Phantom Banjo (18 page)

But then he started talking, telling about
when he was a kid with parents who spent their lives collecting
songs. He told of sitting in mountain cabins with his mamma and
daddy and his mountain aunts and uncles, listening to them sing.
Old, old people who lived in the hills with no water but who
gathered family for miles around when he and his folks came to
visit with their recording machines and Mamma's little notebook. He
told how a lot of mountain songs really came from England, Ireland,
and Scotland and how the people's speech, which he didn't imitate
when he talked, was believed by some scholars to be the same as
spoken in those countries at the time the mountaineer's ancestors
came over and hid themselves in the hills, isolated from outside
influences. Others in the audience may have heard it before but it
was all new to Gussie. The idea that "ignorant" English might be
closer to the way real Englishmen spoke than the way it was taught
in school intrigued her. She'd never apologize for saying "ain't"
again. As if she ever had.

Four women about Lettie's age, playing
guitars, base, keyboard, and a variety of percussion instruments,
sang women's songs, most of them funny, one or two way too close to
the bone to be funny. They had to leave the same night to return to
their jobs, they said.

An angry no-longer-young man was next. He
sang a lot of the old union songs and war protest songs through his
nose and glared at everyone a lot and said he thought this "get 'em
into heaven" stuff Anna Mae was spouting was a lot of crap but the
barbecued beef smelled good.

Finally it was Brose's turn, him and Willie
and that girl, Julianne Martin, Brose said her name was when he
introduced her. Gussie remembered talking to her a long time ago,
right before she heard about Lettie and Mic's arrest.

Sylvia, the MC, introduced the three of them
as a Balkan band, but Brose pulled up a folding chair and played
his old-style blues, playing faster and faster and adding more and
more riffs here and there until the tune turned into a jig. He used
to sing sometimes, but he didn't now.

Julianne played spoons with him. Willie
didn't join in at all, but as Brose finished, Willie slid in
between him and the microphone, a banjo in his hands.

The banjo seemed to be mumbling to itself
even before Willie struck a chord, and he started playing the tune
to "Mama Don't Allow." Julianne tick-a-tacked it on her spoons and
Brose flatpicked it on guitar and Willie caught the eye of one of
the jug-band members and whistled through his teeth, motioning with
a jerk of his head for the band to join them.

As they stepped up, thumping and tooting
along, they began to lose the melody but Willie motioned with his
thumb for the sound woman to raise the volume on the instrument
mike, and even with the one hand not on the banjo, the banjo
relentlessly plunked out the tune. The jug band picked it up and
repeated the refrain, over and over, and Willie stepped forward and
opened his mouth as if about to sing, then stepped back again,
shutting his lips tight and shaking his head. Stepping back up to
the mike again, the banjo still ringing, he squared his shoulders
and raised an admonitory finger, his voice now sounding like a
preacher's or a bogus doctor in a snake-oil medicine show.

CHAPTER 9

"My dearly beloved friends," Willie began,
holding his index finger aloft to command attention and pronouncing
each word with a little flourish at the end and giving "friends"
three syllables, "has it occurred to you during this eve-en-ing’s
performance that your brothers and sisters appear to be afflicted
with an embarrassing and unsightly loss of memory, which causes
their tongues to twist painfully around familiar words, which
causes melodies to go astray and rhythms to break faith each beat
with its brethren? Well, I am here to tell you, brothers and
sisters, that there is a reason for this and there is a cure. The
cure is to sing and this instrument of song I clutch in my two
hands will lead us on. But this instrument, for all its beautiful
larynx, has no tongue. Can anybody teyell me," and his voice rose
with televangelistic fervor, "Yea, can you teyell me what the name
of this blessed song might be?"

" 'Rollin' in My Sweet Baby's Arms'!" someone
shouted.

"Hallelujah, brother, that's the spirit. Not
the exact phrase I was lookin' for, but good try."

" 'Mama Don't 'Low,' " Gussie bellowed.

"Precisely, darlin'! Amen, sister. And dearly
beloved, just what is it that Mama don't allow and how exactly do
we feel about it?"

"No gi-tar pickin'," someone said, and they
got through the first line. Followed by, with shouted prompting
from the audience, "But we don't care what Mama don't allow, gonna
pick that guitar anyhow. Mama don't allow no guitar pickin' in
here."

"And what else?"

"No banjo pickin'—"

And through the same thing, the words all
fitting into the melody, not easily, but with the banjo keeping the
tune and the people who didn't sing but just remembered the words
prompting the stage, the whole thing came together, simple and
complicated as a child learning to tie his shoes, or a
brain-damaged adult relearning how to tie his shoes. The banjo
ventured a little side riff of "We Shall Overcome."

At the same time, Gussie didn't know what
made Willie laugh and carry on so about that old Sam Hawthorne
song, except that it was a good one for singing along and built up
a lot of energy between the stage and the audience, almost all of
whom were waiting to go on stage.

They went through every instrument on stage
with a solo, except that even during the solos the banjo kept the
tune. Spoons, kazoo, washboard, washtub base, a fiddle someone had
just whipped out, even the Coleman stove defied Mama's orders and
played anyhow, but Willie kept the song going to clapping, finger
snapping, stomping, singing, humming, whistling, and singing again,
making up more and more verses as if he was afraid to stop.

Finally he did, and when he stopped Gussie's
throat was raw and her hands stung from clapping. The song must
have gone on for twenty minutes but Willie still stood in front of
the microphone, which wasn't like him. He had quite a few faults
but refusing to yield the stage wasn't generally one of them. He
was breathing a little fast as he said, "Anybody else noticed that
it's actual fact that someone ain't allowin' us to sing around
here? How long has it been since any of you sang in public, never
mind for money?"

"I had a gig two months ago!" someone
said.

"Not since March," somebody else said.

"Me, I ain't worked at singing the folk songs
of our land for well over two years," Willie said, the banjo, now
slung across his back, rattling out "This Land Is Your Land." "A
few days ago I found out why, and because of it and maybe because
of something a friend left me, I stand here before you tonight as a
marked man."

People were getting impatient. They were here
not just to hear music, but to play it themselves, and were not the
least bit interested in listening to a quasi-sermon by someone who
seemed to have fallen prey to a particularly weird trip. "You
should be more careful who your friends are, fella, and she
wouldn't have left you with a thing like that!" the angry
no-longer-young man jeered.

"Actually," Willie said, bringing the banjo
forward again, "it was a guy—"

The heckler made an even nastier comment and
Gussie edged over to him, ready to brain him with her Mexican
basket bag if he didn't dry up.

"And what he gave me was this banjo. Anybody
recognize it?"

Anna Mae Gunn was standing beside Gussie when
he held up the banjo, and Gussie heard her make the sort of
stricken noise a doe might make when she's hit by a bullet. Anna
Mae pushed past Gussie and elbowed her way through to the stage
while Willie was playing guessing games, and took the mike away
from him. Willie made a bow, waving his arm as if there were a
plumed hat at the end of it, but he tried to argue quietly with
her.

Anna Mae said, "I know," as she turned back
to the mike and said, "Well, better get on with the show. Anyone
who'd like to talk more to, uh, to this man, see him backstage.
Meanwhile, we have a gospel group from Mobile, Alabama, up next,
that right, Syl?"

She waited onstage while it cleared and the
gospel group took its position. Willie went docilely enough, but
his expression was more dangerous than Gussie had ever seen it as
he waited for Anna Mae to exit. Anna Mae tried to brush past him
but he grabbed her arm. Gussie didn't know if Willie was drunk or
not, but she had two of the people she loved in jail already and
she was going to do her best to keep his familiar face from making
an ass of itself, so to speak.

"I wish you hadn't of done that, ma'am," he
was saying, still trying for control. "I know it sounds crazy, but
what I was trying to tell them was important. It has to do
with—"

"I have a good idea," the Gunn woman
said.

Gussie strode up between them, gushing, "Miz
Gunn, I just think it's wonderful what you're doing for people
here. Why, I was just telling Willie before the show—have you met?
My goodness, I am always amazed at how much people can have in
common and not know each other. This is my friend, Will—"

"I think you'd both better come inside with
me," Anna Mae told them. "We have to get a couple of things cleared
up."

She took them inside to the kitchen, then led
them downstairs to the basement, which had been converted into a
home recording studio with egg-carton-shaped foam for
soundproofing, tape recorders, microphones, and soundboards. They
could yell all they wanted down there, which was evidently what the
woman had in mind.

She shut the door behind them and she and
Willie started shouting at the same time. "What in the hell do you
mean. . ."

". . .by pulling me offstage," Willie
said.

". . .by flashing around Hawthorne's banjo
like that. Where did you get it? Don't you know you could get us
all busted that way? Don't you know that's a thing of power?"

Gussie, used to breaking up arguments between
drunks before they escalated too high, hollered, "Whoa, goddammit.
Simmer down. One at a time, now." They both stopped sputtering and
glared at her. "Miz Gunn, this gentleman you're hollerin' at here
is Willie MacKai. He was one of the founders of the Flugerville
Festival, has been a musician for thirty years, and I do believe
that was probably the first time anyone was ever so rude as to boot
him offstage."

"Thanks, Gussie, but I can speak for myself,"
Willie said belligerently.

"If nobody ever has before, then they've
never had as good a cause," Anna Mae said. "Now I'm going to repeat
my question very slowly and distinctly so you'll understand that I
want an answer; what the hell are you doing with Sam's banjo?"

"Playing it, dammit. Leading songs with it,
like Sam did."

"Not like Sam did, buster. You'll never be
able to do anything like Sam did. How did you get it?"

"That's my business."

"For Christ's sake, you sound like a couple
of two-year-olds," Gussie said. "Am I going to have to crack your
heads together to get you to calm down. Now, Willie, you were all
set to tell a couple hundred of Miz Gunn's guests how you got that
banjo, don't you think she maybe has a right to know too?"

His mouth writhed in such a nasty way that
she had no desire to know what he was thinking, but she was pretty
sure it didn't have anything to do with the spirit of sweet
reason.

Finally he passed a hand over his face,
watching Anna Mae over it. She glared back. "You're one of them,
aren't you?"

"Do you know how crazy you sound?" the woman
said, her black eyes boring into him. "One of who? What is that
shit?"

"One of the people Lulubelle Baker warned me
about. One of the ones who's tryin' to frame me for Mark Mosby's
death, which you were no doubt responsible for. One of the ones who
destroyed the Folk Music Archives."

"Yeah, sure, I did all that stuff. I do it
all the time, and then put on folk festivals single-handed to use
up all the extra time and money I have left over."

"Maybe it's a trap," he shot back, his jaw
thrust forward.

"Yeah, and maybe you're Sam Hawthorne and I'm
just too blind to see it, in spite of the fact that Sam and I have
been friends for fifteen years. Otherwise, you better tell me right
now how you got ahold of Lazarus."

"Or what?"

"Or I call the cops and tell them I just
threw a drunk off my place who looked a lot like somebody wanted
for murder in Texas."

Gussie started to butt in again and explain
to her that that was a mistake, that for all his bluster Willie
MacKai would no more murder anybody than he'd grow wings and fly.
Trouble was, she was pretty sure Anna Mae Gunn no more believed
such a thing than she herself did. Gussie was just trying to talk
Willie into telling Anna Mae what he would have told her of his own
free will if she hadn't flown at him like that. Of course, if the
Indian woman and Sam had been good friends, then maybe she was
grieving more than ceremonially and wasn't thinking too clearly. Or
maybe she just liked to make scenes and cause trouble. A lot of
people in show business were like that. Anything for a little
drama.

Someone was knocking on the door. Anna Mae
and Willie stood squared off but Gussie walked right between them
and went to open the door. Let in some air if nothing else.

A gangly man stood there, his Adam's apple
taking a dive into his collar and bobbing back up as he took in the
attitudes of the other two people in the room. "Excuse me, ma'am, I
wanted to talk to Ms. Gunn a minute," he said. Gussie was about to
tell him it wasn't an awful good time right then and maybe he
should come back but by that time, instead of turning tail, he
walked right in as easy as if he'd been invited and stuck out his
hand to Willie. "Willie MacKai, isn't it? I'm Faron Randolph. Let
me tell you, sir, I just sort of came by chance because my wife had
some research to do in Washington, D.C., but if I had known you
were going to be here, I'd have come on purpose just to see you. My
dad took me to the Flugerville Festival one year all the way from
St. Joe just to see you. 'Now, son,' Dad told me, 'you pay
attention to Mr. Willie MacKai there because he is something you
don't see too often, a true folksinger, singing songs taught to him
by American cowboys and Mexican vaqueros since he was a boy and
also doing all those popular songs city singers have written to
sound like folk songs.' He told me to pay special attention to the
way you played the guitar, Mexican style, and asked me how many
times I'd seen Bobby Dylan playing it that way. I was going through
a time when I thought Bobby Dylan was the best thing since sliced
bread."