Being a Green Mother (16 page)

“It is open to interpretation, of course,” Orb said. “I always preferred to think of it as a farewell by a lady friend as Danny went off to war, a conscript. But I believe you are correct. Yet unless we had a male singer—”

“No, ’sokay,” he said quickly. “But you know, if we could sort of act it out a little—”

They tried it. The drummer set aside his drums and posed as the young man, and Orb confined herself to her harp, not singing, leaving that to Lou-Mae.

The two remaining Sludge and Orb played a preamble; then the drummer and Lou-Mae walked into the center. They paused there, facing each other, and Lou-Mae began to sing.

There seemed to be an electricity as the song progressed and the magic took hold. The drummer and Lou-Mae were staring at each other as if genuinely loath to part. Mountains seemed to form, and the sound of the pipes that the organist made seemed to echo across them. A breeze stirred the imagined trees, and leaves tumbled down, for it was autumn. The same breeze stirred Lou-Mae’s dress and hair, and she was lovely.

As the song ended, something snapped. The drummer stepped forward, and Lou-Mae met him halfway, and they embraced as if drawn together by irresistible magnetism, and kissed, long and deep. Then he hauled himself away, dramatically reluctant, and stumbled down the hill, while she watched, sobbing. They knew they would never be together again.

The music ended, and they came out of it. “Geez,” the guitarist said. “I’d a sworn you two was in love!”

“I guess I thought I was, for a moment,” the drummer said, reappearing from the next room. He looked at Lou-Mae. “
Am,
maybe.”

She dropped her gaze shyly. “Maybe,” she agreed, wiping away her tears. She was evidently shaken.

“I will check her schedule,” a new voice said.

Startled, they looked. There stood Luna and an older man. “This is the director of the Kilvarough Arts Center,” Luna said. “I asked him to come here to audition you, and we decided not to interrupt.”

“We definitely want you,” the director said. “I believe
there is an open date in two months. We are a public service organization, so we can not afford more than a nominal gratuity, but the exposure is excellent. If your group is amenable—”

“They are amenable,” Luna said.

“I shall be in touch shortly,” the director said. Luna escorted him out.

“Arts Center?” the organist asked.

“That would be a most prestigious engagement,” Orb said. “After a successful performance there, it should be possible to get bookings almost anywhere else.”

“That’s great!” the organist said. “But all we got is one song! How we gonna do a full show?”

“I think we shall have to work out other pieces,” Orb said. “Perhaps some solo renditions, interspersing the group efforts.”

“I guess,” the organist said. He looked at the drummer for agreement, but the drummer was locked in a gaze with Lou-Mae, oblivious.

“I think we have started something,” Orb remarked.

“But we got a gig!” the guitarist said gleefully.

“Let’s see to it that we are ready for it.”

“But you know, we gotta stay somewhere—I mean, a month—”

“I suspect my cousin will arrange something.”

Her confidence was justified. Luna found lodging for them all. They practiced diligently, working out new songs and new skits, fashioning a variety program from parts that had just one thing in common—magic. As they worked together, they came to know each other and to respect one another’s qualities. The drummer and Lou-Mae were definitely a couple, but Orb made it plain that however much she might respect the music they were creating, she had no interest in any romantic attachment with any of the boys.

When the time of the performance came, the audience chamber was only a quarter full. “This is typical,” the director confided. “There is not any great support for the arts today, alas.”

“It’s still a damn sight bigger than anything we’ve seen before,” the drummer said. Then, embarrassed: “Delete that; I mean we never had a big crowd.”

They started their performance. The audience seemed not
particularly impressed—until the first note sounded, and the magic spread out. Then the people were rapt. All coughing ceased, all motion; it was as if statues sat in every chair.

After the intermission, there were substantially more people attending, and more filtered in, until at the end the hall was better than half filled. “That has never happened before,” the director confided.

Next morning the reviews appeared. It seemed that several of the city’s critics had hastened to the hall and taken in at least part of the performance. Orb read, and felt dizzy. “Can this be us?” she asked.

“It’s the wildest praise any local performance has ever had,” Luna assured her. “They felt the magic; mere expertise would never have moved them like this.”

In the afternoon the offers started coming in. Cities all over the country were asking for the Livin’ Sludge, and offering fees that left the boys’ mouths hanging open.

The group was on its way.

– 8 –

Luna was in touch with sundry professionals, and set the new group up with a bookkeeper who would stay in touch and handle their bookings and records. She was Mrs. Glotch, a grandmotherly woman of unquestioned competence and integrity. She refused to travel, but would be on constant call, and would update them whenever they called in. If an emergency arose, she would search them out; Luna gave Orb a stone that would serve as a beacon, so that Mrs. Glotch could always locate her geographically.

But how would they travel? The boys had blithely assumed that they would rent a bus and fit it out with beds and a kitchen, so they could live on the road. “No way I get in that bus!” Lou-Mae declared. “I’m a good girl!”

Orb was less concerned about her morals or safety, because of her amulet, but shared the girl’s disinclination for this type of travel. “Why not use commercial transport and hotels?” she asked.

“You know what they
cost
?” the drummer demanded.

“And I won’t trust my organ to shipping,” the organist added. “It’d arrive broken, in the wrong city.”

“It sure would!” the guitarist exclaimed, and he and the
drummer broke into crude laughter, while the organist looked nettled.

Orb exchanged a glance with Lou-Mae. Had they missed something? Then Orb realized that there was more than one meaning of the word “organ,” and caught the point.

They did seem to have a case. Money should be no problem, with the bookings they could now get, but the problems of shipping were notorious. They needed their own transportation.

They considered renting a railway car, but the ones they were shown were ancient and bug-ridden, and the tracks did not go to many cities, and schedules were erratic. They considered a private airplane, but the cost was horrendous, and the chambers crowded; in addition, the guitarist was afraid to fly. They considered a mobile home, but Lou-Mae declared that to be little more than a mobile bedroom and would have no part of it.

Luna hated to admit it, but the boys’ original notion of a revamped bus seemed to be the only feasible mode. But Lou-Mae remained adamant; she had a thing against buses, somehow believing that she would be confined to the rear if not actually molested. “But I’ll see that no one bothers you,” the drummer assured her. “You’re the one I’m afraid of, Danny-Boy!” she retorted. Then she kissed him.

The others nodded. Lou-Mae had liked the drummer ever since that first song together and had dubbed him Danny-Boy after their success with Londonderry Air. But she regarded it a sin to be intimate with a man outside of marriage, and a lesser sin to have the opportunity for such intimacy, even if it was scrupulously avoided. She was, perhaps, afraid of herself. She represented an ideal standard, and the boys respected that without quite understanding it. The bus was out. But what else offered?

“There is magic,” Luna said. “A big carpet—”

“Not on your life!” the guitarist exclaimed. “We’d be blown off!” His fear of flying seemed worse with the prospect of an open carpet.

“Or a dragon-drawn wagon—”

“Can’t trust a dragon,” the organist asserted. “Those reptiles are only waiting their chance to turn and toast you. Half of ’em hid out in Hell when magic was banned, and the evil
never did get out of ’em. Sure, the drivers use safety spells, but spells can glitch.”

“Perhaps unicorns, then.”

“They can’t be controlled,” the drummer said. “ ’Cept by a—” He paused, his eye turning on Lou-Mae. “Then again—”

“I always adored unicorns,” the black girl confessed.

“Yeah, but if she—if something happened to—where’d we be then?” the organist demanded, looking sternly at the drummer. “Way out nowhere with a pair of enraged unicorns!”

“What do you mean,
if something happened
?” Lou-Mae exclaimed angrily. “I tell you, nothing could—” But then she looked at the drummer, who was trying to stifle a blush. “I mean, nothing
would
—well, not likely, anyway.” Now she seemed to be attempting her own blush, though her dark skin protected her. “Maybe we’d better pass on the unicorns.”

“Maybe I’d better consult with the local Gypsies,” Orb said. “They surely know how to travel with baggage.”

“You’re a Gypsy?” the guitarist inquired. “I always thought it would be nice to live in wagons and rip off the—I mean—”

Orb smiled. “Gypsies do what they have to, to survive. They aren’t bad people, but they don’t like to be tied down.”

“I know the feelin’,” he said.

“Come with me, if you want, and we’ll see what they have to say.”

“Well, sure, okay!” he agreed, pleased.

Orb’s carpet would hold two in a pinch, but there was no way the guitarist would get on it, so they took a taxi to the next township, where a band of Gypsies was passing. They decided to take their instruments along, because Gypsies always responded to music.

It was a disappointment. These Gypsies wore ragged but conventional clothes and drove battered cars. On top of that, they were surly and suspicious of strangers. “Get away from here, woman,” one snapped. “We’ve got trouble enough.”

“But I have lived among you, in Europe!” she said. “I speak the language!”

“Yeah? Speak the language.”

“I am looking for good transportation,” she said in Calo.

They looked blankly at her. Then one old woman nodded. “It’s the old tongue,” she said. “But we’ve almost forgotten it, here, and the young ones never learned it.”

“Oh.” Orb tried to mask her disappointment. “But perhaps you can help me anyway. All I want is information on—”

“You can’t use a car or carpet?”

“We have a group of five, with instruments. One won’t ride a bus, and one won’t fly. We’d prefer to travel together, if we can agree on how to do it.”

“You know Gypsy ways?”

“As I said, in Europe—”

“Can you dance?”

Oh. “I know the
tanana,
” Orb said guardedly. “But—”

The woman laughed. “But you can’t
dance
it! You’d die of shame. Because you’re not a Gypsy, just an observer.”

“That’s right. But I do respect the Gypsy ways, though they are not mine. Can you help me?”

“Maybe, girl, maybe. You know of Jonah?”

“Who?”

“The fish that swallowed Jonah.”

“Oh, you mean the whale? In the Bible?”

“The
fish
. He was damned for that, but not in Hell. Damned to swim the air and earth, but never the water, until the Llano sets him free of his guilt.”

“The Llano! You know of it?”

“Of it. Not much more. You seek it?”

“Yes!”

“Then you’re in luck. Jonah may help you. He’s sleeping in Clover Mountain. Call him out, do the dance, and if he likes you he’ll swim for you. Most of the time.”

“A
fish
? I don’t—”

“He’s what you want, if you can win him over. We tried to get him, but we’re not pure Gypsies anymore, and—”

“Move!” a man called. “They’re comin’!”

Instantly the gypsies, men, women, and children, piled into their cars, and the cars cranked up, sputtered, and got moving. As this occurred, three trucks roared in, filled with men. They had shotguns, and looked angry.

“Get
outta
here, girl!” the old gypsy woman screamed at Orb as her car squealed away.

Two of the trucks careened after the fleeing Gypsies, the
shotguns firing. The third skewed toward Orb and the guitarist.

“Run!” Orb cried, realizing the danger they were in.

They ran. They cut across a ragged field, but the truck pursued, bumping across ruts and churning up turf. “There’s two!” a man yelled.

“Kill ’em!”

“Naw! One’s a slut! Lay ’er first!”

They crossed a gully, then a ridge, and half-slid down the other side. The truck screamed to a halt, balked by the terrain. “Catch ’em afoot!” a man yelled. “They can’t cross th’ rapids!”