Phantom Banjo (4 page)

"I'll have her call you back the minute she
gets here. Now don't you worry. Everything'll work out. You wait
and see." Trust a friend's mother to come up with platitudes.

Oh, well, at least they had friends, Juli
reminded herself. She'd been taught by her mother, the expensive
child psychologist her mother had sent her to after her father
died, and her guru to count her blessings so, dutifully, she did.
She lit the gas jet on Barry's old stove, made herself a cup of
chamomile tea, carried it with her to the living room where she
scissored herself onto the floor. She did ballet stretches as she'd
been doing since her dancing days, then rolled her head in circles
and rotated her shoulders. Two weeks of riding across country,
eating goopy truck-stop nachos and peanut butter sandwiches,
drinking too much caffeine to stay awake when they couldn't stop
for the night due to the highway regulations of one state or
another. George had the right idea going back to bed.

Her forehead throbbed and she knew that
pretty soon a tight band would close around her scalp and she'd
have one of her headaches again. But then nobody ever said it was
easy.

Barry read on, totally absorbed, but the cat
uncurled from his lap, stretched one paw at a time, and hopped down
in front of Juli, its calm little face upturned, waiting for her to
make a lap. She obediently did so, hoisted it onto her thighs, and
petted its lumpy fur. Poor thing was allergic to fleas, she
remembered Molly explaining. Its name was Pyewacket, or was it
Helva, or was that Lettie's cat? No, Lettie's cat was Tan, Satanna,
or one of them. It was hard to keep straight all of their friends'
cats and dogs, there were so many of them. People like the Curtises
and the Chaveses were always taking in strays, cats, dogs,
musicians.

First they'd come to the club and grin all
through your set, clap hard, and chat a little at breaks. They
might be the only ones all night to leave any kind of a tip, though
it was always only a dollar or so, but they came back every night
of a gig. Long about the third night they'd ask what the
accommodations were and after that there was a bed, a bath, a
stove, and foster animals instead of a sleeping bag on the floor of
the van and a spit bath in the John at whatever restaurant or bar
they were playing that night.

Of course, some of the people who were
attracted to musicians were kind of weird, wanting to nose into
their private lives and live vicariously what seemed to be a more
glamorous life-style. But the friends she and George had made and
kept weren't like that. They were great. Most of them, like Molly
and Barry and the Chaveses, were considerate of the musicians'
privacy and gave them plenty of space. George tried, for purposes
of both friendship and publicity, to write a newsletter every once
in a while to let people know what was happening on the road. And
Juli usually loved to talk anyway, and to hear about other people's
lives, about the day-in-day-out troubles and triumphs that she'd
thought were so boring when she first went on the road.

One day she and George hoped to be able to
afford to drive a mobile home or a bus around the country, but in
the meantime they were lucky to have people like the Curtises, who
were always glad to see them but who treated them as casually as if
they were roommates and took little notice of their coming and
going. When Barry and Molly or some of their other friends went on
vacation, sometimes Juli and George got to house-sit for them, and
had a place all to themselves. It was like playing house. But God,
she got tired of playing house in other people's houses. Still, it
just made no sense to maintain a place of your own when you were
never in it.

Once upon a time, she had heard from older
veteran musicians, gigs had come with room and board. But that
hadn't been the case most places for a long time. So friends across
the country, the Curtises and others, who worked straight jobs and
had an extra room were godsends. And then there was Lettie, who had
a small record distribution business for privately produced
records, which she not only sold but promoted to the few folk radio
shows and all the festivals she and Mic could attend, kept club
lists, and wrote reviews for folk music journals. Her husband Mic
was willing to drive all night so he and Lettie could attend a
festival, where he introduced everyone to everyone else whether he
knew them or not, was quickly on first-name terms with all of the
luminaries at any given event, and was just as quick to turn them
on to the music of less celebrated friends. Other friends were
musicians themselves, but not on the road. Some helped friends with
bookings or were willing to type newsletters. Then there were
people who organized concerts and festivals, open mikes and
referral lists, printed newsletters or journals. Several folks she
knew of were involved in that in Chicago and Lettie said her mom
knew of a guy who did that kind of thing in Tacoma too.

Juli's reverie was interrupted when the door
banged open and Molly Curtis jogged in, her dark brown hair
escaping from its braids to cling in damp wisps to her sweating
face. Her legs were bright red under her blue running shorts, her
tank top soaked. She thrust a paper bag into Julianne's hand,
"Here, girl. You looked like you needed this and they had your
favorite flavor at the 7-Eleven." Inside were two plastic cartons
of vanilla almond frozen yogurt with a couple of plastic
spoons.

Juli grinned up into Molly's dripping face.
"You're wonderful," she said, but her gut was in knots from
exhaustion, tension, and caffeine and she knew she couldn't eat a
thing.

She pulled the plastic spoons from the bag
and tapped them together idly, then deliberately arranged them
between the fingers of her right hand. "Hey, you know, I was
working on a story to tell about magic spoons while we were on our
way down here," she told Molly. "What do you think of this
rhythm?"

Tapping the spoons across her left hand and
clicking them against her thigh and forearm, she ticked out a
rhythm. They didn't make as much noise as her metal or wooden
spoons. "Well, you get the idea. It goes like this, ba da da, ba da
da, ba da dad dad dad dad da, ba da da, ba da da, ba da pow pow
POW!"

"Amazing what that girl can do with frozen
yogurt," Barry observed.

Molly threw a stack of letters at her. "Here,
girl, stop playing with your food and read your mail."

Juli tore open the letter from their
accountant, a friend named Pete Zimmerman in Chicago. This must be
the tax refund they'd been waiting for since April. But it wasn't.
It was a letter. "Dear George and Julianne, Don't get upset. I'm
sure we can work things out and there has been some
misunderstanding. But you need to be back here by July 10 for an
IRS audit. They claim you owe $30,000 in back taxes and fines from
1987 on. Unless you can show you maintain a permanent home, they're
disallowing your travel expenses as business deductions. Call me
ASAP and we'll work out strategy. Love, Pete."

Without a word to the Curtises, Juli threw
the opened letter on top of the pile of mail, left the yogurt
melting in the cartons, and strode back to the spare bedroom, where
she threw herself on the bed next to George and buried her face in
the pillow.

* * *

Meanwhile, the Chaveses had been having a
good time driving another musician friend down from Canada.

Mic drove and Lettie sat in the back seat
while their guest, Hy MacDonald, regaled them with bawdy stories of
his travels from Scotland through Australia and New Zealand, and
his previous successful tours in the U.S. Hy did not look like a
man who wrote and sang romantic, mythic ballads full of Celtic
folklore and imagery that made sensible young women with good
careers in banking want to climb into his lap and light his
cigarettes. Short, thin, and balding with limp sandy hair covering
only the back two thirds of his scalp and his front teeth yellowed
from nicotine, he looked more like a particularly nervous banker
himself, Lettie decided. But she and her husband were the last ones
to judge by appearances.

Mic looked more like a Scottish folksinger
than Hy did. With his first name and his freckled face and red
hair, he was often mistaken for a kid of Irish or Scottish lineage
whose mother had married a Mexican. In fact, the Chaves name, which
dated in Texas from before the Alamo, was pure European Spanish and
Mic, whose full name was Miguel Alejandro, was the heir to
generations of Texas's aristocratic Spanish heritage—no money, but
plenty of pedigree. But now he talked as rapidly and
enthusiastically as the most verbose Celt, swapping Hy yarn for
yarn.

Lettie was the shy, seemingly aloof, intense
one of the pair, the more compulsively creative. And who knew where
she'd gotten that from? Well, her mom had been a dancer when she
was younger. Lettie had seen the pictures. But ever since she could
remember, Gus had worked as a barmaid. At least she was finally out
of the oil fields, able to indulge her lifelong ambition to get the
hell out of West Texas now that her little girl was secure with
Mic. She'd moved her cats and her shoe collection to a little
rental house in Tacoma and tended bar across the street from the
place where Craig Lee's Triumph Music cooperative held open mikes.
The pickers all came in to the bar to jam after the open mike shut
down, and to be spoiled by Gussie. Even the Seattle city slickers
who thought Texans were all oil-rig bums and hicks had thawed to
Gussie's West Texas drawl and down-home warmth. And Gussie had
adopted Washington and especially the musicians as matter-of-factly
as she took in stray cats.

Which was how Lettie and Mic got acquainted
with Craig and had gotten drafted as "roadies" for Hy to bring him
across the border for the Triumph Concert that would kick off his
cross-country tour.

"And then there was Roger in this foolish
puce spandex jogging suit—" Hy was saying as they drew up to the
customs window. It was late, so the lines weren't too bad, but
they'd already swapped three stories and Hy had sung them a piece
of his new song while they waited.

"Where are you going?" the customs man
asked.

"Tacoma," Mic said.

"Where you coming from?"

"Vancouver."

"Place of residence?"

"Amarillo, Texas, for us," Mic said,
indicating Lettie with a wag of his fingers.

"Aberdeen, Scotland," Hy said, and handed
over his passport for inspection.

"Your business in Tacoma?"

"We're visiting my wife's mom," Mic said.
"And we're taking this gentleman to a concert he's performing."

The customs man ran his flashlight across
Hy's passport and peered at it more closely, then flashed the beam
inside the car, where it picked out the guitars sitting in under
the hatchback. "Will you pull in over there by that white line,
sir, and you and your passengers get out of the vehicle and enter
this building through that door?"

"Yes, sir," Mic said, and as he pulled away,
he rolled his eyes at Lettie in the rearview mirror. Oh, well,
they'd expected a little hassle since Hy was neither American nor
Canadian. They were unprepared, however, when a uniformed man with
a lug wrench and crowbar demanded the keys to the car and began
popping hubcaps.

"Had some problems tonight, have you?" Mic
asked the customs official behind the desk casually.

The man ignored the question. "Which of you
is Hyslop MacDonald?"

"That would be me," Hy said.

"We'll need to retain your passport for a
while, sir. Meanwhile, if you and the other gentleman would step
into that cubicle and remove your clothing and hand it out. And
you, ma'am, if you'll use that other cubicle and do the same."

"What's the problem, officer?" Mic asked,
although he doubted that it would do any good and would probably
make the customs people nastier.

"The problem, sir, is that you're attempting
to assist a known political subversive and probable drug trafficker
into the United States."

Mic and Lettie looked at Hy, who shrugged.
"Maybe they think I'm Irish."

CHAPTER 3

Even the worst of luck is bound to change
sometime. In a later batch of mail George unearthed the flier from
Josh Grisholm scheduling an upcoming appearance in Tulsa. The
Martins had met Grisholm at the Dumas Folk Festival, introduced, as
usual, by Mic Chavez. Josh was not only a great writer of funny
topical songs and the best-known living player of plucked autoharp,
but he had made money at folk music since the pop folk groups
started playing his songs in the sixties. He had a good agent, a
small record company, and a national reputation. Maybe what he
didn't have yet was an opening act. It was worth a try. Juli had
been corresponding with him since that first meeting, and his
letters, though short and infrequent, were witty and warm. A letter
wouldn't work at this point however, so Juli called his agent, who
gave her Grisholm's number at his present gig.

Josh was glad to hear from her and even
gladder that the two of them were in Tulsa. "God, Juli, it would be
terrific if you and George could stick around long enough to open
for me," Josh said. "Give me a chance to talk to Dave Meeker, the
guy who's producing this concert. When he called the other day, he
asked if I minded having a rockabilly band open for me."

Juli smiled into the phone, appreciating the
way Josh made it sound as if they were doing him a favor.

George had been wandering around the
Curtises' house making peanut butter sandwiches and catching up
with the new cartoons taped to the refrigerator since the last time
he was there while Juli talked on the phone. The conversation was
brief. He heard the plastic clatter as she re-cradled the phone.
"No dice, huh?"