Bone Music (15 page)

Easter 1949

Robert Johnson and Peetie Wheatstraw got off the train at St. Marys early in the morning Easter Sunday. They tried to find a hire car to take them to the Mountain, but because of the holiday there were none to be had. That left them with no option but to make the trip on foot.

In some ways that was for the best. The people of St. Marys knew about the Mountain in those years, and they suspected it mightily; lots of busy minds would have taken note if two unearthly men like Peetie Wheatstraw and Robert Johnson had hired a car to take them to the Mountain.

Whether it was for the best or not, it wasn’t an easy walk. The countryside gets rough and uneven along the river north of St. Marys, and the weather was terrible. Terrible! Easter came early in 1949, and the winter that year was a rough one besides. Even in a mild year the mountainous parts of Missouri get real winters, and on Easter 1949 the winter was very real indeed. It snowed on and off all day that Easter, and when it wasn’t snowing the temperature went just high enough to thaw a little of the thick snow already on the ground and turn it into slush. That bitter melting cold burned Robert Johnson as it never could have burned him when he was still truly a deadman.

Or maybe not. By the time they’d walked the fifteen miles from St. Marys station to the foot of the Mountain, even dead Peetie Wheatstraw had took himself a chill.

“I don’t like this cold,” he said, pausing for a moment to look at the trail that led from the riverside up to the summit of the mountain. “It aches me grievously.”

Robert Johnson had started shivering two miles back, but he didn’t let that intimidate him. “What’s the matter,” he said. “Can’t you take a little cold?” And then he laughed bravely till he realized that laughing let the cold run down deep into his lungs.

“Don’t give me that,” Peetie Wheatstraw said. “You going to catch yourself another pneumonia if we don’t get you to a fire.”

Robert Johnson shrugged. “I ain’t scared of no pneumonia,” he said, even though the whole idea of pneumonia scared him something terrible. “They got a pill they call penicillin, now. Pneumonia don’t kill nobody who finds themself a doctor.”

Peetie Wheatstraw looked at him like he was out of his mind. Which maybe he was, or maybe they both were, or maybe every soul upon that Mountain was out of his mind. “You watch out for those city doctors,” he said. “They kill a lot more than they save. Always have, always will.” He gestured at the trail. “C’mon, Robert Johnson. Get a move on. Charlie Patton has a shack half a mile up the Mountain; he always keeps a fire there.”

The trail up was easier going than the trip from St. Marys had been, because life is always milder on the Mountain than it is in the world outside. If the world is cold then the cold upon the Mountain is less bitter; if it snows upon that Mountain then the snow is light and airy, too soft and dry to seep through a hiker’s boots. When the thaw comes it comes all at once, in one warm afternoon, and the runoff flows into the springs and streams without ever muddying a trail.

But the mildness wasn’t much help for Robert Johnson. He’d already took his chill, and there wasn’t a fire in the world that could warm it quickly out of him.

When they reached the shack Peetie Wheatstraw put his hand on Robert Johnson’s arm. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll have to tell Charlie Patton that I’ve brought you.”

Robert Johnson nodded to show he understood, but Peetie Wheatstraw didn’t see. He was already opening the door of the shack, greeting Charlie Patton, speaking to him too quietly for Robert Johnson to hear. After a while — a long while, longer than Robert Johnson expected — Peetie Wheatstraw leaned out the door of the shack and told him to come in.

He didn’t look happy when he said it. He looked — worried. Which is a very strange expression to see on the face of a man who calls himself the Devil’s Son-in-Law.

It only took Robert Johnson a moment after he got in the shack to realize why Peetie Wheatstraw looked that way: the reason was Charlie Patton.

Charlie Patton was angry — spitting angry, and angrier still when Robert Johnson held out his hand to introduce himself.

“You keep that to yourself,” Charlie Patton said. “You’re a stranger to me, Robert Johnson, and I’d just as soon see it stayed that way.”

Now there were deep connections between Robert Johnson and Charlie Patton. Patton, after all, was the man who taught Son House blues, and Son House was Robert Johnson’s teacher. The two men weren’t even strangers; Charlie Patton had worked the plantation where Robert Johnson grew up, and lots of nights when he was a boy Robert Johnson sat at the fireside with the other children, listening to Charlie Patton play.

Back when he was alive the first time, Robert Johnson would have took exception to talk like that from a man who might as well have been his kin, but in his new life he was a God-fearing man, and he loved God, too, and because he feared and loved the Lord he turned the other cheek when he was able. When Charlie Patton refused to shake his hand Robert Johnson took the insult with good humor and a measure of grace; he said “All right, then,” and clasped his hands before him to show he didn’t plan to take offense.

“Show a little courtesy, Charlie Patton,” Peetie Wheatstraw said. “This man is our guest. He isn’t here to ask a favor from the Mountain King; he’s here because John Henry sent for him.”

Charlie Patton spat into the fire.

“I saw him sing, twelve years ago. I know who Robert Johnson is.”

Robert Johnson winced. He stared at his shoes.

“You don’t know nothing, Charlie Patton. I’ve been watching this man for months. I know him like I knew my brother. He ain’t the person who he was.”

Charlie Patton scowled. “I saw him,” he said. “I saw the Eye.”

“I know you did.”

“There are things for which a man can never be forgiven,” Charlie Patton said. “There are gifts so fine that vain men don’t deserve them.”

Peetie Wheatstraw didn’t answer that right away. Instead he spent a long moment looking at the fire through the open door of the shack’s woodstove, looking like he was weighing his words and trying to decide how much he ought to say.

“I want to show you something, Charlie Patton,” he said at last. “You say you saw the Eye, twelve years ago? I’ve seen the Eye — four, five dozen times these last few months. It hangs above the river watching him for hours on end.”

“It doesn’t hate him, Charlie Patton. Just the opposite, in fact — I’d swear I see it watch him full of adoration.” He stepped to the door of the shack, and opened it. A cold wind gusted through the aperture. “See it for yourself,” he said. “It’s watching now, just as I thought it would be.”

And sure enough, the Eye hung above the river, staring at them.

Staring at Robert Johnson. Watching him, lovingly.

Then suddenly the wind reversed itself, and the door slammed shut with a terrible bang.

“I don’t believe you,” Charlie Patton murmured, but that just wasn’t true. He turned away from Peetie Wheatstraw and Robert Johnson and began tidying his shack. After a moment he went to the cookstove to stir the beans simmering atop it. “Sit down,” he said. “Be comfortable.”

Later when they all were warm Charlie Patton served them beans and rice, and after that he found his guitar. “I haven’t played in a long time,” he said. “I don’t play much these days.”

Everyone who knew the Mountain knew that was true. There was a reason Charlie Patton lived so low on the Mountain, instead of near the summit with the other Kings.

“I didn’t play for a long time,” Robert Johnson said. “But these days I play more than I used to.”

Charlie Patton eyed him carefully, measuring the man. “Is that a fact?” he asked.

“It is.”

Charlie Patton nodded. “I know a song,” he said. “I bet you never heard it.”

Peetie Wheatstraw raised an eyebrow. “And what song would that be?”

They all knew what he was asking about.

“Nothing that ought to make you fret, Bill Bunch.” Bill Bunch — William Bunch, more rightly — was Peetie Wheatstraw’s born name, but he never used it when he no longer was alive. “Just a little song I know. You ought to hear it, too.” Charlie Patton gripped the guitar strangely — one hand around its neck, the other all but covering the guitar’s open mouth. And as his hands moved, the guitar seemed to speak. “Lord have mercy,” the guitar said. “Lord, Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy — pray, brother, pray, save poor me.”

Robert Johnson laughed. “John Henry can make his hammer ring like a bell,” he said. “But you got yours talking like a lady.”

Even Peetie Wheatstraw had to laugh at that. “I never met that lady,” he said. “Maybe Charlie Patton ought to introduce me.”

And they laughed.

When the laughter died, Charlie Patton said, “This here is a song about a man who lived and died and lived again, and instead of him going on to his damnation — or reward! — he found himself back on earth being somebody he never ought to be, something nobody ever ought to be — something dead and alive at the same time, a body not alive enough to feel and not dead enough to go still and decay. I know a man who’s like this song, and there are days I feel for him, I tell you.”

And then he sang.

His song was a four-four ballad with loose, uneven rhymes; it was long and sad and sometimes beautiful; but it was also a little on the maudlin side, and there were places where it dripped with self-pity. It was the story of Charlie Patton’s reawakening as his music charmed him out the gates of Hell. It told how he’d traveled three weeks on his own after he came back from Hell, curing the sick and straightening the lame, enlightening the ignorant and teaching miserable people to rejoice. When those three weeks were over he came to a crossroads, and there at the crossroads was John Henry, singing.

John Henry made his hammer ring like a bell.

Charlie Patton played along with him — played his guitar for the first time since he’d come back to the world of man and woman. As they played, the magic in their music transported them, and when their song was done the two deadmen stood upon the great Mountain above the great river.

Charlie Patton never meant to climb that Mountain, but his music took him to it anyway. When the song was over and they stood together on the Mountain, John Henry told Charlie Patton who he was and why he was and what his role was in the scheme of things, but Charlie Patton didn’t like that. Not at all.

So he came down from the mountain and went back to his vocation among the people, whispering songs that cured the sick and straightened the lame. He could have done that for a lifetime, because he loved the work. But it isn’t in human nature to take a gift and let it go at that, and the day came when a rich farmer demanded Charlie Patton raise his dead daughter from the ground.

Charlie Patton didn’t have it in him to raise nobody from the dead. Sure, he’d walked out of Hell himself, but that didn’t mean he could walk out of Hell for a little girl who’d already spent three years moldering in her grave.

Charlie Patton told that farmer there was nothing he could do. But the farmer wouldn’t take that for an answer. He put his shotgun to Charlie Patton’s head and told him he was going to sing. Then he built a bonfire beside the little girl’s grave, exhumed her, and called people from thirty miles ‘round to witness his daughter’s resurrection.

Charlie Patton did as he was told. What else could he do, with a shotgun to his head? But no matter what he did, he couldn’t raise the dead. He sang to the child’s bones, and did everything he could to tease them back to life. But all he managed to do was make the dry bones dance.

They danced to his song for as long as he could sing it, and when the song was over they collapsed. The farmer cocked his gun and told Charlie Patton “Boy, you going to sing, I warn you,” and Charlie Patton sang, of course, and by and by the bones began to dance again. But no man can sing forever, not even a hoodoo man, not even a King who ruled by moral right as Charlie Patton did. Somewhere after midnight his voice gave way and his guitar strings snapped and Charlie Patton collapsed in an exhausted heap.

The bones collapsed beside him.

And the farmer, good to his word, blasted Charlie Patton’s skull with both barrels of his shotgun.

Now, you can’t kill a deadman, and the lead that tore the top off Charlie Patton’s skull didn’t send him back to Hell. But the blast most surely startled him, and it scared him, too. When he saw he was still a living deadman he shrieked in fear, grabbed his guitar and three big pieces of his broken skull, and ran.

It must’ve been a funny thing to see, old Charlie Patton running like his life depended on it (which, of course, it couldn’t), carrying his guitar in one hand and most of his head in the other.

Or maybe it wasn’t. Surely the townsfolk didn’t take it in good humor; but then Charlie Patton’s egress took him directly through the center of the crowd. He ran into and over half a dozen of them, and what is a mob like that supposed to do when some bloody gruesome monster deadman barrels into them?

They did the only thing they could do, of course.

They tore Charlie Patton to pieces.

When the song was over they were all quiet for the longest time — Charlie Patton quiet because he’d said his piece and played his blues, and he thought that said it all; Peetie Wheatstraw quiet because he’d heard it all before; Robert Johnson quiet because there are some things you just can’t tell a man, no matter how clear you see them.

It was Robert Johnson who finally broke the silence.

“How the hell did you ever get yourself back together?”

Charlie Patton shrugged. “Deadman’s body got a draw to itself. Like a magnet, but different. One day I woke upon the Mountain, and I knew this life was meant for me.”

The way he said it there was no mistaking that he wasn’t any too happy about the life that was meant for him. And deeper under that there was something else — like he was scared, or something. Robert Johnson thought maybe he was scared to face the world again after the terror that ripped him limb from limb, and maybe that was the reason he didn’t go back out into the world or up onto the mountain with the other hoodoo men, but there’s no way to know a thing like that — a secret that a man keeps in his heart — for sure.