Picking the Ballad's Bones (17 page)

"Was that what it was?" Gussie asked.
"I thought it was seeing her just go 'poof that gave me cold
chills."

"Still, it didn't seem to hurt none,"
Willie said. "I think we would have heard her scream if it did,
don't you?"

"Aw, shut up, MacKai," Brose
said.

Willie looked mildly surprised but not
offended. "You want to go next, Brose?"

"I gotta think about it, man. I got
responsibilities at home. Who's gonna look after my critters?
What'll the kids think if I don't come back?"

“
I—I
could go next,” Juli said. “I expected to feel the shock but I
think it's just a natural part of using so much power. I mean, I'm
not afraid—well, not very much. I heard what Torchy says, and I
know maybe you people think I'm nuts when I tell you so, but
I
have
talked to George and—I don't care what that woman says, I
haven't done anything wrong and I don't think if this kills me I'm
going to go to hell or anything so—"

"Hold on there a minute, darlin',"
Willie said. "Sam Hawthorne gave this banjo to Mark Mosby who gave
it to me. I'll go next. Hand it over, Brose. Been nice knowin' you,
buddy."

"Willie—" Gussie said, raising a hand
to touch his sleeve. In spite of the way he had hesitated, she had
the feeling that now, rather than having really thought things
through, he was just closing his eyes, holding his nose, and diving
into it. "Willie, you don't have to. What do you know about
Scottish ballads anyhow? That redhead likes you. She wouldn't be
too hard on you and you got to admit that if she forced you to lead
a life of endless debauchery, you probably wouldn't notice much
difference from the way you usually carry on."

"Aw, Gus," he said, plunking the first
note and clipping off the string ring with the nail clippers Anna
Mae had left lying on the tablecloth, "I didn't know you cared. But
I'm too old to get broke to harness good now and I don't think I
could just walk away from that particular lady when the going got
rough, so I might as well do what I hired on for. If I'm not back
in seven years, send in the cavalry, will you, babe?"

And he placed the ring on his finger,
held the banjo so the head was close to his cheek, and played the
tune for all it was worth, three times through, real quick, and
handed the banjo to Julianne, who was sitting nearest, as if it
were hot.

As soon as she had it in her hands, he
was gone, with nothing to show he had been standing there but a
little lifting of the edge of the tablecloth as if there were a
sudden draft.

Julianne murmured apologetically to
Brose, "I'm going to go next, okay?" And he nodded
mutely.

It gave her fleeting joy to hear the
note her fingers plucked and she clipped the string ring and placed
it on her left hand on her middle finger beside the Navajo silver
wedding band she still wore. Then she played the rest of the song,
three times over, relishing the notes, a little smile on her face
and her lips moving as if she was singing to herself. She smiled
with her head cocked a little to one side as she handed the banjo
back to Brose, whispered, "Here I go," relinquished it—and was
gone.

"It takes 'em suddenlike, don't it?"
Brose said to Gussie and she nodded. She wished he'd stay. She
didn't want to be the last one. She was feeling more and more
scared with every one who left, more and more alone—well, except
for Walter Scott, of course, but he was different.

On the other hand, she didn't want to
influence him but she said, "Brose, before you—before anything
happens, give me a hug, will ya, hon? With people disappearin'
right and left like this, I need to feel something
solid."

Still holding the banjo, he enveloped
her in a great bear hug and gave her a big sloppy kiss to boot. He
was still damp from the rain and sweaty and his shirt smelled
reassuringly of horse and dog and the dust from feed stores and his
arms were strong and real. He held her so tightly she knew he had
been feeling the same way she did but hadn't thought to say
anything. Finally, when she felt her ribs were going to break if he
held her any tighter and she needed to draw a clear breath, she
stepped back and he released her. And while she was putting her
basket bag firmly on her arm in preparation to volunteer to go
next, he struck the first note and was clipping off the string ring
and putting it on as she looked up.

The song came out more
syncopated than it had with the others, and he played it with the
lonely concentration he always gave the blues, then laid the banjo
on the table. She tried to stare hard at him the whole time so he
couldn't disappear but she had to blink and when she did,
he was as gone as if he'd got up from the table
on his own two legs and gone outside.

"Oh, my," she said. "Oh, Lord. Walter,
what do you make of that?"

"I think," the ghost replied, "upon
further reflection that it's an ill curse she's cursed you with
indeed to survive in times past using only the words of ballads.
For I know better than most that trying to survive with only the
help of literature is a chancy venture."

"I guess so. But I'll have to try. Can
you find your way back to your grave okay?"

"I s'pose I'm still hoping I might
join you."

"Alrighty then, let's give it a try,"
she said, and she picked up the banjo and set it in her lap as
she'd seen the others do, but it felt unnatural and awkward to her.
She tried to fit her fingers around the neck at the same frets as
she'd seen the others do but her fingers were small and she had to
clamp her whole hand over the frets to get her third finger to
reach the third fret of the third string. When she plucked the
sound came out as a dull thump, but she hadn't heard anybody say
she had to play it beautifully, just that it had to get played. She
set the banjo down while she took her nail clippers from the table
and wriggled the string ring loose and set it on her left middle
finger as the others had done, then picked up the banjo
again.

And had absolutely no idea what to do
from there. She wasn't a musician and she assumed that, like the
others, just watching the Wizard play was enough to teach her the
song. But it wasn't. She had never played a banjo before in her
life and apparently she wasn't going to start now. "Help me out,
Wat. How do you play this thing?"

"I dinna ken, lass. I once played the
piano but I nivair laid eyes on such a thing as that until you
brought it here. As you heard Michael Scott say, I'm not verra
musical, except in a listening and collecting sort of
way."

"Yeah," she said. "Me
neither. Well, hell." She set the banjo on the table and stared at
it as if it had betrayed her. Finding no comfort there, she rose
and began the familiar motions of doing something useful, clearing
the
table, the sort of thing she had done
her whole life. No sense in leaving a mess for the caretaker when
he got home. She started to empty the water from her teacup into
the sink but remembered it was supposed to be magic water and saved
it in another cup instead. Then the dregs of tea wouldn't pour out
with the rest. As she started to brush them together with her
fingers to throw them into the trash, she noticed what
funny-looking tea leaves they were, irregularly shaped and black
and gray and one was even white, with what looked like writing on
it. She peered at it and saw the words "Tam Lin" and whistled to
herself.

"Walter, do you think this is what I
think it is?"

"It's my buke," he said. "The
cannibalistic witch burned my buke and was serving it to us as
leaves in her cursed tea."

Gussie was scraping together the last
of the ashes into a little tea ball the custodian had in the drawer
by the sink when she heard a car door thump and, before she could
look up, saw Torchy peering over her shoulder.

"Only you left to keep me company?
What a shame. But what's your pleasure, ducks?"

"Solitude would be nice," Gussie said.
"But failing that, I'd like a little more explanation, which
shouldn't be too hard for you, girlie, as much as you like to hear
yourself talk. What's with giving us ashes of book for
tea?"

"Ah ah ah, you're forgetting your
position, dearie. You're mine now."

"Because I drank the water from your
polluted fairyland river?"

Torchy nodded.

"Wrong. Here's the water,"
she said, holding it up. "And here's what you used for tea leaves."
She held up the tea ball. "And I couldn't play the song since I'm
not a picker and I didn't have Pete Seeger's
How to Play the 5-String Banjo
book
handy. So I guess I'm still a free agent, dearie. So I ask you
again, what's the idea of using the ashes of the books in our
tea?"

Torchy laughed lightly. "Oh, surely
you see!"

"Oh, surely
I don't
or
I
wouldn't be standin'
here askin' you, would I?"

Torchy's laugh deepened as
she sat down, and took on a convulsive up-and-down quality that had
the
Fairy
Queen
pounding the table and gasping for air. "But—it's—so—ob—vi"—she
hiccuped,"—ous."

She let them guess while
she recovered from her hilarity,
then
said with a wide white smile,
"Oh, come
on
now.
Don't you
get
it?
It's just too rich, really, but as I warned you, it won't do to
have my colleagues saying I was too easy on you people. I had to
make it at least a
little
challenging. So I mixed up the ashes and served
them to you so that the affinities would be scrambled, you see.
Your friends won't find themselves in the ballads Mick
predicted
—
that would
be too easy, not to say too boring,
and
I'm far too creative for that
sort of typecasting. No,
this will
be ever so much more fun."

"What do you mean?" Gussie
asked.

"You'll see. If they're lucky that is.
I don't suppose you'd like to just give me the banjo and call the
whole thing off?"

"I don't suppose so,"
Gussie said, before she'd given it much thought.
She didn't
even want to
ask the woman what
she
thought calling it all off meant, and anyway, Gussie
didn't
figure the banjo
was hers to give. It was Sam Hawthorne's in the care of Willie
MacKai and in her care till Willie got back. If Willie had wanted
to give it to Torchy Burns he'd have done it himself.

She started to say as much to Torchy
Burns but before she could open her mouth the woman was gone and
the banjo was playing another familiar ballad tune.

PART II

THE BORDERLANDS

CHAPTER 17

Willie had hoped that the
Debauchery Devil's fondness for him might let him end up in his
favorite kind of ballads—that is, the bawdy kind. But as the
kitchen at the cottage disappeared, everything was blurry for a
while but a song he remembered Buffy St. Marie once singing: "The
Lyke-Wake Dirge."

"If ever thou gavest hosen and
shoen

Every night and a'

Sit thee down and put them
on.

And Christ receive thy
soul."

He remembered those words without
really knowing what they meant except what you had done for or to
people in life was supposed to be yours in death. For better or for
worse. The Golden Rule and all that. God, was this a trick and he
was in hell and hell was one long hard-shell Baptist fire and
brimstone sermon?

No. A path opened in the haze around
him and he saw a field of grass hedged with yellow broom all around
and a pretty girl and a handsome devil of a guy pulling up some
greenery in a slow and significant way. He followed the path to the
couple, took a step, and joined them, blending . . .

* * *

Something clacked close to
the bed. Willie shot out a hand to throw back the bed curtains and
waddled to the window. Wherever he was, it sure wasn't Texas. Below
the window was a lush garden of unfamiliar flowers, with stone
walls rising from the garden to the bower and up another two
stories where the walls were cornered with towers and toothed with
businesslike battlements. The place was a whole lot bigger than
even the main house at the L. B. J., ranch.

But he noticed something else as he
reached his slender, shapely hand up to wipe his long golden hair
out of his eyes and pluck a strand from off his milk-swollen
breast. There were a few more profound differences to his situation
than mere geography. He was female. Not only female, but
pregnant.

Another clack and a clatter as the
stone fell short of its mark and a familiar, beloved voice said,
"Sarah, cum awa' wi' me." And though the voice had a Scottish burr
instead of a Texas drawl Willie would have recognized it anywhere.
It was his own voice.