by Alan Rodgers
And snapped.
“Damn you!” Leadbelly shouted. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
As the Devil laughed at the presumption of the question, and Leadbelly’s knees buckled beneath him, and —
And Leadbelly forced his knees to straighten, and stood to face the Devil, and raised his hands against him.
“I’m going to kill you,” Leadbelly whispered, still trembling as his knees shook and shivered underneath him — “I swear I am.”
That was when Emma saw he had a razor in his hand, just before Leadbelly stepped onto the dais of the Devil’s throne and slit that fallen angel’s throat as if he were a hog for slaughter.
Memphis, Tennessee - Tampa Red
September 1952
When the last fire burned itself cold on the ridge over Memphis, the blues were all but dead. Oh, there were still talents scattered here and there across the land — but there was no one on the Mountain, and there was no order, and there was no rule to guide the people’s spirit. They were terrible days, those last weeks of September 1952.
Like a winter of the spirit where there was neither magic nor music.
Oh, there was white Elvis Presley, half a talent laboring under the burden of the great King’s guitar; and there was Furry Lewis, six months convalescing in the hospital after his automobile wreck. And there were tiny lights whose talents grew in the vacuum — grew and grew to fill the void, grew until their gifts exceeded the ability of their hearts to contain them.
The magic overtook those bluesmen. It haunted them, and ruined most of them. Many turned to drugs or spirit liquor, trying to tamp the music and the magic that haunted them; so many of them came to bad ends.
Like Tampa Red.
It isn’t hard to hear what happened to Tampa Red, even from a distance of years, listening to recordings. The difference between the sides he cut in his youth and those he produced after his retirement is dramatic. When he was young he sang dance blues, snappy and glib, music you can listen to for years and never notice. But his later work is unmistakable. There’s an eerie, haunting quality about it that no one ever could mistake; hear it once and you never will forget it.
Red quit recording after the death of his wife, in the early fifties, just after the horrible events above Memphis. He quit because something had changed — in the music, in the world, and in himself. Grief had put something deep and compelling in his blues (which till then had been light and facile, easy music from an easy talent, pretty but callow). And as he and the world and his music changed in concert, things began to happen when he played.
The hoodoo was in him, then. But he — like Elvis and so many others after the fall of the Seven Kings — didn’t want to face it. He was a musician, not a hoodoo man; he wanted to sing, not make songs to charm the dead out of their graves.
But the magic was in him, whether he wanted it or not.
So Tampa Red did the hardest thing he ever did in his life: he set his guitar aside. He took his savings home to Tampa, bought him a little place in a neighborhood only lately gone to hell, and lived the same life every other retired person lives in Florida: quiet and peaceable and mundane.
No hoodoo in that life, nor ever ought there be. Tampa Red liked it mighty fine, no matter how sad it made him not to play.
Then one night he met three people in a bar — three men who knew his lifework, and loved it out of all proportion to the resonance he’d carried in those days. When he was deep in his cups he told them who he was, and told them he still knew his licks.
I could record tomorrow, he said, and the three men laughed, and after a while Red laughed along with them.
Then the third man said, “You know, I believe you,” and Red sang three haunting choruses of “Tight Like That,” and they all knew how true it was.
“We’ll rent a studio tomorrow,” the second one said. Tampa wasn’t any music town, but any place the size of Tampa has a place where local businesses record their radio advertisements, and they rented that.
And Red set that place on fire.
He truly did. All three of the men and the engineers they hired saw the brilliant flames that burned around him as he played — but later they decided they imagined it among them, because the photos that they took showed nothing but an old old man, picking his guitar.
Not that it matters. Because the fire was the least of what took place in that studio: the most of it was music, alive and magical, full of hoodoo sorcery and things no man could describe; and if the magic lost itself in that room, the music found its way to tape, and anyone who listens to that album knows the reason Red retired.
Because his talent grew too great for him, and (for all the saltiness of his early songs) he was a Godly man who never would abide that.
Red made one more album, a year after his comeback. The scene that grew up from his singing that time was a terrible, terrible thing, and does not bear recounting. The sight of it frightened him so dearly that he never sang again.
It was like that for Washboard Sam, too. He’d given up the music back in 1946 — quit playing and recording blues, set his guitar down, and spent the rest of his life as a policeman, raising a family, trying to be an ordinary man.
But the music came for him, all the same. It came to him in his dreams, starting in the early fifties, and haunted him till finally he knew he had to play.
He played in public three times after his retirement: recording dates in 1953 and 1954, and during a European tour in 1964. He died in 1966 of heart failure.
But some folks say he never died.
They say that Sam became a deadman, just as if he were one of the seven lost forgotten Kings, and if you know the place and the password and the right day of the year, you can find him to this day, playing songs that cleanse the hearts of wicked men and teach the lame to heal.
There are other names, too. Stevie Ray Vaughan was a bluesman who came to a strange untimely end, and now they whisper his unlikely name in the strangest, most unlikely times and places.
Furry Lewis died in 1983 at the age of ninety. The records he recorded in the last days of his life are amazing things.
Elvis was the King, but everyone who knows him knows he never meant to be.
The Shrine of the Repentance of Shungó
Blue Hell
Timeless
For the longest time Lisa sat on the sandy bank of the stream beside Robert Johnson, waiting for the Lady to speak. As she sat, she listened — to the Hellish jungle all around them; to the wind in the infernal blue sky; to the sound of poor damned Robert Johnson breathing lifelessly.
But most of all she listened to the stream. It sounded so beautiful, that stream — the sound of the brook was the strumming of a guitar, gently pressing four-four time.
The whisper of the leaves on the breeze as they stood beside the water was the song that was the motion of the world.
Some of those who’ve heard the music of the shrine say it’s lonely, ponderous, and sad; blues music like you hear when you get up in the morning and the blues are there to greet you.
But other people say that it isn’t sad or happy, but beautiful and intense as the music that is the sum of all our lives.
Robert Johnson pointed at the water that ran through the shrine. “The Eye of the World is down there,” he said. “I helped the Lady bring it there in 1952. It cost me everything I loved, and it cost me my salvation. But I don’t regret it for a moment.”
Lisa frowned. “That can’t be,” she said. “I saw it, hanging high above the river. How can it be here and there?”
Robert Johnson shook his head. “You don’t understand,” he said. “The Eye has two faces. One of them hangs above the river, waiting for Judgment Day. The other one is here in Hell, waiting to carry the damned to the world and Armageddon and their Judgment.”
The brook that strums, the jungle forest that whispers secret histories of all our days, the basin that holds the lens that Hoodoo Doctors call the Eye of the World — there’s no way anyone who witnessed any of those things could mistake that they’re touched divine and sacrosanct. And people ask how ever there could be such a holy shrine in the bluest pit of Hell.
Sensibly enough.
But the sense in that misses Hell’s true nature. For it’s a place not only for the damned but for the damned and unrepentant. Who among us, after all, hasn’t once or another time sinned enough to damn him straight to Hell? The God Who loves us knows our weaknesses, and He loves us even so. Hell isn’t a place of Holy Wrath and Retribution; it’s a place to separate the pious from the unrepentant.
It’s not a pretty place. Just the opposite, in fact: Hellish means just what it does because the Pits are Awful. But that Hellishness reflects not Divine Judgment but the nature of the occupants. And there are those among the unrepentant with greatness, love, and beauty in them, no matter how they sin.
The Santa told Lisa these things as the girl sat on the shore of her stream.
And she told her so much more.
She told her history a thousand thousand years untold, history unknown not because it’s secret but because the living have forgot it. She told how, long before man came to the western hemisphere, another island shimmered in the sea that now surrounds great Hispaniola — a rich blue thriving place that bloomed with a thousand thousand flowers.
In a glen near the center of the island there was a shrine. There was a window in that shrine, and the window looked at heaven from the world.
The loa — a class of Higher Beings (angels, almost, but very different) — the loa built the Eye to celebrate their love for the Lord. They built a thousand other wonders, too — like their great mountainesque sculptures that stretched miles into the heavens. They took great pride in their accomplishments, and after a while they grew to hold themselves in high regard.
They grew so vain, in fact, that when man arrived in the Americas, the loa built temples that man might worship them. They were gods, they told the men who found them. They demanded to be worshiped. They demanded sacrifice — human sacrifice. And taught the Mayans, who taught the Aztec. . . .
When the blood began to stain the sea the Lord could abide no more. He walked upon the earth to cast the loa and their paradise into Hell, removing them forever from the living world. This was just a moment after the great revolt of angels, in the hours after God cast Lucifer and his confederates from Heaven; the two events were linked directly. The great isle of the loa slammed into the firmament of Hell only moments after Firgard smashed to Hell beside the sphincter of the damned Bosphorus.
For a moment, then, the Eye of the World — which only moments before had rested at one portal in the second Paradise of earth and at the other atop a glittering tower high above Firgard, the greatest Jewel in Heaven — for a moment, then, the Eye of the World rested with both antipodes in Hell. One of them in the most beautiful glade in Blue Hell; the other one atop the broken tower.
But that circumstance only lasted for a moment. For the Devil saw the comely jewel where it rested above the tower, and took it for his own; and seven angels, seeing the other about to fall into his foul hands, fought their way down into Hell to retrieve the second facet of the Eye.
The angels set the Eye they saved high above the Mississippi River, where now it watches us lovingly, waiting for the Last Days and the Destiny assigned to it. The Devil took the facet that once had looked on Heaven and hung it in the great receiving hall of the Mansion called Defiance, and for a time it was his dearest prize.
Those who’ve got the gift can see the Eye where it hangs above the river; on days when it shines clearly they can see through it, directly into Hell. Those who have that gift call it the Eye of the World, and they know it waits for Judgment Day.
Ten thousand years after the Lord cast the loa into Hell, Shungó — greatest among them — returned to the glade that once held the aperture toward Heaven. When she sat in that glade her mind’s eye looked back on the heights from which she’d fallen, and saw in reverie the glorious sight of Heaven viewed from earth.
As she remembered the Glory of the Lord, humility came to her, and she saw the error of her ways.
Seeing, she repented.
I was wrong, Shungó thought. So wrong. Her heart filled with regret, and she mourned every sin she’d ever made —
Then the Hands of the Lord appeared to her, and took her arms to carry her to Heaven and redemption. There the Lord took her to His bosom as He takes all angels to Him.
And kissed her, and sent her out into the world to be his ears and eyes upon the earth. He called her Santa Barbara, and He loved as dear as He loves all His pious children.
Something’s wrong,” Robert Johnson said. He pointed at the place where the stream split to feed into the basin, and Lisa saw the water slowing to a trickle. “That water shouldn’t ever be that slow.”
The Lady looked uneasy, but she didn’t look surprised.
“This is why we’re here, isn’t it?” Lisa asked. “You saw this, didn’t you?”
As the water slowed Lisa waited and waited and waited for an answer, but the Lady never gave one.
The Fallen City Firgard
Hell
Timeless
Dan carried Polly into the ruined city, looking for shelter. But all the houses that he found were broken, crumbling, ceilings collapsed among their walls, and for a moment that stretched on and on Dan thought he’d find nothing but debris —
And then he found the tower.
The tower was nearly as ruined as every other thing in the Fallen City — nearly, but not quite. It had three walls, and the stone stair at its center was still intact; three of its seven floors still stood unbroken, and at its top the tower keep stood sound as it had the day the angels made it. Dan saw that place, and he saw shelter; he hurried to the refuge of the stair without thinking how the hair on his arms stood on end as he passed through what once was an inviolable door; didn’t think about the music that rang in his ears, the flickers of light just outside his vision, the promise of something, something —
But it didn’t matter what, because Dan didn’t even notice.
Maybe that was just as well.
Because if he’d realized where he was, Dan would have gaped in wonder. He would have marveled at the fallen majesty around him, and he might have lost his presence of mind. . . .
But he didn’t. How could he notice any of those things, with Polly sobbing on his shoulder, sob sob sob broken little sobs like the sight of ghost John Henry had broken something deep down in her spirit?
He couldn’t, of course. It wasn’t in him to notice anything with her in such awful pain, and that’s as it should be.
He sat on the last steps of the stair, and he held Polly in his arms, and he cooed into her ear. He said, “I love you, Polly,” and he really meant he did, no matter how guilty strange he felt when he said those words.
Polly looked up at him with wide mournful tearful eyes, and she told him that she loved him, too.
And she kissed him like a lover, and Dan felt his heart fill with desire too intense to deny —
And heard music, so beautiful, so powerful that music, he thought the wings of angels carried him away —
But no. No, it wasn’t angels, Dan looked up and saw dead Elvis come to join them, carrying their bags, and not just their bags but the guitar.
He had the guitar in his hands, and he was playing, God that man could play, listen to him listen to him Dan had near forgot the power of his music in the days since they’d sailed out of Detroit.
Then he paused, and looked up to see Dan and Polly watching him, and looked — abashed.
“You swore you’d never play again,” Dan said.
“I know I did,” dead Elvis said. “I meant it, too.” And he held the guitar out to Dan, waited for him to take it.
But Dan never did.
“It’s yours,” he said. “Ain’t no sense in you denying.”
Elvis frowned and shook his head, but that didn’t change a thing. After a while he rolled his eyes and shrugged and slung the guitar over his shoulder.
“Let’s go,” he said. “We haven’t got much time.”
“What? Where?” Dan asked, but Elvis didn’t answer. Instead he led them out into the dying rain, through the Fallen City.
Miles and miles through the Fallen City, until they came upon the fountainhead of a clear beautiful spring.
When Dan stood at the foot of that spring and looked into its depths, he saw another fountain and another pool on the far side of its depths, and beyond that pool were two great doors, and those were the gate of Heaven and the gate of Hell, the Gates of Judgment we all come to one way or another.
At the far end of the spring the water led away into a subterranean stream — or tried to. There was rubble and debris fallen all around the aperture where the water went to ground, and Dan saw that a great amphitheater had only just collapsed into that end of the fountain.
“The Lady told me that he’d send that storm,” dead Elvis said. “She said he meant to block the stream. She told me that we had to reopen the passage if we could.”
“I don’t understand,” Dan said. “What do you mean? Who sent the storm?”
Elvis sighed. “The Devil sent it,” he said. “Who else you think gives weather down in Hell?”
The Mansion Called Defiance
Hell
Timeless
Now Leadbelly was a man of mediocre scruples, and he’d been in league with the Devil for as long as he’d had gambling chits in Hell. Which was all his death and a big snatch of his life as well.
But even if he was a damnable man, he was a brave one, and a fellow with a temper, too. When the Devil made a monkey of him, Huddie Ledbetter didn’t take it, not for a solitary moment. He stood up to Old Scratch, no matter if the Devil want him to kneel like some Master’s Boy, and when the Devil pressed him Leadbelly took after him with the razor in his hip pocket.