Bone Music

by Alan Rodgers

  The pilot started to argue with that — with good cause, since it went counter to their flight plan and their instructions from the air-control tower — but Vaughan held up a hand to silence him. And then he whispered a verse from Sister O.M. Terrell’s take on “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” which is about as hip and bluesy as a gospel number can be.

  And the pilot swung low, just as Vaughan’s song commanded.

  It got a little better after that. The deathliness and the cold receded, and the song that deadmen call the music of the world came back to them, or nearly did, at least. It never got comfortable while they were in the air, but so long as they flew low Vaughan didn’t feel as though he would expire.

  Not that he felt good. Just the opposite, in fact — the flight was miserable, even agonizing. When air-control directed them to land a hundred miles early, outside Baton Rouge, it almost came as a relief.

  The pilot peered back at them, cleared his throat. “The tower said Lakefront Airport is closed,” he said. “New Orleans International, too. Closest open field is Baton Rouge.”

  Vaughan nodded. Furry Lewis groaned, and it looked like he wanted to say something, but the words never came.

  “All right, then,” Vaughan said. “Get us as close as you can.”

  The pilot nodded; banked the plane and started the descent toward Baton Rouge.

  “We’ll have to rent a car,” Vaughan said. “It’s a drive from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. Not a long drive, though.” Furry Lewis nodded weakly; Tampa Red didn’t even seem to hear. Red didn’t look like he was hearing anything, in fact — he looked dead. Corpse-dead, as though he’d gone back to his damnation or on to his reward.

  As the plane swung wide, banked again, leveled, straightened, and touched the runway.

  And the aching stopped, and the music of the world became a song large enough to consume them, to propel and define them, and Red whimpered like a man released from agony.

  “Praise God,” Furry Lewis said. “I’ve never known a longer hour.”

  Slower, now, and slower still as they approached the terminal and the plane eased to a halt. The pilot secured the brakes and opened the hatch to let them climb out of the cabin.

  Vaughan got dizzy trying to stand up; Furry Lewis left his seat unsteadily. But Red was worse than either of them — by a lot. He stumbled as he left his seat, and then stumbled again on the stairs, and Vaughan began to think he’d never find his legs. Vaughan took his arm, and helped him down onto the runway.

  “You going to be okay, Red?” he asked.

  Red nodded, but he didn’t look good. He didn’t look good at all, in fact.

  “You want some help?” Vaughan asked, and when the other deadman didn’t answer Vaughan put his arm over Red’s shoulder, and steadied him for the walk across the tarmac. As they entered the terminal Red seemed to find his legs, and Vaughan released him — but he kept close to Red, watching him carefully.

  “Where from here, Stevie Ray?” Furry Lewis asked.

  “Car-rental counter. Up ahead and to the left.”

  Just before they got to the car-rental counter, Red stumbled again. Vaughan barely caught him in time to save him from collapsing to the floor, and when he tried to steady the deadman Red’s legs went to jelly underneath him.

  “Red. . . ?”

  “I’m okay,” Red said. “I just took a little faint, that’s all.”

  “Yeah,” Vaughan said. But he didn’t think so, not for a moment. “Think you can make it to the counter? Car’s right past the counter, by the door.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Red said. “You know I will.”

  And he waited for Vaughan and Furry Lewis to reassure him, but neither of them did.

  “Why don’t you take a seat, Red?” Furry Lewis asked. “Wait with him, Stevie Ray. I’ll rent the car.”

  Vaughan nodded. “I’ll do that, if you like,” he said. “It wouldn’t take a minute.”

  “No trouble,” Furry Lewis said. “You think I don’t know how to rent a car?”

  The truth was that he didn’t know, because he hadn’t had a need to rent one in the years since he’d passed on, and while he’d rented cars for the great King back in the early fifties, the car-rental business has changed dramatically across the decades. But it ain’t like doing business with Hertz takes rocket science; and anyway Furry Lewis had charm enough to fake the parts he didn’t know.

  “All right,” Vaughan said. “Let me know if you need help.”

  Furry Lewis allowed as he would, but he didn’t have a solitary intention of asking for help. And he didn’t need it, either.

  “I’d like to rent a car,” he told the rent-a-car clerk.

  “Would you like a midsize or a compact, sir?”

  Furry Lewis grinned. “I’d like a Cadillac,” he said. He’d seen those pricey Japanese and German cars around, but he didn’t think much of them. His idea of a car was the same as it’d always been — wide seats, big motor, whitewall tires.

  The clerk smiled. “We’ve got one,” he said. “I’ll need your license and the credit card you’d like to put this on.”

  Furry Lewis reached for his wallet. “I’d just as soon pay cash,” he said.

  The clerk frowned. “That can be arranged,” he said. “But I’ll need a credit card to secure the rental.”

  Now Furry Lewis was a deadman, and he didn’t have no credit cards. He could have had some if he’d put an effort to it — Stevie Ray Vaughan had — but it wouldn’t be a simple undertaking, and Furry Lewis had never gone to the effort of making the requisite arrangements.

  He didn’t have a current driver’s license, either, though he had the one he’d died with back home in a drawer full of memorabilia.

  So when the clerk asked him for a credit card and a driver’s license, Furry Lewis put a spell on him. Oh, it wasn’t any evil spell, but it was a deceitful one: he hummed a little tune as he reached into his wallet and brought out two smooth strips of plastic, and as he hummed he smiled very wide.

  “That’ll be great,” the clerk said, running one of the strips through a device that would have took an impression from it if it’d been a credit card; copying nonexistent numbers from the surface of the other. When he was done he asked Furry Lewis how long he’d need the car.

  “I’ll take it for a week,” Furry Lewis said. A week was longer than he figured he would need the car, but it was better to be sure.

  “Insurance?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Great. And you wanted to pay for that in cash?”

  “I do.”

  The clerk pushed a contract toward the deadman; at the bottom there was a dollar amount, circled in red ink. Furry Lewis took the money from his wallet and pushed it toward the clerk.

  The clerk handed him the keys along with his change.

  “Right out that door,” he said. “Third car on the left — you can’t miss it.”

  Ten minutes later they were on I-10, heading toward New Orleans. They made good time at first. It wasn’t hard; all the traffic was moving in the opposite direction.

  Furry Lewis did the driving; Vaughan rode shotgun. Red took the back seat — both sides of it. He sprawled out across the length of it, sort of resting, sort of stretching out, but not as relaxed or comfortable as either of those things. More like a man writhing in the dirt someplace, maybe suffering a little, maybe suffering a lot, but without the stamina to wail. . . .

  He seemed to get a little better as they drove the Caddy east-southeast toward New Orleans.

  But not much better.

  “What’s wrong with him, Furry?” Vaughan asked as they passed a sign that said La Place — 10 Miles. As he asked that question Red groaned from the back seat, long and low all haunting-like, so unearthly that even dead Stevie Ray Vaughan shivered
at the sound. “I don’t like the sound of that at all.”

  Furry Lewis didn’t take his eyes off the road, but he nodded. “I don’t like it, either. I don’t know what’s got into him. He ought to be vivacious as he ever is.”

  Vaughan leaned back to get a glance at the prone deadman. “Red? Hey, Red, is there anything we can do for you?”

  Tampa Red shook his head — so slightly that Vaughan almost didn’t see it. “I’m fine,” he said. “I just don’t feel so good, that’s all.”

  Now the sign before them said La Place — Next Exit 2 Miles, and Vaughan reached into the glove box to check the map to see how far they had left to go. He could have saved himself the effort — because suddenly there were red traffic-control cones lined up all along the highway, shunting them toward the exit, and the sign said Road Closed — All Traffic Exit Right.

  Two dozen heavily armed men and women in National Guard uniforms stood on either side of the sign, enforcing the closure.

  “What the hell. . . ?” Vaughan asked.

  Furry Lewis swore profanely.

  When they were halfway off the exit it finally came to Vaughan that they’d come across. “They’ve closed the city down,” he said. “All the way the hell out to here.”

  Furry Lewis nodded.

  Vaughan looked at his map, trying to figure out how they were going to get into the city. It wasn’t much use; the New Orleans detail map gave out long before La Place, and the state map only showed two roads along the route — I-10 and US-61. They knew I-10 was closed, and it was an easy bet that US-61 was, too. Too easy; there wasn’t a chance they’d miss it if they closed I-10.

  No way to go around to the north — Lake Pontchartrain was in the way.

  But it was different to the south. Because south of New Orleans is Cajun country, and there are more tiny roads through the swamps than anyone can count — lots more than the National Guard can close in a few hours.

  “We ought to be able to get through if we travel along the south bank,” Vaughan said. “We need to turn back — the nearest bridge goes across the river about ten miles back.”

  Furry Lewis nodded. Turned left under the Interstate, then left again to get back on it going in the opposite direction. Twenty minutes later they crossed the river by Vacherie and turned right onto SR-18, which is what the maps call that part of the river road that follows the south bank of the Mississippi from Baton Rouge to New Orleans.

  SR-18 took them all the way into the outlying suburbs of New Orleans before they found another National Guard roadblock at the junction with Interstate 310.

  Just before they got to the roadblock Red sat up in the back seat and groaned. He was breathing, Vaughan could hear — breathing laboriously and unsteady. Vaughan looked back and saw that Red was covered with sickly sweat like he’d never seen on a deadman.

  “Turn right,” Red told them. “Right here, into the dirt.”

  Furry Lewis didn’t argue with him; he did exactly as Red asked. Vaughan, now, he would have argued — he did argue, in fact. Not that it mattered.

  “There isn’t any road here,” Vaughan said. “What’re you going to do, plow through that hedge?”

  Furry Lewis laughed, because that was exactly what he meant to do.

  Through the hedge; crosswise over some farmer’s driveway; through a barbed-wire fence on the far side of it.

  “It’s going to cost you a piece,” Vaughan said, “when you pay for what you just did to this Cadillac’s grille.”

  Furry Lewis shrugged as the Cadillac surged into the pasture. “I’m good for it,” he said.

  Vaughan laughed. “I know you are,” he said.

  As half a dozen head of cattle scattered across the field, trying to get out of their way.

  “Bear left,” Red whispered. “You’ll find a dirt road not far from the southeast end of the field.”

  Cow-pats spattered off the tires, and here and there the Caddy’s tires spun wild in the mud. When they were halfway across, the farmer came out of his farmhouse and started waving a shotgun at them.

  Furry Lewis didn’t pay him any mind, except to laugh a little at the sight of the man in such hysteria.

  Kept laughing, too, even when the farmer raised his gun and started shooting.

  Maybe because the farmer missed, or maybe because Furry Lewis was a deadman not susceptible to murder, or maybe because the whole experience struck a chord with him — who can say?

  Who can say indeed.

  As they reached the field’s southeast corner, and the Cadillac plowed over the corner fencepost.

  “When you get to the road, turn straight,” Red said, which made no damn sense at all until they got to the road and came onto it where it bent, and to their right it was more-or-less west and straight ahead mostly south.

  A long, smooth dirt road that looked like it went on forever into bayou country. It wasn’t on the map — not either one, not the state map nor the detail map of New Orleans.

  “I bet the Guard doesn’t even know about this road,” Vaughan said. “I think we’re going to make it.”

  Furry Lewis didn’t look convinced. “I wouldn’t worry about the Guard,” he said. “But I’m not looking forward to what’s ahead of us.”

  That brought back the things Vaughan saw on the news that afternoon, and reminded him of the dread he felt in his heart when he’d seen it.

  Sobered him considerably.

  “Look for yourself, Stevie Ray,” he said. “There, in the swamp-woods off to your left. Let your heart look through your eyes, and you’ll see them.”

  It was dusk, almost the end of dusk — but when Vaughan looked into the woods he saw them clearly as he’d see in the brightest part of day.

  Clearer, maybe. For the things he saw were minor loa — swamp devils like you’d conjure in the tropics to curse the children of the wetlands. And hellish things like those are clearer in the night than they can be in the day.

  “It’s Hell, Stevie Ray. All around us, here — Hell has fallen up to earth.”

  Stevie Ray Vaughan wanted to argue, because he didn’t want to believe that such a thing could happen. But even as he did he knew that he was wrong.

  He knew where he was.

  Of course he did. All deadmen know the winds of Hell. They taste those winds for hours when they’re gone, before they sing the Hell-door open and walk back among the pathways of the living.

  “Five miles down along this way,” Red said. He sounded stronger, now — almost hale and whole. “And then you’ll find a crossroads. There will be a fire, there, and the ruins of a boneyard. The bones will tell you which turn to take.”

  Vaughan understood that better than he was comfortable with. Furry Lewis said, “Of course,” and gave a little nod like that was the obvious thing.

  Suburban New Orleans

  The Present

  Emma didn’t pay much attention which way she went as she tore out of the Kmart parking lot. That was a terrible mistake, because her turns took her exactly where she didn’t want to go — back into the old heart of the city, where the hardest part of Hell had fallen up to earth.

  A terrible, terrible mistake.

  The first clue she had that she’d stumbled into something bad was when the streetlights went dark all around her, as power failed throughout the city suddenly lit only by the brilliance of the blood-red moon — and just as suddenly dead-end barricades appeared before her on the road.

  “Oh my God,” Emma whispered, slamming down on the brake pedal. The Buick’s tires screamed and skidded long and hard before the car came to a stop.

  Backed the car up; put it back in gear. Rolled back onto the road.

  When she came to the next intersection Emma saw light off in the distance to the right, and she thought that light had to be a way o
ut of this awful place.

  But she was wrong.

  When she followed the light it led her to the worst thing she’d come upon in a day full of terrible discoveries: it led her into the midst of a battle where a legion of the damned did battle with the Louisiana National Guard.

  She screamed again when she saw that.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Emma said. She did a U-turn, drove a few blocks back away from the battlefield. Turned into what looked to be a quiet alley; pulled the car over, switched on the dome light, found her map, and tried to figure out how the hell they were going to get out of there.

  As she read the map she felt a hand on her leg, sliding upward — it damn near scared her to death. When she saw it was Leadbelly making a pass at her she grabbed the hand by the wrist and pushed it away from her.

  She wasn’t gentle. At all.

  “What’s the matter, baby?” Leadbelly asked. “You don’t like me?”

  “You tried to sell me to the Devil,” Emma said. “You thought I’d pay a gambling debt! Keep your foul hands to yourself.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Oh, Emma Henderson, it wasn’t really like that. You know it wasn’t! You got to understand what I was trying to accomplish!”

  “I bet you were,” she told him. “I hate to think what it would have come to if the Devil would have took me.”

  “I wouldn’t let him do that,” Leadbelly said. “I would have took you back, woman. I promise that I would!”

  That was half a lie, at least. But Emma wasn’t certain which half was which.

  But it wasn’t like she had a chance to consider the question. Because suddenly there was heavy breathing too damn close, and Emma tried to push dead Leadbelly away from her — only Leadbelly wasn’t there.

  When Emma tried to fend him off all she pushed against was air.

  Because Leadbelly wasn’t anywhere near her.