Phantom Banjo (11 page)

Willie guessed that would have pretty well
wiped out the headliners, okay. He shook his head, wonderingly.
Weird how so many people in the same profession were dying off all
of a sudden. And what about the snotty way the newscaster sounded
when she told about it, as if she was saying "good riddance"? Even
to Willie, who was a fairly conservative man politically, the
dismissal of Nedra Buchanan as a traitor seemed unduly harsh.
Buchanan was a gifted singer from a long line of Scottish
historians and folklorists and she had also marched for civil
rights and world peace and nuclear disarmament and a number of
other liberal causes. Willie didn't usually agree with her, but he
respected her for her determination and strength of purpose, as he
had respected Sam, who he also thought was crazy as a bedbug.

"Well, well," Lulubelle said, "looks like you
were smart to get out of that business. Not only is it
unprofitable, it's getting dangerous."

"Sure seems that way, don't it?"

"No seems about it, honeybun," she said, and
the channel flipped again.

"Police are seeking a ranch hand today in
connection with the death of an Austin man. The body of Mark Mosby,
thirty-eight, was discovered . . ."

"Well, they make it sound like they think I
killed Mark! He just died—somethin' from that accident. I've been
tryin' to get to a phone to tell somebody when that damn fool horse
ran away with me and—" Willie broke off suddenly, wondering just
how much trouble he might be in and just how much he ought to be
telling this very strange hooker about it all but Lulubelle was
paying him no nevermind at all.

"The ranch hand is also wanted for the theft
of a horse bearing the Bar B Bar brand of his employer."

"Now, goddamn it all, that's it! I mean, that
just takes the cake!" Willie said, pacing as furiously to and fro
as his sores would let him. "Hell, I didn't steal that horse. It
stole me!"

"So, you're a wanted man," Lulubelle said as
the screen went blank. "My, my, a real desperado. I always knew you
were a bad one, you devil you."

"It's all a mistake. I can straighten it out
as soon as I see the boss," he said with more confidence than he
actually felt. Nothing seemed very straight at the moment. "Jesus,
it seems like the whole fucking world is fallin' apart. First Sam,
then Mark, then Josh and Nedra and what with the destruction of the
Archives and all—god damn, that's most of everybody and everything
I've stood for . . ."

Lulubelle giggled. "Aw, c'mon, sport. What
did those big shots ever do for you anyway?"

"Mark was no big shot. He was my friend."

"Yeah, and look how he paid back your
friendship! Did he try to help you when he was getting the
gigs?"

He appreciated the sympathy for a few minutes
before he realized that she shouldn't have known about any of that.
"Wait a minute. Just how closely have you been following my musical
career anyhow, lady?"

"Musical career? Hell's bells, darlin', I
don't care nothin' about your musical career . . . except for the
sentiment in your drinking songs and the way it boosts business.
I'm tone deaf. Can't tell a dirge from a jig, if you want to know.
But I have followed you otherwise, your love life, your marriages,
your drinkin’ and smokin' and the inspiration you've been to
countless others to do likewise, and I have always mightily admired
you. Takes a real actor to make being so miserable look like so
much fun most of the time and has won quite a few converts to the
cause."

"I don't know shit about no cause,
Lulubelle."

"Why, honey, I am on your side. You just hold
on awhile here and you can watch all the assholes who ever made you
feel like nobody flushed right down the tube."

"Wait a minute, you mean you knew this stuff
was going to happen?"

"Sure, and I can show you another thing or
two too. Wait a minute. I got something here that will just make
you die. You will be so friggin' glad you got out when you
did."

She slid a videocassette into her VCR and the
screen filled with the image of a handsome young man in black
neoprene trousers that looked a little like a wetsuit, a soft
garnet-colored open-necked sweatshirt piped with black satin, and
garnet-colored aviator glasses. Lulubelle settled back against a
threadbare satin pillow embroidered and fringed with gold thread
that said Deep in the Heart of Texas. She tucked her right ankle
under her left buttock and swung her right leg up and down, curling
her scarlet-tipped toes like a kneading cat. "Oh, that Nick, he's a
pistol, he is," she said.

The man was starting what seemed to be a
speech, or maybe a progress report, and at first Willie couldn't
make heads or tails of it.

"The program has been coming along nicely.
Our weather bureau has provided the coup de grace for many of the
major festivals, providing heavy rains, cyclones, hurricanes,
earthquakes, and, in one particularly inventive instance, a
blizzard, to complement the efforts already made to see to it that
there are dwindling numbers of the subjects left to warble their
disgusting nonsense to whoever might still be deluded enough to
listen.

"The Public Pestilence Service, meanwhile,
has been busy in the more heavily settled areas near mountains,
coal-mining areas, and universities, where remnants of the families
who have been identified as carriers of this brand of so-called
music are most concentrated.

"Thus those members of the family who insist
on clinging to the old songs have been dying off and the
information has been rendered extinct by the simple expedient of
introducing new motivations and interests to the children of these
vector families. The elders who proved too hearty to succumb to the
deadly diseases have been afflicted with Alzheimer's, while
blasting programs at local mines have served to deafen many of
them.

"Meanwhile, the academics involved have found
that they can't sponsor such outmoded subject matter as
ethnomusicology or folklore without losing grants. Enrollment in
their classes has dwindled sharply and the so-called scholarly
organs that once published their papers have gone out of business.
Also, the academic population was easily infected with the same
diseases we used on the commercial performers—AIDS, the new
airborne strain of herpes that settles in vocal chords and attacks
joints, other kinds of arthritis, as well as some of the exciting
new three-year viruses.

"Our most important strategic coup thus far
was accomplished by one of our terrorist minions at the Library of
Congress, but other collections have been quietly but effectively
obliterated. We expect to have polished off all of the major
offenders by the end of the year and to have implemented the
program for eliminating recordings and books containing the
offending material so that it cannot be relearned.

"The death of a major opponent, Sam
Hawthorne, was a happy side effect of the operation at the Library
of Congress. With the death of Hawthorne and the destruction of the
material at the Library, we have succeeded in wiping from memory a
large body of the most powerful songs. Those contained in the
Library and those known to Hawthorne are no longer of any major
importance and it is an easy task to simply mute them in the minds
of those remaining performers. In a short space of time no one will
sing these weakened songs and they will be truly dead. This is, of
course, a major victory for us. To a lesser extent, the repertoires
of other prominent figures will be similarly disposed of as their
ability to transmit is destroyed, and we expect the project to peak
by the end of the year, at which time other impediments to our
influence can be tackled."

"Who is that guy?" Willie asked as the
picture dissolved.

"That's Nick. Didn't I tell you he's a
pistol? Did you ever hear anything so rich?"

"Did he say what I thought he said? Did he
have the collections at the Library of Congress blown up?"

She nodded.

"Sam's death?"

"Well—no. Can't take credit for everything,
though, well, hell, why not. Sure. Slugged the old geezer right in
his sentimental ticker."

Willie took a deep breath to keep his whiskey
down.

"How about the plane wreck with Nedra and
Josh? That an accident?"

"Nicky baby has something to do with 'most
all so-called accidents, darlin'. What's the matter? You look like
you ate somethin’ bad. I showed you that to give you a laugh. Don't
tell me—"

"No, no," he said hurriedly. This was more a
nightmare than a dream by now and he had no idea what kind of a
thing Lulubelle Baker was but he knew enough not to antagonize her.
"Just that these here saddle sores are gettin' sorer all the
time."

She pulled a little vial of powder from her
cleavage and shook it at him. "I have something right here that
will fix you right up. It's new—devil dust—lots better than angel
dust."

He might have known an aspirin was too much
to expect in this place. "It's okay, darlin'. If you don't mind
I'll just use your bathroom and mop 'em off again while I'm in
there. Then I reckon I'd better get back to the ranch and see—"

"You can't go back now," she said, her red
eyes kindling threateningly.

"Oh, just long enough to clear my name,
darlin'," he called back casually.

"I jest showed you that 'cause I thought
you'd get a kick out of it," she wailed in a wounded fashion.
"Nicky'd be real unhappy if he knew about it but I told him, shoot,
Nick, some of those singers are my best folks and I felt like you'd
like knowin' how we gave all those do-gooders their
come-uppance."

"Who's Nick? Is he some kind of organized
crime boss?"

"Not crime. We don't care one way or the
other about law. Just what seems like fun, stirrin' things up some.
There now, try a little of this. You'll like it. It won't hurt you,
honest."

She held out the vial to him. He held out his
pistol to her, barrel first.

"Don't think I can say the same about this,
Lulubelle. I want to thank you for your hospitality, for the
entertainment, but just now I think I'll be on my way if it's all
the same to you."

Her laugh was as bitter as bile. "No skin off
my ass, darlin'. I was just bein' friendly, for old times' sake.
Outta the goodness of my li'l ol' black heart. Go on and make a
fool of yourself. Run your goddamn mouth. Nobody's gonna believe an
old soak like you anyway. And you missed the chance of your life to
make beautiful music instead of that racket you used to make."

The banjo twanged "Goodnight Irene" all the
way down the steps, through the crowd, and out the door where
Willie stepped into the brightness of a hot Texas morning, blinked
to adjust his eyes, and found himself in the middle of an empty
plain beside an exhausted horse. He knew it was exhausted because
he could see its chest heave once in a while and because it didn't
stink any worse than it did, which it would have if it were
dead.

* * *

News of Josh Grisholm's death sent Julianne
Martin straight to her spiritual advisor, Lucien Santos.
Fortunately, Santos had been able to see her right away. He was
immensely popular, as he should be, since he possessed a psychic
gift greater than any of the others Juli had entrusted herself to
for healing after George was gunned down at the job he had taken at
a convenience store to try to pay off the IRS. Santos's past life
regressions and trance-channeling were so eerie that he'd rapidly
become the most popular psychic counselor in Joplin, Missouri,
winning many converts and thoroughly alienating the rest of the
psychic community in Joplin. Professional jealousy, Julianne
figured. Because Santos was not only very gifted, he was also very
wealthy.

Even before George's death, Santos had
relieved much of the sense of pain and loss she'd felt at having to
give up doing music full-time to work at waitressing. She had seen
Santos once, then, and George had gone around tight-lipped for a
week. When she'd finally gotten him to talk he said, "Jules, we can
barely afford rice and you spent seventy-five dollars to have that
guy tell you you used to be a jongleur in the court of Eleanor of
Aquitaine. I wish you'd have hit Ellie up for a loan while you were
back there to pay her messenger boy."

She'd thought George was probably jealous
too. Lucien was a good-looking guy, tall, fit, redheaded, and with
penetrating brown eyes that seemed to absolutely burn with warmth
when he looked at her. She didn't tell George that Lucien hadn't
charged her the full seventy-five dollars, but told her he saw
better things coming for her and he was so sure of it, he'd let her
pay him the rest when her good fortune materialized. That was
pretty nice. Certainly not the mark of a charlatan. And when George
was killed, Lucien was so wonderful that Julianne thought he
probably was developing a thing for her. But maybe not. When she'd
withdrawn into herself for a while and not consulted him, he hadn't
seemed to mind, and was always glad, almost relieved, to see her.
He never had charged her full price and he had done her so much
good.

Not only did she feel much better after she
saw him, but she was in awe of his quite exceptional powers.
Through him she had actually talked to George several times,
received messages, been able to tell George the things there hadn't
been time for before his death. When she was with Lucien, it was
like George had never died, as if the bottom hadn't ever dropped so
suddenly out of her life. When Lucien trance-channeled for her it
was sort of like talking long distance to the other side, and in
her past-life regression, she knew what she learned was not her
imagination or a dream. Wide awake, under only a very light trance,
she had seen herself in Eleanor's court, and in a later session, in
a later life as a troubadour for Mary Queen of Scots. Even just in
ordinary counseling, Lucien never had to fish for what her problem
was or resort to vague generalities as so many other practitioners
had to.