Crow had no answer for him. None at all.
(2)
He sat on the rooftop, legs folded Indian fashion, old guitar laid across his bony knees, singing blues to the night. The wind had turned cold and fierce and it blew around him and through him. On that gale he could hear the voice of the creature in the swamp. The wind was filled with his rage.
The Bone Man smiled. He felt great sadness that Henry’s boy had died, but he also felt great pride that Henry’s daughter, Val, had stood up and stood tall. Henry would be proud of her. She’d done what no one—certainly not him, and probably not Griswold—had thought anyone could do with just an ordinary gun. She’d brought down one of them. One of his soldiers. Griswold’s fury filled the air around him, and it tasted just fine to the Bone Man.
He strummed his guitar. So much pain downstairs. So many folks hurting and dying. So many folks changing, in good ways and bad. So much death.
Yet it wasn’t all dark, not even up here in the wind, and he ran his fingers over the strings, picking out a tune. Val had taken her stand, and now for the first time in thirty years the thing down there in the wormy dark was not so sure, not so cocksure by a long mile, and that was good. Now there was a little more hope mixed in with all that hate and rage on the wind. Not much, maybe, not enough almost for sure, but some—and for tonight that was going to have to do.
He slipped his bottleneck out of his coat pocket and fitted it over the forefinger of his left hand, sliding the smooth glass down the strings as he plucked a note and then another. Downstairs they were doing their trying and their dying, their sewing and their praying. The Bone Man was no sage, he didn’t know who was going to make it through this night, or who was going to make it through till the coming of Griswold’s Red Wave. He didn’t know if anyone would be able to take another stand, like Val did tonight. Maybe Crow would, but that was something the Bone Man would have to see. Crow…and maybe Mike. He played some notes, finding his way into a song. The old one that he used to play on Henry’s porch. The one about prisoners walking that last mile to Old Sparky down in Louisiana. The one he played on that long ago summer. “Ghost Road Blues. ” He played it and then he started to sing the words in a voice no one could hear.
As the wind shrieked its fury around him, the dead man sang his song.