Bone Music

by Alan Rodgers

In her dream there were seven Kings, the old Kings who’ve only walked the world and Hell as vaporous phantoms since the battle on the ridge in Tennessee. The Kings stood around a forge, stoking the fire inside its hearth, and they were solider and more real than Lisa had seen them in any other dream. As Lisa approached the forge, one of the Kings — the one they call Blind Willie — turned to face her. He knelt to look her in the eye, and whispered to her.

  What he whispered was a song: “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring,” recast and recut as blues. When the song was done he said, “Remember that, Lisa — it’s important.”

  And Lisa said, “I don’t understand. Why is it important?”

  Blind Willie frowned, and hesitated. “When the Lady forges the Eye,” he said, “You need to sing that song. There’s a fire in that song, and the Eye needs a fire like that. The King will sing it with you. If he doesn’t, you’ve got to make him sing.”

  And then she woke, as suddenly and wakeful as though she’d never slept at all.

  As Rebecca Carter sobbed and shivered on the platform, a man approached her from the crowd. He was a horribly disfigured deadman with the scars of six pistol shots in his skull. When Rebecca Carter saw him, she gasped. And shouted, “Fred!” as she ran to embrace him, sobbing and wailing and shivering all the while, and after a while he led her away from the stage.

  And maybe they shared a good eternity in damnation together, or maybe they were each other’s damnation, and that was always meant to be. Or maybe they found that other thing that came upon the City of New Orleans late that night — who can say for sure? People hurt each other when they love each other. It’s wrong and it’s destructive, and maybe the cure is to run away and never look back — but maybe there’s a time and place where people who’ve hurt one another can learn to live in love and peace, respectfully and Godfully, and maybe Fred and Rebecca Carter found that for each other.

  Who can know? Who can say? Some days, some times, the only thing that we can do is pray.

  When Lisa woke she saw the Lady taking the shattered Eye of the World from her carry-bag. So beautiful, those fragments — like jewels, but brighter and more glorious. One by one the Lady took them from her bag and placed them in the forge, till now the furnace hearth inside that place made the glittering fragments shine like tiny suns.

  Lisa went to dead Elvis and tugged on his sleeve. “I had a dream,” she said. “Blind Willie says you have to sing.”

  The deadman yanked his arm away from her. He had an expression on his face like she’d bit him hard enough to draw blood; he swore profanely under his breath.

  “Get away from me, girl,” he said. “I ain’t got no business with Blind Willie.”

  “You’re wrong,” Lisa said. “He told me! He said, ‘The King will sing it with you. If he doesn’t, you’ve got to make him sing.’”

  Dead Elvis scowled. “You’ve got the wrong man,” he said. “The King you’re looking for is Furry Lewis, out at the revival.”

  “No it isn’t. I know who is the King, and I know you when I see you. You’ve got to sing.”

  When Rebecca and Fred Carter had disappeared into the crowd, Washboard Sam returned to the platform and peered again out into the crowd. This time he chose one of the greatest among the fallen — Sister O.M. Terrell.

  When he saw her and pointed at her, the Sister stood unsteadily. The revivalist said, “Behold before you, sinners, Sister O.M. Terrell, who heard the sweet word of the Lord, and sang it to us all!”

  “Sang it to us all!”

  “She heard the good word, but she sinned. And that sin carries her to this day.”

  The crowd gasped, and there was a quiet hush — a hush so sad it like to break the Devil’s heart, because he heard it where he sat upon his throne in his Mansion called Defiance, still aching from the cut Leadbelly gave him. Of course he heard it! When the Devil listens he hears everything in Hell, and that night he listened intently.

  “Let her sing,” the revivalist shouted, and the crowd roared, “Let her sing!”

  And Sister O.M. Terrell staggered half-drunkenly to the edge of the platform, then climbed up onto it in a clumsy and unladylike fashion. When she was on the platform the crowd saw that she was holding her beautiful guitar, and no matter what else had become of her she still had the majesty and the poise that marked her as a giftie songster.

  She strummed three chords, and the crowd murmured with awe.

  “I lived a hard life, my friends. And it led me to this sorry state they call damnation.”

  Someone whispered damnation. A child in the back began to cry.

  “I was a good woman, and an honest one; I took the gifts the good Lord gave me and made His handiwork my life work. And I did it well! But in my declining years I fell from that blessed state of Grace we call Salvation, and I found two demons.”

  “Two demons!” the crowd shouted back at her.

  And Sister O.M. Terrell said, “Yes, yes, yes, I found two demons. One of them was smoke and one of them was drink, and they burned a fire in me that fed upon itself — and me.”

  “Burned afire!” the crowd repeated. The child wailed, now, shrieking piteously. She was so loud that for a moment she became the focus of the revival, and the Sister tried to comfort her from the platform.

  “Do not weep for me, young lady,” she said. “I am my own woman, and the mistakes I took to damn me are my very own. They are indeed.”

  The crowd said, “They are indeed,” and the child calmed — just a little.

  When the Lady took the smithy tongs from their place above the hearth and drew the glowing fragments of the Eye from the forge, Lisa lifted her kazoo to her lips and began the “Jesu” Blind Willie taught her in the dream.

  The Lady smiled at her, because she knew the melody and knew what it would do — and then she beckoned.

  “The Hammer,” she said, and Lisa knew what she meant. Because she knew the Hammer that rings like a bell in her heart — and she’d recognized it when Dan Alvarez had carried it toward them through the bayou. The Hammer you use in the forge where you cast the Eye is John Henry’s guitar, the Hammer that rings like a bell, the same Hammer the great King took from its place on the door of Hell. When it sat on the Black Door it was a sounding chime, and when the great King plied it open with the song in his heart it metamorphosed in his hands until it was the guitar that Elvis Presley stole. But underneath it all it was still the Hammer that three angels used to forge the Eye of the World an eternity ago.

  And as Lisa played “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring” on her toy kazoo, the melody resonated inside the Hammer’s sounding box where it lay slung over Dan Alvarez’s shoulder. The sound and the resonance surprised Dan Alvarez, and it seemed to frighten him, too. He took the guitar off his shoulder, held it out before him like it was some dreadful beast that set upon him. And he gaped.

  For the longest time as Lisa played, he gaped.

  “The Hammer,” Santa Barbara repeated, more urgently this time.

  And Dan Alvarez looked back and forth across the room, terrified and panic-stricken. Back and forth and back again, until his eye settled on dead Elvis.

  Dan crossed the room toward him.

  “It’s yours,” Dan Alvarez said, looking the deadman in the eye. Lisa nodded, carefully because she knew she didn’t dare to interrupt her song.

  “I told you,” dead Elvis said, “and I’ll tell you again — that Hammer ain’t none of mine. I took it once, and that was a terrible mistake. But I don’t take it anymore, you understand?”

  But Dan Alvarez ignored him. He kept moving, slowly, steadily, carefully across the room until he stood just inches from the protesting deadman.

  And then he put it on him. Not listening to the protests, not letting dead Elvis push it back on him.

  As the guitar began to play, almost of it
s own accord.

  Now, dead Elvis could have turned and run. He could have dropped the Hammer on the floor and said that was the end of it. He could have made his protests good a dozen different ways — but he didn’t.

  He couldn’t, in the end. Everybody knows that. When the music’s got inside a body there’s no way he can avoid it; when the Hammer that rings like a bell takes you, it’s got you, and there’s no way to deny it.

  Dead Elvis took John Henry’s periapt guitar, and he played.

  Played the melody Lisa drew for him, because it’s a melody nobody can deny; and in the end that song consumed them all.

  When Sister O.M. Terrell finished her testimony, she broke out into song, and the crowd sang with her. She sang “Let Your Light Shine on Me,” which some people know (with its uplifting verses made coarse and ungodly) as “Midnight Special,” and then she sang “You Know the Bible’s Right,” and when she was done the crowd was full of the clear pure spiritual joy that comes when plain folks find salvation.

  Then the revivalist stepped back onto the platform and chose another sinner from the crowd.

  He chose the worst man inside the compass, and some people would’ve said he found a man who never could repent. Maybe they were right, and maybe they weren’t, but when Washboard Sam was revivalist the third sinner whose testimony he took was Huddie Ledbetter.

  “Huddie Ledbetter,” he said, pointing. “Huddie Ledbetter, I call you to testify before us!”

  And Leadbelly swore a foul foul oath. “I won’t,” he said, and he meant it — but Emma Henderson pushed him forward, just as she’d pulled him into the revival’s compass, and before he realized what was about the whole crowd was pushing him forward, from one to another to another, and it made no difference how he tried to resist, because the revival had took him and it was determined.

  When he stood on the platform he glowered at the crowd. He wasn’t pleased at all.

  “You want you a sinner? All right, then, you got me.”

  “A sinner,” the crowd repeated, all serious and grim.

  “Yes, I’m a sinner. I like to drink, and I like to gamble, too. I turned on friends as bad as I turned on enemies, and I never took a shame of it, not when I could avoid it. I tried to kill a man who trusted me, and I tried to sell a woman to the Devil. But I never bowed to no man, and I don’t bow to nobody else, either. You want me to say I was wrong? Maybe I was. Maybe I’m sorry. But if you want a man to kneel and pray, you better find another man.”

  A hush descended on the crowd. Leadbelly began to leave the platform, but then he stopped. Suddenly, abruptly. As a woman stood — far, far in the back, a woman stood, and she said, “You’re lying, Huddie Ledbetter. I heard you sing, and I know you heard the sweet music of the Lord. You can’t hear that song without you ever feel repentance in your heart.”

  Huddie Ledbetter swore profanely.

  “Lady, what do you think you know?” he asked. “What do you know about what I heard or didn’t hear? You never lived my life. It’s mine.”

  The woman was still standing. “I know you, Huddie Ledbetter. I heard you sing, and I know you for everything you are. And you ain’t as bad as all of that.”

  “You’re wrong,” the deadman said. “I can’t begin to say how wrong you are, lady.”

  But even as he said those words, something shifted in his heart, and every congregant saw it. The woman said, “I’m not,” and Huddie Ledbetter looked ashamed, as though he were a virgin and her words had stripped him naked on the stage.

  “I’ll tell you what’s so wrong,” he said. And then he sang the song that was his testimony, and when it was done his heart was bare, and every one among them knew his sins.

  But even more important, he knew those sins himself. And who can look honestly upon his own worst deeds and not bemoan them? That night at the revival Huddie Ledbetter repented, and in repenting changed the nature of the world.

  As Elvis played he sang wordlessly, and the Crown that was the Kingship he’d denied descended on him. Furry Lewis felt it happen from his place out on the south point of the compass, and when he did he hooted with delight and took up the song that reverberated from the Tower.

  As the bluesman, the hoodoo man, and the Kings all sang rounds that shaped and molded the furnacebright substance of the Eye —

  That was when the terrible presence descended on the Tower. It came as contrast, heralded by darkness visible streaming rays among the Light. Everyone who saw that darkling shine knew it in her heart even before Scratch emerged into the Tower.

  Lisa shuddered, and she almost lost her song. Dead King Elvis swore, and the darkness shone more brightly.

  “Lucifer,” the Lady said. “You’ve come.”

  Her voice was full of sadness, but it held no fear.

  “I have,” the Devil told her. “You knew I would, didn’t you? I come to claim the treasure of my kingdom.”

  The Lady shook her head. “You have no business here, Morning Star. Leave us be.”

  The Devil laughed as he stepped forward to seize the molten substance of the Eye from its place within the forge. The Lady raised her hand, warning him away, but Lucifer ignored her.

  He tried to, anyway.

  Shouldered Santa Barbara aside, reached into the furnace —

  — as the Lady shouted, drawing her fiery sword. “Your guard, Scratch,” she shouted.

  Now the Devil may be arrogant enough to try pushing Our Lady of Sorrows out of his way, but he isn’t stupid. When she called him out he reeled around to face her, and though he had no weapon on him but his hands, he was a match for her. When the Devil sets himself to face a challenge his hands are stronger than damnation and his claws as fierce as fire on the sun; when he turned to face the Lady he was terrible and strong. Parrying her sword with his bare hands; meeting her blows so powerfully that he all but struck it from her hands —

  Parried, parried again, and now he got both hands around the blade, and slowly surely began to pry it away from her. The Lady met that by twisting the blade and rushing toward him — the one to try severing his fingers, the other meant to run him through. But neither of those strategies did her any good. The Devil’s grip was too severe to break and his fingers were too cruel to rend, and now he lifted the great fiery blade until he pulled the Lady off her feet — and brought it down again so hard so fast she lost her grace and tumbled to the floor.

  The Devil didn’t hesitate an instant when that advantage came to him. He saw her off her guard and leapt upon her.

  Wrung his hands around her throat, and strangled her to death.

  So slow, so long — the Lady died hard and bitter, all the while pounding at him with her sword. She gouged him grievously, but the Devil didn’t let that stop him. No matter how he bled, no matter that great geysers of his ichorous black blood sprayed across the room, he didn’t loose his grip.

  When Dan Alvarez saw how she was dying, he started toward her, intent to rip the Devil off of her or die trying. But when he made to move the woman whom he loved touched his arm so gently, caught his eye, and shook her head.

  “Let her be,” Polly sang, improvising to force the tune onto her words. “This is how the Devil would distract you — and you must never lose the song.”

  Lisa heard that, and she thought, That’s right — but only for a moment. For when she looked back at the Lady and the Devil and the horror happening before her, she knew a terrible truth: she knew that Dan and Polly both were right, and that the Devil was trying to distract them and he was trying to kill the Lady, too, and if he could do either one then everything was lost.

  And then she thought about her dream, and she thought about Blind Willie, and she knew an inspiration.

  It came to her like this: she was walking toward the Devil all black-bloody and destructive, toward the Lady dying as he stran
gled her, and Lisa moved slowly slow and careful all focused on her song. Closer, now, and closer, till she realized she was close enough to touch the Prince of Lies, so frightful, all the hate in the world crystallized into a single form, and then she knew she still had to get closer. Softening her music till it wasn’t much more than a whisper, and playing close below his dreadful horns, almost directly in the Devil’s ear.

  Played and played as the Devil now began to tremble. The music hurt him, didn’t it? And Lisa knew that made a kind of sense, because the music Blind Willie gave her was the most beautiful thing she’d ever found in all the world or Hell, and the Devil was all awful ugliness made tangible to see. But it still amazed her — look, look how he grew pale, how the hard crimson of his skin faded toward lavender. He was getting weaker, wasn’t he?

  As the Lady trembled and went still.

  When Lisa saw that she forgot about her song.

  “Lady!” she cried, and she didn’t even notice how her kazoo clattered onto the floor —

  As the Devil cast the fallen Lady away and turned to strike Lisa, hard. The back of his great hand caught the tiny girl no bigger than a baby — caught her in the soft center of her belly and slammed up, up into her till Lisa went flying across the room.

  Hit the wall and dropped like a rock till she smacked face-first into the floor, and oh she hurt, hurt so bad she couldn’t even cry she didn’t have her breath, she couldn’t breathe, she was dying Lisa realized and the Devil still came at her, oh God oh God he lifted her by the collar lifted her high with one arm as he hauled back to bludgeon her with the other —

  As something bright and fiery filled the room, and a streak of black and silver flashed through the air behind the Prince of Lies —

  — and suddenly as anyone could imagine the Devil’s head tumbled from his shoulders.

  His body went all slack, collapsing to the floor, and Lisa fell hard beside it but she didn’t care, she was alive, she hurt she was alive and there behind the fallen Devil was her Lady, Santa Barbara, standing broken and abused but never beaten.