Picking the Ballad's Bones (5 page)

CHAPTER 5

"Where we headed,
darlin'?" Willie MacKai mumbled sleepily as he let himself be
tugged past the compartment where his compadres lay sprawled
together like a litter of hound pups, sleeping off the long trip
and the excitement afterward. It did occur to him that maybe he
ought to let them know where he was going, since he had Lazarus,
the banjo, which had gotten them all out of several jams already.
He should warn them—warn them—he couldn't remember what he was
supposed to warn them
about.
His head was full of fuzz. Well, hell, they knew
as much about this as he did. Maybe they already knew about
whatever it was Torchy was going to show him. He saw Julianne,
still peakedy and peeling from her burns with her eyebrows growing
back a hair at a time and so pale she looked like a forties movie
star without her makeup. She and Gussie looked up at him as he
passed and he shrugged and waved a feeble little wave and allowed
himself to be towed. Whatever Torchy was going to show him, he
hoped it would be worth the strain of being woke out of a sound
sleep. He was a little tired of running all over creation. That
Torchy was a strong-willed woman though—strong in other ways too.
He wasn't sure he would have been able to resist the tug of her
hand if he'd wanted to. He admitted to himself that he was somewhat
under the influence. Thoroughly gerzoggled, if you wanted to know
the truth. That was some whiskey that woman had fed him.

He sobered up considerably, however,
when Torchy answered, pulling him into another car, "Why, we're
hiding, Willie luv. Didn't you see the coppers hanging about
outside the car as we passed the windows?"

* * *

"Wait, wait, hold it right
there, " Selena Anderson commanded, waving her flashlight for
emphasis. "You're telling us a story about a drunk person? You make
it sound funny. That's really disgusting."

"Are you always this much
of a pain in the tail or is this
just
special party manners?" the figure in the cowl asked, then said,
"Never mind. Maybe you're right. This part
isn't proper for kids. "And with that, she blew out the
candle
,
rose to
her feet and started to glide away.

"Hey, wait," Sass Pulaski
called. "Aren't you going to
tell us the
rest? How about the ghost? Does it meet Willie?
What kind of a story is it that we don't know how it
ends?"

"The usual kind," the
voice drifted behind the woman as she opened the French doors and
her black robes billowed behind her, along with the curtains. "The
kind where you'll find out later, when you're older and maybe more
ready for it, or if you're never ready for it, maybe you
won't."

She hated to stop like
that but the little Anderson girl was a problem. Minda Moloney's
parents were okay; they were part of the underground that supported
the activities of the storyteller, but the Anderson kid could get
them all in hot water. Minda's parents would have to think of
something to tell the kids. It had been agreed that the storyteller
would simply leave if there was any trouble.

Between the condos, in the
narrow path that led to the parking lot, she removed the robe and
cowl and stuck them into an Adidas bag she had concealed under her
robe. Now, as a small woman with a mop of gray curls, wearing a
pink jogging suit and running shoes, she strode purposefully by
moonlight and lamp light toward the ferry dock. The ferry would
take her back to Seattle, and from there she could catch a bus to
the airport. The hotels were always needing temporary bartenders to
fill in during conventions.

She slept on the ferry
going over, made a phone call one of her connections, and hiked up
to meet the airport shuttle, sleeping on the bus. Her connection,
an old friend from before the trouble, put her up for the night and
played her some of the bootlegged recordings she'd made of the
first of the clandestine concerts. The next morning, the airport
Red Lion hired the storyteller/bartender for a postal employees'
convention. She was glad she'd hung on
to
the robe and cowl. There were sure to be a few private
Halloween parties where a likely-looking spook
could find a small audience.

* * *

"Down in Carlisle there was a lady . .
." the banjo frailed the melody line and Willie recalled the words
as Torchy pulled him behind her. The cars were all dark back there,
with no seats. If it hadn't been for the cops, Willie would have
insisted that Torchy stop and let him rest. He could hardly walk.
Good thing the train wasn't moving.

These last dark cars smelled different
from the rest of the train. The smell was one he hadn't smelled for
years and yet it was very familiar—shit. That's what it was. That
and a wild and gamey musk but mostly just plain shit—animal shit.
Not horseshit or cow manure however. This was exotic-smelling crap.
The smell reminded him of peanuts in the shell, of walking a lot on
concrete, of sticks with inflatable gorillas tied to them—the zoo.
That was it. It smelled like the zoo. Aw. That was nice. They were
going to the zoo. Who'd have thought Torchy was the sentimental
type?

She swung open the door of the car
ahead of them. A sign said No Admittance. He passed a door leading
to the outside as he slid in behind her. Willie stumbled again,
against some bars this time, and heard the clank of metal against
metal. He turned toward Torchy and saw for the first time that her
eyes glowed in the dark. Then she turned away from him calling,
"Come on, luv. This way."

He followed slowly,
banging himself and the banjo as
he tried
to follow her. "Where are you?" he asked. "Turn toward my voice so
I can find you."

"Sorry, luv, I seem to
have dropped my hankie.
Do
come and help me look." He blundered toward her
voice that seemed to be off to the left and slightly fainter. "Come
on, where are you? Oh, I can't find that hankie anywhere and it's
one my dear old granny give me." Her voice was so faint now it was
hard to make it out and he took two more quick steps and banged
into a wall, causing something to clang shut behind
him.

"Torchy? Torchy, where are you,
darlin'?" he called and something very warm and hairy brushed
against his hand. He was thinking that Torchy had the most
incredible case of morning mouth he had ever smelled as a hot gust
of moist and smelly breath washed over him. Then the mouth behind
the bad breath yawned with a sound like a burning house collapsing
and Willie knew, if he should be lucky enough to survive, that that
sound would echo in all of his nightmares ever
afterward.

The big mouth with the bad breath
swallowed the sound and as if from a great distance he heard the
banjo frailing away at "The Lady of Carlisle" and he remembered
that the song was the one in which the lady in question was such a
twit she couldn't make up her pea-brain which of two men she wanted
so she tried to figure out which one was stupid enough to climb
into a cage of lions to pick up her fan. Oops.

Only in the song the choice the woman
had given to the two men was to risk dying or risk not getting laid
and since he, personally, knew how many fish were in the sea (or
approximately) he much preferred those fish to the lions. He took
several steps backward, ready to run back the way he'd come and let
old Torchy handle the situation however she thought was fitting.
However, he hadn't taken three edgy little sideways baby steps back
the way he came when iron bars slammed against his face and old
hairy sent a blast of hot, smelly breath down the back of his neck.
He thought he heard the tinkle of feminine laughter fairly close
by.

The banjo, leaning halfway
through the bars, began
frailing
frantically. Willie's memory was busy replaying all of the juiciest
scenes of his life so he couldn't recall what the song might be but
it made Old Hairy back off a pace or two. About that time a long
staff of dim light glowed from a side door. Torchy's silvery giggle
faded, and the light grew, only to be blocked out by somebody
standing in front of it. A flashlight beam blossomed in the
darkness and the lion or lions, as the case was (Willie was not
anxious to find out), gave rather anemic little roars, then settled
back to merely making noises like industrial-strength
lawnmowers.

* * *

"Now where do you suppose those two
are going?" Gussie had asked as Torchy jetted past them, dragging a
bewildered looking Willie in her path.

Julianne couldn't make out what she
was saying and for want of a better answer turned her back on the
corridor and stared out the window again. The uniformed policemen
waiting outside the Carlisle station were not being the least bit
subtle, standing there waiting for people to de-board, searching
faces and referring to a pad once in a while. James Bond they were
not. Juli grabbed Gussie's arm and pointed.

Gussie shook Anna Mae, Faron, and
Ellie, saying to each in turn, "Get up. We got to hide. The cops
are here. I'll be back in a jiffy." Then she set off down the
corridor after Willie and Torchy to warn them. At first she'd
thought maybe they had gone up to the lounge car to find Brose
Fairchild, then remembered that the lounge car was in the opposite
direction, seven cars up toward the head of the train. She'd never
be able to warn Brose in time but she could maybe reach Willie and
Torchy.

Anna Mae and Julianne scrambled down
the side of the platform where the steps weren't, on the far side
of the tracks, where other tracks ran alongside and they were in
danger of being hit by other trains. Anna Mae, thinking Juli was
right behind her, sprinted across the tracks and set off in the
direction of the city.

Julianne had been right
behind her until, with her eyes
straight
ahead and her hearing gone, she neglected to see a switch engine
until it almost ran her down. She flattened herself back against
the side of the train and wondered what to do next. None of the
others had followed Anna Mae and Juli personally didn't want to be
separated from them.

She was relieved when Torchy Burns
showed up. "Gussie caught you and warned you?" Juli asked, her
tongue feeling thick from disuse.

Torchy nodded, grabbed her hand, and
towed her as she had towed Willie down the tracks toward the last
car, where she opened the door and waved to the occupants, then
nodded to Juli and shoved her in. Juli, expecting to see the rest
of her friends hidden perhaps in a car that had already been
searched, found herself in a car that contained no seats and was in
fact a big open rectangle bristling with the conflicting energies
of several whole families.

One woman was cooking on a camp stove
while two small children clung to her skirts and a baby sat on her
hip. Two boys were tossing juggling clubs back and forth. Most
people were sleeping on foam mattresses and cushions pushed up
against the walls.

A man in jeans that were
worn out at the knees and a scruffy-looking polyester knit shirt in
paisley that looked as if it was left over from the 1960s came to
stand spraddle-legged in front of her. She blinked her stubbly lids
at him, feeling stupid and disoriented and wondering how in the
world she was going to communicate with these people. The man
leered at her and put his fingers under her chin, grinning at its
peeling reddened skin and flicking the cropped remains of her bangs
with the backs of grimy, very smelly fingers. Then he shoved her to
the side of the car where she almost sat on a sleeping child. At
that moment the people who were awake jerked to attention, however,
and the man made a gesture and a woman near her handed Juli a
soiled bandanna and motioned for her to tie it over her hair, which
she did. The woman also handed her a moth-eaten sweater and
motioned her to put it on and pretend to sleep, which she also did.
She
peeked only once as the policemen
inspected the car, and wondered if she shouldn't give herself up
then and there.

* * *

Faron and Ellie Randolph simply
disembarked with the rest of the passengers and walked over to the
station, right past the policemen who were busy looking for
clandestine departures of several members of a desperate gang and
were paying no attention to a normal-looking tourist
couple.

"Wait," Ellie said. "Shouldn't we
stick around and see what happens to the others? Look over there!
Isn't that Brose—"

"Shhh. Keep your eyes forward and try
lookin' like you're late for work or something," Faron said. "And
watch for a phone booth."

"Good idea. Only do you have enough
change to call home?"

"I wasn't going to do that right away.
Remember the last Silver Dollar Days when that Brit group was
playing?"

"'Old Hag You Have Killed
Me'?" Ellie asked.

"Yeah, them. I remember talkin' to
Terry Pruitt about how they ought to play 'Lady of Carlisle' since
she lived here. Hope she still does."

"I don't think it's such a hot idea to
involve other people with the cops after us and
everything."

"Maybe not. But if this thing is what
it sure seems to be, I bet any musician who's still trying to play
traditional music is going to be involved whether they want to or
not."