Bone Music Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used in tribute, eulogy or by permission of the subject. Any other resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First eBook Edition: Chameleon Publishing 2015

  First Hardcover edition published by Longmeadow Press 1995

  All Text is ©2015 Alan Rodgers LLC

  Bone Music Copyright © 1995 by Alan Paul Rodgers

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Chameleon Publishing

  Publishers since 2014

  23511 Aliso Creek Road #120

  Aliso Viejo, CA 92656

  www.chameleonpublishers.com

  Cover Illustration: Amy Sterling Casil

  Edited by Scott Rodgers

  ISBN: 978-1-60312-303-7 E-book

  BIC: FK Horror and Ghost Stories

  Bone Music

  Dedication

  The Beginning

  Emma

  Robert Johnson

  Hoodoo Doctor

  Blind Willie

  The Truth Will Set You Free

  Blind Hoodoo Men

  Blind Willie

  Sonny Boy

  Spanish Harlem

  Among the Saint Francois Mountains

  Spanish Harlem

  Marlin, Texas

  Spanish Harlem

  Marlin, Texas

  Spanish Harlem

  Mama Estrella

  Among the Saint Francois Mountains - The King of Southeastern Missouri

  Outside Memphis, Tennessee

  John Henry and the Wizard Kings

  Spanish Harlem - School

  With the Lady

  Hell - John Henry

  Near St. Marys, Missouri - Peetie Wheatstraw

  Hell

  Near Johnson City, Tennessee

  Los Angeles, California - Dan Alvarez

  Among the Saint Francois Mountains Of Southeastern Missouri

  On the Road in Eastern Tennessee

  Among the Saint Francois Mountains Of Southeastern Missouri - again

  Greenville, Mississippi - The Present

  Los Angeles, California - The Present

  Greenville, Mississippi - The Present

  On a Railway in the Southwest - The Present

  Among the Saint Francois Mountains - Of Southeastern Missouri

  Greenville, Mississippi - 3

  On a Railway in the Southwest - The Present

  Among the Saint Francois Mountains Of Southeastern Missouri

  Greenville, Mississippi - 4

  Los Angeles, California - The Present

  Memphis, Tennessee - Again

  New Orleans, Louisiana - The Present

  Somewhere in America - Traveling by Rail

  The Devil’s Quarter of New Orleans

  Somewhere in America - Traveling by Rail

  Memphis, Tennessee - Robert Johnson

  Detroit, Michigan - The Present

  Memphis, Tennessee - Again

  Detroit, Michigan - The Present

  Memphis, Tennessee

  Greenville, Mississippi - Emma

  Memphis, Tennessee - September 1952

  Memphis, Tennessee - Tampa Red

  Hell.

  The Devil’s Quarter of New Orleans

  The South Side of Chicago- Stevie Ray Vaughan

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Dedication

  For Kay McCauley

  who walks on water

  The Beginning

  Long before anybody else figured it out, Lisa knew how big it was, the thing that was wrong with her. She was only eight, and she was only a girl, and she was dying, but even so, she knew: even back before she died she knew about the Hoodoo Doctors and the Seven Kings and even the Eye of the World.

  Partly she knew from the dream she had the night she died. Santa Barbara weighed her that night in the place between dead and alive — she whispered to Lisa, and touched her.

  But even more she knew hoodoo because the magic and the music lived inside her heart, and she breathed and drank them both even when she was alive.

  That was the thing about Lisa: the music was inside her, and when she died she lived and died and lived again. Because she knew both sides of death so well, she knew the song they call Judgment Day as though she were a Hoodoo Doctor. She loved that song, and sometimes she sang snatches of it in her head. But she knew better than to sing it aloud. Of course she did! Anybody who’s got the sense to hear that song knows what it will do, come Judgment Day: They know that it will open up the Eye of the World, and Hell will cry upon the Mississippi Delta when she sings.

  Lisa loved that song. But she never ever sang the tune.

  Now Robert Johnson, he sang the tune. But Robert Johnson was a young man when he sang it — brash and vainglorious, and when he sang Judgment Day he sang because he knew that he was dying and he thought that was the end of the world. Such a fool, that Robert Johnson! Everybody with the talent knows no bluesman ever lived to be a Hoodoo Doctor without dying first. But that was Robert Johnson for you: He lived and he died and when he was dead Hell spat him out, because not even Hell can abide vanity vast enough to swallow the world.

  Before the world broke open there were seven kings — seven hoodoo wizards who ruled the Mississippi lowlands from the Delta all the way north to Chicago. Oh, they didn’t rule so you could see — there were mayors and governors and presidents for that. But those men weren’t true powers in the Delta. The real powers were the Wizard Kings of Hoodoo, and the lesser hoodoo men — Hoodoo Doctors — sworn to them.

  You and I know these hoodoo wizards as great blues singers, dead and buried. But they are not dead — only hidden, pulled away from the world.

  After he was dead awhile, Robert Johnson repented. But Hell never did forgive him.

  The first time Lisa Henderson saw the goddess who repented was in the hospital when she was still alive. She was in her sunny room in the children’s ward, and it was dusk with the sun streaming in across the river to make the room brighter than it was all day, and the goddess whispered to her.

  Lisa, she said.

  Lisa’s hair stood on end the moment she heard the goddess say her name. Not just because the room was empty and alone — Lisa got an awful chill the moment that she heard it because she recognized that voice, even though she’d never heard it.

  Because all her life she’d heard the old ladies talking on the tenement stoops. And she knew about Santa Barbara, who they sometimes call Shungó or the goddess who repented. And the moment Lisa heard that voice she knew that no matter what the doctors did, no matter how her mother prayed, no matter how the nurses nursed and Mama Estrella came to give a blessing — no matter how it happened Lisa was about to die.

  She turned to face Shungó and she looked the goddess in the eye. She was so beautiful, Lisa thought. More beautiful than any goddess ought to be; more beautiful than a demon loa like Shungó could ever be — when Lisa saw her she knew she was a Santa, good and true, a Santa so beautiful that she could only be Santa Barbara, the virgin with the sword. None of the other stories mattered to Lisa — none of the horrible tales that surrounded the goddess who repented made any difference at all.

  Becaus
e Lisa loved Santa Barbara. She didn’t hesitate: she took the Santa‘s outstretched hand and followed her into a dream.

  But the dream was no dream at all — only the blackness of an hour’s sleep while the nurses came to take away her untouched dinner.

  When she woke she felt calm and rested. She already knew what would happen that night, and in her heart she was prepared.

  At nine her mama came back to be with her, and Lisa was glad. She wanted Mama with her tonight, because even if she was prepared to face the darkness she wasn’t ready to face it alone.

  “I love you, Mama,” Lisa said.

  Mama kissed Lisa’s forehead and sat in the recliner beside the hospital bed.

  “How was your dinner, child?” Mama asked.

  Lisa smiled and lied. “It was wonderful, Mama.”

  Mama knew that was a lie. She looked at Lisa disapprovingly, and Lisa knew she was about to get another lecture, and oh but she hated lectures.

  “Child —” Mama said, and then she just stopped. Lisa waited for her to go on, but she never did.

  “I’m sorry, Mama,” Lisa said. “I tried to eat it. I really did. I was hungry! But the food here is so gross. . . .” She patted her stomach as she spoke, to emphasize her hunger.

  That was a bad idea. Because the cancer was a mound beside her stomach, and when her fingers brushed across the roundness where it bulged against her skin, the tumor throbbed painfully, and kept throbbing. Then suddenly the pain became unbearable, and Lisa screamed. She writhed against the mattress, twisting the sheets as she tried to push the agony away from her — grabbed her hips with her hands, pulled herself tight, tried to press out the fiery mass that was her cancer . . . closed her eyes and pushed the way she saw Lily Fernandez push the day she had her baby on the tenement stair.

  When she opened her eyes again there was blood everywhere just like when Lily had her baby. For a moment Lisa thought she’d done it — pushed the throbbing burning out of her, but no, no, it was only the tube from her arm pulled loose and blood was jetting everywhere from the broken tube and the torn vein, pulsing blood went everywhere with every excruciating throb in her abdomen.

  Then something deep inside her stomach surged and broke, and the pain metamorphosed into a sensation so terrible and consuming that Lisa lost sight of everything but the cancer as she screamed —

  And screamed, and screamed.

  She was alone with the cancer for a long time after that. The world receded; her mother disappeared; if the doctors came to tend to her she never saw them. The part of her that could think was certain she was dying. Any moment now the world would turn to night and the Santa would take her hand to lead her through the darkness between this world and the next.

  But the night and the Santa never came. Instead the world swam back into focus as the doctors poured their medicines into her, and Lisa saw them everywhere crowding around her, nurses, doctors, people in uniforms she didn’t recognize.

  “We need to operate,” someone said. “She’s hemorrhaging.”

  The medicine was cold comfort dripping down into the veins of her right arm. It turned the pain into an abstraction, and pushed the world so far away . . . so far away that Lisa hardly screamed when she saw the doctors cut her tummy with their knives. She felt the pressure where they cut her, and she felt the flesh peel open as it parted from the scalpel’s edge. She heard the Velcro sound as the surgeon pulled the skin of her abdomen away from the cancer that bulged out of her like a leathery grey egg, and she saw blood roiling away from the tumor, and she wanted to reach out to touch the mottled surface of the cancer. But the medicine was too much for her; when she tried to lift her hand she found she did not have the strength to move it.

  One of the doctors reached into her open stomach with a clamp; after a moment the blood stopped welling from her abdomen.

  “I’ve stopped the hemorrhage,” her surgeon said. “But — something’s wrong. This is impossible.” He reached into her again, and Lisa felt him lift the cancer, saw him peer at its underside. “The tumor has grown into her femoral artery. It’s got to be impeding blood flow from her heart.”

  The doctor beside him swore. “What’re you talking about? Tumors don’t grow into arteries. It just doesn’t happen.”

  “Look for yourself.”

  The second doctor swore again. “I see it,” he said.

  “The growth has weakened the arterial wall — look at it, it’s going to tear soon.” The first doctor paused, gestured at the perspiration beading on his forehead. An orderly tamped the moisture with white gauze. “There’s no way to remove it. When it tears, the girl is dead.”

  Lisa wanted to give that doctor a piece of her mind. I’m not dead, she wanted to say. I’m not! I’m alive! But her voice betrayed her just as her hand had betrayed her, and she was silent.

  “She’s still breathing, Jim. Hell, her eyes are open. For all you know she may be awake enough to hear you.”

  “It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing we can do.”

  The second surgeon sighed. He sounded angry. “You’re wrong,” he said. “Stand aside and let me work.”

  Someone twisted the sphincter on Lisa’s IV, and more cold leaked down into her forearm through the plastic tube.

  When the coldness reached her wrist, the world went away for the last time. First there was darkness, and cold, and then the Santa kissed her.

  Took her hand and led Lisa away into the darkness where there are no stars.

  Emma

  Anyone with half an ear for magic can hear the eerie melody deep inside the blues. Lisa’s mother, Emma Henderson, heard it every time she listened. She only listened when she was afraid.

  After Lisa’s life was over and before her death had come to her, Santa Barbara walked with her in the place between this life and the next.

  When most people die they pass those steps so quickly that the trauma of the passage leaves no memory on them. But Lisa stumbled in that place, and as she fell the Santa held her by the hand and kept her from tumbling into the emptiness.

  Lisa looked up at the Santa through the light that was no light but darkness visible, and she almost started to cry. “I’m scared, Santa,” she said.

  Santa Barbara didn’t answer, but the power of her silence reassured Lisa. After a moment she drew her flaming sword from the sheath that hung at her belt, and as the blade came free its fire illuminated the corridor that carries children through the Kingdom of Death toward the gates of Heaven and Hell.

  Lisa saw where she was, and she had to ask her fate before it found her. “Where am I going?” she asked.

  The Santa frowned.

  “It isn’t time for you to go, child,” the Santa said.

  “I don’t understand,” Lisa said. “What do you mean?”

  The Santa let go Lisa’s hand, wrapped her arm around the girl’s tiny shoulder, and drew her to her breast.

  “Don’t tremble, child,” she said. “There’s nothing to fear.”

  The Santa‘s reassurance frightened Lisa.

  “I don’t understand,” Lisa said. “Tell me what you mean.”

  Santa Barbara frowned. “The world still needs you, child.”

  “I’m just a girl,” Lisa said. “I don’t want the world to need me.”

  The Santa kissed her on the forehead.

  “That’s why it needs you most of all,” the Santa said. “God loves the humble most of all.”

  When the Santa said God’s name her sword shone brightly as the sun, and Lisa felt God’s Love enfold her in a way that living children hardly can imagine.

  “I don’t want to go back,” Lisa said.

  The Santa nodded. “I know you don’t, child.”

  “I won’t go,” Lisa said. “I won’t, I won’t.”

  The Santa frowne
d again. “Listen to it, girl.” She gestured at the darkling haze at the near end of the hall. “That’s the music of the world, calling you back into the elements of life. Could your heart deny that song?”

  Lisa tried to answer. She wanted to say Yes, yes, it could, it will, I won’t go, do you hear? but it wasn’t any use: she was already gone.

  Our Lady of Sorrows: Santa Barbara, the virgin who carries the sword.

  You can find her shrines in lawns and niches all through Florida, the northeast; everywhere folks have immigrated from the Caribbean. Uninitiated folks might mistake them for shrines to the Virgin Mary — but that’s a serious mistake. For Santa Barbara is nothing but nothing at all like the Mother of the Lord.

  Some say she is no saint at all, but rather a voodoo demon loa whose secret name is Shungó. Others say she is a saint, bloodthirsty and vindictive but touched with the righteousness of Heaven.

  No ordinary man could ever say for certain which she is — though there are those who think they know. Those who truly know would never say: questions like that aren’t meant to answer.

  Wise men know and fear her; honor and respect her, no matter what they call her.

  Only fools dare to cross her.

  There is a song all bluesmen know: they call it the song for Judgment Day.

  Some of them know it in bits and pieces; others know it nearly whole. The oldest, greatest, deepest talents among them know the song as it truly will be sung — but none of them would ever sing it just that way.

  None of them would dare.

  As bluesmen and lady blues singers learn their craft they come to know this song a little at a time; as they master the blues the song comes to them more and more clearly. If and when they grow to be Hoodoo Doctors (and few of them ever do) they know it by heart, and in their hearts — no matter how they’ve never heard it sung.

  No Hoodoo Doctor who knew the song would ever play it.

  Not exactly. He wouldn’t dare: anyone who hears the song enough to know it knows what it will do.

  If you listen to much blues you’ve probably heard bits and pieces of it, worked and reworked into blues standards (some of which have gone on to be rock ‘n’ roll standards) — but even if you’ve heard them all you’ve only seen the shadows that this song casts. There’s no way plain uninitiated folks can imagine the original from its parts.