Phantom Banjo (24 page)

But Juli was looking up at everybody, Gussie,
Anna Mae, Willie, and Brose, who once again loomed over them all.
She smiled sort of half apologetically, looking pained and
frightened. She thumped the heel of her hand against her temple
again but when she took the hand away there was a little smear of
blood. "Oops. Maybe that's why I can't hear anything, do you
s'pose?" she asked, lapsing almost into baby talk. "I think maybe
you better get me a doctor."

CHAPTER 12

While Anna Mae ran back into her house to
call an ambulance, the others tried to find help for their own
wounds or those of their companions. Fortunately, plenty of the
musicians attending seemed to do medical jobs for a day gig. Sylvia
had at one time been a paramedic, the washtub bass player a
registered nurse, the gospel singers were a radiologist and an eye,
ear, nose and throat specialist. Then there was the plastic
surgeon, the woman who played bodhran for the Irish group, and the
neurologist who played a marimba.

Willie hunkered down next to Juli. Now and
then he had to open his mouth and crank it to first one side, then
the other to try to pop his eardrums. Gussie snagged the
gospel-singing EENT man and brought him over to Juli. He gave her a
cursory once-over, then said he had to go to his car. When he
returned, he was carrying a briefcase.

"Got your instruments in there, Doc?" Gussie
asked, then coughed. The acrid smell of burning wire did not blow
away as easily as regular smoke or the scent of manure.

He nodded. "Yes, and even more important. Got
my release forms. Waivers of responsibility if the patient doesn't
go in for follow-up treatment." Juli signed in a shaky blue
ballpoint scrawl.

He had her sit up on a log in front of the
ruins of the stage, one of Anna Mae's tartan couch blankets around
her soaked blouse and jeans. Her drying hair was beginning to curl,
the charred bangs kinking into tight ringlets at her hairline. Her
blue eyes looked naked and defenseless, slightly startled without
lashes and brows.

"We'll need to have Clarissa look at your
burns," he said.

"Calling in consultations already, huh?"
Gussie asked.

"Well, of course, Julianne is entitled to
choose her own physician but I just thought . . ."

"It's dead," Anna Mae said, stalking up to
them. Her mouth was set in a hard line and her hands were balled
into fists at her side.

Gussie stared at her stupidly, then said,
"Oh, you mean the phone?"

"Yes."

"Lightning must have gotten it too," Willie
said.

"Maybe," she snapped back.

The gospel-singing EENT man, whose name was
Harvey something, said, "Looks like it's all first degree but I'm
no expert. Let's get her inside. The light's so bad out here I
can't see a damned thing."

"It's no better inside," Anna Mae told him.
"We're still disconnecting everything so I can turn the house
current back on. And I'm not sure my own wiring didn't burn
out."

"Well, inside is still going to be better.
Somebody needs to round up all the sleeping bags and blankets they
can find and somebody else start getting people in. Some of these
folks are going to be shocky. We need to dry them off and warm them
up."

From the roar of helpless engines and the
whine of mud-mired tires, Gussie figured that some people were
already trying to liberate themselves from the rain-soaked fields.
Brose had a winch on his truck, but his wheels were as stuck as
everybody else's. Still, he plodded dizzily from car to car trying
to help rock the four-wheel drives out of the mud so they could
help the other vehicles. The blond fellow Gussie had noticed
staring at Willie earlier was helping too.

Duck Soul peered over Gussie's shoulder,
"How's she doing?" he asked, nodding at Juli.

"We're not sure. She probably needs to go to
the hospital but the phone's down, and everybody's stuck in the
mud."

"Not me," he said, jerking his thumb in the
direction of his van, which still sat in the driveway. "I could
take her, or any of the others, and make the call too."

"You could drive away and not take your share
of the blame for this too," Anna Mae growled.

"Blame? Hey, lady, it was, to put it in
insurance company terms, an act of God. Hell, I'm grateful to that
guy I was playin' against. If he hadn't taken over my keyboard, I
would have been crisped instead of him. I'm just tryin' to help out
here. Give me a fuckin' break, huh?"

"Looks to me like you've had breaks, mister.
Who the hell do you think you are, busting in here with your
electric crap? You're sure no friend of Nedra Buchanan's I ever
heard of. Who put you up to it? The feds?"

"God, no, lady, my manager just thought it
would be like, a good publicity stunt, you know?"

Anna Mae whirled around, "What?"

" 'Scuse me, ma'am," Faron said, his finger
upraised to tap her on the shoulder again, "but I think we should
build up another fire and dry these folks out."

"Okay. Sure," she said, sounding annoyed,
then added absently, "good idea."

"Well knock me over with a feather," Gussie
said. "I do believe that's about the pleasantest thing you've said
to anybody all day." Even as she said it she realized it was a
stupid time to be picking a fight with the woman, but she had just
about had it with Anna Mae's snappiness, and she said so.

"Most people would be knocking themselves out
trying to help and here you are biting the heads off of everybody
who consults you, which they shouldn't have to, it being an
emergency situation, but seem to be doing out of courtesy since
it's your place."

Anna Mae looked for a moment like she was
going to hit her, then said, "You don't know anything about it,"
and stalked into the house.

A closer, louder engine roared and Duck Soul
drove past her, looking dead ahead, heading for the gate. His
assistants were still onstage dismantling the sound system.

Gussie followed Faron back to the woodpile
and began hauling logs to the fire pit.

Nary a trace remained of the rain except the
mud and a greasy mugginess clinging to the night air. With the sun
down, the air was nippy enough that you could toast your front by
the fire and your backside would still be shivering from the wet
and cold. Everybody sat around it popping their ears and hugging
blankets and sleeping bags. Some had had changes of clothing and
towels and these they shared out with the people who had only come
for the day.

Brose had given up on the cars and sat
staring into the fire, chucking sticks at it. Gussie sat beside
Juli and hugged a blanket around her. Before long Juli slouched
down so that her head was in Gussie's lap, as Lettie's had been all
too often after she fell off her bike or somebody hurt her
feelings. Idly, Gussie combed the limp blond hair with her fingers,
wondering if the poor kid had asked for this event and if so, which
particular transgression she was atoning for this time.

"So, Willie," Eric Havelock said, "what kind
of spook do you suppose sicced the lightning on us?"

"Can you speak up, son?" Willie asked. "One
of the nice things about that little bolt from the blue, Havelock,
is that I can see your mouth move but I can't hear any of your
crap."

Hawkins, the chanteyman, was saying to
Randolph, "All I can say is, I'm mighty glad this didn't happen at
sea. We'd have all been lost for sure."

"Y'know, I think you're onto somethin'
there," Randolph said. "I bet that's why there are so few recorded
instances of heavy metal folk concerts taking place on ocean-going
vessels."

Gussie hooted appreciatively and regretted it
when Julianne moaned and sat up, started to rub her eyes and winced
from the flash burns.

"Whatchall gonna do when you find out
Willie's right is what I want to know," Brose said.

"What do you mean when we find out he's
right?" Havelock sneered. "You're not going to let a string of bad
luck make you superstitious like little Miss Crystal Aura there,
are you?"

"Goddamn, man, are you that fucking dumb or
do you just sound that way?" Brose asked. "Lightning strikes and
you still don't get it, do you?"

"And I resent the aspersions cast on the
character of the widdah Martin," Willie said, forgetting he had
claimed he couldn't hear what was going on. "Julianne just happens
to be what you might call an advanced thinker. A little misguided
maybe, but a few more times having all that luck she don't believe
in knock her on her ass and she'll come around."

"You all just stop that right now, hear?"
Gussie said. Her dander was up so high she bet her face was as red
as Juli's. "For shame pickin' on a little old sick girl who can't
even hear what you're sayin'."

"At least we're not talking behind her back,"
Havelock said. The woman who had been giving him a shoulder rub
stopped abruptly after a particularly emphatic pound with the side
of her hand that resembled a karate chop. "Jeez, people sure are
sensitive around here."

"Is she crying?" someone demanded.

"No—that's a siren. Somebody must have called
the ambulance after all."

"Do we still need one?"

“
I
do,"
Havelock said. "I think my shoulder blade just got
busted."

"That ain't all gonna be busted," Brose said,
rising to his feet. "Them're po-lice sireens, not ambulance. Think
I better go find me a powder room."

"Shit," Willie said and scrambled to his
feet, the banjo playing "Birmingham Jail" ever louder as the sirens
approached, "me too. I'll come along just to make sure you keep the
powder dry."

The banjo shifted to a song the New Christie
Minstrels used to sing, "Company of Cowards." The two men
disappeared into the shadows beyond the fire just as headlights cut
through the gloom, across the fire, and toward the house, catching
Anna Mae in their glare.

Immediately after the first set of headlights
came another and another. Two uniformed officers climbed out of the
first car.

Gussie, who had had a great many policemen as
clientele in her bartending days, rose to her feet and walked
toward them. These kids were all throwbacks to the revolutionary
days of the sixties. They automatically bristled around cops.
Walking quickly but casually toward them with her hands in clear
view she said, "Officers, God are we ever glad to see you. We have
injured folks here. Is the ambulance on its way?"

The police didn't answer her. Several more
piled out of the car, brandishing nightsticks. One in the first car
pulled out a bullhorn. "Okay, we've heard about this riot. You
people can't get away with that kind of thing in this county. Come
away from that fire and line up against the sides of the cars, your
hands on the hoods and your feet spread."

"All of us?" Havelock asked, and got whacked
for his trouble.

"Just a minute here," Anna Mae said, flying
into the light. "This is private property and there wasn't any
riot. We were having a private party with entertainment and there
was an accident and—"

But another officer appeared carrying the
cash box, which was right out on the table where Sylvia had left it
when the lightning hit. "Oh, yeah? You always charge for your
private parties, lady? I don't even want to tell you how many
zoning laws and city ordinances you're in violation of, not to
mention harboring fugitives. Assume the goddamn position. You have
the right to remain silent . . ."

Gussie gripped the police car hood and swore
under her breath. It wasn't enough that these bozos had to arrest
her kids, now they were getting her too, and all these other
innocent people.

"We have a right to call a goddamn lawyer,
don't we?"

"I am a lawyer," said the steel drummer.
"Don't worry, they can't hold us for long. Even if Ms. Gunn was in
violation, it's a civil thing, not a criminal one."

The musicians and the few audience members
who were not musicians were lined up in rows on both sides of the
cars. Then, with their hands on top of their heads, they were
herded into the last vehicle, a van. Gussie smirked triumphantly
when they packed the damned thing and still had more people left
over than they could cram in.

"Oh, Captain," a woman officer called from
beyond the beam of a flashlight. "I found that Texas plate you were
looking for, right here, just like the man said it would be."

The Captain sauntered into the light. "This
fire here, that's another violation," he said, and picked up a log,
walked toward the house, beamed the torch into one of the windows,
and flung the burning log. A crash of glass and a rush of light and
sound as the curtains went up testified to the accuracy of his
aim.

"Goddamn you, you can't do that to my
property," Anna Mae said, rushing toward him.

"Oh, I think you'll find that I can do just
about what I like around here, Miss Gunn. See, I happen to know
quite a bit about you and how you came to have this place. Higgins,
Montgomery, you see to it that that fire is dispersed."

"Backup vans are on the way, Captain," said a
patrolman who stuck his head out of the window of the second
car.

"Fair enough. As they drive up, call a fire
truck. We don't want this hazard to spread to the homes of
law-abiding tax-paying citizens."

"Do something," Gussie hissed to the steel
drummer but he shook his head.

"They know this is illegal as well as I do.
Can't you see they don't care? I'm likely to get shot resisting
arrest. Wait until we're being booked, in a room full of people.
Then I'll make them wish they'd all taken up truck farming."

The two policemen were chucking burning logs
at the house while Anna Mae screeched at them to stop it, but they
acted as if they didn't hear.