Bone Music (18 page)

Emma could feel the Lady close and looming, almost as though she was in the car with her and Lisa. Emma had felt the presence watching them angrily all the way from New York, and it didn’t go away when they got to Mississippi. She kept expecting Shungó to appear before them on the road and warn Emma away from her destination, but she never did.

They got to Greenville early in the afternoon, and Emma thought their journey was over — but it wasn’t. Mama Estrella’s directions turned out to be useless. Emma couldn’t find any dirt roads at all off highway 82 — and all the roads that led west from 82 led west into pinewoods toward a bluff.

At first Emma thought that had to be her own error, so she drove back up 82, watching all the side roads from the opposite direction.

And still found nothing.

So she went into town and found a pay phone to ring Mama Estrella at the hospital — but all the phones were out of order.

Every solitary phone in town, it seemed.

At half past two she pulled into the convenience store parking lot for the third time (she’d been there twice already, trying to get the out-of-order pay phones in front of the store to work) to ask the clerk if he knew what was the matter.

Inside the store was cool and air-conditioned, startling in contrast with the torpid Mississippi heat outside. The clerk behind the counter was a dark-skinned man with short white hair. He looked to be about as old as time.

Despite the heat he wore a red bandanna around his throat.

“I need to make a long-distance phone call,” Emma told the clerk, “but all the pay phones in this town are out of order.”

The clerk nodded. “I know they are,” he said. “We had a thunderstorm two nights ago. That there —” he nodded at the old beige phone on the wall behind the counter “— is about the only working phone on this end of Greenville.”

Emma wanted to scream. She was exhausted from her trip, addled from the heat, and confused from driving back and forth over unfamiliar roads. She wanted to find a place to rest — a place where she could hide beneath a blanket and pretend the world went on without her. She wanted to get a hotel room and spend three days recovering from the trip.

But there just wasn’t time. She knew that, deep inside her heart: things had begun to happen quickly and in ways she couldn’t afford to ignore.

“Lord Almighty,” Emma said. “How far will I have to drive to find a phone that works?”

The clerk shrugged. “I haven’t heard that much of the news,” he said. “Far as I know phones are out for miles all around.”

“Damn. Damn damn damn damn,” Emma said — and then she did begin to cry. It was all too much, just too too too damn much.

“Ain’t no need to cry, ma’am,” the clerk said. “Use my phone if you have to. But if it’s got to be long distance, make it brief, please.”

The offer surprised Emma, and a part of her regarded it suspiciously. But she took it all the same. She stepped behind the counter, dialed the hospital’s number (from memory — Mama Estrella was in the same hospital where Emma had worked the last twelve years of her life), and asked for Estrella Perez.

When she told Mama Estrella about the trouble, Mama told her to go to the first crossroads south of Greenville and burn an offering.

“Say what?” Emma asked her.

“Buy a new pack of cigarettes,” Mama Estrella said. “Go to the crossroads, open the pack, and smoke one — just one cigarette. When you’re done, put the pack to the center of the crossroads and leave it there. Get in the car and drive the way you’ll know you have to go.”

“That’s crazy,” Emma said. “What do you think I am, some kind of a witch?”

“I don’t think anything about you, Emma. But I know how to help you find the road you need.”

Emma sighed. “Thanks, Mama,” she said. “I’ll be in touch.”

Mama said goodbye, and Emma hung up her phone. “Can I leave you a couple dollars for the call?” she asked the clerk.

The clerk shook his head. “You weren’t on for long,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.” He smiled, and even though his smile was beautiful it chilled Emma to the bone. “Anything I can get you?”

The way he asked that question made Emma’s chill start all over again — for a moment she almost thought he’d heard Mama Estrella’s instructions.

“Yes,” she said. “There is. I need a pack of Marlboros — no, two packs. — Yes, the red ones, thanks.”

She paid the clerk and left without saying another word.

Dan Alvarez was never sure what happened to him after the thunder. Later he could remember running blindly through the raining dark, stumbling, battering himself again and again. But he could never remember how he escaped the burning wreck of his apartment.

Never remembered what happened to the Santa, or what she meant for him when he accepted her.

The thing he remembered clearest was waking in a ditch in an abandoned industrial park. Sitting up and looking around to see the city of Los Angeles dark and fiery all around him — the power was out everywhere for miles, no electric lights anywhere he could see in every direction. But there was light. Plenty of light — the whole damned city was on fire.

If he’d had any sense he would have counted his blessings and crawled back into the ditch. It wasn’t safe, wandering around with the city burning. But he wasn’t thinking at all, let alone thinking sensibly. In the dark and the thunder and the rain Dan Alvarez was a creature of his frightened heart, and when his heart screamed at him and told him to run for his life, he ran.

Ran.

And it was good he did, because there were flash floods in Los Angeles that night. Twenty minutes after Dan Alvarez ran terrified from that ditch a storm of white water and hard debris roared through it, and if Dan Alvarez hadn’t run he would have died a horrible death of batterment and drowning.

As it was he almost died anyway — when he wandered too close to the broken walls of the Los Angeles County Reformatory and the riot and the looting that came when its prisoners ran wild. The prison was ten blocks southeast from the ditch, and Dan’s run took him directly toward it.

I’ve got to run, a small voice whispered deep inside his skull, I’ve got to go home.

He tried to run home, but the truth was that he never could. His apartment was gone, blasted by thunder and burned to the ground, and there was nothing but nothing for him to run home to, and all he could do was run and run and run forever in the night until he dropped from exhaustion —

He was a block and a half from the prison when he stumbled as he moved out into the center of the street, trying to get around a tractor-trailer parked along the shoulder. He tried to catch his balance, but the road was too slick and he was moving too fast and he was too winded. One foot caught on the back of the other, and came down sideways and out of kilter; his ankle gave way and he dove face-first into the asphalt —

— face-first into the asphalt as lightning struck the lightless prison gates and the walls came tumbling down. Someone screamed, and gunfire exploded brightly in the darkness, and Dan knew he had to run.

Had to get up and run for his life, or he was going to die.

Run run run! said the voice in his head, but he couldn’t run — he couldn’t even move. For the longest moment he lay paralyzed on the dark rain-wet road as people screamed and guns blasted and now a mob of people stampeded through the broken prison walls and out into the city. Dan damn near got trampled by the crowd that ran toward him — if he hadn’t roused himself enough to roll under the semi rig the throng would have trampled him to death.

When the crowd was gone there were more flashes of gunfire, and the sound of shots exploding not too far away. Dan knew he couldn’t stay where he was. He knew he had to run. So he pushed himself back onto his feet, and he forced himself back into motion.

But he was too numb, too exhausted to run. When he tried to run all he managed was a slow trot, a run so slow he could’ve walked more quickly in the day in the sunshine when the world was decent and alive.

After a while the trot went away entirely, and Dan Alvarez found himself skulking through the shadows, creeping around the edges of the firelight as the city burned.

Here there were looters, and storefronts shattered and set afire; here there were rioters taunting a homeowner as the poor man tried to hold them at bay with a shotgun; here three policemen stood guarding half a dozen people they’d bound in handcuffs and leg irons.

In his mind he was an animal, prowling warily, ready to turn at any moment and struggle for his life. Now gradually he realized he was hungry, and when he saw the broken storefront he didn’t think how it’s looting when you rummage through a broken store. He was hungry, and he knew there was food inside; he went in and he ate.

He found cold cuts behind the shattered doors of the store’s cooler; deli ham and Genoa salami, still wrapped in their tough plastic wrappers. Dan peeled the backing of the ham package, and he ate hungrily, shoving big fistfuls of cured meat into his mouth, hardly even bothering to chew.

When the ham was done he threw the wrapper on the floor and closed his eyes, savoring the fullness. He felt like a predator, walking away from the rent carcass of his prey; he wanted to raise his head and howl at the moon.

And then he did howl, long and low and sad.

It was the wrong thing to do.

Wrong wrong wrong.

Because there were police out on the street, and they heard him. One of them turned to face Dan and shone a flashlight in at him. Dan tried to hide from the beam, but he wasn’t fast enough; the policeman saw him clearly before he had the chance to duck.

“You there! What’re you doing in that store?”

Dan didn’t say a word. He didn’t even breathe; he kept low and still and prayed the police would go away.

His prayer went unanswered. Of course it did! Police don’t just walk away when they find young men looting stores in the middle of riots! They go in and arrest the ones they find, even when they’ve only looted for the food they need to eat.

“Answer, damn you. You want us to have to come in there and get you?”

Dan wanted to taunt them. Go ahead, he wanted to say. Go ahead, I’m not afraid.

But it would have been a lie. He was terrified and he didn’t dare taunt the cops, because he knew they’d kill him if they had to.

One of the policemen swore; the other one said, “I’ll move toward him from the right side. You take the left.” His partner grunted, nodded, turned on his flashlight, and started moving toward Dan.

They’re going to kill me, Dan thought. He heard something hard and metallic snap into place, and thought he saw gunmetal glint in the scattered light. I’ve got to run, he thought, but when he looked around he saw that there was nowhere to run.

“Put up your hands and step out of the shadows. Don’t make any sudden moves.”

They were getting close, now — too close. Dan eased away from the cooler, crawled toward the cartons that lined the store’s back wall. Pressed himself into the shadows.

But it didn’t do him a bit of good. Not one damn bit.

Because the first cop came around the aisle on Dan’s right, and as he did his flashlight caught Dan squarely, dragging him out of the shadows —

And Dan screamed.

“Don’t move!” the second cop shouted, and his partner froze. But Dan didn’t freeze. He couldn’t freeze; he was too terrified. Instead he bolted into the light, bolted at the first cop who shot his gun three times bam bam BAM at point-blank range and that should have cut Dan to shreds — should have left him a pile of wrecked and bloody meat leaking blood on the filthy floor. But didn’t, somehow. None of the bullets hit Dan, or if they hit they passed right through him, doing no damage at all. Dan ran into the cop; his shoulder caught the barrel of the gun, and Dan just kept going. Into the cop, knocking him over as the cop screamed and his partner swore, bellowing threats he couldn’t make good without shooting his partner, too. The cop went down, knocking over a display of canned dog food; Dan kept going, stepping over the cop and on him, one foot came down on the cop’s face, and something crunched underneath it. Dan didn’t look back to see what it was. There wasn’t time for that. Wasn’t time to do anything but run.

Run!

Through the fiery streets, through the night, into forever.

When Dan stopped running he was in a trainyard, surrounded by boxcars. He saw an open car and knew that he could hide there through the night; he climbed in and found a corner so dark that he felt lost inside it.

And hid.

After a long while he drifted off to sleep.

Somewhere in his sleep he heard the car bang into another and felt it lurch. A while after that there came the music that train wheels make as they roll along the smooth Pacific rails — rhythmic and mild, gentle and compelling.

The music reassured Dan in his rest, and soothed him deeper and deeper into his sleep. By the time he woke California was a place as distant as his dreams.

The ritual at the crossroads worked just as Mama Estrella had promised it would. Emma parked a few yards from the intersection, opened the pack of Marlboros, and smoked one. When she was done she carried the open pack to the middle of the intersection, set it on the pavement, and returned to her car.

And drove away.

Half a mile later she saw a dirt road she hadn’t noticed before, and turned onto it; followed the dirt road for ten minutes before she saw a weathered wooden shack in the pinewoods off to her left.

That’s it, Emma thought. There wasn’t any doubt about that in her heart; this was the place she’d crossed half a continent to find.

Lisa was asleep in the car seat, just as she had been since early that morning.

“We’re here,” Emma said, rubbing Lisa’s shoulder. “Time to wake up, baby.”

“Leave me alone,” Lisa said. “Wanna sleep!”

Emma bit her lip. The girl had such a temper these days — Emma was more than half afraid to cross her.

“You want to wait here in the car, child? — Maybe I won’t be there long, I hope.”

And suddenly the girl’s eyes opened wide.

“Be where?” she asked. “Where are we?”

Emma eased the car onto the grassy side-path that led toward the shack, slowly, slowly pushing the car through the brush. “This is the place Mama Estrella told me about. There’s someone here who can help you, she said.”

“I don’t want any help,” Lisa said. “Just leave me alone!”

“I told you that I would already,” Emma said, stopping the car a few yards from the shack, putting the transmission into park. Cutting the ignition and opening the door. “You want to stay here, Lisa, that’s your concern.”

Lisa mumbled belligerently — Emma couldn’t quite make out the words, but she knew she wouldn’t have liked them if she’d heard them.

“Are you coming?” Emma asked as she got out of the car. Lisa didn’t answer, but she climbed out of her car seat and followed Emma out the driver’s side door. She followed Emma along the last few yards of the path, stood beside her as Emma knocked on the rickety wood door.

A soft familiar voice told them to come in. It was very familiar — intimately familiar, though for the life of her Emma couldn’t think how it was she knew it.

“Hello. . . ?”

Emma pressed on the door, and it swung open as easily as the door to a pantry.

“Hello, Emma Henderson. Good afternoon, Lisa.”

Inside the shack it was dark as dusk, and Emma could scarcely see a thing. There were shadows that looked like furniture, and she could see the silhouette of a man on the far side of the room, but all the details were opaque. Emma took her daughter’s hand and stepped carefully through the threshold, uncertain of her footsteps.

“I know you,” Emma said. “Where do I know you from?”

The silhouette laughed. “I’ve known you all your life, woman. But we only met this afternoon.”

The man from the store, Emma thought. And as she realized him the room brightened to reveal the details she remembered — the short, snow-white hair; the dark, leathery-creased skin; the scarf he wore around his neck despite the fact that it was high summer in Mississippi.

His name was Leadbelly, or maybe it was Huddie Ledbetter, depending whether a born name or a taken name is the true measure of a man, and he was neither dead nor alive. He was seventh of the Seven Kings, the only King surviving, and in his way he was like her daughter Lisa.

He was a rogue and a scoundrel, but he was gifted like no other; he was the man who’d tried to kill Robert Johnson, after that man’s rebirth and redemption; he was a murderer so cruel that twice the judges put him away for life, and so gifted that twice he’d sung his way to freedom, for his songs so charmed the men who imprisoned him that they could not help but set him free.

He wore his scarf to hide the scar that marked him: somewhere late in life he lost a barroom brawl, and when his rival finished with him he slit Leadbelly’s throat and left him for a corpse. But Huddie Ledbetter didn’t die — he walked away and healed without ever going to a doctor. All his life and all his death he wore red scarves around his throat to hide the bright white slash that marked him for who he was. But he could not hide his nature, and the scar was just the most obvious bit of that.

“You can call me Huddie Ledbetter, if you like,” he said.

Emma’s eyes went wide. “I know who you are,” she said. “You died before I was born.”

Leadbelly laughed, and his laugh was the music of the world. “I’ve heard that said,” he told her. “Do I look dead to you?”

Emma laughed at the question, because he’d asked it so good-natured there was no way to answer it.

That was when Lisa let go of her mother’s hand and stepped toward the deadman. “You can’t fool me,” the child said. “I know who you are. I can see it!”

Leadbelly laughed again. “Is that so?”

“It is,” Lisa said. “You’ve been to Hell, I know. The devil-mark is all over you.”

Leadbelly went quiet for a moment. And he looked so old! Older than he’d looked back at the store, and sadder, too. He knelt to look Lisa in the eye; held her head in his hands. When he kissed her forehead Lisa tried to squirm away from him, but she couldn’t.

“You can see the marks, can’t you, child?” he asked. “I should have known you would.” He eased away, watching Lisa as carefully as a necromancer reads his offal. “Don’t let those marks concern you, child. I don’t mean you any harm, and I don’t mean to lead you toward temptation.”

There was something in his voice when he talked about the marks — Emma thought it sounded like regret, but she wasn’t any surer of that than she was of anything else.

“Something’s wrong with my little girl, Mr. Ledbetter,” Emma said. “She’s been through things — I can’t begin to tell you.”

The old man looked at Emma quizzically. “Tell me what you please,” he said. “I’ll listen if you like.”

“Two days ago she almost killed a little boy,” Emma said. “There’s something terrible got into her.”

The old man looked — alarmed. Unsettled, too. “What happened?” he asked.

Emma told what she’d learned from the nursery attendants — how Lisa had beaten the boy to within an inch of his life and then disappeared from the school; about the water that covered Lisa when Emma found her — water that had bleached everything it touched without burning the way ordinary bleach would. She even told him about Mama Estrella and the ritual in the garden, and how the shrine had come to life and nearly murdered Mama.

“Down here we call her the Lady,” he said when she told him about the horror in the shrine. “But you know that, don’t you?” He stared away into the darkness, looking worried.

Emma nodded.

Leadbelly got to his feet, crossed the room, and began to search among the shadows; when he finally stepped out of the darkness he held a beautiful old guitar.

Emma knew that instrument the moment she set eyes on it — it was Leadbelly’s battered twelve-string guitar. When she looked at it she was certain she could feel the hoodoo seeping from it. “Follow me,” Leadbelly said. He stood by the door of the shack, waiting for Emma.

Emma put her arms around her daughter, holding the girl protectively. “I won’t let you hurt my baby.”

Leadbelly scowled. “I wouldn’t ever harm her,” he said.

Lisa put her hand on Emma’s arm and pressed just hard enough to get her mother’s attention. “I’m not afraid, Mama,” she said. “The old King doesn’t mean me any harm.”

Emma wanted to say, Child, what’re you talking about, what do you mean, “old King,” but the girl pushed Emma’s arms away before her mother could say a word.

“Lisa. . . ?”

“It’s all right, Mama,” Lisa said. She was crossing the room, heading toward the door, and now she met him in the doorway, took his hand, and followed him into the pinewoods.

Emma wanted to shout at her — What do you think you’re doing, child? — but it was too late, because they were gone into the woods and the girl wasn’t going to pay any attention anyway. So she swore under her breath and threw up her hands and sighed.

And followed her daughter and the hoodoo man into the west, through the woods and the tall grass and the palmettos, up the gentle rise until they stood on the bluff that overlooked the Mississippi River.

Right around dusk Leadbelly led them to a ring of big rocks up on the bluff; in the center of the ring there was a black scar of char and ashes from an old bonfire. “Help me find some wood,” he said, and Emma looked around to see that there were fallen branches all around them, lying in the grass and among the palmettos.

Emma stooped, pulled a branch half the size of a sapling out of a palmetto thicket. “Looks like a hurricane came through here,” she said.

Leadbelly shrugged. “I don’t know about any hurricane,” he said. “But there was a big storm three weeks ago.”

He took the branch from Emma, hefted it, and broke it cleanly over his knee. Folded the two halves together and broke them as a pair.

“You need more?” Emma asked.

The old man shrugged. “Small stuff,” he said. “Get me kindling — there, see that branch of twigs?”

Emma grabbed the branch he pointed at, shook away the pinestraw that still clung to it, and handed it to him.

Leadbelly broke the twigs up into kindling, arranged it around the big wood, and lit the fire with an old Zippo lighter.

Lisa lifted Leadbelly’s guitar out of the grass. “I like your guitar,” she said. She let it rest on her knees as she ran her finger up and down the strings. “It’s very beautiful.”

The old man turned around, swearing as he did. “You put that down,” he said. “I never told you you could touch my hammer.”

For half a moment Lisa almost looked afraid. “You never said I couldn’t,” she said. And then she set the guitar gently on the grass beside the old man.

“Lisa!” Emma said. “Don’t you be fresh!”

The old man shrugged. “Let her say anything she pleases,” he said. “It don’t bother me.”

He took the guitar by the neck and lifted it off the ground. Carried it to the far side of the fire and began to play.

As he played he sang. He sang a song with no words at all, but he didn’t need words, because he wasn’t singing to Emma or Lisa. He was singing to the fire, and as he sang the fire roared to life.

So beautiful, that fire. It had a very special beauty, because it was enchanted, and not just enchanted but revealed — for as Leadbelly sang the fire grew not only greater but truer, and by and by its truth grew ultimately revealing. Truer and clearer and more beautiful, and now the light it cast showed things not shadowy as firelight but true as sunshine.

“I saw a fire like this lots of times,” Lisa said at last, but she wouldn’t say no more than that, no matter how her mother prompted her.

“Is that so, child?” the old man asked.

But Lisa wouldn’t answer him, either.

Now the fire grew so true that its light began to suffuse them. For a moment Leadbelly looked transparent as a ghost — Emma could see the river through his heart, and she knew the magic in the music had consumed them all; consumed them all as it grew truer and truer, so true that now it showed the deepest secret truth about each of them.

Emma could even see the ghost of her own truth, surrounding her: it was the specter of courage, for she was a woman with backbone who would never flinch from any terror if it meant the welfare of her child.

The true light showed Leadbelly for the angry mean-tempered scoundrel that he was — but it showed the splendor of his gift, too, and it showed he knew something true and important about the nature of the world. Listening to him in that light Emma knew that he sang songs that God whispered in his ear.

And then she looked at Lisa.

Lisa looked dreadful in the true light from the fire: her skin was venous, mottled, and leathery as the surface of the cancer that bore her. And the look in her eye was so bloodthirsty! — And standing behind her with a hand on Lisa’s shoulder was Santa Barbara with her burning sword.