Bone Music (20 page)

Easter 1949

That next day it was springtime on the Mountain, and Robert Johnson drew it in as deeply as he could. It was spring, and there were new buds on the trees, and as Robert Johnson climbed the final bends of the trail that led to John Henry’s mansion at the summit, he thought the Mountain could be any mountain anywhere in the south, any mountain anywhere at all. Just a beautiful green mountain covered with trees and brambles and wildflowers blooming in the spring. But it was special, too — Robert Johnson could feel how special it was. There was something extraordinary about that place, something tremendous and triumphant. As he climbed the last steps up the Mountain he felt as though he were ascending the steps of the mansion in the sky, up beyond the Pearly Gates.

When he reached the mansion gates they opened to admit him of their own accord, just as they’d opened for the Hands of God in the tale Ma Rainey told. Robert Johnson walked into the mansion’s great hall, and his feet carried him inward as though they had minds of their own. In through the hall as it grew deep and dark, down inside the Mountain; past the pillars of damnation; through three stations and their attendant chapels; into the bowels of the Mountain.

To the doors of John Henry’s sanctum, where the great King sat before a roaring fire in his deep leather chair.

John Henry was a great dark mountain of a man — taller, broader, and more gentle-eyed than Robert Johnson ever expected to find him.

He wore a crystal talisman on a leather thong around his neck — a great jewel cut in the shape and image of the Eye of the World. Some say that pendant was no jewel but a tiny mirror always fixed upon the Eye, and when the Eye was shut, the pendant was shut too, and when the Eye gaped open it did too.

The Lady gave his pendant to him, everyone knows that. Some say the Lady is his consort, and that may be true.

“Huddie Ledbetter tried to kill me last fall,” Robert Johnson told the great King. “That’s something I think you ought to know.”

John Henry frowned. The expression was a frightful thing on his broad dark face; it gave Robert Johnson a chill as bad as any he’d felt in his new life. “That man worries me,” he said. He didn’t say another word about the subject, but Robert Johnson hadn’t expected him to.

“He worries me, too,” Robert Johnson said. Of course he worried Robert Johnson! He’d drugged Robert Johnson with spirit liquor, slit his throat, and left him for dead, bleeding into the river. If the river and the Eye hadn’t held him in their hearts, Robert Johnson would have died for certain.

“I didn’t call you here to talk about no Huddie Ledbetter,” John Henry said with his voice as deep and sonorous as a hot wind from the mountains. “I called you here to see you — and to show you something.”

The great King lifted his amulet off his chest, pulling the heavy leather thong that held it over his head. Held the amulet out to show Robert Johnson —

And as he looked at it Robert Johnson knew that he was looking into the Eye of the World, honest and true, and no matter how it was just a jewel John Henry wore around his neck, no matter how the Eye of the World still and always hung in the sky above the river, watching the land; no matter what else was real and true this was still the Eye. Robert Johnson looked deep into it and he saw that mighty lens, cracked and patched and battered once again. He saw through the lens into Lucifer’s great chamber in the Mansion called Defiance, where ten thousand demons pressed and beat the cracks unceasingly.

“It’s breaking, Robert Johnson,” John Henry said. “But you can see that, can’t you?”

Robert Johnson nodded. “I see the devils down in Hell,” he said. “They’re going to smash it through.”

John Henry said, “You see it all, then.”

He set the Eye on the table that he kept beside his leather chair and turned away from Robert Johnson. For the longest while he stood facing the fire, looking into the flames as though he expected to find the same sort of revelation there that Robert Johnson saw when he looked into the Eye.

John Henry said, “Every day those devils get that much closer. Last month they made it onto the Mountain where the Mountain stands between Hell and the world. Now every night they come for Sonny Boy Williamson.”

“I saw them last night,” Robert Johnson said. “I don’t think those devils will be back.”

John Henry laughed, deep and melodious. “That’s what I heard,” he said. “More power to you.”

Robert Johnson shrugged. “I was there,” he said. “I do what I can.”

The great King wheeled around to face him, turning away from the fire. “There’s an awful confrontation coming,” John Henry said. He sounded — terrified. More frightened than Robert Johnson ever imagined any King could be. “We’re going to need you, Robert Johnson.”

Robert Johnson nodded. “Call me,” he said. “Call me and I’m yours.”

The King nodded. “You know I will,” he said. He lifted the Eye off the table, pulled its thong over his head, and let the jewel fall back to its place beneath his throat. “I want you here,” he said. “Stay here on the Mountain. Stay here in my mansion if you like.”

Robert Johnson wanted to take the hospitality the great King offered. He truly did. But before he even took a moment to think about the question, his heart told him that he never could. Robert Johnson spoke the words his heart told him to because he knew he had to; it was only later that he understood what they meant and why he had to say them.

“You know I can’t,” Robert Johnson said. “The Mountain ain’t no place for a man alive.”

John Henry nodded and allowed as it was so.

“And there’s something back in Memphis — something that I’ve got to do. I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it in my heart.”

The King blinked; for half a moment he looked surprised. Then he nodded sadly. “If that’s what you hear, you need to listen to it, Robert Johnson. You’d be a comfort to me here — but that’s not as urgent as the music in your heart.” He sighed. “Be ready for me,” he said. “I know I’ll need you soon.”

Robert Johnson left the Mountain two hours before sundown without stopping to tell anyone goodbye. Maybe that was for the best.

For when he reached the foot of the Mountain, half an hour after moonrise, he looked back at the summit and saw a great fire on the Mountain.

And he knew that fire was no place for the living.

He hiked back to St. Marys, and in the morning he caught the southbound train to ride it back to Memphis and his life as Hinky Tom.

And waited for the King to call him to his service.

It was a long wait — much longer than he ever would have guessed as he stood in the King’s sanctum talking before the roaring fire. Six months went by, and then a year; and now Robert Johnson found himself in love. Such a crazy thing, to fall in love when he was no ordinary man, when he didn’t dare make any commitment for fear the King would call him to a fate so grave it frightened a man with shoulders broad enough to shield the world.

But it wasn’t like he had a choice. Robert Johnson met Virginia Henderson, and the moment that he knew her he loved her against all common sense; and because his heart commanded him beyond the possibility of denial, he married her, and they made a cozy home not far from the river.

Six months later Huddie Ledbetter died, and Robert Johnson felt it when he rose back from Hell to be seventh of the Seven Kings.

A few weeks after that Robert Johnson’s wife turned up pregnant with their daughter. When she was born Robert and Virginia named their daughter Emma.

Robert Johnson loved his daughter Emma more dearly than anything else he’d ever known in the world; in Hell; he loved her more dearly than he loved the Pearly Gates of Salvation.

But he hardly had the chance to know her.

Because the King called him three days after Emma’s birth. Robert Johnson answered the call, just as he’d promised he would. And though he returned from it, that return was only for a moment before he was lost forever to the ones he loved.

The Present

Emma and Leadbelly spent hours searching the woods by the pale blue light of Leadbelly’s fluorescent lantern. That light was bright enough to let them see for miles in thin pinewoods on the bluff, but even so it did them little good. No matter how they looked, no matter which way they shone the light, there was no sign of anyone — no sign of anything alive. Nor were there any tracks: Leadbelly searched and searched the ground for spoor, but he found none.

When the sun was high and bright Leadbelly said “Enough of this. Follow me. We need to try something different.” And he led her to his musty cottage in the deep deep woods. He made coffee and served it with sectioned oranges, and sat with Emma near the dark hearth still dusty with ashes from last winter’s fires.

And began to play his melodious twelve-string guitar. Softly, softly, picking and strumming no recognizable tune but an endless half-melody — a melody from a jam session, but how could anyone call something so quiet and gentle a jam?

After a while he seemed to doze, but he played on and on. Till now the music drifted away, and Emma faded asleep still sitting in the wide-armed chair beside the hearth.

The last thing she heard was Leadbelly, snoring.

Dan Alvarez woke panting, gasping for air. It was pitch night in the boxcar, he was as alone as alone gets, and now the train rounded a bend and moonlight flooded in through the open boxcar door.

And in the moonlight he saw that terrible thing that followed him out of his dream, beautiful and ominous and powerful as it was the day John Henry carved it from the wood: the great guitar that Elvis Presley stole.
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September 1952

Robert Johnson climbed the Memphis ridge to search for Blind Willie one final time before he answered John Henry’s call. This time he found the hardest path, and he followed it against the grain until it led him to Blind Willie’s shack.

When he reached the door he found Blind Willie waiting for him, as though the gospel songster who became a King had known that he was coming.

And perhaps he did.

“I owe you something dear, Blind Willie,” Robert Johnson said.

Blind Willie tried to say there was no debt between them, but Robert Johnson cut him off before he could finish speaking.

“It doesn’t matter if you hold me to account,” Robert Johnson said. “I hold myself accountable.”

And then he gave Blind Willie the seven Mysteries he’d kept hidden in his heart for years.

When he was done Blind Willie thanked him, and invited him in to sit a spell.

Robert Johnson hesitated to accept that invitation. It was nearly dusk, and the great King’s call was still in his ear. But then Blind Willie said, “There’s something that I need to tell you, Robert Johnson,” and Robert Johnson knew he had to hear the word.

“All right, then,” he said, and he followed Blind Willie into the darkness of the shack.

Blind Willie poured two cups of sassafras tisane from the brew-pot on the stove, and carried them to the table. “There’s sugar in the covered bowl if you like it sweet,” he said, pointing at the bowl in the center of the table.

Robert Johnson thanked him, stirred in half a spoon of sugar, and sipped his brew as he sat back in his chair.

“The Lady came to me last night,” Blind Willie said. “In a dream she came and talked to me.”

Robert Johnson snorted. “I thought you were a man who didn’t go around talking to no Ladies,” he said.

Blind Willie cleared his throat. “She came to me,” he said. “I don’t go looking for her.”

“I always thought you didn’t have no truck with any Caribbean devils,” Robert Johnson said. He was partly sardonic when he asked that, but he meant the question, too. Blind Willie was a strictly righteous man.

“I saw her, and I bade her get away from me, devil, yes, yes I did. But then she knelt before me and began to pray. I heard her pray for forgiveness, Robert Johnson, and I know from the way she said that prayer that she’s prayed it every night for a million years. If a devil speak a prayer like that, his words surely would catch fire, or he would go to his redemption, one; and the cataclysm from either act is a thing no deadman could mistake. I looked at her again, and I could see she wasn’t just a fallen angel, but a repentant one. Repentance leaves a mark upon a body, Robert Johnson. You of all men ought to know about that.”

Robert Johnson shrugged. “I don’t see nothing when I look into the mirror. But if you tell me you can see it, I believe you.”

“When her prayer was done she got up off her knees and sang to me. Three songs, she sang — one of them was Judgment Day, and another was ‘The Ode to Joy.’ The third song was ‘When the Saints Come Marching In,’ but the words she sang were strange to me. I never heard no one sing those words before, and I swear to you, Robert Johnson, if I never hear those words again it won’t be a day too soon.

“She said those words were a calling, and when you sing them — you, Robert Johnson — you will call the tumult down upon the devils out of Hell.”

And then he said the words he didn’t dare to sing. I won’t recount them here for the same reason Blind Willie spoke them where he could have sang them. No one ever sings those words, no matter how clear they remember them — when bluesmen sing that version of the song they hum out the most important passages, or slap the syllables on their guitars, or hide them in cacophonies of music.

It isn’t Judgment Day, that song, but it’s powerful juju even so.

“She said you’d know when you had to sing,” Blind Willie said. “She told me other things, too, but I’ve got to face those things myself.”

Robert Johnson frowned. “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me everything you know.”

Blind Willie looked away. He looked so sad, Robert Johnson thought — like a man in mourning for the loss of everything he loved.

“You need to tell me,” Robert Johnson said. “I need to know before I go to face the fire on the ridge.”

After a while Blind Willie looked up and allowed that Robert Johnson had a point. And he told him all of the most terrible things the Lady had divined to him — how the day was close upon them when Our Lady of Sorrows would descend into Hell to seize the inside of the Eye from the place it hung in the great receiving room of the Mansion called Defiance; how the Eye would fall to pieces when she lifted it — and if the hoodoo men and Robert Johnson didn’t sing to give her cover the demon horde would rend her limb from limb as they tried to storm the aperture between this world and the next.

How before her work was done Blind Willie, John Henry and all the Kings, all the hoodoo men and Robert Johnson, too — they all would face the hordes of Hell, and hold them with their song.

And then Blind Willie told him how each of them would pay a terrible price. When the song was done every solitary one who stood against the hordes of Hell of them would be gone, and there would be no deadmen in the Delta Kingdom.

And Robert Johnson would be dead and gone to Hell, no matter how he once had tasted the sweet wine that is redemption.