Phantom Banjo (12 page)

She composed herself on the couch,
deep-breathing as she'd learned in yoga class. Lucien deep-breathed
for a few moments too. This room was so restful, with a tape of
soft panpipe music playing in the background, the warmth of a small
wood-burning stove, sandalwood incense perfuming the air. Chimes
tinkled at the window and crystals glinted soothingly from odd
spots around the room. Lucien always turned down the lights and
now, through her closed eyelids, a spot of bright warmth penetrated
from the flame of a fat red candle Lucien burned to give clients
something to focus on during sessions.

Lucien's voice was a warm baritone, with a
faint trace of foreignness about it, she wasn't sure what,
something Spanish since his name was Santos? Or maybe Portuguese?
It completely disappeared when he was channeling. "Oh, Julianna,"
he said, softening and broadening the a's, "once again, you are
grieving."

"Yes," her voice sounded far away to her, as
if it belonged to someone else.

"Someone you liked very much, admired, maybe
even loved, has passed to the next phase."

"Yes."

"And this person's death, coming so soon
after George's death, makes you feel isolated and cursed and so
very much alone."

"Yes."

"This was Josh Grisholm, wasn't it? The one
who died? He was an extraordinary performer and, I believe, a great
influence on your art."

She nodded, tears rolling down her cheeks
from the sympathy in his voice.

"But, Julianna, you know he isn't far. You
have learned that much with me, surely. And we've talked in our
sessions about George. How by pairing with another musician rather
than a patron who could appreciate your uniqueness you put false
boundaries on your art, on the type of expression you allowed
yourself, repeating your patterns from former lives and former
failures and manifesting failure for yourself because George, in
life, had such negative patterns. Now you are doing so much better,
working at a steady job, getting in touch with yourself, focusing
on your inner power rather than diffusing it as you did when you
and George did music together."

"But I miss it," she said. "And Josh's death
reminds me how much I miss it. Also, I've learned so much from you
that I want to use the music to share what I've learned. Lucien, it
feels like the right thing to do and now, with Josh's death, I
realize how short life is, how little time is left to teach and to
learn."

She opened her eyes and saw Lucien nodding,
smiling through his red mustache and goatee. If it hadn't been for
the way he wore his long red hair in a braided ponytail, he would
have looked more like a Freudian psychiatrist than the more
nontraditional counselor he was.

"Well, then, Julianna," he said as if he had
known what she was feeling all along, "then now may be the time for
you to begin what you have learned you must do. Let's see if anyone
on the other side has any guidance for you." His head dropped to
his chest. "Has anyone out there got messages for Julianna?"

After a moment, George's voice addressed her
directly. She caught her breath sharply, feeling a reluctance she
only now recognized to hear George's voice, so familiar but also,
somehow, so alien, when she wasn't able to see him, touch him.
Sometimes to have him with her only in such a limited way seemed
almost more painful than comforting. But she didn't like to seem
uncaring so she had never expressed that thought to Lucien. Odd
that he hadn't picked it up.

"Jules, hi, babe. How's my girl?"

"Fine, George. How are you, honey?"

"Oh, you know, it's always great around here.
Harp practice, heavenly choir rehearsals."

She sighed. "Must be some good jams there
lately with all the musicians who have crossed over. Is Josh
there?"

"He's on his way. Processing in now, I think.
Look, babe, I just wanted to tell you that your feelings are
absolutely right and I'm glad Lucien is giving me the chance to
tell you. You've been so lonely and the waitress job has been such
a drag for a creative woman like you. You need to get out, go to a
festival again, meet some of our old friends. Now, listen to me. In
the mail today you'll be receiving the announcement for a festival
in honor of all of us who have gone before. You should go."

"Hon, I can't. I don't have the money for a
bus and I have to work and . . ."

"Manifest it, baby. Hitch if you have to but
go. Stop with all this whining and crying and start moving."

She winced. George was a lot more critical
and bossy now that he had crossed over than he had been in life.
But then, once a person got to the other side, they surely knew
what was a mistake for the living and what wasn't. He was just
trying to help her.

"And, Jules?"

"Yes, George."

"When you get back, you should start working
with Lucien on developing your own powers. We can feel your vibes
clear over on this side. You could be great help to others, hon.
Oops. I'm being summoned. I think they may want me to show Josh
around. Talk to you later, babe."

Julianne nodded as if he could see her.

Lucien shook himself and sat up straight,
opening his eyes. "Well, who was there?"

"George."

"Did you kids have a nice chat?"

"Well, yes, but he wants me to go to a folk
festival and I . . ."

"That might be a good thing, Julianna. To put
a closure on all of this garbage from your past about music. Go.
Confront all those people and exorcise them. And then perhaps you
can begin to explore other options, allow George to rest and break
out of the patterns of your previous lives and start living this
one."

Lucien wished her such luck on her trip that
he didn't charge her at all for his services. And since she was so
hurt and confused and still so much at a loss, and since it gave
her a direction that made her feel as if she was actually taking
charge of her life, she sat down and wrote a song as soon as she
got home, packed a tote bag and her spoons, and began a daily vigil
for the invitation George promised would come in the mail.

CHAPTER 7

Willie stood blinking in the pounding sun.
When he saw a mirage, he saw a dandy. Well, maybe. A bawdy house
where the whores watched folk music terrorist programs on the six
o'clock news wasn't a whole lot less probable than talking
rattlesnakes, but that wasn't sayin' much. If he accepted the fact
that he'd just escaped a devil woman, where'd that get him? Here
was where, alone miles from civilization with nothing but a
half-dead horse, a pistol to shoot it with, and a banjo that seemed
to think the whole thing was funny since it started tickling itself
with "The Old Gray Mare She Ain't What She Used to Be."

His nostrils tickled faintly as the dust rose
with a hot wind. Off in the distance, a dust cloud plumed up in the
north. If anything could have surprised him by now, which it
couldn't, he would have been surprised since he was near no road
that he knew of. In fact, now that Lulubelle's was gone, he wasn't
sure exactly where it was that he was supposed to be except out in
the middle of an enormous expanse of parched Texas landscaped with
nothing but rocks, dust, dry grass, mesquite, and tumble-weed. But
wherever he was, he now saw that a beat-up blue Chevy pickup was
bearing down on him, the sun glinting on the windshield.

It screeched to a halt a few feet from the
horse's tail. The door banged open and the driver lumbered out,
jerked off his battered black hat, and threw it in the dust.

"Goddammit, MacKai, I heard there was a bad
case of horse abuse out here but I never expected to find you
here."

"I don't think it was probably 'horse' that
they said, Brose, but it's real good to see you anyway."

"What'd you do to this animal?" Brose
Fairchild asked.

"More like what he did to me. You wouldn't
believe it. Who the hell called you from way out here?"

"Beats me. Someone who wanted you to catch
hell anyhow."

"You gonna try to save this cayuse or shoot
'im?"

Rivulets of sweat ran from the clown-red wool
of Brose's hair down his face, which was dusted with large brown
spots, bigger than freckles. The shape of his features was the same
as those of his long-gone papa, a black "travelin' man." The red
hair and beige color he got from his mama, a stripper from Kansas
City who had been professionally known as the Wild Irish Rose.

Once Willie and Brose had toured together,
Willie doing cowboy songs and sixties folk, Brose playing blues
licks on six-string and twelve-string like nobody on the circuit
had heard live before. Then he'd blend the blues into an Irish
waltz and finish off with a reel. But he'd gotten sick of it
somewhere along the way, and now he worked as a sort of
troubleshooter for the animal protection agencies, locating and
rescuing animals no one else thought worth saving, taking them back
to his ranch and nursing them to health.

He and Willie hadn't seen much of each other
in recent years, nothing at all in the last two.

"If you don't look damned silly, with that
banjo around your neck and that gun in your pants," Brose said.
"And how is it you're gettin' it to play 'Cool Water' all by its
little ol' self?"

"It was Sam Hawthorne's banjo," Willie said.
"It's been doin' this ever since Mark brought it over to the ranch.
I sort of figure that must have been the secret of Sam's success,
having it so well trained it played itself so he could just kick
back and sing. Now then, let's shoot that horse or load it and get
back to your place and I'll tell you about it."

"It's your horse, MacKai. You decide. You
want to try to save 'im, we'll try." Brose had saved a lot of
beasts that, from a farmer's or rancher's viewpoint, weren't worth
the trouble. Lots of people had considered him not worth the
trouble too, at one time or another.

"It's not exactly my horse. In fact, some
people are claiming I stole it."

"Same difference," Brose said slowly. "You
stole it. You decide."

"Aw, shit. Let's have a try at saving him. I
ain't real sentimental about horses ordinarily but ol' Strawberry
is an ornery independent cuss and I identify with that. Certain
parties played a dirty trick on both of us and that's a hell of a
thing to do to a good horse, not to mention a good man."

He and Brose rubbed the horse down with a
gallon of alcohol Brose poured over the horse's heaving sides. Then
Brose took a turkey baster and forced bottle after bottle of
Gatorade down the beast's mouth to replace the fluids and salts it
had lost. Finally, they used a special winch Brose had built into
the back of the truck to hoist the horse into the truck bed. Brose
tied a tarp over the top of the truck bed to shield the animal from
the sun and the men climbed in the cab, Willie with quite a lot of
difficulty. The hot seat nearly fried him and he had to fan it with
his hand for a moment before he could stand to sit down.

"Now then," Brose said. "What you doin'
takin' up horse rustlin' in your old age? I thought you was workin'
on your pappy's boss's ranch."

Willie told him everything starting with the
accident. Including the talking rattlers.

"Sounds like DT's okay," Brose allowed. "
'Cept like you said, two minutes between shots ain't long enough
for withdrawal to cut in." Privately, he wasn't so doubtful of
Willie's story. Working alone on his place with injured animals,
Brose had begun noticing things, seeing and hearing things he
wasn't prepared to talk about to most people. Those rattlers may
not have actually talked to Willie, but Brose knew Willie let
things get to him more than he admitted most of the time. If he
was, say, in shock over Mark's death, and surprised the snakes by
blundering in a way a man born and bred to snake country might not
normally blunder, well, then, no wonder if his own guilt put words
in the snake's mouth he meant for himself. The rest of the story
got wilder though, with Lulubelle Baker and her crazy television
programs.

When Willie had finished Brose asked, "That
what you plannin' to tell the cops?"

"I don't even want to think about the cops,"
Willie moaned.

"If they thinkin' 'bout you the way you say,
you better dull that story down some if you want to tell it to them
and keep out of the psycho ward."

Now, Brose was no slouch at making up big
lies himself. He'd been doing it most of his life, one way or
another, to survive and to entertain himself, get himself laid, and
sometimes to entertain other people. He and Willie had spent enough
time on the road together they knew each other's lies, the kinds of
lies they told, when they were most apt to get elaborate. This was
not Willie's kind of lie. Of course, Willie was a more accomplished
actor than Brose had ever been, but still, Willie MacKai was
unlikely to waste a windy of that magnitude on an audience of one
man he knew had a well-developed built-in bullshit detector.

Besides, Willie never lied about no whores.
Willie never would admit to needing whores. His stories about
whores would be more like how they didn't want to be with any other
man after being with him, not how one of them was patting him on
the back for being so damned bad.

And there was all that weird business with
the guy on the tube bragging about doing in the Archives and Sam
Hawthorne and being behind those diseases—sounded like somebody had
been doin' too many drugs to Brose. But Willie never did drugs and
his paranoia didn't lean in the direction of diseases, not as long
as Brose had known him. It was more in the direction of communist
plots and there had not been word one about communists in the whole
story. Still, Brose didn't see any reason why someone couldn't
change the kind of crazy he was. But though the story might be
embroidered or Willie might plausibly have gone nuts sitting around
with nothing to do but count cows, Brose believed that Willie
believed what he was saying. And maybe it was true. Nothing
surprised Brose much anymore.