Phantom Banjo (17 page)

"Well, the fella hotwired it for us and got
the lights working and stumbled off back to bed. We pulled up to my
place about two in the morning.

"I was just startin' to say goodnight to
Marty and thank her for all her trouble and tell her how sorry I
was my bad luck seemed to be catchin' when I noticed that though my
living-room light was on, the porch light was off. Marianne, my
neighbor who was watchin' my house, knew I was comin' home too and
had specifically told me when I called her earlier that she'd leave
on the porch light. But I figured maybe the bulb had burned out or
something.

"I asked Marty to spend the night, since that
car of hers might break down at a less convenient place next time,
so she tagged behind me into the house.

"I noticed right off that the cats weren't
watching for me from the window but thought they just didn't
recognize the sound of Marty's car. Then I saw that the porch door
was unlocked and I remember saying to Marty that Marianne must have
been in an all-fired hurry to leave. The mail was on the kitchen
table, quite a pile of it, and I couldn't remember having left so
much opened mail there with it, but lots of the letters were open.
When I picked one up, I saw it was postmarked after I left. Also, a
couple of file boxes of old papers were sitting on the kitchen
counter, open. I usually keep them on the back porch, and when I
looked back there, the door was ajar and there was water on the
floor. I figured maybe it had rained real hard and flooded the
floor, and Marianne rescued the file boxes, even though I didn't
remember leaving any on the floor, to keep them from getting wet.
Probably left the door open to dry it out. There was nothin'
valuable back there and there was an inside lock.

"One of the cats jumped down from on top of
the Frigidaire but the others all seemed to be hiding. I noticed
the bedroom door was open when I came in, and that made me kind of
peeved at Marianne 'cause I told her I didn't want them in there.
They pee on the bed if I leave them alone too long. So I went in to
see if they had and noticed that both the closet door and the
window were wide open too and it was chilly and blowin' cold rain
onto my bed. I knew then somebody had broke in and I called Marty
in and told her. What bothered me most was that my oldest cat,
Chessie, was gone too. Goddamn burglars got no consideration. Can't
even close the damned window behind 'em. I swore if that little old
cat was hurt I'd find whoever broke in if it was the last thing I
did and wring his goddamn neck.

"Well, li'l ol’ Chessie had gone and hid
under the house and the other cats came home once they heard me
callin'. The cops came by for all the good they did. They asked if
I had any ex-husbands or boyfriends who had it in for me, like
since I work in a bar I'd hang out with that kinda sleaze-bags. I
told 'em if it was that simple to figure out who broke into my
house, I wouldn't have needed them. The funny part was that nothin'
was gone, not a blank check or the insurance dividend check that
was in all that mail. I didn't know what to think, Willie."

"Some kid, maybe?" Willie offered, though he
didn't think all the other trouble she'd had was coincidence.

She shook her head. "Nope, and I don't think
it was one of the sex nuts who get their kicks out of invadin'
somebody else's privacy either, like the cops thought. Because
about a week later, I went to play one of the tapes in my car, and
it snarled all up in the player. I got out the album. I always tape
my albums for the car, you know. Anyway, it was scratched clear
across both sides. And, Willie?"

"Huh?"

"So were all the others. And all of my other
tapes did the same as the one in the car, just snarled right up. I
tried to play them on the way out here and they were useless. They
did somethin' to the CD's I had from my last birthday too. They
won't play any more than the others. Not even your albums, Willie.
That's one reason I decided to come out here and campaign for Mic
and Lettie. I haven't heard any good music in weeks. You know all
the radio shows they used to have with folk music had to go off the
air. But I can't imagine why that thief would ruin my record
collection and not take anything. Why, a customer of mine that
works at Boeing says they're developing some new space technology
that needs scrap vinyl. They're payin' pretty good prices for it
and Bill, that's my customer, has been raiding garage sales for old
records. So I'm surprised the burglar didn't just take 'em."

She huffed to a stop and Willie said, "Maybe
you can sell the wrecked ones and get a little money that way,
Gus."

"I don't want their damned money. I want my
records to play like they're damned well supposed to and I want my
kids back."

Willie tried to make light of the whole
thing. He didn't want her to be as scared as he was. "Know what I
think, Gus?" he asked. "I think you missed your chance to be a
radical in the sixties and are now atoning for very sensibly votin'
Republican by becomin' a full-blown hippie now that you're old
enough to do what you want."

"Well, apparently that's what somebody else
thinks too, but I'm not any different than I ever was and I did not
vote Republican, you cute little fascist you. I could understand it
if I was some kind of radical, but even if I was Abbie Hoffman come
back from the grave I don't see why the federal boys would be so
spiteful as to ruin my record collection. And I'm not Abbie
Hoffman, I'm just Lettie's mama and they can't hold that against
me. Of course, I'm tryin' to get her out of the hoosegow. What
mother wouldn't?"

When he didn't say anything for a long time,
Gussie asked him, "Well, Willie, what do you think? Does this have
anything to do with what you were talkin' about?"

"Maybe so, maybe not. I think so. But I got
to work it through a little more before I tell you about it,
darlin'. As for you, I think you'd be best off keepin' your mouth
shut and your eyes open and see which way the wind blows."

He was so serious and worried-sounding it
scared her a little, though not enough, of course, to keep her
mouth shut. If somebody, anybody, was out to get her or hers she
would by God go down kicking and screaming with all her might and
they would know they'd been in a hell of a fight. Nevertheless, for
Willie's sake, she nodded and said, "That's what I'm here for."

* * *

Tony went into a coughing spasm and Kathie
Jorgensen stopped staring at the stain on the mattress of the cot
her strange new boarder had been leaning against while she told her
story. "This Gussie you're talking about," Kathie said, her voice
quiet and deliberate, as if she was trying to piece something
together. "That's you, isn't it?"

Gussie made a face and shook her head. "Not
exactly. Not anymore." She shifted position, stretching her
noodle-numb legs in front of her and bouncing them up and down
until tattoo needles began stinging them.

Kathy started to ask another question but
noticed the way the other boarders were turning away, almost as if
they were embarrassed. When you got an evasive answer about
somebody's identity, it was against street etiquette to pursue the
subject. But Kathie didn't live on the street and she had the
feeling this story concerned her in a personal kind of way. "You
knew all these people then, really?"

"Sure did."

"And these people you 're calling devils?"
Kathie asked.

"That's what I call 'em, " Gussie said. "You
got to make your own mind up about some things, honey."

"Well, what I don't get,"
Pete said querulously, "is how come if you were just you, in one
little place, how come you
know so blasted
much about what everyone else was thinkin' and sayin' where you
weren't?"

"Hey, don't get your bowels in an uproar,
kiddo. It's just a story. I learned it this way, from the people
who told it to me. If I want to say I'm one of the people in it,
what's it to you? But I got to tell all the parts or it ain’t no
fun. And like I say, I ain't exactly the same woman now as I was
then. So I switch off like, like they do on TV, so's you 'll get
all the important parts."

Crazy Ruthie hit him with the end of the dog
lead she wore around her waist when her dogs were staying the night
at the costume shop. "Yeah, let 'er tell it her way. Just like on
TV. God, it's been years since I had one of them. Go on, lady, then
what happened?"

* * *

When everybody had finished registering and
was milling around the stage, somebody came out and messed with the
microphone, then the Indian-looking woman stepped onto the
patio-deck stage and introduced herself, saying, "Welcome to my
place and to this gathering. I'm called Anna Mae Gunn. I advertised
this gathering as the Maryland Memorial Folk Festival for all the
great ones we've recently lost from our ranks, Sam Hawthorne, Josh
Grisholm, Nedra Buchanan, and so many others, all the departed
spirits who left their immortality on disk, tape, and record at the
Library of Congress Folk Music Archives, now gone. Festival doesn't
seem quite the word. Your names have been chosen from the charter
lists of other festivals. Most of you are musicians, a few are
collectors, friends of the music, distributors, but by and large we
have invited no audience, no reviewers, or other members of the
press.

"Maybe a better word for this gathering is a
ceremonial of the sort some of you will be familiar with as an
Irish wake. For me, I think of it more as something that cousins of
my mother's people, the Athabaskan Indians of central Alaska do,
called a Stick Dance, where two villages get together and sing and
dance their folks up over the top, to the good place where spirits
come to rest. I have reason to feel that with all that's been
happening lately, the people we've lost need the comfort of our
support.

"We who do this music, who love this music,
come from all over, we travel all over. Despite a lot of stuff
that's been happening to try to keep us in our place lately,
musicians, especially those who carry the songs of the people, have
always wandered—maybe just from one encampment to the next, from
one holler to the next, from one town to the next, one castle to
the next and back again, bringing news, telling stories. But
somehow, with all that wandering, we seem to disconnect from home
folks and attach to one another, even at distances, as a large,
spread-out, sometimes loving, sometimes brawling tribe. Sort of
gypsies without the benefit of a specific ethnic minority heritage
to make us worth being studied by cultural anthropologists with
government grants.

"But as a tribe, as a profession, as a group
of people who share the bond of our music, we have suffered the
loss of many of our leaders, our best spokespeople, our chiefs. I
welcome you and offer my place as a place for our tribe's Stick
Dance, our tribute to our dead by joining our songs to their
spirits as they seek their rest from this life.

"One more thing, then I'll hush and let the
music start. As many of you may know about us Indian people, when
we have a ceremonial feast, which this is, it is a free
demonstration of hospitality. The meat, the corn, potatoes, and
water are on me. Other folks with the facilities have brought pop
and beer and other things to snack on. Proceeds from the pies back
there go to help out the families of our friends. They made big
money according to our standards, but most of them still couldn't
afford health insurance. And well, I can't either. I don't want you
to come on my property as my guest to sing at this do and go
hungry, so help yourself to the food, but please remember I'm only
half Indian. The Scottish part of me won't be at all offended if
you have something extra you want to drop in the coffee can to
cover the costs. Thanks."

The first act was a jug band composed of jug,
washboard, musical saw, kazoo, banjo, and a fellow who played a
Coleman stove with a salad fork and promised to play a ladder the
following day. They made a lot of racket that sounded a lot like
"When the Saints Go Marching In," in the spirit of the Indian
feast.

Then there was the gray-bearded man with his
hair parted in the middle who stood up and sang a cappella sea
chanteys, as well as a couple more with the help of a concertina.
Gussie stuffed her fliers in her Mexican basket purse embroidered
with the little burros and the sombreroed boys and listened to the
songs with such a big grin on her face you'd have thought she'd
died and gone to heaven. She didn't know any of the songs at all,
and he admitted he liked to do ones he had learned from old sailors
themselves or from what he called field recordings instead of
copying the same old ones everybody did. But he taught them the
crewmen's part, and Gussie crowed along on those choruses confident
in the knowledge she'd be drowned out by people with better voices.
She loved sea chanteys as only a woman who'd grown up on the
prairies could. For her they were alive with romance; sea spray and
rolling waves and even battling storms wearing oilskins sounded
wonderful when you're baking in 110-degree heat, fighting ticks and
chiggers. Her love of chanteys was one of the things that had led
her to seek the job in Tacoma, where she could see Puget Sound
every day. The Sound wasn't quite the ocean, but it was a damn
sight closer to it than the Brazos. This chanteyman made it clear
to them all though that sea chanteys were serious business and that
being a sailor was just as rough and dirty a job as working an oil
rig or punching cows or even waitressing, for that matter.

She felt so good singing like that. Cleared
the lungs, she always felt, like her kids said yoga did.

Next up was a casually clean-cut middle-aged
man who played mandolin and sang in a twangy voice odd versions of
old songs she'd heard the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary
and other famous groups do long ago. It took him a while to get
started going good, because he flubbed the first line of the first
song several times. Finally he said "damn" in a soft voice and went
on to another one. Then he'd stop in the middle of a verse and seem
to be disoriented for a moment, unable to remember the words. The
way he sang the words, she thought he was putting on being more
ignorant than he was, or making fun of people who didn't know good
English, and she had about half decided she could do without
him.