Phantom Banjo (37 page)

"Us too," Lettie said.

Gussie's hand was shaking as she cradled the
receiver again. Willie, who had been clutching a mug of coffee and
pacing the floor, stopped suddenly and slid an arm around her
sagging shoulders. "Gus, what's the matter, darlin'?"

Tears slid into wrinkles she didn't normally
have. "Lettie and Mic are out of jail, Willie, and I just don't
have the guts to get back in that goddamn car and go see them. And
I feel like calling them back and telling them not to come either,
because I'm afraid something will happen to them."

"I hear you, darlin', I'd offer to drive you
over there except I'm afraid of the same thing. But we did beat the
bastards once so I guess we can keep on doin' it, as long as we've
got Sam's banjo and that song. Those sons of bitches may be tough
but old Hawthorne, hell, never was nothin' as tough as Sam." He was
still hugging her and spread a grin across his face but she knew he
was just acting cheerful to keep her from falling into even more
pieces than she already had.

So she gave him the best smile she could
muster, which didn't amount to much. "Yeah, that's right. And thank
God for little ol' Juli. She has some funny ideas but there's
something about her . . ."

"Yes, ma'am, there is. And that Hawkins guy,
comin' after us with that chantey like we were the great white
whale or something. We got a little magic on our side too, and some
fine friends."

"Fewer of those all the time, Willie," she
said, relapsing into gloom as she remembered the festival and the
aftermath.

Willie sighed. "True. Too true."

Gussie felt her blood pressure lower fifty
percent when Lettie and Mic arrived later, seemingly unscathed by
their brief careers as convicts.

They hugged and talked, and later, Anna Mae
and Lettie cleaned and dressed Gussie's blisters and raw spots and
Juli's and Brose's burns and all three of them took leftover
antibiotics from Gussie's bout with pneumonia, which had run its
course before the pills had run out.

When everyone had been reunited, treated,
fed, bathed, and otherwise made as comfortable as possible,
sleeping bags were hauled from the van, borrowed from the
neighbors, and quilts and comforters and sofa pillows spread on the
floor, which could not only be stretched out on but blissfully did
not move while it was being slept on.

Gussie thought she would sleep like a dead
person once her head hit her pillow and, as it turned out, that was
the problem. She found she was afraid to sleep for fear she
wouldn't wake up again. Juli, beside her, curled up like a child
and slept soundly. Lettie and Mic snuggled together on the floor on
one side of the bed, Anna Mae wrapped a sleeping bag around her on
the other side. None of them moved much from one hour to the next,
Gussie knew, because she opened her eyes and checked the luminous
hands of her alarm clock every half hour or so. Around four she sat
straight up as she heard the glass door to the deck slide open and
footsteps creaking on the boards. She was in the hallway before she
heard the faint tinkle of the banjo.

Willie sat cross-legged on her wooden bench,
a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and the banjo in his lap.
Fog rolling in from the Sound smothered everything around the deck
except for the rosebush that trailed along the top rail. The tip of
Willie's cigarette glowed like a Cyclops's eye through the
gray.

She'd gotten so used to seeing the banjo
strings moving of their own accord that it was almost as if banjo
strings always did that kind of thing, but here in the dark and the
fog on her own back porch they looked as ghostly as they were.
Willie took a long drag on his cigarette and started to insert it
between the strings and the tuning head. The strings jangled
angrily, and he set the cigarette on the bench beside him instead.
With his fingers on the banjo strings, the tune was fuller and
livelier.

"There's somethin' on some kinda tree and da
da da da da . . ." he sang.

Gussie went back in the house and dug through
the battered Mexican straw bag, which had lost one of its little
figures as she dragged it from the station wagon to the van, but
still held the flier she'd written his song on.

She joined him on the porch and slid the
glass door mostly shut behind her. "Here it is, Willie. Here's that
song. It's blossoms on the flowerin' tree. Pretty, huh?"

"Yeah," he said, when he'd sung it through
again. "Real pretty, but you know, I can't understand why Sam would
choose to break through from the spook world to give us this
particular song. Just pretty ain't exactly his kind of
environmentalism. And it sure as hell isn't a socialist metaphor. I
mean, he doesn't mention Che Guevara or any of that stuff. I know
it's what helped us out back there, I know it's important, I know
it has something to do with why Hawkins's chantey got us out of
that mess but . . ."

The glass door slid back again and Faron
stood barefoot in his jeans, wiping his fogged-up glasses on the
hem of his Save the Tyrannosaurus T-shirt. "Maybe I can help," he
said to Willie and Gussie. To the banjo he said, "Play it again,
Sam."

After the song finished, he stared at his
toes a long time.

"Well, do you know what it means?" Gussie
asked.

"Yeah, I think so. Only I'm not sure it's
going to be a whole lot of help. Anybody got any idea if folk
performers in other countries have been getting the same sort of
harassment we have?"

"I haven't heard anything about it," Gussie
said. "I'm sure Craig would know, even if he's in the hospital. But
why?"

"Because the song says to go back to the
root—and I don't see what else he could mean besides the root of
the songs . . ."

"That's what we thought," Willie said. "But
it's still not real clear, is it?"

"No, but if you figure that Hawkins's song
worked not only because it was right for the situation, but also
because Hawkins, as a working seaman, had learned it and sung it as
a legitimate part of his work, that's a root in a way. But an awful
lot of songs don't have their roots here. Most of what we think of
as American folk music started someplace else—an awful lot of it in
England, Scotland, and Ireland. Of course, there's all kinds of
ethnic music and especially black music that is pretty much
considered indigenous American music because even though it has
African roots, the songs are mutations, not direct transplants, and
a lot of the characteristics peculiar to it come out of the slave
experience. Still, I'm afraid if the only way to reclaim some of
these songs is to go back to the original roots, what with all the
old-timers in the mountains that have been dying off and all, I'd
say we're going to have to leave the country."

"Sure. The only way I'm goin' to be able to
afford to leave the country is if I get deported," Willie said.

During the last strains of the song, Brose
had slid back the glass door and had been listening to what Faron
had to say about it. Now he said, "Don't be too sure about that,
buddy. You have friends who have come into some unexpected
wealthiness."

"What the hell are you talkin' about,
buddy?"

"Remember the bet with Duck Soul, the heavy
metal artiste, just before the storm? Well, seems old Duckie may
have a lot of faults, but welchin' on bets ain't one of 'em. He
sent me a cashier's check for the ten thousand dollars he promised.
Barry Curtis should have wired it to Gussie's bank by now. I was
thinkin' about using it for the farm but the way things've been
goin', I might not get back there alive. Besides, the bet was with
all of us, not just me."

Willie's eyebrows shot up to his hairline.
"How 'bout that? I'd have sworn he was with Nicholson's outfit but
maybe not. Lady Luck is spinnin' the wheel of fortune so fast these
days it kinda makes you dizzy, don't it?"

* * *

A week later Willie, Brose, Anna Mae, Juli,
Faron, Ellie, and Gussie boarded the emptiest British Airways
flight they could book on such short notice. They half expected to
be hijacked by terrorists and wanted to take as few people with
them as possible when they went.

They weren't too far off. Faced with the
banjo and the charm-song Sam had sent, the devils voted unanimously
to return to using minions on that particular group and had availed
themselves of the services of a "sleeper" terrorist agent, one R.
McCorley, employed as a steward by the airline, to plant a bomb
under one of the seats.

Hawkins, Lettie, and Mic had decided not to
go—Lettie and Mic because they needed to get home and see what they
could salvage of their lives, Hawkins because he rather thought he
preferred sea travel to air. Even so, the party was large, the
plane nearly empty. It was shortly after dark and in the flatlands
around Sea-Tac airport the air was clear as a bell, the moon rising
outside the oval windows of the airplane.

Willie felt a momentary thrill, a rebellious,
desperado rush. His sense of the dramatic was titillated by the
knowledge that he was finally fighting for something he cared
about, and becoming the cowboy-Robin Hood no amount of carousing
had ever made of him. He pulled Lazarus onto his lap from its seat
beside him and struck up the chord of a rebel song. "Ah then tell
me, Sean O'Farrell, tell me why you hurry so. Hush now, boys, now
hush and listen and his eyes began to glow. I bear orders from the
Captain. Get ye ready quick and soon. For we all must be together
at the risin' of the moon."

R. McCorley, fussing with the safety
instruction cards three rows forward in order to cover his
movements, stopped, straightened, and all but saluted. The fine Mr.
Nicholson and all his kind be damned. There were few things
McCorley loved better than blowing people up but one of those
things was a good old rebel song, well sung. He slipped the wee bit
of a bomb back into his jacket. He decided he would stay on this
flight, after all, instead of disembarking at the last minute, as
he'd planned. The music and the craic promised to be good, he could
use a bit of a jaunt back to the auld sod, and he could also think
of a more effective way to use his bomb, if he liked. He was still
humming the song later as he disarmed the bomb in the men's
room.

Juli felt her back unknot as the steward
emerged from the bathroom and took a seat. He seemed to be enjoying
the music, and now that she had a closer look at him, he appeared
to be a perfectly nice person. Still, there had been something
about him . . .

Gussie also shuddered, felt someone walking
over her grave, as the saying went. The engines rumbled, the plane
slid smoothly down the runway and lifted into the sky. She was not
the only one who let out a sigh of relief.

"I hope to God this thing stays in the air,"
she said.

"I think there's something we can do about
that," Faron said. "Willie, if you'll hand me Lazarus, we've got
plenty of time to learn a new song. A friend of mine, Suzette Haden
Elgin, wrote it for just such occasions. It's called 'The Airplane
Only Flies Because the Passengers Believe That It Will.' I think
you'll agree there's a lesson in there for all of us
somewhere."

A redheaded stewardess appeared suddenly from
the cockpit. Only Gussie saw her exchange challenging glares with
McCorley before she shrugged, entered the cabin, and with apparent
spontaneous delight clapped her hands in appreciation of Willie's
last song. "Oh, sir, I think that's ever so delightful. Would you
mind awfully if I learn it too? Does a stint in the pubs wif a bit
of song and dance meself from time to time, as an 'obby like." They
all urged the redhead, whose nametag said her name was Miss T.
Burns ("call me Torchy, it's me stage name like"), to take a load
off her feet and join them.

EPILOGUE

Harry was waiting, not at his accustomed
barstool picking over his Lotto tickets, but outside the door of
the bar as the woman who called herself August arrived that
evening.

"Evenin', Harry," she said. "Gettin' a little
air?"

"Waiting for you," he said. "I just was
wonderin' if that woman had gotten ahold of you yet."

"What woman was that, Harry?"

"Glamorous, L.A-type redheaded woman, said
she was lookin' for you to offer you a job in a new place she was
opening. I just thought she might have called and arranged to meet
you. She's waiting for you in there now. Just thought you'd want to
know."

They exchanged long, rather serious looks,
measuring on both sides, then August asked, "Harry, can you
sing?"

"I don't know, never tried."

"Well, try this one, will you, and sing it
for Vicki and Lewis and the others and tell them I have to move
along now. Family business, say. But remember it, if you can. I
knew it when I was a girl, and lost it, and just found it again not
too long ago. Some people believe that most of the words were the
last goodbye of a condemned Scottish murderer, though mostly it
gets sung in Irish pubs, but I reckon it will do for
Bremerton."

She sang the first verse, and when she
reached the second, he picked it up in a surprisingly strong and
true tenor that strengthened and harmonized with her shaky soprano,
and they sang through to the end of the second verse, "Oh, all the
comrades ere I had/They're sorry for my going away/And all the
sweethearts ere I had/They'd wish me one more day to stay./But
since it falls unto my lot/That I should go and you should not/I'll
gently rise and softly call/Farewell and God be with you all.".

He hadn't sung since he was a boy, and
enjoyed it so intensely that he screwed his eyes up tight and sang
so loud that inside the bar the redheaded woman plugged her ears up
and headed for the ladies' room. The bartender sang the words to
the last verse, but when it came to the last two lines Harry joined
in, "Then fill to me the parting glass—Farewell and joy be with you
all." The sound of his own voice pleased him so much that he
grinned as he finished the line as the note faded and said, "Damn,
I'm good." And then he opened his eyes and realized that he had
sung that last line all alone, there in the parking lot, with only
the hum of the street lamp and the traffic noise for
accompaniment.