There was a little record player on a table by the window, a stack of records. She went over and opened the player box and turned it on. The record she wanted was already on it. She lifted up the needle and set it right, stepped back, and looked at me.
She was oh so fine. I looked at her and thought maybe I should have stuck with her, brother or no brother. She could melt butter from ten feet away, way she looked.
And then the music started to play.
IT WAS TOOTIE’S VOICE. I RECOGNIZED THAT RIGHT AWAY. I HAD HEARD HIM plenty. Like I said, he wasn’t much as a person, willing to do anything so he could lay back and play that guitar, slide a pocket knife along the strings to squeal out just the right sound, but he was good at the blues; of that, there ain’t no denying.
His voice was high and lonesome, and the way he played that guitar, it was hard to imagine how he could get the sounds out of it he got.
“You brought me over here to listen to records?” I said.
She shook her head. She lifted up the needle, stopped the record, and took it off. She had another in a little paper cover, and she took it out and put it on, dropped the needle down.
“Now listen to this.”
First lick or two, I could tell right off it was Tootie, but then there came a kind of turn in the music, where it got so strange the hair on the back of my neck stood up. And then Tootie started to sing, and the hair on the back of my hands and arms stood up. The air in the room got thick and the lights got dim, and shadows crawled out of the corners and sat on the couch with me. I ain’t kidding about that part. The room was suddenly full of them, and I could hear what sounded like a bird, trapped at the ceiling, fluttering fast and hard, looking for a way out.
Then the music changed again, and it was like I had been dropped down a well, and it was a long drop, and then it was like those shadows were folding around me in a wash of dirty water. The room stunk of something foul. The guitar no longer sounded like a guitar, and Tootie’s voice was no longer like a voice. It was like someone dragging a razor over concrete while trying to yodel with a throat full of glass. There was something inside the music; something that squished and scuttled and honked and raved, something unsettling, like a snake in a satin glove.
“Cut it off,” I said.
But Alma May had already done it.
She said, “That’s as far as I’ve ever let it go. It’s all I can do to move to cut it off. It feels like it’s getting more powerful the more it plays. I don’t want to hear the rest of it. I don’t know if I can take it. How can that be, Richard? How can that be with just sounds?”
I was actually feeling weak, like I’d just come back from a bout with the flu and someone had beat my ass. I said, “More powerful? How do you mean?”
“Ain’t that what you think? Ain’t that how it sounds? Like it’s getting stronger?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“And the room—”
“The shadows?” I said. “I didn’t just imagine it?”
“No,” she said. “Only every time I’ve heard it, it’s been a little different. The notes get darker, the guitar licks, they cut something inside me, and each time it’s something different and something deeper. I don’t know if it makes me feel good or it makes me feel bad, but it sure makes me feel.”
“Yeah,” I said, because I couldn’t find anything else to say.
“Tootie sent me that record. He sent a note that said:
“I don’t know, but I got to wonder why Tootie would send it to you in the first place. Why would he want you to hear something makes you almost sick . . . And how in hell could he do that, make that kind of sound, I mean?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Someday, I’m gonna play it all the way through.”
“I wouldn’t,” I said.
“Why?”
“You heard it. I figure it only gets worse. I don’t understand it, but I know I don’t like it.”
“Yeah,” she said, putting the record back in the paper sheath. “I know. But it’s so strange. I’ve never heard anything like it.”
“And I don’t want to hear anything like it again.”
“Still, you have to wonder.”
“What I wonder is what I was wondering before. Why would he send this shit to you?”
“I think he’s proud of it. There’s nothing like it. It’s . . . original.”
“I’ll give it that,” I said. “So, what do you want with me?”
“I want you to find Tootie.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t think he’s right. I think he needs help. I mean, this . . . It makes me think he’s somewhere he shouldn’t be.”
“But yet, you want to play it all the way through,” I said.
“What I know is I don’t like that. I don’t like Tootie being associated with it, and I don’t know why. Richard, I want you to find him.”
“Where did the record come from?”
She got the sheaf and brought it to me. I could see through the little doughnut in the sheath where the label on the record ought to be. Nothing but disk. The package itself was like wrapping paper you put meat in. It was stained.
I said, “I think he paid some place to let him record,” I said. “Question is, what place? You have an address where this came from?”
“I do.” She went and got a large manila envelope and brought it to me. “It came in this.”
I looked at the writing on the front. It had as a return address
“I called them,” she said, “but they didn’t know anything about him. They had never heard of him. I could go look myself, but . . . I’m a little afraid. Besides, you know, I got clients, and I got to make the house payment.”
I didn’t like hearing about that, knowing what kind of clients she meant, and how she was going to make that money. I said, “All right. What you want me to do?”
“Find him.”
“And then what?”
“Bring him home.”
“And if he don’t want to come back?”
“I’ve seen you work, bring him home to me. Just don’t lose that temper of yours.”
I turned the record around and around in my hands. I said, “I’ll go take a look. I won’t promise anything more than that. He wants to come, I’ll bring him back. He doesn’t, I might be inclined to break his leg and bring him back. You know I don’t like him.”
“I know. But don’t hurt him.”
“If he comes easy, I’ll do that. If he doesn’t, I’ll let him stay, come back and tell you where he is and how he is. How about that?”
“That’s good enough,” she said. “Find out what this is all about. It’s got me scared, Richard.”
“It’s just bad sounds,” I said. “Tootie was probably high on something when he recorded it, thought it was good at the time, sent it to you because he thought he was the coolest thing since Robert Johnson.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. But I figure when he got over his hop, he probably didn’t even remember he mailed it.”
“Don’t try and tell me you’ve heard anything like this. That listening to it didn’t make you feel like your skin was gonna pull off your bones, that some part of it made you want to dip in the dark and learn to like it. Tell me it wasn’t like that. Tell me it wasn’t like walking out in front of a car and the headlights in your face, and you just
