Phantom Banjo (8 page)

He smelled burning hair and flesh at almost
the same time he saw off in the distance down the long flat road
the flames of the wreck, sparks catching on the dry branches of a
scrawny cottonwood, smoke obscuring the starlight.

The awful smell of cooking hair and flesh
grew stronger as Willie pulled up to the wreckage of the van, and
Willie wondered if he'd even recognize Mark. The heat flowing from
the wreck hit him like a flamethrower and he skirted it, trying to
see inside. It wasn't the same van Mark had been driving the last
time he saw him, but a similar one, white like all the others,
windowless in the back. You could see the van's frame through the
fire now, smell the fumes of the burning carpet and plastic. Willie
covered his mouth and nose with one hand and stumbled on around,
almost falling over the charred, smoking corpse of the longhorn
lying near the wreck.

The foul-smelling smoke hit him in the gut
and he bent over to puke out most of the evening's bottle, thinking
it would be a cold day in hell before he ever ordered a steak
again.

Straightening, he spotted something gleaming
in a patch of yucca just beyond the wreck, and walked toward
it.

Oh, God. Oh, Lord. Looked like one of Mark's
instruments had made it, even if he hadn't.

But then, beyond the cactus-cradled banjo, he
saw the boot, and the leg encased in denim, and the rest of Mark
sprawled beyond.

He knelt beside the younger man, staring at
his back to try to see if he was breathing. You weren't supposed to
move somebody who'd been hurt like this, he knew. Might break their
back or something. But hell, you had to tell if they were alive. He
touched Mark's face, still warm and wet with perspiration.

Abruptly Mark sat straight up. His eyes flew
open and his hand poked at his mouth.

"Shit, I broke a tooth," he said.

Willie shook his head slowly. "You're damn
lucky that's all you broke, my friend. What happened?"

"How the fuck should I know? A goddamn steer
charged the van—"

Willie laughed, his sense of humor activated
by relief. "I'll have to have Lenny speak to his livestock. Can't
have them breaking people's teeth every time they decide to commit
suicide. Come on, pal, let's get you back up to the house."

Mark seemed okay except for the tooth, a
little bleeding from one ear, and a giant red swelling circling
into his matted dark hair. Staggering together, he and Willie
headed back for the Jeep.

They were almost there when Mark snapped his
fingers and lurched away from Willie to return to the yucca bush
and pluck the banjo free before climbing into Willie's Jeep.

Back at the house, Willie unearthed an
almost-clean towel and wetted an end of it to wash the blood from
Mark's ear.

"You got to watch it on these back roads,
son," he teased Mark. "Those attack cows will just leap out and get
you. I'm going to give a call up to the house and have them come
down with another van, take you in to the doctor. Okay? It'll be
faster than waiting for an ambulance to come here and that way you
won't have to bounce around no more in the Jeep."

"No, no, no," Mark said. "I'm okay. Be fine.
Just—"

"The hell you are," Willie said, and picked
up the phone to call, but the line was busy. He set it back down
and told Mark, "I'll try again in a couple minutes."

"Gotta tell you about Sam," Mark said. His
speech was a little slurred.

"No, buddy, you got to rest. Let me fix you a
little drink to relax you and you just take a nap while I get us
some help."

"Willie, goddamn—lissen t'me."

"Okay, okay. What's on your mind besides that
goose egg growing there. Let me put some ice on that." He looked in
the freezer. "It'll be a few minutes. I used the last one in my
drink. Just a sec." He grabbed the towel he'd used to sponge the
ear off with, fished what was left of an ice cube out of his drink,
and wrapped it in the towel, applying it to Mark's head.

"I'll try them again. We'll get you to the
hospital in Brownsville."

"Forget it. I'm fine. Little headache's all.
Had too much hospital already."

"If you got insurance, boy, this is a good
time to use it," Willie said. "Looks like you lost your ass this
time. Everything but your banjo."

Mark swallowed some of the drink Willie put
in his hand, and rallied a little, making a conscious effort to
enunciate. "Naw, unpacked the van last March when I came in off the
road, started staying at Joann's place."

"You off the road?"

"Had to. Couldn't afford it anymore. Not
enough money in the gigs to pay for the gas to get there."

"I sure as hell know what you mean about
that," Willie said emphatically. "But you never used to have any
trouble getting gigs."

"Look, Willie, about Sam . . ."

"Sam who?"

"Hawthorne."

"What about him?"

"He's dead, 's his banjo."

"How'd you get it?" Willie asked.

"He—gave—it—to—me," Mark answered. "Got to
tell you."

"Let me try to reach the house one more time
and then I'll listen to what you say while we're waiting for
them."

The line was still busy.

Mark was hard to understand at first, but he
was a stubborn man and made sure Willie heard everything about the
concert and afterward. He was concentrating so hard that Willie
knew what he had to say was important to him, and so Willie
concentrated too, until his own mind filled in the details and he
was able to visualize what Mark told him.

* * *

Mark had carried the banjo into the hospital
emergency waiting area. It looked like the aftermath of a battle.
Stretchers lined the walls, people threw up in emesis basins, or
bled quietly into makeshift dressings while they waited their turn
for treatment in one of the rooms. Mark half expected to see
Hawthorne among them, with the paramedics still doing CPR.

A woman was busily typing up forms at the
receptionist's desk, behind a glassed-in enclosure. Mark tapped on
the glass and asked for Hawthorne.

She glanced at him, her eyes barely
flickering with the kind of feminine response he usually elicited.
"You family, sir?"

"Yes," he said, knowing that he'd get nowhere
if he said no.

She told him which room Sam was in and that
they were preparing a bed for him in the cardiac care unit.

If they were getting a bed ready, Sam had
made it then. Still carrying the banjo, Mark strode down the hall
before anyone could ask any more questions and opened the door to
the room the lady had indicated. He thought he'd leave the banjo
with Sam, or with the nurse, see how the old man was doing, and
leave.

A forest of IV stands stood over the bed, and
the steady beep of an electrocardiogram machine dominated the room.
A nurse stooped near a crash cart, checking the drugs and supplies,
replacing items that had been used.

Sam lay pale and still, a thin greenish
oxygen tube spanning his face like an overgrown plastic mustache.
Mark stood by the bed and watched Sam breathe for a moment, then
started to turn to the nurse.

Then Sam's eyes opened and he glared up at
Mark.

Mark, who was never very sensitive when it
didn't suit him, kept his voice pitched low, so the nurse wouldn't
be able to hear. "It's okay, Mr. Hawthorne. I'm not a reporter. I—I
brought your banjo to you."

The older man blinked and relaxed a little.
"Sorry, son," he said, and his voice rasped from the effort. "I'm
not taking requests right now."

"Well, I've got one anyway, sir. There's a
whole lot of people getting rain checks on that concert. You get
better now, hear?" And Mark gently laid the banjo on the bed and
started to leave.

"What might your name be, son?" Hawthorne
asked.

Mark returned to the bedside, so that Sam
wouldn't have to strain to speak and also so that the nurse
wouldn't hear and realize Mark wasn't family after all.

"Mark Mosby."

"You're a picker."

It wasn't really a question but Mark said,
"Yes, sir."

"Well, son," Sam said, clearing his throat
painfully. "You may know my wife died a few months ago. My brother
and sister are in England. I always thought when I died, I'd leave
Lazarus there"—he blinked toward the banjo—"to the Archives. But—"
he coughed, then said in such a low whisper that Mark had to lean
over the bed rails to hear him, "suppose you hang on to it for
me."

"Sure. Don't worry, Sam. I'll be right here
in Austin. I'll call tomorrow and see how you are. As soon as they
let you out of here I'll—" but the old man's eyes had closed and
Mark's ear picked up a change in the beat of the background noise.
He called the nurse and she punched a button at the head of Sam's
bed that brought other doctors and nurses racing in.

Mark had fled the room then and stood holding
Sam's banjo, watching the door to the room for what seemed like
hours, until the doctors and nurses came out too. This time Sam was
with them, the sheet pulled up over his face. He wasn't going to
need the bed in CCU after all.

* * *

The night Sam Hawthorne died, a woman in
Fredericks, Maryland, got a posthumous phone call from him asking
her to organize a folk festival.

"Mae, Sam Hawthorne here," the famous clipped
Yankee voice announced when she picked up the phone.

Even groggy as she was from nightmares about
the explosions at the Library of Congress over in D.C., which was
only about an hour's drive away, Anna Mae would have known who it
was. Only Sam Hawthorne ever called her Mae.

"Sam, did you hear about the Archives?"

"Yes, Mae. Yes, I did. And that was partly
what I'm calling about. I'm afraid I didn't take the news so well,
and not to beat around the bush too much, Mae, you might say it
killed me."

"What?"

"Heart attack. Hurt like hell and what's
worse, I never finished the concert. But that's not the important
part. The important part is that Dusty and Bill Beresford—you know
Bill—"

Anna Mae nodded dumbly at the telephone and
then realized what she was doing and said, "Yes. Bill's the
archivist of the folk collection. He was working late and was
killed in the blast."

"That's the fellow. Good man. Fine picker
too. Anyway, you know I've always kept an open mind about religion,
but it seems as if the bunch of us are sort of stuck at the airport
metaphysically speaking. Don't seem to be getting anywhere. Well,
we don't mind so much because the company's good but we've been
talking it over and we think something's going on down there. Why
don't you have a little get-together in our collective honor and
see what comes up? I hate to give you such short notice, but you've
always been a good organizer. I remember the fine work you did at
the Annapolis festival that one year."

"Thank you, Sam," she said, glowing with the
warmth the special friendship with that remarkable man had always
given her. "You know I'll do my best."

"I know you will, Mae. My best to everyone.
Sorry to have to cut this so short but you understand . . ."

"I understand, Sam. Thanks for thinking of
me."

"Take care of yourself, Mae. And watch out.
Oh, and about Lazarus . . ."

"What about Lazarus? Sam? Sam?" Anna Mae had
listened for a long time. When she woke up, she was still
listening, and for a moment she thought it was a dream, but the
receiver was still in her hand.

* * *

Back in Texas, Mark Mosby, dying of a
slow-leaking brain hemorrhage, finished his story in the best dying
cowboy tradition before he joined Sam and the others. "Couldn'
b'lieve it. Didn' know what to do," Mark told Willie. "Slept . . .
woke up 'bout three . . . called you." The injured man was lying on
the couch and looked up appealingly at an increasingly nervous
Willie. Mark should have gone to a hospital right off, Willie
thought. The boy's eyes looked funny—one big and dark, the other
one shinier and greener than was natural.

"I'm going to try the house again," Willie
told him. The line was still busy. Willie poured another drink,
sloshing the liquid over the sides of the glass and onto his hand.
Drying the hand on his cutoffs, he said, "Buddy, you hang in here a
minute. I'm going to try to drive up to the house and fetch
help."

Mark lay very still and said nothing, the
empty drink glass resting on its side by his hand, the banjo at his
feet.

CHAPTER 5

Willie banged through the screen door. It
should have taken him no more than two steps to be at the Jeep but
the damn fool thing refused to stand still. It swayed in the heat
and quivered away from him each time he lifted his foot to step
forward. He squinted his eyes, trying to zero in on it but it
wouldn't focus—he was either drunker than he thought he was or he
must have gotten more shook up by the accident than he had
supposed. He took a deep breath and stepped forward with all the
deliberation of a Zen master.

And jumped three feet back through the open
screen door, slamming it behind him as from the corner of his eye
he caught the flash of diamond-patterned scales slashing down and
forward into the light pouring through the door.

Had it not been for years of conditioning,
the sixth sense of someone raised from boyhood in snake country, he
might have remained in the path of that long body slicing the air
where his chest should have been. By the time the snake landed with
a heavy plop to coil onto the seat of the Jeep, however, Willie had
the screen door between them almost without thinking about it. No
sober man could have done it better.

"Sorry to bother you, buddy," he said as he
backed into the room, his eyes never leaving the Jeep, "but I gotta
get my pistol. Big ol' rattler tryin' to drive the Jeep out
there."