Bone Music Read Free Page B

thought about a gesture he’d made toward Williamson on the stage. And he wanted to think It’ll serve that bastard right, but he didn’t have the heart. Williamson was a bluesman, even if he was only a journeyman in 1938, and he loved the gift with all his heart. It wasn’t in him to wish evil on a man who had the gift in him so strong as Johnson did.
    And maybe Johnson heard him thinking what he thought. Because the dark thin man got to his feet as Williamson approached the table, and he greeted Williamson warmly. “You ain’t all bad,” he said. He didn’t say it nasty or derogatory, the way Williamson would’ve thought. Just the opposite, in fact: Robert Johnson reached out to take Williamson’s hand. He slapped the big man on the back and smiled. “You ain’t bad at all, Sonny Boy,” he said, and he said it like he meant it. “Barmaid!” he shouted. “What happened to my whiskey?”
    Almost like she’d known he was about to call her, the bar girl came around the corner with the whiskey on a tray. She set the bottle and three glasses on the table and left without meeting their eyes.
    The seal on the bottle was cracked and oh-so-carefully nestled back in place. It looked plain enough, and any everyday man would have took it for a ordinary whiskey bottle. But both bluesmen had the sight, and they could see the poison sifting through the liquor where the owner-man had poured it in.
    Robert Johnson laughed. “That fool thinks he’s going to kill me,” he said. He laughed again, laughed like he’d just told the sweetest joke he’d ever heard.
    And maybe it was — but if it was, Williamson didn’t see the humor. “You ought to have a care,” he said. “It doesn’t do a man no good to gather hate like that.”
    Johnson took the bottle from the table and twisted off the cap. “You know who I am,” he said. “You think I’m afraid?”
    Williamson scowled. “I think you ought to be.”
    Hoodoo Doctors eat poison all the time. It doesn’t touch them, and wouldn’t hurt a one of them, even if he were alive — because the truth in the music inside a Hoodoo Doctor is enough to purify any poison. But Robert Johnson wasn’t any Hoodoo Doctor, no matter how he held himself in high regard.
    “I’m not afraid,” Johnson said. “The gift is in me. The gift will purify me, no matter what the poison is.” And he hefted back the bottle, and opened his mouth to drink —
    But before the liquor touched his lips Williamson was on his feet, knocking the bottle from Johnson’s hand. It tumbled to the floor and shattered; in three places the whiskey caught fire as it spread across the floorboards.
    Johnson stared at Williamson, stunned and angry. For a moment Williamson thought he was about to attack him. “You got to watch yourself, Robert Johnson,” Williamson said, tamping out the fire on the floorboards with the leather sole of his boot. “Just because you got a gift don’t mean the ones who hate you don’t got theirs.”
    The owner-lady pushed her chair away from the table and hurried away.
    Johnson didn’t even notice. He scowled and swore, reached across the table and grabbed the big man by the collar. He shook Williamson three times — hard and masterfully, as though their sizes were reversed. Then he pulled him across the table and whispered angrily. “I swear to God, boy,” he said. “I swear to God, you ever do a thing like that to me again, I’ll peel your hide right off your bones. I swear to God I will.” He eased Williamson back into his seat. “Barmaid,” he shouted, “we got a mess over here. And we need more whiskey.”
    The second bottle was poisoned, just as the first had been. Johnson didn’t care; he opened the bottle, threw away the cork, and drank deeply of the poison. Williamson tried to stop him — not because he didn’t fear the threat, because he knew damn well Johnson could make it good — Williamson tried to stop him because he could see Johnson and the poison,