WHEN I CAME TO, THE MUSIC WAS STILL PLAYING. TOOTIE WAS BENT over me.
“That sound,” I said.
“You get used to it,” Tootie said, “but the thing can’t. Or maybe it can, but just not yet.”
I looked at the wall. There was no alleyway. It was just a wall plastered in paint designs and spots of blood.
“And if the music stops?” I said.
“I fall asleep,” Tootie said. “Record quits playing, it starts coming.”
For a moment I didn’t know anything to say. I finally got off the floor and sat on the bed. I felt my cheek where the tentacle hit me. It throbbed and I could feel blisters. I also had a knot on my head where I had fallen.
“Almost got you,” Tootie said. “I think you can leave and it won’t come after you. Me, I can’t. I leave, it follows. It’ll finally find me. I guess here is as good as any place.”
I was looking at him, listening, but not understanding a damn thing.
The record quit. Tootie started it again. I looked at the wall. Even that blank moment without sound scared me. I didn’t want to see that thing again. I didn’t even want to think about it.
“I haven’t slept in days, until now,” Tootie said, coming to sit on the bed. “You hadn’t come in, it would have got me, carried me off, taken my soul. But you can leave. It’s my lookout, not yours . . . I’m always in some kind of shit, ain’t I, Ricky?”
“That’s the truth.”
“This, though, it’s the corker. I got to stand up and be a man for once. I got to fight this thing back, and all I got is the music. Like I told you, you can go.”
I shook my head. “Alma May sent me. I said I’d bring you back.”
It was Tootie’s turn to shake his head. “Nope. I ain’t goin’. I ain’t done nothin’ but mess up Sis’s life. I ain’t gonna do it.”
“First responsible thing I ever heard you say,” I said.
“Go on,” Tootie said. “Leave me to it. I can take care of myself.”
“If you don’t die of starvation, or pass out from lack of sleep or need of water, you’ll be just fine.”
Tootie smiled at me. “Yeah. That’s all I got to worry about. I hope it is one of them other things kills me. ’Cause if it comes for me . . . Well, I don’t want to think about it.”
“Keep the record going, I’ll get something to eat and drink, some coffee. You think you can stay awake a half hour or so?”
“I can, but you’re coming back?”
“I’m coming back,” I said.
Out in the hallway I saw the big guy was gone. I took the stairs.
WHEN I GOT BACK, TOOTIE HAD CLEANED UP THE VOMIT AND WAS LOOKING through the notebooks. He was sitting on the floor and had them stacked all around him. He was maybe six inches away from the record player. Now and again he’d reach up and start it all over.
Soon as I was in the room, and that sound from the record was snugged up around me, I felt sick. I had gone to a greasy spoon down the street, after I changed a flat tire. One of the boys I’d given a hard time had most likely knifed it. My bet was the lucky son of a bitch who had fallen on the fire escape.
Besides the tire, a half-dozen long scratches had been cut into the paint on the passenger side, and my windshield was knocked in. I got back from the café, parked what was left of my car behind the hotel, down the street a bit, and walked a block. Car looked so bad now, maybe nobody would want to steal it.
I sat one of the open sacks on the floor by Tootie.
“Both hamburgers are yours,” I said. “I got coffee for the both of us here.”
I took out a tall cardboard container of coffee and gave it to him, took the other one for myself. I sat on the bed and sipped. Nothing tasted good in that room with that smell and that sound. But Tootie, he ate like a wolf. He gulped those burgers and coffee like they were air.
When he finished with the second burger, he started up the record again, then leaned his back against the bed.
“Coffee or not,” he said, “I don’t know how long I can stay awake.”
“So what you got to do is keep the record playing?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Lay up in bed, sleep for a few hours. I’ll keep the record going. You’re rested, you got to explain this thing to me, and then we’ll figure something out.”
“There’s nothing to figure,” he said. “But God, I’ll take you up on that sleep.”
He crawled up in the bed and was immediately out.
I started the record over.
I got up then, untied Tootie’s shoes and pulled them off. Hell, like him or not, he was Alma May’s brother. And another thing, I wouldn’t wish that thing behind the wall on my worst enemy.
I SAT ON THE FLOOR WHERE TOOTIE HAD SAT AND KEPT RESTARTING THE record as I tried to figure things out, which wasn’t easy with that music going. I got up from time to time and walked around the room, and then I’d end up back on the floor by the record player, where I could reach it easy.
Between changes, I looked through the composition notebooks. They were full of musical notes mixed with scribbles like the ones on the wall. It was hard to focus with that horrid sound. It was like the air was full of snakes and razors. Got the feeling the music was pushing at something behind that wall. Got the feeling too, there was something on the other side, pushing back.
IT WAS DARK WHEN TOOTIE WOKE UP. HE HAD SLEPT A GOOD TEN HOURS, and I was exhausted with all that record changing, that horrible sound. I had a headache from looking over those notebooks, and I didn’t know any more about them than when I first started.
I went and bought more coffee, brought it back, and we sat on the bed, him changing the record from time to time, us sipping.
I said, “You sure you can’t just walk away?”
I was avoiding the real question for some reason. Like, what in hell is that thing, and what is going on? Maybe I was afraid of the answer.
“You saw that thing. I can walk away, all right. And I can run. But wherever I go, it’ll find me. So, at some point, I got to face it. Sometimes I make that same record sound with my guitar, give the record a rest. Thing I fear most is the record wearing out.”
I gestured at the notebooks on the floor. “What is all that?”
“My notes. My writings. I come here to write some lyrics, some new blues songs.”
“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 South.
“I go in there, and I’m the only one in the store. There’s reco
rds 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 unwiped 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 it 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 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 halfway around his neck like someone had worked him over with sandpaper.
“ ‘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 a while.
“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 countersong 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.
Down These Strange Streets Page 7