George Martin - Down These Strange Streets

“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: Play it when you have to. That’s what it said. That’s all it said. What’s that mean?”

“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 The Hotel Champion . She showed me the note. It was on a piece of really cheap stationery that said The Hotel Champion and had a phone number and an address in Dallas. The stationery looked old, and it was sun faded.

“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 wanting to step out there even though it scared the hell out of you and you knew it was the devil or something even worse at the wheel. Tell me you didn’t feel something like that.”

I couldn’t. So I didn’t say anything. I just sat there and sweated, the sound of that music still shaking down deep in my bones, boiling my blood.

“Here’s the thing,” I said. “I’ll do it, but you got to give me a photograph of Tootie, if you got one, and the record so you don’t play it no more.”

She studied me a moment. “I hate that thing,” she said, nodding at the record in my hands, “but somehow I feel attached to it. Like getting rid of it is getting rid of a piece of me.”

“That’s the deal.”

“All right,” she said, “take it, but take it now.”

MOTORING ALONG BY MYSELF IN THE CHEVY, THE MOON HIGH AND BRIGHT, all I could think of was that music, or whatever that sound was. It was stuck in my head like an ax. I had the record on the seat beside me, had Tootie’s note and envelope, the photograph Alma May had given me.

Part of me wanted to drive back to Alma May and tell her no, and never mind. Here’s the record back. But another part of me, the dumb part, wanted to know where and how and why that record had been made. Curiosity, it just about gets us all.

Where I live is a rickety third-floor walk-up. It’s got the stairs on the outside, and they stop at each landing. I lived at the very top.

I tried not to rest my hand too heavy on the rail as I climbed, because it was about to come off. I unlocked my door and turned on the light and watched the roaches run for cover.

I put the record down, got a cold one out of the icebox. Well, actually it was a plug-in. A refrigerator. But I’d grown up with iceboxes, so calling it that was hard to break. I picked up the record again and took a seat.

Sitting in my old armchair with the stuffing leaking out like a busted cotton sack, holding the record again, looking at the dirty brown sleeve, I noticed the grooves were dark and scabby looking, like something had gotten poured in there and had dried tight. I tried to determine if that had something to do with that crazy sound. Could something in the grooves make that kind of noise? Didn’t seem likely.

I thought about putting the record on, listening to it again, but I couldn’t stomach the thought. The fact that I held it in my hand made me uncomfortable. It was like holding a bomb about to go off.