by Guran, Paula
“Those aren’t lyrics, those are notes.”
“I know,” he said.
“You don’t have a music education. You just play.”
“Because of the record, I can read music, and I can write things that don’t make any sense to me unless it’s when I’m writing them, when I’m listening to that music. All those marks, they are musical notes, and the other marks are other kinds of notes, notes for sounds that I couldn’t make until a few days back. I didn’t even know those sounds were possible. But now, my head is full of the sounds and those marks and all manner of things, and the only way I can rest is to write them down. I wrote on the wall cause I thought the marks, the notes themselves, might hold that thing back and I could run. Didn’t work.”
“None of this makes any sense to me,” I said.
“All right,” Tootie said, “This is the best I can explain something that’s got no explanation. I had some blues boys tell me they once come to this place on the South side called Cross Road Records. It’s a little record shop where the streets cross. It’s got all manner of things in it, and it’s got this big colored guy with a big white smile and bloodshot eyes that works the joint. They said they’d seen the place, poked their heads in, and even heard Robert Johnson’s sounds coming from a player on the counter. There was a big man sitting behind the counter, and he waved them in, but the place didn’t seem right, they said, so they didn’t go in.
“But, you know me. That sounded like just the place I wanted to go. So, I went. It’s where South Street crosses a street called Way Left.
“I go in there, and I’m the only one in the store. There’s records everywhere, in boxes, lying on tables. Some got labels, some don’t. I’m looking, trying to figure out how you told about anything, and this big fella with the smile comes over to me and starts to talk. He had breath like an un-wiped butt, and his face didn’t seem so much like black skin as it did black rock.
“He said, ‘I know what you’re looking for.’ He reached in a box, and pulled out a record didn’t have no label on it. Thing was, that whole box didn’t have labels. I think he’s just messing with me, trying to make a sale. I’m ready to go, cause he’s starting to make my skin crawl. Way he moves ain’t natural, you know. It’s like he’s got something wrong with his feet, but he’s still able to move, and quick like. Like he does it between the times you blink your eyes.
“He goes over and puts that record on a player, and it starts up, and it was Robert Johnson. I swear, it was him. Wasn’t no one could play like him. It was him. And here’s the thing. It wasn’t a song I’d ever heard by him. And I thought I’d heard all the music he’d put on wax.”
Tootie sipped at his coffee. He looked at the wall a moment, and then changed the player again.
I said, “Swap out spots, and I’ll change it. You sip and talk. Tell me all of it.”
We did that, and Tootie continued.
“Well, one thing comes to another, and he starts talking me up good, and I finally I ask him how much for the record. He looks at me, and he says, ‘For you, all you got to give me is a little blue soul. And when you come back, you got to buy something with a bit more of it till it’s all gone and I got it. Cause you will be back.’
“I figured he was talking about me playing my guitar for him, cause I’d told him I was a player, you know, while we was talking. I told him I had my guitar in a room I was renting, and I was on foot, and it would take me all day to get my guitar and get back, so I’d have to pass on that deal. Besides, I was about tapped out of money. I had a place I was supposed to play that evening, but until then, I had maybe three dollars and some change in my pocket. I had the rent on this room paid up all week, and I hadn’t been there but two days. I tell him all that, and he says, ‘Oh, that’s all right. I know you can play. I can tell about things like that. What I mean is, you give me a drop of blood and a promise, and you can have that record. Right then, I started to walk out, cause I’m thinking, this guy is nutty as fruitcake with an extra dose of nuts, but I want that record. So, I tell him, sure, I’ll give him a drop of blood. I won’t lie none to you, Ricky, I was thinking about nabbing that record and making a run with it. I wanted it that bad. So a drop of blood, that didn’t mean nothin’.
“He pulls a record needle out from behind the counter, and he comes over and pokes my finger with it, sudden like, while I’m still trying to figure how he got over to me that fast, and he holds my hand and lets blood drip on—get this—the record. It flows into the grooves.
“He says, ‘Now, you promise me your blues playing soul is mine when you die.’
“I thought it was just talk, you know, so I told him he could have it. He says, ‘When you hear it, you’ll be able to play it. And when you play it, sometime when you’re real good on it, it’ll start to come, like a rat easing its nose into hot dead meat. It’ll start to come.’
“What will?” I said. “What are you talking about?”
“He says, ‘You’ll know.’
“Next thing I know, he’s over by the door, got it open and he’s smiling at me, and I swear, I thought for a moment I could see right through him. Could see his skull and bones. I’ve got the record in my hand, and I’m walking out, and as soon as I do, he shuts the door and I hear the lock turn.
“My first thought was, I got to get this blood out of the record grooves, cause that crazy bastard has just given me a lost Robert Johnson song for nothing. I took out a kerchief, pulled the record out of the sleeve, and went to wiping. The blood wouldn’t come out. It was in the notches, you know.
“I went back to my room here, and I tried a bit of warm water on the blood in the grooves, but it still wouldn’t come out. I was mad as hell, figured the record wouldn’t play, way that blood had hardened in the grooves. I put it on and thought maybe the needle would wear the stuff out, but as soon as it was on the player and the needle hit it, it started sounding just the way it had in the store. I sat on the bed and listened to it, three or four times, and then I got my guitar and tried to play what was being played, knowing I couldn’t do it, cause though I knew that sound wasn’t electrified, it sounded like it was. But, here’s the thing. I could do it. I could play it. And I could see the notes in my head, and my head got filled up with them. I went out and bought those notebooks, and I wrote it all down just so my head wouldn’t explode, cause every time I heard that record, and tried to play it, them notes would cricket-hop in my skull.”
All the while we had been talking, I had been replaying the record.
“I forgot all about the gig that night,” Tootie said. “I sat here until morning playing. By noon the next day, I sounded just like that record. By late afternoon, I started to get kind of sick. I can’t explain it, but I was feeling that there was something trying to tear through somewhere, and it scared me and my insides knotted up.
“I don’t know any better way of saying it than that. It was such a strong feeling. Then, while I was playing, the wall there, it come apart the way you seen it, and I seen that thing. It was just a wink of a look. But there it was. In all its terrible glory.
“I quit playing, and the wall wobbled back in place and closed up. I thought, Damn, I need to eat or nap, or something. And I did. Then I was back on that guitar. I could play like crazy, and I started going off on that song, adding here and there. It wasn’t like it was coming from me, though. It was like I was getting help from somewhere.
“Finally, with my fingers bleeding and cramped and aching, and my voice gone raspy from singing, I quit. Still, I wanted to hear it, so I put on the record. And it wasn’t the same no more. It was Johnson, but the words was strange, not English. Sounded like some kind of chant, and I knew then that Johnson was in that record, as sure as I was in this room, and that that chanting and that playing was opening up a hole for that thing in the wall. It was the way that fella had said. It was like a rat working its nose through red hot meat, and now it felt like I was the meat. Next time I played the record, the voice on i
t wasn’t Johnson’s. It was mine.
“I had had enough, so I got the record and took it back to that shop. The place was the same as before, and like before, I was the only one in there. He looked at me, and comes over, and says, ‘You already want to undo the deal. I can tell. They all do. But that ain’t gonna happen.’
“I gave him a look like I was gonna jump on him and beat his ass, but he gave me a look back, and I went weak as a kitten.
“He smiled at me, and pulls out another record from that same box, and he takes the one I gave him and puts it back, and says, ‘You done made a deal, but for a lick of your soul, I’ll let you have this. See, you done opened the path, now that rat’s got to work on that meat. It don’t take no more record or you playing for that to happen. Rat’s gotta to eat now, no matter what you do.’
“When he said that, he picks up my hand and looks at my cut up fingers from playing, and he laughs so loud everything in the store shakes, and he squeezes my fingers until they start to bleed.
“A lick of my soul?” I asked.
“And then he pushed the record in my hand, and if I’m lying, I’m dying, he sticks out his tongue, and it’s long as an old rat snake and black as a hole in the ground, and he licks me right around the neck. When he’s had a taste, he smiles and shivers, like he’s just had something cool to drink.”
Tootie paused to unfasten his shirt and peel it down a little. There was a spot half way around his neck like someone had worked him over with sand paper.
“ ‘A taste,’ he says, and then he shoves this record in my hand, which is bleeding from where he squeezed my fingers. Next thing I know, I’m looking at the record, and it’s thick, and I touch it, and it’s two records, back to back. He says, ‘I give you that extra one cause you tasted mighty good, and maybe it’ll let you get a little more rest that way, if you got a turntable drop. Call me generous and kind in my old age.’
“Wasn’t nothing for it but to take the records and come back here. I didn’t have no intention of playing it. I almost threw it away. But by then, that thing in the wall, wherever it is, was starting to stick through. Each time the hole was bigger and I could see more of it, and that red shadow was falling out on the floor. I thought about running, but I didn’t want to just let it loose, and I knew, deep down, no matter where I went, it would come too.
“I started playing that record in self-defense. Pretty soon, I’m playing it on the guitar. When I got scared enough, got certain enough that thing was coming through, I played hard, and that hole would close, and that thing would go back where it come from. For awhile.
“I figured though, I ought to have some insurance. You see, I played both them records, and they was the same thing, and it was my voice, and I hadn’t never recorded or even heard them songs before. I knew then, what was on those notes I had written, what had come to me was the counter song to the one I had been playing first. I don’t know if that was just some kind of joke that record store fella had played on me, but I knew it was magic of a sort. He had give me a song to let it in and he had give me another song to hold it back. It was amusing to him, I’m sure.
“I thought I had the thing at bay, so I took that other copy, went to the Post Office, mailed it to Alma, case something happened to me. I guess I thought it was self defense for her, but there was another part was proud of what I had done. What I was able to do. I could play anything now, and I didn’t even need to think about it. Regular blues, it was a snap. Anything on that guitar was easy, even things you ought not to be able to play on one. Now, I realize it ain’t me. It’s something else out there.
“But when I come back from mailing, I brought me some paint and brushes, thought I’d write the notes and such on the wall. I did that, and I was ready to pack and go roaming some more, showing off my new skills, and all of a sudden, the thing, it’s pushing through. It had gotten stronger cause I hadn’t been playing the sounds, man. I put on the record, and I pretty much been at it ever since.
“It was all that record fella’s game, you see. I got to figuring he was the devil, or something like him. He had me playing a game to keep that thing out, and to keep my soul. But it was a three-minute game, six if I’d have kept that second record and put it on the drop. If I was playing on the guitar, I could just work from the end of that record back to the front of it, playing it over and over. But it wore me down. Finally, I started playing the record nonstop. And I have for days.
“The fat man downstairs, he’d come up for the rent, but as soon as he’d use his key and crack that door, hear that music, he’d get gone. So here I am, still playing, with nothing left but to keep on playing, or get my soul sucked up by that thing and delivered to the record store man.”
Tootie minded the record, and I went over to where he told me the record store was with the idea to put a boot up the guy’s ass, or a .45 slug in his noggin. I found South Street, but not Way South. The other street that should have been Way South was called Back Water. There wasn’t a store either, just an empty, unlocked building. I opened the door and went inside. There was dust everywhere, and I could see where some tables had been, cause their leg marks was in the dust. But anyone or anything that had been there, was long gone.
I went back to the hotel, and when I got there, Tootie was just about asleep. The record was turning on the turntable without any sound. I looked at the wall, and I could see the beak of that thing, chewing at it. I put the record on, and this time, when it come to the end, the thing was still chewing. I played it another time, and another, and the thing finally went away. It was getting stronger.
I woke Tootie up, said, “You know, we’re gonna find out if this thing can outrun my souped-up Chevy.”
“Ain’t no use,” Tootie said.
“Then we ain’t got nothing to lose,” I said.
We grabbed up the record and his guitar, and we was downstairs and out on the street faster than you can snap your fingers. As we passed where the toad was, he saw me and got up quick and went into the kitchen and closed the door. If I’d had time, I’d have beat his ass on general principles.
When we walked to where I had parked my car, it was sitting on four flats and the side windows was knocked out and the aerial was snapped off. The record Alma May had given me was still there, lying on the seat. I got it and put it against the other one in my hand. It was all I could do.
As for the car, I was gonna drive that Chevy back to East Texas like I was gonna fly back on a sheet of wet newspaper.
Now, I got to smellin’ that smell. One that was in the room. I looked at the sky. The sun was kind of hazy. Green even. The air around us trembled, like it was scared of something. It was heavy, like a blanket. I grabbed Tootie by the arm, pulled him down the street. I spied a car at a curb that I thought could run, a V-8 Ford. I kicked the back side window out, reached through and got the latch.
I slid across the seat and got behind the wheel. Tootie climbed in on the passenger side. I bent down and worked some wires under the dash loose with my fingers and my razor, hot-wired the car. The motor throbbed and we was out of there.
It didn’t make any kind of sense, but as we was cruising along, behind us it was getting dark. It was like chocolate pudding in a big wad rolling after us. Stars was popping up in it. They seemed more like eyes than stars. There was a bit of a moon, slightly covered over in what looked like a red fungus.
I drove that Ford fast as I could. I was hitting the needle at a hundred and ten. Didn’t see a car on the highway. Not a highway cop, not an old lady on the way to the store. Where the hell was everybody? The highway looped up and down like the bottom was trying to fall out from under us.
To make it all short, I drove hard and fast, and stopped once for gas, having the man fill it quick. I gave him a bill that was more than the gas was worth, and he grinned at me as we burned rubber getting away. I don’t think he could see what we could see—that dark sky with that thing in it. It was like you had to hear the music to see the thing existed,
or for it to have any effect in your life. For him, it was daylight and fine and life was good.
By the time I hit East Texas, there was smoke coming from under that stolen Ford’s hood. We came down a hill, and it was daylight in front of us, and behind us the dark was rolling in; it was splittin’, making a kind of corridor, and there was that beaked thing, that . . . Whatever it was. It was bigger than before and it was squirming its way out of the night sky like a weasel working its way under a fence. I tried to convince myself it was all in my head, but I wasn’t convinced enough to stop and find out.
I made the bottom of the hill, in sight of the road that turned off to Alma May’s. I don’t know why I felt going there mattered, but it was something I had in my mind. Make it to Alma May’s, and deliver on my agreement, bring her brother into the house. Course, I hadn’t really thought that thing would or could follow us.
It was right then the car engine blew in an explosion that made the hood bunch up from the impact of thrown pistons.
The car died and coasted onto the road that led to Alma May’s house. We could see the house, standing in daylight. But even that light was fading as the night behind us eased on in.
I jerked open the car door, snatched the records off the back seat, and yelled to Tootie to start running. He nabbed his guitar, and a moment later, we were both making tracks for Alma May’s.
Looking back, I saw there was a moon back there, and stars too, but mostly there was that thing, full of eyes and covered in sores and tentacles and legs and things I can’t even describe. It was like someone had thrown critters and fish and bugs and beaks and all manner of disease into a bowl and whipped it together with a whipping spoon.
When we got to Alma May’s, I beat on the door. She opened it, showing a face that told me she thought I was knocking too hard, but then she looked over my shoulder, and went pale, almost as if her skin was white. She had heard the music, so she could see it too.