“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 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 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’.