[story] the greatest bluesman
author: vee h. hariri (thanatophilia)
email: burnabridge [at] gmail.com
Catherine Mary Saint Croix done eat her baby. Done eat her baby and start singing so sweet. Townsfolk call her a witch (which means knowledge and just imagine what horrors of horrors she knows). Townsfolk say she sold her soul. Townsfolk run her out of town and they don't wanna hear from her no more.
So Catherine Mary Saint Croix starts wandering the Louisiana land, wanders the dirt and the gravel and the swampland. She's fed and powered and haunted by that baby in her belly again.
First night on the road, she gets herself a bed for the night with her voice. Cuts the man when he tries to thrust up and up and up. Already been one baby, don't need to be no more.
The thing of it is - the thing that makes it funny - is that she really did sell her soul. Devil came wandering yonder, wrapped her golden curls round his scaly claws and promised her the voice of angels for the prettiest penny she held.
"Break your innocence and take your soul," the Devil had recited as he'd helped her devour her little babe from head to soles. And the more she ate, the more she sang, and the more her voice filled the world.
Frederick Leroy Johnson used to belong to a nice, pansy sort of man who liked to wash his face and touch his legs, but never did try to do the holy deed, and that was all right with Freddy. But Mr. Pouve had kicked the bucket and Freddy got himself sold to a nasty drinkin' man who had less soul than a witch in heat.
Frederick Leroy Johnson's been a bad, bad boy, been a bad, bad slave, talkin' back, and hittin' the whippin' man. Frederick Leroy Johnson's done run away. Gotta hide every step of the way, because black boys ain't so welcome out on the open road.
So Frederick Leroy Johnson starts wanderin' the Louisiana land, wanders the deep waters and the dark woods. He's fed on hunger and powered by freedom and fear. And the thing of it is, he finds Catherine Mary Saint Croix out in the swamplands.
She's as beautiful as a porcelain angel with the voice of the prettiest of the birds. He finds her hip deep in mud, wrists deep in gore.
"Ah, ma'am? Ah, ah, ma'am?" he calls to her from a few steps away.
She looks up at him and smiles. Then she goes right back to a'singing like she's out of her pretty, little head.
He's a slave to her voice. He knows because he starts hearin' her in his dreams. Maybe she just sings over him whilst he sleeps. She does that sometimes while touchin' her belly with the expression of benevolence that only mothers can summon up.
Her hair's the color of sunshine and her lips're the color of sin. He knows all about sin, his skin and his eyes bein' just as black as its heart and all.
Now that he's got Catherine Mary Saint Croix, Freddy Leroy ain't gotta hide no more. He's her slave all official-like. He cleans her clothes and brushes her hair and goes in to town to buy her new clothes when her white belle-dresses begin to turn dark with blood and dirt.
He don't wanna know where she gets her coin, only knows she got it and he ain't got no qualms about palmin' the change here and there and there again.
"You always kill 'em, Mary?" he wonders as he helps her out of a blood stained gown.
She hums up high in her throat, like she's vibratin' something with the noise, like it feels good to act that crazy.
"Only when they go tryin' to plant a baby in me, Frederick Leroy Johnson," she answers, her voice so heavenly.
A lawman come looking for his Catherine Mary Saint Croix. A lawman come packin' heat and holdin' the straining leashes of his own dogs of war. A lawman been chasing a trail of dead men. A lawman been chasing the putrid footprints of a running slave.
Frederick Leroy Johnson won't let him have her though, and it's his turn to turn his hands into the instruments they are.
"Freddy, Freddy," Catherine Mary Saint Croix sings in her nightmarish euphoria. "You've done a bad, bad thing, boy, but now you're mine, you're mine and mine and mine."
Freddy can't do nothin' but smile at her and listen to her song. Can't do nothing but hum to her tune, like a child's lullaby. It swirls and whirls and wheels around them. Hers - all hers - the blood on his hands makes him hers.
So when she brings him down to the crossroads and buries the crunchy bones of the big, bad lawman deep down in the earth, Freddy Leroy don't think nothin' about a magic word or two sung so sweet from her pretty, pink lips.
"Come on up now," pretty Mary croons. "Come on up now, and let my Freddy sing as beautiful as me."
And what she's callin' comes. A big, black man with eyes like Satan comes crawling up from the earth. Like a hungry slave at a chicken leg, that lawman's bones be stuck between his great big teeth.
He looks at Catherine Mary Saint Croix like she belongs to him, the same way Frederick belongs to her: in that sinful way where you done somethin' so bad you'll never be clean enough to escape the taint of it again.
"This is freedom to you, boy?" the big man wonders, laughin'. "You escape the whipping post and come straight to me? Ain't no wonder, boy, it ain't no wonder at all."
Catherine Mary Saint Croix curtsies to the man and looks like the rich belle she used to be; only she's blood stained and tattered. The big man touches her hair, touches her breasts, but goes no further. She lets him. She lets him touch her, and she looks up at him with her big, blue eyes. He approves of her obeisance and he turns to look at Freddy Leroy.
"Go on now," Mary says to her boy. "Go on now, git on your knees and ask him to give you the gift for me."
And Freddy does what she tells him, gets down in the dirt that they always say is so much like his skin. He clasps his hands like a good boy prayin' and to the man he says:
"Let me sing like Mary. Let me do good by her. I'll give it up, just like she done, just make me right for her."
The big man laughs, like a smiling maniac. He's pleased that Frederick Leroy Johnson knows the deal of the deal. That's when Freddy feels that big man touch him. He feels that big man scratch him, feels him draw blood and mark him. He feels the big man pull his hips up and rape him.
"Break your innocence and take your soul," the big, big man mocks and Freddy keeps his face pressed to the dirt so he don't have to see. It's more'n enough to feel.
"Break his innocence and take his soul," Catherine Mary Saint Croix sings. Her voice makes him tremble like crystal made to ring. "Break his innocence and take his soul and give him back to me ..."
With his Devil-given gift, he plays the guitar better than any man alive, and she sings more beautifully than anything has got the right to. The menfolk want her for their bed, the menfolk hate him for his talent and his skin, but he don't mind them none. It's his child she's heavy with. Greatest bluesman to ever walk this blasted earth, and his beautiful Mary's got his baby inside.
He is her slave, and he plays his music just for her. She sings to the world, but every chord to come cryin' out of his guitar is just for her. He sold his soul off to the Devil to make his white, witchy woman pleased, and in return she's blessed him with her smiles.
"Freddy, Frederick Leroy Johnson," she croons when she comes into his bed, "you got beautiful fingers for a black boy."
He's an instrument for her. He teases those beautiful fingers of his up and down the strings for her. He collects the coin those damn hungry, white men throw up onto the stage at her. He kills them if they come too close, drags their bodies out into the swamp or says a few words to the Devil and lets him have his due in pounds of flesh.
Together they go east and together they go west. She sings and she tempts and he cries and he kills. Ain't nowhere in their beautiful Louisiana that's safe from their song of brimstone and fire.
Mary has her baby out in the swampland. She hurts and she bleeds, but she don't make a sound; just turns as white as death and as still as stone. Mary has her baby at sunset; the oily swamp water looks like blood spilled from her wound. Catherine Mary Saint Croix bleeds like she's bein' torn apart and from the labors of her womb comes the Devil's child.
It ain't his child, Freddy knows - always knew - knew from the moment he felt that big, black man ripping away at everything inside.
It ain't his child, but Frederick Leroy Johnson, who sold his heart to Mary and his pitiful soul to the Devil, loves that child just the same. The newborn is black-skinned and demon-eyed, but gorgeous to Freddy who helps his woman back up onto her feet and wonders:
"What's his name, baby? What are you gonna call this sweet child of mine?"
She laughs in the fadin' light, her voice so trillin' sweet. "I won't eat you, baby," she promises. "I won't eat you and I'll call you my little Night Bird..."
The child makes an animal sound, a hiss and then a coo, which Catherine Mary Saint Croix echoes in the dark. Tears of pride be runnin' down Frederick's face, and as he listens, he gets to singin' and worshipin' along with them before the comin' dawn.
Night Bird Johnson grows quick, quick as a devil. He gets big and he gets strong and he gets vicious. He loves his mammy and he loves Freddy too, but he rapes a girl when he turns eleven and kills a man at twelve. Ain't no room in his heart but for mammy and for Freddy and for all the evil he gotta do.
The lawmen start comin' again, come on charges of miscegenation and murder and rape. But Freddy didn't let them have his Mary the first time, and he ain't lettin' them take his son now.
He can slit a man's throat, shoot a man, break a man's neck, take an axe to a man's face. The bodies get to pilin' up and that Night Bird gets to feedin'. Night Bird Johnson, carrion bird, knows all the secrets that his witch mother knows and much more.
Catherine Mary Saint Croix loves her baby so.
"He grows so big," she tells Freddy, even in their bed. "He grows so strong, so smart."
And she's still so beautiful, still sings so sweet. Men still come sniffin' at her skirts, and it's still Frederick who strikes them down dead.
Folks all across Louisiana know about them now. Catherine Mary Saint Croix's hometown steps up and tells her nightmare tale about how she ate her babe when he was not more than six months old. Folks from all around recount her voice, the deaths that followed after her like a plague. Then she'd found that boy, that runaway slave and she'd made that dirty boy one of her own. Now they got that demon child, that half-breed mongrel with eyes like a murderer.
Holymen and lawmen come huntin' after Mary's sins.
Night Bird... Night Bird Johnson comes hungering after her love and her sex and her power.
She's heavy with child again. Frederick can tell in the way that they touch each other that this babe is Night Bird's own. The boy is fifteen and taller than a full grown man and Freddy knows what this true son o' the Devil has done.
Once upon a time, Catherine Mary Saint Croix had sung to him that she killed the men who tried to plant the babes inside. He'd loved her then, been tormented and haunted by that voice she'd whored herself to the Devil for. He'd bowed down in the dirt before that crooked serpent for her, and had believed she'd loved him still.
But when he sees her enthralled with what is not their son, he can't do nothin' but kill her the way he used to kill just for her. He can't do nothin' but kill her and that bastard son.
Frederick Leroy Johnson has been a bad, bad boy. A bad slave, slaughtering his beloved lady in a jealous rage, slittin' his own son's throat and runnin' away. This time he stinks too much of sin to hide himself away. So he walks the open roads and plays his guitar and howls and prays.
He's the greatest bluesman to ever walk the earth. The soul he lost aches in his chest and he still hears his Mary in his dreams, singing that song that he'd pretended was just for him.
("I won't eat you, little one, I won't eat you, baby..." she had crooned in that gory sinkin' light the day their Night Bird was born.)
"And at the crossroads, I heard her say," Freddy wails against the screechin' rain. The whitefolks in the audience are watchin' him in awe. Whitefolks don't know nothin' about blues, but they feel it in him. "I won't eat you, little one, I won't eat you baby..."
It's a year to the day. Once upon a time, a lawman came huntin' Catherine Mary Saint Croix, came packin' a gun and holdin' the leashes of his three great dogs of war.
The hellhounds come bayin' now, to take revenge on Freddy Leroy for the life he stole. That big ol' Devil be raw about what Freddy Leroy done to his little Night Bird.
Frederick Leroy Johnson just laughs. The monsters catch him out in the open at the gravel crossroads and he don't even bother to run.
"She asked me to kill any man who tried to lay her with child." He coughs up blood as the beasts of brimstone take supper with his intestines. The sky above is cloudy and gray. He can't see the stars or the moon and the lightnin' stings his eyes. "An' I always answered to her above you, Devilman."
The big, black man claws his way up out the earth and stares at that little, black slave with amusement in his dark eyes.
"Well then, boy," Lucifer mocks, his voice beautiful and too perfect. "Ave Maria, Amen."
the end
email: burnabridge [at] gmail.com
Catherine Mary Saint Croix done eat her baby. Done eat her baby and start singing so sweet. Townsfolk call her a witch (which means knowledge and just imagine what horrors of horrors she knows). Townsfolk say she sold her soul. Townsfolk run her out of town and they don't wanna hear from her no more.
So Catherine Mary Saint Croix starts wandering the Louisiana land, wanders the dirt and the gravel and the swampland. She's fed and powered and haunted by that baby in her belly again.
First night on the road, she gets herself a bed for the night with her voice. Cuts the man when he tries to thrust up and up and up. Already been one baby, don't need to be no more.
The thing of it is - the thing that makes it funny - is that she really did sell her soul. Devil came wandering yonder, wrapped her golden curls round his scaly claws and promised her the voice of angels for the prettiest penny she held.
"Break your innocence and take your soul," the Devil had recited as he'd helped her devour her little babe from head to soles. And the more she ate, the more she sang, and the more her voice filled the world.
Frederick Leroy Johnson used to belong to a nice, pansy sort of man who liked to wash his face and touch his legs, but never did try to do the holy deed, and that was all right with Freddy. But Mr. Pouve had kicked the bucket and Freddy got himself sold to a nasty drinkin' man who had less soul than a witch in heat.
Frederick Leroy Johnson's been a bad, bad boy, been a bad, bad slave, talkin' back, and hittin' the whippin' man. Frederick Leroy Johnson's done run away. Gotta hide every step of the way, because black boys ain't so welcome out on the open road.
So Frederick Leroy Johnson starts wanderin' the Louisiana land, wanders the deep waters and the dark woods. He's fed on hunger and powered by freedom and fear. And the thing of it is, he finds Catherine Mary Saint Croix out in the swamplands.
She's as beautiful as a porcelain angel with the voice of the prettiest of the birds. He finds her hip deep in mud, wrists deep in gore.
"Ah, ma'am? Ah, ah, ma'am?" he calls to her from a few steps away.
She looks up at him and smiles. Then she goes right back to a'singing like she's out of her pretty, little head.
He's a slave to her voice. He knows because he starts hearin' her in his dreams. Maybe she just sings over him whilst he sleeps. She does that sometimes while touchin' her belly with the expression of benevolence that only mothers can summon up.
Her hair's the color of sunshine and her lips're the color of sin. He knows all about sin, his skin and his eyes bein' just as black as its heart and all.
Now that he's got Catherine Mary Saint Croix, Freddy Leroy ain't gotta hide no more. He's her slave all official-like. He cleans her clothes and brushes her hair and goes in to town to buy her new clothes when her white belle-dresses begin to turn dark with blood and dirt.
He don't wanna know where she gets her coin, only knows she got it and he ain't got no qualms about palmin' the change here and there and there again.
"You always kill 'em, Mary?" he wonders as he helps her out of a blood stained gown.
She hums up high in her throat, like she's vibratin' something with the noise, like it feels good to act that crazy.
"Only when they go tryin' to plant a baby in me, Frederick Leroy Johnson," she answers, her voice so heavenly.
A lawman come looking for his Catherine Mary Saint Croix. A lawman come packin' heat and holdin' the straining leashes of his own dogs of war. A lawman been chasing a trail of dead men. A lawman been chasing the putrid footprints of a running slave.
Frederick Leroy Johnson won't let him have her though, and it's his turn to turn his hands into the instruments they are.
"Freddy, Freddy," Catherine Mary Saint Croix sings in her nightmarish euphoria. "You've done a bad, bad thing, boy, but now you're mine, you're mine and mine and mine."
Freddy can't do nothin' but smile at her and listen to her song. Can't do nothing but hum to her tune, like a child's lullaby. It swirls and whirls and wheels around them. Hers - all hers - the blood on his hands makes him hers.
So when she brings him down to the crossroads and buries the crunchy bones of the big, bad lawman deep down in the earth, Freddy Leroy don't think nothin' about a magic word or two sung so sweet from her pretty, pink lips.
"Come on up now," pretty Mary croons. "Come on up now, and let my Freddy sing as beautiful as me."
And what she's callin' comes. A big, black man with eyes like Satan comes crawling up from the earth. Like a hungry slave at a chicken leg, that lawman's bones be stuck between his great big teeth.
He looks at Catherine Mary Saint Croix like she belongs to him, the same way Frederick belongs to her: in that sinful way where you done somethin' so bad you'll never be clean enough to escape the taint of it again.
"This is freedom to you, boy?" the big man wonders, laughin'. "You escape the whipping post and come straight to me? Ain't no wonder, boy, it ain't no wonder at all."
Catherine Mary Saint Croix curtsies to the man and looks like the rich belle she used to be; only she's blood stained and tattered. The big man touches her hair, touches her breasts, but goes no further. She lets him. She lets him touch her, and she looks up at him with her big, blue eyes. He approves of her obeisance and he turns to look at Freddy Leroy.
"Go on now," Mary says to her boy. "Go on now, git on your knees and ask him to give you the gift for me."
And Freddy does what she tells him, gets down in the dirt that they always say is so much like his skin. He clasps his hands like a good boy prayin' and to the man he says:
"Let me sing like Mary. Let me do good by her. I'll give it up, just like she done, just make me right for her."
The big man laughs, like a smiling maniac. He's pleased that Frederick Leroy Johnson knows the deal of the deal. That's when Freddy feels that big man touch him. He feels that big man scratch him, feels him draw blood and mark him. He feels the big man pull his hips up and rape him.
"Break your innocence and take your soul," the big, big man mocks and Freddy keeps his face pressed to the dirt so he don't have to see. It's more'n enough to feel.
"Break his innocence and take his soul," Catherine Mary Saint Croix sings. Her voice makes him tremble like crystal made to ring. "Break his innocence and take his soul and give him back to me ..."
With his Devil-given gift, he plays the guitar better than any man alive, and she sings more beautifully than anything has got the right to. The menfolk want her for their bed, the menfolk hate him for his talent and his skin, but he don't mind them none. It's his child she's heavy with. Greatest bluesman to ever walk this blasted earth, and his beautiful Mary's got his baby inside.
He is her slave, and he plays his music just for her. She sings to the world, but every chord to come cryin' out of his guitar is just for her. He sold his soul off to the Devil to make his white, witchy woman pleased, and in return she's blessed him with her smiles.
"Freddy, Frederick Leroy Johnson," she croons when she comes into his bed, "you got beautiful fingers for a black boy."
He's an instrument for her. He teases those beautiful fingers of his up and down the strings for her. He collects the coin those damn hungry, white men throw up onto the stage at her. He kills them if they come too close, drags their bodies out into the swamp or says a few words to the Devil and lets him have his due in pounds of flesh.
Together they go east and together they go west. She sings and she tempts and he cries and he kills. Ain't nowhere in their beautiful Louisiana that's safe from their song of brimstone and fire.
Mary has her baby out in the swampland. She hurts and she bleeds, but she don't make a sound; just turns as white as death and as still as stone. Mary has her baby at sunset; the oily swamp water looks like blood spilled from her wound. Catherine Mary Saint Croix bleeds like she's bein' torn apart and from the labors of her womb comes the Devil's child.
It ain't his child, Freddy knows - always knew - knew from the moment he felt that big, black man ripping away at everything inside.
It ain't his child, but Frederick Leroy Johnson, who sold his heart to Mary and his pitiful soul to the Devil, loves that child just the same. The newborn is black-skinned and demon-eyed, but gorgeous to Freddy who helps his woman back up onto her feet and wonders:
"What's his name, baby? What are you gonna call this sweet child of mine?"
She laughs in the fadin' light, her voice so trillin' sweet. "I won't eat you, baby," she promises. "I won't eat you and I'll call you my little Night Bird..."
The child makes an animal sound, a hiss and then a coo, which Catherine Mary Saint Croix echoes in the dark. Tears of pride be runnin' down Frederick's face, and as he listens, he gets to singin' and worshipin' along with them before the comin' dawn.
Night Bird Johnson grows quick, quick as a devil. He gets big and he gets strong and he gets vicious. He loves his mammy and he loves Freddy too, but he rapes a girl when he turns eleven and kills a man at twelve. Ain't no room in his heart but for mammy and for Freddy and for all the evil he gotta do.
The lawmen start comin' again, come on charges of miscegenation and murder and rape. But Freddy didn't let them have his Mary the first time, and he ain't lettin' them take his son now.
He can slit a man's throat, shoot a man, break a man's neck, take an axe to a man's face. The bodies get to pilin' up and that Night Bird gets to feedin'. Night Bird Johnson, carrion bird, knows all the secrets that his witch mother knows and much more.
Catherine Mary Saint Croix loves her baby so.
"He grows so big," she tells Freddy, even in their bed. "He grows so strong, so smart."
And she's still so beautiful, still sings so sweet. Men still come sniffin' at her skirts, and it's still Frederick who strikes them down dead.
Folks all across Louisiana know about them now. Catherine Mary Saint Croix's hometown steps up and tells her nightmare tale about how she ate her babe when he was not more than six months old. Folks from all around recount her voice, the deaths that followed after her like a plague. Then she'd found that boy, that runaway slave and she'd made that dirty boy one of her own. Now they got that demon child, that half-breed mongrel with eyes like a murderer.
Holymen and lawmen come huntin' after Mary's sins.
Night Bird... Night Bird Johnson comes hungering after her love and her sex and her power.
She's heavy with child again. Frederick can tell in the way that they touch each other that this babe is Night Bird's own. The boy is fifteen and taller than a full grown man and Freddy knows what this true son o' the Devil has done.
Once upon a time, Catherine Mary Saint Croix had sung to him that she killed the men who tried to plant the babes inside. He'd loved her then, been tormented and haunted by that voice she'd whored herself to the Devil for. He'd bowed down in the dirt before that crooked serpent for her, and had believed she'd loved him still.
But when he sees her enthralled with what is not their son, he can't do nothin' but kill her the way he used to kill just for her. He can't do nothin' but kill her and that bastard son.
Frederick Leroy Johnson has been a bad, bad boy. A bad slave, slaughtering his beloved lady in a jealous rage, slittin' his own son's throat and runnin' away. This time he stinks too much of sin to hide himself away. So he walks the open roads and plays his guitar and howls and prays.
He's the greatest bluesman to ever walk the earth. The soul he lost aches in his chest and he still hears his Mary in his dreams, singing that song that he'd pretended was just for him.
("I won't eat you, little one, I won't eat you, baby..." she had crooned in that gory sinkin' light the day their Night Bird was born.)
"And at the crossroads, I heard her say," Freddy wails against the screechin' rain. The whitefolks in the audience are watchin' him in awe. Whitefolks don't know nothin' about blues, but they feel it in him. "I won't eat you, little one, I won't eat you baby..."
It's a year to the day. Once upon a time, a lawman came huntin' Catherine Mary Saint Croix, came packin' a gun and holdin' the leashes of his three great dogs of war.
The hellhounds come bayin' now, to take revenge on Freddy Leroy for the life he stole. That big ol' Devil be raw about what Freddy Leroy done to his little Night Bird.
Frederick Leroy Johnson just laughs. The monsters catch him out in the open at the gravel crossroads and he don't even bother to run.
"She asked me to kill any man who tried to lay her with child." He coughs up blood as the beasts of brimstone take supper with his intestines. The sky above is cloudy and gray. He can't see the stars or the moon and the lightnin' stings his eyes. "An' I always answered to her above you, Devilman."
The big, black man claws his way up out the earth and stares at that little, black slave with amusement in his dark eyes.
"Well then, boy," Lucifer mocks, his voice beautiful and too perfect. "Ave Maria, Amen."
the end