Strum Again? Book Three of the Songkiller Saga (18 page)

Brose scooped up a handful of the
crystallized tears. "Don't nobody give her a hanky until we get
these appraised," he said, holding one up to look at in the glow of
the inverted-fishbowl-shaped light fixture in the center of the
room. "They might be diamonds."

That stopped Torchy's crying, and she looked
down at the glittering tears with a brave smile of sharp white
gore-red-lipstick-smudged teeth. "Well, I'll be blessed," she said,
scooping up some of the gems herself. "I haven't been able to do
that in centuries. What comes of fallin' in with decent companions,
I suppose. What more proof of my sincerity can you possibly want
than these? Here, you can each have one and conjure me up whenever
you get in a bind or need a bit of a win at bingo to keep body and
soul together. I really must have the banjo, though."

Lazarus began to play a sad song in a very
minor key.

" 'MacPherson's Lament,' " Willie said.

"Yeah," Faron said. "I was able to play it
on Uncle Theo's violin, but I didn't remember the words until Anna
Mae sent the song back through Lazarus. What was that story again,
Anna Mae?" he asked. "I know the song, but what was behind it?"

Anna Mae bit her lip and sleeked her black
hair back behind her ears. "If everybody will be quiet for a moment
so I can hear, I'll get back into it." She sat still for a moment
while the banjo played the same refrain over and over, and when she
opened her eyes, she was gazing at Willie, except that she wasn't
looking so much at him as through him, and into the past. Her voice
came out strong and her alto could have been a tenor, with a
Scottish burr thickening her words. She was back in the song,
recalling the part of her that had once been one with
MacPherson.

"I was born the son of the MacPherson and a
Gypsy, brought up as a MacPherson and taught fiddling in my
father's house until I learned of my Gypsy blood from the taunting
of other boys. I found my mother's people, Gypsies and Jacobites,
and with them became a freebooter. The Laird o' Grant wanted me
deid, and caused my own clansmen to go against me. Shepherds it was
who caught me sleeping in a field and captured me. I was not
betrayed by a woman, as some say. The woman was a lass I sometimes
saw in the village, and she cared for me and sent o're the Bridge
o' Banff for a reprieve to free me. But meanwhile I was marched up
the scaffold to hang a quarter of an hour before the pronounced
time. It was a grand day. Folk came from all over to hear me play
my fiddle one last time and to bid for it when I was deid. I
offered it to any of my clan who would play the lament I wrote for
myself at my funeral, but there were no takers. . . ."

Her voice trailed off and she sang, in her
own voice to the accompaniment of Lazarus playing all alone,

"There's some come here tae see me hang

And some tae buy my fiddle,

But before that I do pairt wi' her

I'll brak' her through the middle.

He took the fiddle into baith his hands

And he brak' it o're a stane—"

Her voice stopped in midnote, and Lazarus
stopped too with a sudden thunk: one string popped off. Four more
thunks, like corn popping in a kettle, as the other strings broke
and sprang up, coiling toward the tuning pegs, which fell out. The
banjo's head filled like a balloon until the skin tore loose from
its moorings and the bone ring that held it to the wood popped
free. Then the neck caved toward the ruined head until it snapped,
dangling by the metal rod that held it together.

Eleven pairs of eyes turned toward Torchy
angrily, and with fear and fascinated curiosity. She held up both
palms. "Hey. I never touched it. Don't you think if I could have, I
would have taken it before now?"

Ellie's eyes welled up with tears, and she
left the sofa to crawl around on her hands and knees, picking up
strings and pegs and pieces of the ring, wiping her eyes on her
wrist as she searched like a dog who'd lost its ball. Faron started
crawling with her and picked up a peg and handed it to her, putting
his arm around her.

Anna Mae looked to Brose, and to Juli, and
finally at Willie. "I guess Sam's spirit was telling us one more
thing."

Willie nodded and picked up the broken
construct of wood and metal and shoved it into Torchy's
outstretched hands. "I reckon so. I guess you got yourself a deal,
devil."

* * *

The Debauchery Devil flourished the
vanquished banjo before her boss.

"How'd it get broken?" he asked.

"MacKai did it," she said. "He got pissed
off when one of the others accused him of hiding behind it and
slammed it against the door. But here it is, and it will never
cause us any trouble again. You want to do the honors, or shall
I?"

"Ugh," the Chairdevil shivered with
distaste. "Be my guest. You've earned the right."

She smiled at the mutilated instrument, and
it burst into flames in her hands and disintegrated.

The Chairdevil had no objection to looking
at the ashes. "So much for the magic of Wizard Hawthorne," he
said.

CHAPTER 13

Ute stopped talking, picked up a bundle of
sage he had brought tucked in his shirt pocket, and lit it from the
camp fire. He waved it around, fanning its sweet pungency toward
each of the women in turn, then propped it up between two rocks. He
started to overturn the coffeepot on the fire when Shayla St.
Michael shielded the fire with her hands.

"Hey, wait, stop. What are you doing?"

"Turnin' in," he said.

"But you haven’t said what happened next.
What did they do without the banjo?"

"About what you 'd expect. They left. Some
of 'em split off and some went together."

"Well, yes, but just like that? I mean, how
could they just leave after all of that?"

"Ma'am, I can see where up and movin' 'just
like that' as you say might be a little hard for you or me,
involvin' big decisions and considerable separation anxiety and
trauma and like that. However, these folks were essentially movin
'-type people. Why, Willie MacKai back in his heyday used to log a
couple thousand miles a week sometimes. He'd say he sang and played
for free—the part of his gig he got paid for was getting there. And
they were all like that, even Gussie, now that she'd become a
storyteller. And remember too, the reason they had gone away and
the reason they had come back where they knew it wasn't gonna be
real healthy for them was that they had some songs to spread, and
they couldn't do it, even if they wanted to, from the comfort of
the Curtis living room. They had to take those songs all across the
nation and they had a lot of ground to cover. Also, with Lazarus
gone, the decision of where to go, where to start, and who with was
up to each individual."

"Yeah, but it must have been hard, after
being together so long, for them to split up like that,"
Heather-Jon mused.

"Well, as that Torchy-devil pointed out,
they couldn't exactly get maximum range for song spreading as an
ensemble. Gussie was the only one who'd planned much of anything.
Musicians are the people who coined the phrase 'play it by ear,'
you understand. When a lot of what you do depends on what everybody
else does, too much organization can get in the way of your
flexibility and be a pain in the ass."

"I suppose so," Barbara said. "And they did
have all that protection. Yes, I can see where moving along and
splitting up was the most sensible thing for them to do."

"I'd have been lonely," Mary said softly.
"Even the Gypsies take their families with them."

Ute sat back down on his rock, set the
coffeepot back down, and stared into the flames. "Yeah, though I
guess when you're movin' and you've got somethin' new to do and
see, it's a lot easier than it is to be left behind."

* * *

Ellie sat on the divan, her dad's old
cardigan wrapped around her, her hands thrust deep in the pockets
where she fingered Lazarus's strings and pegs as if they were
rosary beads left to her by a friend who had recently died. She'd
known all along the others would be leaving. She'd thought she and
Faron would be going too, but her whole family ganged up on
her.

"Seven years is long enough," her dad said.
"Besides, we want you and Faron at the convention this year to tell
the others what happened. Nobody plays or sings much filk anymore,
but the most musical people in our group still come. I'm sure
they're gonna want to hear what you and Faron have to say."

"We sort of planned on using Tulsa as
a control base," Gussie told her. Ellie knew she was just trying to
make her feel as if she were doing something important too, and she
also knew that she and Faron and her parents
would
be making a vital contribution to the
mission, but even though she was glad to be home, part of her was
just used to going, and it wanted to leave when her friends
left.

"It's easiest for you and Faron to cover
this area," Anna Mae said briskly. "If you don't, then one of us
will have to, and we don't have the contacts you do."

"Oh, I
know
," Ellie said. "I'm just going to miss you
all so much."

Terry gave her a hug. "We won't be able to
stay together either, so you'd have to miss us anyway."

"We'd better figure out who's going where,"
Gussie said, "so I can give you each a list of contacts and code
phrases. My feeling is that we need to fan out from this area and
stick to the Midwest and south central area right now, since we
only have my vehicle for transportation."

"I think that's wise," Anna Mae agreed. "We
don't know how well Torchy's protections work, or even if they do,
and we should be within reach of each other in case one of us runs
into more trouble than he or she can handle."

"We'll be damned lucky if it's only one at a
time," Willie said.

"I've got a list of our contact people in
the South Central & Southwest areas that Morgan Richards put
together with help from Lettie and Mic, Gussie and some of the
other music network who've kept in touch," Barry told them, pulling
out a sheaf of paper and dealing the pages like cards to each
person. "Y'all realize that as soon as you memorize these, you'll
need to eat them."

"What? No self-destruct?" Dan asked.

"Most of these folks will know Willie and
maybe Juli or Brose already," Barry continued. "But for the rest of
you, we've set up a code that will help you identify them and vice
versa. Just in case there are any phony cops or IRS people or
SWALLOW agents lurkin' around. Morgan also sweeps our phones every
week so you should be able to call in safely from pay phones or
cellular lines."

"Maybe we should just all concentrate on one
area at a time and then have Gussie round us up when we think we've
got things started there and head on out to another area," Juli
suggested.

"I don't know about that," Willie said. "I
move faster alone and I reach more people."

"We're talking big cities here, Willie, and
not being able to use any kind of publicity. I really think the
territory's going to be plenty big for all of us," Anna Mae
said.

"Nope," Willie said stubbornly. "Torchy's
idea of each of us taking home ground is better. If I can't find an
audience in Texas, I can't find one anywhere. Y'all can do whatever
you want, but I'm headin' back south. Anyhow, I'm not sure cities
are where we're gonna get listened to. People in small towns are
lots of times more interested in having someone entertain them than
people in cities who're up to their asses in entertainment
already."

Anna Mae nodded cautiously. "Well,
yes. That's a good point. But on the other hand, if someone wants
to trap you, a small town has fewer places to hide. Still, much as
I hate to
admit it, I think you may be
right. I'd like to try my luck first in Anadarko, where I was
brought up. I don't have any relatives still there that I know of,
but I feel like I understand where people there are coming from.
Besides, my people had their own songs that weren't dependent on
the big-name folk musicians. Maybe they've still retained them and
would be willing to help us."

"I'm sure Lucien Santos, my teacher in
Joplin, could help us," Julianne said eagerly. "And he's very
influential. Besides, I want to see if I can still contact
George."

Brose shrugged. "I got no
preference. I'll go along with Gussie, I guess. I got no home now
at all. I sure as hell don't want to go back to Texas, but it seems
to me from what I've seen around here that people are going to need
us just as bad
in cities as in little
towns. Only rich people have access to a lot
of the entertainment in the cities. Folk music always was
mostly intended for poor folks anyhow."

"That's true," Terry said. "And Dan and I
don't know anyone over here. I don't think we'd be overloading an
area if the two of us went with Brose and Gussie to some major
city. I still don't think it's wise to spread ourselves too thin.
Remember, we still don't know if that stuff Torchy gave us in the
plastic bag is any good or not. Perhaps once we figure that out, it
will be safe to spread farther."

"I guess if y'all are splitting up, though,
you'll need it in separate bags," Molly said practically, and
brought out more Ziploc bags. They divided the fairy dust and the
crystallized tears among them, though no matter how much dust
Willie shook from the original bag, there always seemed to be about
the same amount left.

Julianne was the first one to notice that
and mention it, and Gussie nodded, saying, "Good. Seems to be the
real thing then, or if it's not, at least we won't get busted for
having some illegal designer drug we never even heard about. So far
ol’ Torchy seems to be on the level."