Strum Again? Book Three of the Songkiller Saga (42 page)

"Give me my luck function then," she said.
"I'll be Lady Luck."

"Better choice than Mother Nature,
dearie-o," said Peepee with a greasy smile.

"You can be Lady Macbeth for all I care,"
said the Chairdevil. "But not until you produce MacKai. You have
until Summer Solstice, and then your luck runs out."

* * *

"Summer Solstice," said Mary Armstrong.
"Why, that's tomorrow."

"Right you are," Ute said. "And we need your
help on a little matter. I want to teach you a song, and then we're
going to meet at the stock tank under the cottonwoods at the south
fork in the road. There's some people I think you women will want
to meet, including a tour group of animal-rights activists."

* * *

"There's something going on with Willie,"
Julianne told Brose and Gussie the day they were set to leave the
Tulsa refugee camp.

"Like what?" Gussie asked.

"Somethin' like indigestion or somethin'
like a problem with a woman?" Brose asked.

"I don't know," Juli said. "But haven't you
noticed how he's just sort of resigned, and even though everybody
loves his music and people have been learning more songs than ever
and there have even been some professional offers cropping up—just
for him, mind you, not the rest of us—he sort of shrugs it off with
a vague smile. I'd think he was happy except . . . well, he's not.
And the way he goes around wringing your hand when he talks to you
and getting a little teary or hugging a person for no reason at
all."

"Yeah," said Brose. "I did notice that. At
first I thought he was just glad to see me, but it's been gettin'
embarrassing, to tell you the truth."

"And he's pacing more than ever too. Why,
all the grass is completely worn out on the perimeter of the park
just from Willie tramping back and forth at all hours," Gussie
said. "I wonder what's eating him."

"I wish I knew," Juli said. "I sense that
it's something serious, something he's sparing us."

Brose shook his head. "It ain't like Willie
to spare others. He's a spiller not a sparer."

"Then see if you can get him to spill to
you," Juli said earnestly. "And mention it to the others."

But it wasn't to Brose or Gussie that Willie
spilled, or even to Juli, the Curtises, or the Randolphs, of whom
he was fond. No, when he finally let loose with what was bothering
him, it was to Anna Mae Gunn, who aggravated him.

She was packing up and singing under her
breath "I Will Go," and that reminded Willie of where he was going,
and he began singing louder than she was "Don't Think Twice, It's
All Right," and she, being tired and half-mildewed and not the most
tractable of women at the best of times, snapped, "I wish you
wouldn't sing that. You've been hinting away that you're leaving
for some mysterious reason like you think you're better than the
rest of us. Well, we did good work without you. And can continue to
do so if you just want to keep pissing your life away."

"I never said I was better than you," he
said. "And I'm not pissing my life away. But maybe I've found
something worth spending it for. Maybe I'll leave you to carry
things on and just sort of clear the way for you," he said, and
told her the whole deal, finishing with, "Maybe I'll be doomed
forever to be a ghost rider in the sky. I'd like that."

"What kind of weird bullshit is that,
anyway?" asked Anna Mae. She had a lot of nerve calling anybody
else's strange ideas weird bullshit, since as soon as he told her
and strolled off into the sunset, she left the compound and picked
up the nearest out-of-order—and therefore dead—phone. When she
didn't get a dial tone, she said into the receiver, "This is Mae
Gunn calling Sam Hawthorne. Sam, you out there?"

And pretty soon there was a click on the
other end, and a sleepy voice said, "Mae. What a surprise. Nice to
hear from you. What's up?"

"Sam, I think we're going to need that ghost
train again." She briefly explained the situation.

Finally, after hearing her out, Sam said,
"Okay, Mae. Here's how to summon it. I think you'd better gather
your forces while you're gathering information. As Willie told you,
this will take place at Summer Solstice, which is the next magical
window. What he didn't tell you is where, so when you figure that
out, here's how to create a whistle stop," and he told her.

Anna Mae told the others immediately and
finished, "But I'm afraid I ran Willie off, and now we don't know
where this sacrifice thing is supposed to take place. I don't even
know where he's gone, do you?"

Brose scratched his chin a minute and said,
"Well, from a few things he's let drop, I think he's been back to
the ranch. Maybe he's gone back there again to say good-bye to the
boss and the boys. I'd start my phone callin' there if I was
you."

Dally Morales answered and said that no, he
hadn't seen Willie, but he hoped he would show up because Dally had
a message for him from a fancy redheaded lady from Bull-Pen
magazine. -

Anna Mae said in a soft, grim voice, "Hold
it, Dally. This is very important. I want you to tell me everything
the woman said and did." He told her about the woman looking at the
Appaloosa and calling it an elfin gray and about her lack of
interest in their poetry, and Anna Mae said, "If she comes back,
try to keep her there. Willie too."

"I'll try to. I might miss 'em. The boys are
doin' dude tours right now—activist groups of one kind or another.
It's the boss's new profit-making scheme."

"Are your men teaching the dudes any
songs?"

"Do buzzards eat dead stuff?" he asked. "Of
course they're teaching songs. And telling that story Ms. Turner
told us too."

"I'm going to put Gussie on with some more
of the story then. It's vital that your men pass this part onto the
other people there too. We'll be meeting you at the boss's house on
Summer Solstice, and when you hear the story, you'll know why."

Dally heard all Gussie had to say and said,
"Chihuahua, Miz Turner, you got us all beat for tellin' a yarn. But
sure, we can pass this along."

Anna Mae got back on the phone and sang him
one more long song, which he promised he was recording as he
listened. She was about to ring off when he said, "I sure want to
thank Faron Randolph for invitin' me up to that convention of
theirs in Tulsa. I found me a fine golden thread I braided into the
new riata I was makin', and it works like a charm."

* * *

Lettie and Mic drove down to Tulsa to meet
Gussie and the others, as did some of the contacts from Kansas City
and a good quarter of the south-central Native American population.
The writer-musicians were there too, but Morgan Richards was
staying at a friend's house, where he was dispatching a new virus
with the one song that would help Willie's situation.

Finally, the lot of them stood on the corner
outside the park, lining the street for a half mile in each
direction. "Now what?" Gussie asked.

"Now we sing. And play whatever instruments
are handy."

"Sing what?" Faron asked.

"Train songs," she said. "The Wreck of the
Old Ninety-seven," "Casey Jones," "Wabash Cannonball," "Rock Island
Line," "Freight Train." We just keeping singing and playing all the
train songs we know until it shows up. I didn't have to do it the
first time, but San Hawthorne says the train would like it if we
did. Especially now that we've got Lazarus back."

So they sang train songs, three or four of
them as the traffic splashed by.

Soon they heard the tires on the pavement
take on a new sound. Instead of the squishing and rumbling of
individual sets of four soft tires against cement, the sound began
to coalesce into a hard iron noise. The stench of steam and coal
filled the moisture-laden air too, and the smell of hot steel. As
the crowd sang, "Clickety clack, clickety clack—" on the chorus of
one song, their words were echoed by a real clickety clack on the
highway in front of them. Then suddenly, from a brief shimmer in
the heat waves on the road, a solid steam engine and a line of cars
took shape in front of them, and a ghostly voice cried, " 'Bo—oard!
All Aboard!"

* * *

The sacrifice was to take place during the
darkest part of the night of the longest day of the year. Torchy
had already picked out a geomantically correct place for the event
to happen—the southwest fork, which had a road to ride in on, one
fork symbolizing the way to heaven, the other to hell, and, for old
times' sake, a well, symbolized by the stock tank. Except this time
there would be no pesky Bird Janet to foul things up. This time
there would be no maidens for some song to warn:

"O, I forbid you, maidens a',

That wear gold in your hair,

To come or go by Carterhaugh,

For young Tarn Lin is there."

Willie wasn't all that young, of course. He
was on the downhill side of middle age, in fact, though he didn't
seem to know it. And maidens didn't last around him very long. But
Tarn Lin hadn't been real respectful of virgin womanhood
either.

"There's nane that goes by Carterhaugh

But they leave him a wad,

Either their rings, or green mantles,

Or else their maidenhead."

Charming guy, Tarn Lin, as well Torchy
remembered. The song made him seem like a mugger and a rapist in
places, but the truth was, he was like Willie in that he could
weasel the birds out of the trees—even birds he would just as soon
had stayed perched. Like Janet.

"Janet has kilted her green kirtle

A little aboon her knee,

And she has braided her yellow hair

A little aboon her bree,

And she's awa to Carterhaugh

As fast as she can hie."

Couldn't mind her own damn business, little
kingdom wrecker. There were a lot of other verses about her meeting
Tarn and him telling her to go away and her saying Carterhaugh,
which was clearly fairy domain, was hers and her la-di-daddie-da
gave it to her. And she plucked her a highly symbolic rose, and
then he did what any guy living in ballad times would do and:

"He's taen her by the milk-white hand

And by the grass-green sleeve

And laid her low on gude green wood,

At her he spierd nae leave.

"When he had got his wills of her

His wills as he had taen"

. . .
and his
wills weren't the only ones served
. . .

"He's taen her by the middle sma’

Set her to feet again."

Well, yes, and she took her own sweet time
about it too. Torchy had tried to confound the girl with magicks,
but the former fairy queen had reckoned without the mortal
contrariness which she now knew so well.

She had also reckoned without an indulgent
daddy who didn't immediately kill his baby girl for getting knocked
up, and a pragmatic brother who suggested an herb to terminate the
pregnancy. That's when the girl went back to Carterhaugh and
plucked another rose. Tam Lin could never resist the plucking of a
rose, and out he came again to see this blossom about to burst the
bud she carried.

An early advocate of Father's Rights, Tam
asked Janet,

"O why pou ye the pile, Janet

The pile o the gravil green,

For to destroy the bonny bairn

That we got us between?

"O why pou ye the pile, Janet

The pile o the gravil gray,

For to destroy the bonny bairn

That we got in our play?

"For if it be a knave-bairn

He's heir o a' my land

But if it be a lass-bairn

In red gold she shall gang."

And Janet, the little twit, used emotional
blackmail, indicating that it was his affiliation with Faerie that
was to blame, not Janet's own round heels.

"If my love were an earthly man,

As he's an elfin rae,

I could gang bound, love, for your sake,

A twelvemonth and a day."

And Tam had told her how he wasn't an elf
knight at all but a man, and then, of course, Janet wanted to know
what his lineage was. When Janet got wind that Tarn was an earl,
well, she sympathized with Tam when he told her about the bargain
he had made and why. She convinced him to tell her the way to
abduct him out of it.

But no, Willie had more reason for keeping
his word than Tam, and he was a volunteer, after all.

He came out of the bunkhouse after talking
to Dally Morales, ostensibly to buy the horse she meant to send him
to hell on but probably also to say good-bye. He strode toward her
nodding, and she took his arm and smiled up at him. "You won't go
and desert me like that last ol' boy, will you now, Willie?"

"Perish the thought, darlin'," Willie said,
patting her hand. "I'm a man of my word. I told you I'd help you
out, and I will."

And her thoughts turned to their retinue,
the creatures who would join them on the ride. And to what she
would wear, of course.

* * *

Early in the long bright evening of
the longest day of the year, about fifty people milled around the
stock tank at the southwest fork, small groups shepherded by cowboy
poets. Nobby Watanabe herded a cadre of Amerasian teenagers who had
been born in Asia and were now looking for their
other
roots. Then there were the
animal-rights activists led by the Swede and glaring at the leather
in the boots and saddles, petting the horses, and feeding them
freeze-dried carrot chips and apple slices. All current illegal
aliens and former illegal aliens and American citizens of Mexican
descent currently residing on the ranch formed another group.
Finally, trailed by his contingent of ecofeminists, came Ute,
formerly known as Steve Guttenberg, rechristened because of his
association with the University of Texas, or UT, to something that
sounded more poetically cowboyish than merely "Steve."