eyes. “It’s got everything, that’s what,” he said. “Your baby went down to the Mansion. If you want her back that’s where you’ve got to go.”

  “I don’t like it,” Emma said. “Not one solitary bit.”

  But she went to the bathroom and put on the best dress in her suitcase all the same. When she was done she left the bathroom and asked Leadbelly what he thought, and the deadman smiled at her hungrily.

  “You look fine,” Leadbelly said. “You look mighty fine.”

  “That’s good,” Emma said. “But don’t go looking at me like that, you hear?”

  Leadbelly scowled and muttered something cruel, but he looked away all the same.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “It’s getting late.”

  Emma shrugged. “If you say it is, it is,” she said. And followed him out the motel-room door.

  When they got into the car the deadman started giving her all kinds of strange directions — first into downtown New Orleans and the French Quarter by a roundabout approach, then south along the river road where the French Quarter gave way to a maze of rotted houses, burned-down warehouses, and collapsing docks.

  Into a part of the city you can’t find by accident, unless you’re touched and marked, or guided by a soul who knows the Devil.

  The ones who know that place call it the Devil’s Quarter of New Orleans. The Devil doesn’t go there often nowadays, because he doesn’t have to — the world has changed across the years, and now it does the Devil’s handiwork without him. These days the Devil’s Quarter is a shriveled deadland, all but empty and abandoned — all of it but the Mansion. The Mansion never died. It never could, and never would, no matter what.

  “That’s the place,” Leadbelly said, but Emma already knew. She recognized that place from her Lisa dream back up in Greenville. She remembered every detail of that dream, and she never would forget a mite of it. “You can pull right on up the drive. Valet will park the car for you.”

  Emma never had much use for valets; she liked to park her own car. “That’s all right,” she said. “I’ll park out here on the road.”

  “Suit yourself,” the deadman said — and then he smiled, bright and wide. “It ain’t going to matter in the end.”

  But he was wrong. Just once that night, he was wrong; and after all the terrible mistakes Emma made those days in Greenville and New Orleans, it was an act just as seemingly inconsequential that saved her: the place she parked her car.

  But it makes sense, in a way — because the tiny things that led her down the damnable path were honest mistakes, and the thing that saved her was an honest virtue, almost equal. What saved her was her nature and the nature of her heart.

  Memphis, Tennessee

  September 1952

  They visited three hours with Robert Johnson’s wife and daughter, and then he kissed his wife goodbye.

  “I’ll miss you, darling,” he said before he left. “I swear I will return.”

  Virginia smiled sadly and tried hard not to cry. She didn’t say the truth that ached her heart.

  “I love you, Tom,” she said. “Your daughter loves you too.”

  “I know she does,” said Robert Johnson, and he kissed Emma on the forehead and promised her the stars.

  And then he left without looking back, because he knew that if he did he’d break his heart.

  Furry Lewis was already in the car, waiting for him. “Running late,” old Furry said. “Looks like we better hurry.”

  He drove his car fast and a little reckless — he hardly stopped at stop signs, and he didn’t read no speed signs, and twice he rolled through stoplights before they changed to favor him. Robert Johnson was certain some policeman was going to pull them over for a ticket, but none ever did. They made damn good time, in fact — five minutes after they pulled away from Robert Johnson’s driveway they were starting up the ridge-road where the moon was waiting for them —

  And then that big black Cadillac came round the bend ahead of them.

  And swerved hard like it was out of control, back and forth across both lanes, and when it stopped it stopped but good, cutting them off. If Furry Lewis hadn’t had some incredible kind of reflexes he would’ve plowed right into it, killing them both for certain —

  And Robert Johnson looked up, and he saw who it was behind the wheel of that car.

  Which was Leadbelly.

  Smiling at them hungrily from behind the wheel, and right there while they looked at him he reached over onto the passenger seat to get something, and when he came up again there was a short-barrel shotgun in his arms, and suddenly he was blasting —

  — blasting! —

  Shooting at them with that goddamn thing, and if Furry Lewis hadn’t already had that car of his into fast reverse winding down that bluff they would have gone to meet the Maker, there and then.

  Upon the Lake of Fire

  Approaching the Bosphorus of Hell

  Timeless

  On toward midday they sighted land, and for a moment Dan thought they’d found their destination.

  “We’re here,” he said. “Where the hell are we?”

  Dead Elvis just laughed. “We’re in Hell, all right,” he said. “But this isn’t where we’re going.”

  “Oh,” Dan said. “What is that?”

  The deadman pointed at a wide gap in the wall of granite rising up before them. “That’s the Bosphorus of Hell,” he said. “Beyond it lie the fallen city Firgard and the Sea of Fire and Ice.”

  “We’re going to Firgard, then?”

  Elvis shook his head. “No. We’re going past it — through the Sea of Fire and Ice; past the Infernal Hellespont; into the Bay of Ages and across it to the Mansion called Defiance.”

  “That sounds like a long way,” Dan said.

  Elvis shrugged. “The Lake of Fire goes on forever if you let it,” he said. “It stretches farther than anyone could sail. Next to that Defiance is as close as it could be.”

  As Dan watched the boat drew down into the passage, and now the granite cliffs surrounded them, and the fire that they sailed upon suffused the air around them with heat and ash and foul vapors. In places great waves of flame rose up beneath them, threatening to smash them into one cliff or the other; and once they passed a fiery whirlpool vortex, a fire-spout tornado that promised to consume them — but Elvis pulled hard on the ropes that tended their sails, and now a hot wind blew them clear.

  “That was close,” Dan said. “It would have been the end of us, if that fire spout had touched us.”

  Dead Elvis shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not.” He gestured at the bunk. “You ought to wake her,” he said. “We’re going to need her soon.”

  “The girl, you mean?”

  Elvis laughed. “That girl of yours is a woman, boy. Her name is Polly Ann.”

  “Polly Ann. . . ? You know her?”

  Elvis hummed a few bars, and then he sang a half-verse from “John Henry”: “‘Polly could
drive steel just like a man, yes, yes, sweet Polly could drive steel just like a man.’” And then he laughed and laughed, but Dan didn’t think it was so funny.

  “You ought to show a little respect,” he said. “You really should.”

  Elvis laughed again. “Believe me, son,” he said, “I couldn’t regard that lady more highly than I do.”

  Memphis, Tennessee

  September 1952

  Furry Lewis backed them up behind the bend and parked here, out of the line of Huddie Ledbetter’s shotgun fire.

  “What’re we going to do?” Robert Johnson asked.

  “I ain’t got the first idea,” Furry Lewis told him. “Maybe get around him somehow?”

  Robert Johnson snorted. “How we going to do that with him shooting at us?”

  Furry Lewis looked thoughtful, and then his face brightened, and he started to answer — but he never got to finish.

  Because that was when that big black Cadillac came roaring round the bend, and old Leadbelly had his shotgun hanging out the window, braced against the doorjamb, and when he saw the car with Robert Johnson and Furry Lewis he started shooting.

  Damned near got them, too — as it was he took out one of the windows in the back.

  Furry Lewis didn’t take the time to think, or if there was any thinking he’d done it all already — because as soon as the Cadillac come around the corner he got that Buick of his into gear and stomped on the gas pedal.

  And put that vehicle in motion.

  Only there wasn’t no place to go. Down the road was a long straightaway that went from there to Memphis, and uproad was Leadbelly with his shotgun, trying to blast them both to Hell. Left off the road was a sheer drop right off the bluff — and right was a forty-degree grade over rough terrain.

  Straight up to the bluff.

  And Furry did the only thing he could.

  He went right, the hard way, up a grade so steep that the dirt damn near flew out from under them, and all behind them went big avalanche clusters of sandstone rocks and loose red dust, and that poor old Buick hardly had the engine for it.

  Leadbelly would have got them, easy, if it hadn’t been for the looseness of the dirt. Because even though it took him a while to get the Caddy turned around and headed up the incline, he had a hell of a lot more engine for the task than that old Buick did, and he would have caught them in a second if he hadn’t had to eat their dust.

  Halfway up the bluff he caught them, and tried to blast them off the side of it, and would have, too, except his gun was clean of shells by then. Robert Johnson looked back just then to see him pulling the trigger over and over when it didn’t do no good, and now he swore and rammed the back end of the Buick with his Cadillac —

  That was a mistake.

  Because even though it sent the Buick reeling off to the left, it did a damn sight worse to the Caddy. Leadbelly bumped into the Buick, and the traction went loose underneath his tires, and suddenly he was sliding downhill with his tires spinning out of touch with the dirt, sliding sideways downhill till now his car went end over end down the hill —

  And they were safe.

  And there was nothing to do but roll back up onto the road and drive the rest of the way to the top of the bluff.

  Right? Right. . . ?

  Only it didn’t work out that way. Oh, Furry Lewis found the road just over the rise, and he drove on it like he meant to. But Leadbelly wasn’t any more gone than a deadman’s curse. They hadn’t gone more than a quarter-mile when the Cadillac roared around a bend behind them, and there he was, just like Robert Johnson knew he’d be, and what else do you expect from a deadman like Huddie Ledbetter, seventh of the Seven Kings?

  “Damn,” said Furry Lewis. “Damn damn damn.”

  “You better hurry,” Robert Johnson said. “He’s catching up with us right quick.”

  Furry Lewis pressed the accelerator harder, but it didn’t make no never mind. “This old Buick ain’t going to go no faster,” he said. “We got all the fast it’s going to give.”

  It was true, too — the Buick’s engine wasn’t any match for the big V-8 underneath the Cadillac’s hood.

  “What the hell you going to do?”

  Furry Lewis sighed. “Only thing I can do,” he said. “Drive harder and smarter than he can.”

  Hard left off the road again, and now they were roaring up the bluff face, slipping and sliding and half the time their tires weren’t in any kind of contact with the soil, and now they stalled and slipped five feet back down the hillside before they slammed into a big rock and found their purchase once again.

  “Christ almighty,” Robert Johnson said, so scared he didn’t even think of how he’d spoken so profane. He didn’t have no chance to think, neither, because just then there came another three blasts from Huddie Ledbetter’s shotgun, blam! BLAM! BLAM!, and one of the explosions took out the Buick’s rear window, pointy spray-shards of glass went flying everywhere, through their clothes, slivers of the stuff into their skin like needles, bad, bad, automobile windows were like that back before they started using that glass that busts up into cubes.

  “Damn,” said Furry, and he jammed down on the accelerator, but the Buick didn’t go no faster. Worse, it lost traction again, and now they were sliding down the incline —

  “He’s going to get us,” Robert Johnson said. “Won’t take him but a minute to get here.”

  Furry Lewis stole a glance back over his shoulder. “No,” he said. “Look — he’s going up to catch us at the next rise.”

  Robert Johnson made an exasperated sound, and then he swore. “Can’t win for losing,” he said. “Got us either way we go.”

  Furry Lewis looked back and forth and back again, and then he said, “Hell with that.”

  And turned that car around, and got the Buick moving down that ridge road about as fast as it could go.

  By the time Leadbelly figured out they weren’t going up to meet him, that Buick was long gone.

  When they were far enough down the road for Robert Johnson to stop expecting Leadbelly’s shotgun to blast him to kingdom come, it finally occurred to him that running away wasn’t going to get them up the ridge. “What you doing, man?” he asked. “They need us up there.”

  Furry Lewis grinned. “I got an idea,” he said. “I’m going to take this thing south past the Mississippi line, then come round back the east way.”

  And he did exactly that, no matter how long it took — drove south along the river road through Memphis, south and south past the Mississippi line; now east along the old cow trail that ran from Nashville to the Mississippi. Twenty minutes down that, then a hard left onto a dirt road that would lead them to the Memphis bluff.

  And all that way they never saw a solitary sign of Huddie Ledbetter. When they saw the bluff rise up before them Robert Johnson came to think they’d actually done it — slipped past that murderous deadman to make it up the ridge —

  And then they came round the last bend before the bluff, and there was Huddie’s Cadillac, parked square across the narrow dirt road.

  “Aw hell,” said Robert Johnson. But Furry Lewis didn’t look disturbed.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I saw this coming. I got a way around it.”

  “What?”

  “Get down,” he said. “I’m going to gun this thing.”

  And he slammed down on the Buick’s accelerator so hard it made the valve-heads rattle. Bore right down on Leadbelly, who was still trying to get his shotgun cocked and aimed at them, but they were moving too fast, there wasn’t time, and Furry’s Buick hit the rear panel of the Caddy as Furry drove into the shoulder, knocked the Cadillac spinning, damn near drove the Buick into the ditch on the far side of the shoulder, but no, no, they were pulling through, bounce and slam and Robert Johnson damn near went flying through t
he windshield, then wham back down into his seat, and there’s the Cadillac behind them where Leadbelly’s still trying to get that in gear, but it don’t do him no good, no good at all, because he’s sidewise now and where he goes when he puts the car in gear is straight into that damn ditch, Christ on a crutch look at him swear.

  “Whoa,” said Robert Johnson. “Nice job.”

  “Don’t get excited,” Furry Lewis told him. “He’s going to be back in a minute.”

  “Then hurry,” Robert Johnson said. “We ain’t got that far to go.”

  Furry Lewis sighed. “I do my best,” he said. “I can’t make no promises.”

  Now the road pulled along another cutaway, zagging here and zigging there as it followed the contour of the rise up the back end of the bluff. Once they nearly went sailing off the edge of a hairpin turn, one wheel over and spinning wild over the cliff edge, and it was going to fall, they were going to fall, it was over over over — no. The Buick found its traction again, and the off wheel found dirt, and they were alive, they were going to live thank God — Furry slowed the car when they came to the next hairpin, less they damn near fall all over again, and Furry said “He’s right behind us, damn damn damn, get your guitar this is the bluff get your guitar —”

  As they roared around a hairpin turn —

  — as Leadbelly’s Cadillac slammed into the back end of the Buick —

  — as Robert Johnson, puzzled, reached into the back seat to fetch his guitar —

  — and Furry Lewis screamed, “Out!” as he reached across Robert Johnson’s lap to open the passenger door, pulled back and gave him a good hard shove on the shoulder —

  — and Robert Johnson went flying.

  Out the door, onto the road, into the cliff wall opposite.

  As Furry Lewis slammed on his brakes and pulled the Buick’s steering wheel hard to the left. The Cadillac slammed into the Buick’s side, and the momentum of the impact carried both cars over the edge of the bluff.