Strum Again? Book Three of the Songkiller Saga (10 page)

As Gussie finished, the banjo, which was
sitting in the corner, began twanging loudly. Gussie laughed.
"Reminds me of Lettie when she was little. Always wantin' to be
picked up. I sort of recognize that tune, though I can't quite put
my finger on what it is. Must be one of the ones that's been
forgotten."

Juli had scooped it up, even saying, "Shh,"
to it as she cradled it in her lap and put her hands on frets and
strings. She closed her eyes, as she had before when the banjo was
trying to communicate with them through her. It was haunted by Sam
Hawthorne's spirit, of course, and only once or twice when it had
had something vital to tell them had it played such unfamiliar
tunes. Sure enough, Juli opened her eyes, said

"Somebody get a pencil and take this down.
Or better yet a tape recorder."

Dally Morales, who had come into the kitchen
for fresh coffee, dashed back out to the bunkhouse for the
brand-new tape recorder he'd bought himself in San Antonio.
Meanwhile, Faron Randolph was jotting down which notes Juli's
fingers were drawn to as the banjo taught her the tune, which
chords she struck as she became familiar with the melody.

When Dally returned with the tape recorder,
Juli began singing,

"Gussie Turner told her tales

Across this land all over,

And everyone who heard her stories

Knew her for a rover.

Oh, she told of an outlaw band

Who sang forbidden songs,

And the evil things who hate to sing

Swore she wouldn't live too long.

One day her band, they came back home

And Gussie rode to meet them;

The Queen of Elves, a red-haired gal,

Said she'd go with Gus to greet them.

The red-haired gal, ol' Lady Luck,

She gave our Gus a fortune.

But the redhead's friends had other
plans

To be poor Gussie's portion.

For she told of an outlaw band

Who sang forbidden songs;

And the evil things who hate to sing

Swore she wouldn't last too long.

They sent a lowly murder man,

He sought with bow and arrow.

He searched for her both high and low,

His search was wide and narrow.

Oh she run here and she run there,

She run left and right-o,

Till the very desert pitied her

And sent forth three ghostly lights-o.

For she told of an outlaw band

Who sang forbidden songs,

But the evil things who hate to sing

Swore she wouldn't live too long.

Now the lights attacked the murder man,

And him they did lay low-o.

Gus followed them to the lights of town,

And then she had to go-o.

She met her band and they met her,

They travel far and near-o

To bring to people songs the devils

Don't want them to hear-o.

So go sing with the outlaw band

Go sing forbidden songs;

And the evil things who hate to sing

Ain't likely to last long."

Willie leaned over and kissed Gussie on her
sleep-creased face. "And that, darlin', is 'The Ballad of Gussie
Turner' written for you personally by Lazarus."

Gussie nodded sagely. "And very fittin' and
proper it is too. I think we got us a theme song."

"I got it!" Faron Randolph said. "The verse
tune is from 'Jack O'Ryan,' and the chorus is 'The Bonnie Ship the
Diamond.' "

Then they had to sing those songs, and the
words came back as if they'd never been wiped from memory.
Everybody looked kind of thoughtful for a moment after that,
relieved that the magic they'd brought back with them was working
to unlock songs, but a little uncertain just how it would continue
to work.

Gussie broke the silence. "Now I'm ready to
hear the ballad of 'Seven Years Toiling in the Song Mines,' " she
said, "with emphasis on the last twenty-four hours."

"We can tell you on the way, darlin',"
Willie said. "Right now we got to get movin'."

"What's the rush?" she asked with a mouth
full of cinnamon bun.

"The border cops are on their way. Buddy's
going to stay here to help the boss and his boys. There'll be much
less explainin' to do if we're off the property."

"That's okay," Brose said. "We can go hole
up at my place."

* * *

But seven years had passed, and Brose,
at least, couldn't go home again. He couldn't even
find
home again.

He was driving while Willie slept and the
others, who hadn't gotten enough sleep between the long night and
the short morning, nodded blearily in their seats. The banjo was
plunking away to itself like a muttering chicken, another tune
Brose knew he knew and associated with Oklahoma, somehow or other,
but couldn't quite put his finger on.

He turned off the highway at the exit to the
access road leading to his property. He wondered which of the
animals he had saved from the humane society would still be there
and which gone; the cats, the chickens, the old dog, the lame
horses, and the dried-up cows. The boys from Austin had been taking
care of the place for him when he left. There was no mortgage to
pay—the place was an inheritance, and he had sure as hell never
increased the property value. The buildings had been barely
standing, the yard grown into weeds where the animals hadn't gnawed
it down, and even the refrigerator had to be shut by means of four
belts linked together that had to be buckled and unbuckled every
time he wanted a beer. But it was home. From Scotland he had called
his friend Burt Sherry and asked him to help the street kids from
Austin with the animals now and then and to contact him if there
were any problems. He hadn't heard from Burt in about six years, so
everything must be okay.

Of course, it wasn't. Brose was an amazing
musician, a talented amateur veterinarian, and possessed a number
of other hidden skills. Business management was not among them.

He was so sleepy he was almost on automatic
pilot as he turned the van onto the road that used to lead to his
house. It took him a moment to realize that something was wrong. It
wasn't bumpy enough. He had never improved the road. It was nothing
more than a corduroy dirt track leading to his house. Now it was a
broad paved street.

The dirt corduroy road should have led
through nothing except fields where once the sick, crippled, and
rehabilitated animals had grazed. Instead he found himself driving
through a housing development gridded with other broad paved
streets with hundreds of houses that each looked like Mexican
haciendas and all looked like each other lined up on each side of
each street, row upon row, as far as he could see. He drove down
the road, thinking there was some mistake, until he came to a
little cul de sac, where he turned around and drove back. Some of
the houses weren't quite finished yet. Some had only half their
sod, the rest of the yard bare dirt with the little bitty trees
still in burlap waiting to be planted. His cottonwoods were gone.
He drove up and down the streets but didn't see anything familiar,
so he drove back out to the access road and kept looking for his
place. All he found was another road into the seemingly endless
development and a sign that said, "Future sight of Plaza Grande
Shopping Mall by the Cairncross Developing Corp., builders of Sola
Vista Subdivision."

Brose drove the van back onto the highway
until he came to an exit with a convenience store. He went in to
use the phone, remembered he had no American money, and gently
dislodged Gussie's basket bag, which she was using for a pillow.
She grunted, but resettled herself without waking up. He was a
little surprised to find the wad of big bills inside, but she also
had a couple of ones, and these he took inside with him and
changed. He called the listing for the developer, but nobody
answered. Then he called the home in Austin where the boys had been
staying, and the number was out of service, so finally he called
Burt Sherry. A woman's voice answered.

"Evy Ann? That you?"

"Who's this?"

"Brose Fairchild. Burt around?"

"Burt hasn't been around for quite some
time, Brose. Neither have you, for that matter. Can I help you with
something?"

Her voice still had the same cute Lubbock
accent, but she sounded cold and defensive.

Brose was beginning to feel pretty cold
himself. "I just got back from my trip, Evy Ann. My place is gone.
You know what happened to it?"

"Well, of course, I do. It was seized for
back taxes by the government. Those kids who were living out there
were put in foster homes, and Burt went out from the humane society
and had to put down your animals—all but three of the cats and the
puppies. We found homes for them."

"Well, I appreciate your not mincing words,
Evy Ann," he said, the air going out of him.

"Dammit, Brose, you've been gone more than
seven years. What do you expect? You know what the government is
like. Your taxes gotta be paid. You never sent any money, and Burt
and me sure didn't have any extra. I'm sorry, but that's just how
it is. We'd all like to be able to have nice trips, but people have
responsibilities. Speakin' of which, the kids just got home from
school." She sounded as if she were about to hang up.

"Thanks, Evy Ann," he said, but as he pulled
the receiver away from his ear, she spoke again.

"Brose?"

"Yeah?"

"We kept one of the bitch pups and she just
had a litter. If you want one of the puppies, maybe—if you're here
for good and could find a place to take care of her—you could maybe
stop by. We—I—the kids might like to see you again."

"Uh-huh. Thanks," he said, and hung up.

As he climbed back into the truck he felt
for a moment blind, numb, and deaf except for hearing the plaintive
notes the banjo was still plunking. Through a haze of solidifying
pain and anger, he recognized the song as the Woody Guthrie
dust-bowl ballad, "I Ain't Got No Home."

CHAPTER 7

Anna Mae Gunn had been dreaming of a bleak
day in Scotland when Brose climbed back into the van and started
the engine. His face was full of dismay, anger, shame, sadness, and
weariness. Lazarus, leaning against the driver's side of the
backseat, was softly playing a tune. She realized it had been
playing the same tune for some time.

Brose slumped over the steering wheel. As
Anna Mae sat up, the banjo changed its tune abruptly to a Scottish
one she recognized from a hundred house concerts and parties, and
she began to sing the words, at first softly and to herself, but
somehow, she knew, she was singing them for Brose:

"I will go, I will go,

When the fighting is over

To the land that I love where I left to be a
soldier,

I will go, I will go."

The song was the story of a band of soldiers
from a certain glen who followed a prince into war:

"When the King's son came along

He called us all together

Saying brave highland men

Will you fight for my father?

I will go, I will go."

But the song was about the price of war,
even when after surviving the battles:

"When we came back to the glen

The winter was turning,

Our goods lay in the snow

And our houses were burning.

I will go, I will go."

Brose hunched over the steering wheel, his
shoulders shaking, his crazy bristle of red gray hair nodding with
the force of his grief. Anna Mae picked up Lazarus, which was
continuing the tune, and stepped forward, dropping her arm around
Brose's shoulders, leaning her cheek into his hair. His hands on
the wheel were wet.

She found she was crying with him. She'd
left her home too, a farm somewhat neater than his, leaving her
stock to her neighbors and her favorite cat to find his own way
while she joined the others to try to retrieve the music that had
always meant so much to her. No prince had called her to battle,
though the ghost of Sam Hawthorne had called her on the telephone
the night he died and explained to her about the plot to eradicate
the music to which he had given his life. She had organized a
gathering as he'd asked her, and as a result lost both her best
friend and her home. But she had known it was lost when she left.
Maybe Brose had known all along too, but he hadn't had to admit it
to himself until now.

The tune played over and over as she
hunkered down beside Brose until her legs ached. Toward the end the
ghostly presence that played Lazarus rapped out a drum roll on the
banjo's head, and the tune, after a pause, continued.

"I will go, I will go

When the fighting is over

I will go, I will go."

* * *

Willie liked the back roads sometimes, and
since he was driving at night between Austin and Tulsa, he suited
himself and drove along, following the white lines, watching the
half-moon cruise along at the upper edge of his window. He had
slept until nearly one while Anna Mae relieved Brose, and Gussie
curled into a defensive ball in the space behind the backseat,
mumbling something out loud every once in a while. Terry and Dan
spread their sleeping bags under the hatchback, while Ellie dozed
sitting up with her head against Faron's shoulder. Julianne took
the passenger seat. She told him the jist of what had happened with
Brose, which she had learned from Anna Mae, but then he held up his
hand for her to stop talking. He didn't want to know. He couldn't
do anything about it, and he couldn't bear to think that he had
somehow brought the destruction of Brose's life down on him when
his old friend had rescued him the first time the devils got ahold
of him. He looked in the rearview mirror at the bodies sprawled and
sleeping all around him. With so much company, he wondered why he
suddenly felt so lonesome.