Bone Music (24 page)

“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 the 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.

For the longest time Robert Johnson lay beaten and broken and disoriented in the place where the bluff met the road.

And then he began to hear the music.

Up on the bluff.

So beautiful, that music. It was the number Blind Willie played that morning he first met Robert Johnson in the cabin on the bluff — “The Ode to Joy,” recut and remade and syncopated into blues, and it was intensely beautiful. Beautiful that morning in the cabin, and infinitely more beautiful now as two hundred giftie bluesmen live and dead played the melody in rounds.

Beautiful so beautiful Robert Johnson cried to hear it.

And slung his battered guitar over his aching back.

And clawed his way to the summit of the bluff.

When Robert Johnson reached the summit someone gasped and three dozen voices said “He’s here!” and the great King — there beside him at the summit — nodded and whispered that he’d known Robert Johnson would arrive. A murmur washed back and forth across the crowd, and when it subsided the rounding ode reached a new intensity.

Robert Johnson brushed his hands against one another, trying to clean the grit that’d ground itself into his skin as he’d climbed the bluff, but it didn’t do much good. He pulled his guitar around, and found its strings, caressed its frets.

And waited for the song to come to him.

Now he stole a glance at the great King, and saw that the Lady stood beside him. She looked — like a doting wife, almost. Such a strange thing for a Lady such as her! An angel from on high, standing by John Henry loving him like a bride!

But then John Henry was the King, and when Robert Johnson watched him play he saw that same magnificence he felt when he stood before the Lady.

“Santa,” Robert Johnson said, and she turned for a moment to smile on him, and Robert Johnson was complete.

After a while the Eye of the World appeared in the sky above the bluff, and Robert Johnson knew the end was coming for them.

It was so crazed, that Eye. Battered in a thousand thousand fragments that only held to one another because the Lady loved them so. When he looked at it Robert Johnson knew that soon, too soon that love would no longer contain the Eye, and when it flew asunder the end would be upon them.

And in a measure as great as any measure could be, that end would be his fault.

Robert Johnson felt so sad.

He stole another glance at the Lady, and he saw her kiss the great King and step away into the sky.

Into the sky and across it, till now she stood before the widening Eye — which opened like a portal to show the great receiving hall in the Mansion called Defiance.

After a moment she stepped through the open portal.

Inside that hall ten thousand devils set upon her, as if they meant to tear her limb from limb —

And Robert Johnson knew that it was time for him to sing.

As “The Ode to Joy” faded all around him, and Robert Johnson sang the words that Blind Willie gave him.

The tune was the tune we all know as “When the Saints Come Marching In,” and the first three verses were verses of that song.

But the third verse was something else entirely, and I can’t recount it here entirely, for the words should burn this paper. But they began like this:

Now when the moon

Go down in blood

Now when the moon