Strum Again? Book Three of the Songkiller Saga (15 page)

He petted her some more, and she looked up
and gave him a lazy cat grin and blinked at him. "Hey, cat, you
some fine cat. You stay cool so somebody don't eat you, hear?" She
purred and he was sure she understood him. She was a smart cat.
She'd found him, hadn't she?

He was still playin' with her when Mama came
home, loaded down with grocery bags. "Where'd that thing come
from?" Mama demanded. "You know they don't allow animals around
here."

The cat ran off with a last longing look at
Jaydee, and he followed Mama into the house. He argued his case all
during the late lunch Mama always fixed when she got home, so's she
and Harold and Jaydee could all eat together. She and Jaydee would
have snacks in front of the TV later on.

"Aw, Mama, she wouldn't hurt nothin' and
she's real smart. I'd take good care of her. I could feed her
outdoors and leave my window open for her so she could come and
sleep with me. Please, Mama?"

"I said no," Mama said.

"I'll take care of her for you, Jaydee. We
can use her for a moving target."

Jaydee was on top of Harold before he knew
it, madder than he had ever been, screaming things and crying so
loud even he didn't know what he was saying. In the next minute
Harold was holding him at arm's length giving him a shake.

"Harold Endicott, you stop teasin' your
little brother like that. You'll do no such thing."

"Oh, Mama, 'course I wouldn't. Jest jivin'
you, little brother," he said, but Jaydee didn't know if he meant
it or not. Harold caught his eye. "Really," he said.

After dinner Harold slung his rifle back on
and went out to patrol, and Jaydee went back out to the stoop to
find his cat.

She was gone. He called and called, but
there was no sign of her. He sat down on the stoop to wait. That
was when he saw the stranger walking up the street. Funny-looking
fellow. His hair was red and gray, and he had a big gut. His skin
was all mottled, dark brown on light, like there was somethin'
wrong with it. But Jaydee didn't think at first that there was
anything wrong with the man. Just from the way he walked, even
though he seemed kind of sad, Jaydee thought maybe this man was the
second wonder of his day. And he kept on thinking so until the man
stopped at the fence across the street and Jaydee's cat jumped out
from behind it and began making up to the man like she was his.

* * *

The sidewalk felt good under Brose's shoes
after all those miles riding. It felt solid and hard and real, and
nothing else did right now. Too many ghosts. Too much intangible
bullshit. Too much now-you-see-it-now-you-don't. Like his life, for
instance, his home that disappeared when he wasn't right there
looking at it. All the good he had once thought he was doing for
critters as unwanted as he had always been himself. He walked for
miles, and pretty soon he noticed that the faces on the street were
all as dark or darker than his and not too friendly. Lotta noise on
the street, Brose noticed, construction noise, voices, traffic from
the highway. No radios blaring, though, no ghetto blasters
blasting, and for sure no good wholesome all-American kids
break-dancin' to combat drugs or making rap music about how good
life could be with just a little hard work and drive. So much for
stereotypes and stereos both.

Nope, and furthermore, kids wearing red
sweatbands and carrying assault rifles stalked the streets. Must be
the militia Barry had mentioned. Brose had seen them coming twice
and crossed the street and started looking for a way to turn around
and go home, feeling the sweat break out on his forehead despite
the coolness of the day. This was beginning to look less like Tulsa
and more like Beirut all the time.

The neighborhood he'd come from had been
before civil rights, and it had still been a big improvement on
this. The people he saw moved around like extras in a zombie movie.
Maybe they were stoned, but the eyes were clear and the mouths had
an angry, dissatisfied twist to them. A woman with a full grocery
cart and a kid riding the bottom of it glared at him. A young man
in a business suit said, "We don't allow loitering, you know. If
you have no place to go, move on downtown with the other street
people. Just a friendly reminder. You wouldn't want the militia to
take you in."

Brose held up both hands, palms open. "Just
out for my evenin' jog, man."

"You aren't jogging."

"No. It may have escaped your notice, but
I'm on the fat side and I just started, so it's still at the
some-jog-and-most-the-time-stand-around stage."

The man gave him a dirty look and moved on.
Brose walked quickly away and had started to turn around when he
saw the orange cat. She darted down a side street and he followed
her. She looked like the cat they had had in Scotland, and Brose
had a funny feeling he couldn't quite put his finger on about that
cat. He lost her when he turned the corner and finally stopped to
get his bearings, leaning up against one of the kind of huge
fiberboard fences construction companies put up to block off a
project.

Suddenly he felt a soft bump against the
back of his neck. He turned his face into the plushy side and
tickling whiskers of the orange cat.

"Hey, there, kitty-cat, what's
happ'nin'?"

The cat slitted big green eyes at him. He
reached up and stroked it. "You any kin to our Scotch cat,
huh?"

The cat mewed and stepped onto his shoulder.
Its paws weren't even dirty or wet, and it gave him a throaty purr.
A little boy came tearing across the street from an apartment
building entryway flanked by two rows of trash cans.

"Hey, mister, where you goin' wit' that cat?
Das my cat!"

Three of the vigilante sweatbanded kids
appeared and ran up the street, brandishing weapons. "What's
happenin', Jaydee? Who's this guy?"

"Catnapper, das who," the little boy
said.

Brose very carefully plucked the cat from
his shoulder with one hand, but its claws stayed attached to his
shirt. "Come on, kitty-cat. You're gonna get me killed," he told
it.

The cat squalled.

"You're hurting it!"

"Don't you go hurtin' my baby brother's
cat," the middle militia kid said. The little kid's brother and his
two friends made a little half circle around Brose. He was sweating
as he pulled the cat's paws forward a little to dislodge the claw
and set the animal back on the fence. Again he held his hands up,
palms out.

"I can't help it, guys, I'm irresistible to
animals is all."

"Yeah, who you think you are? Come around
tryin' to run off with people's cats. He try anything with you,
Jaydee? Try to give you anything?"

"No, but he tryin' to take my cat."

Brose had taken in stray kids as well as
stray animals, street kids, runaways, as unofficial foster kids.
But initially he'd met most of them when they were in jail. On the
street, when he was the suspected criminal faced by three
self-righteous, armed, and nervous teenagers, he was less sure of
himself than he had been at home. But the little kid was reaching
for his cat, and the older boys stood around glaring. Like
everybody else, they looked pissed off and unhappy, but they also
looked arrogant and a little power drunk. Brose had the kind of
curiosity that all of a sudden stopped him wondering what they
might do to him and started him wondering why they looked that way
to begin with.

"Catnappin'. Thas a capital offense, ain't
it, Harold?" One of the boys asked, leveling his rifle at
Brose.

* * *

Jaydee thought maybe he was going to see
somebody get shot after all. The big man was sweating a lot and he
looked scared.

"Jesus, fellas, I'm a musician, okay? I'm
just in town for a gig and I thought I'd take a walk. Really, I'm
just a musician, and yeah, I like cats, but I sure as hell don't
steal 'em when there's so many for free."

"You a
whut?
Jaydee asked. "Whut did you say you
was?"

"A musician. Here. I'll show you."

The big man sat down on the curb, and with
only a little nervous glance once in a while at the guns and angry
faces of Harold and the others, he talked to Jaydee as if he were
the most important person there. "A musician. You know. I make
music."

"I remember that," Savoy Jones, Harold's
best buddy, said. "Used to be that stuff all the time, but nobody
do it no more."

"Why not?"

"Dunno. Just never hears it no more. Cos'
too much, maybe?"

"Naw. How much it cost to do somethin' like
this?" the man asked, and beat a tricky little pat-a-pat with his
hands on his thighs, like rain falling or footsteps coming home. It
sounded simple except for an odd beat here and there that gave it a
little laugh in the middle, and the man's big blotchy hands looked
like they were dancing.

Jaydee had known it all along. This was a
special man, the same way the cat was special. He set the cat down
and plopped down beside the man. "Sounds funny. Don't it hurt?"

"Try it and see what you think."

Jaydee watched him and tried to do what he
did, his mouth hanging open as he concentrated. "Thas good," the
man said. "Now try this," and he patted himself faster, his slaps
coming fast as the jackhammer on himself for about thirty seconds,
tops and sides of thighs, forearms, and checks, then said, "Any of
you fellas know about rap?"

"Yeah—still some of that on video when I was
little," Mo Jones, Savoy's brother, the third militiaman, said.

"Well, people used to do it on the streets a
few years ago," the man said. "Kids like you. Lots of them used a
drum machine, but when I was a kid, we did it like this, whatcha
call hambones. You just chant to it, really, make up a poem, like
in the army, y'know?"

"Soon's I rack up enough points in the
m'lisha, I'm joinin' the army," Harold said. That was news to
Jaydee.

"If you do," the man said, continuing
to beat out a rhythm, "you'd do this to a march instead of
hambones, and your sergeant would call out the chant. Makes the
march go faster. Goes: 'Hambone / Hambone where you been? Round the
world and back again. Whatcha gon' do when you come back? Take a
walk by the railroad track. Left / right. Left / right.
Leftright.
Leftright
.'
"

Jaydee watched closer this time, his hands
trying to follow the man's but not quite catching up, so that he
ended up patting air part of the time. He got the first part pretty
good, though. "Do that business with your cheeks again,
mister."

"Come on, y'all, sit down and you try it.
You have to pooch your cheeks out with your tongue to get that
popping sound. Sounds a lot like some of our kin in Africa
talk."

Jaydee wanted to learn African talk. He saw
some of the neighbors at their windows. Even Maurice Chisholm, who
was his age, had pried himself loose from the TV long enough to
look out the window. Five more m'lishamen and a whole crowd of
other kids of various ages crowded around in back of Harold, Savoy,
and Mo to watch the man.

"Hey, Maurice! Come over here! I bet you
can't play hambones like African talk!"

Maurice came running. Jaydee followed the
man as he chanted soldier songs one after another, and pretty soon
Jaydee could follow most of it. Harold was almost as good as the
man himself.

Sweat poured down the man's face and arms
and soaked his shirt, and his hands left tracks on his clothing and
smacked where they hit his skin as he played. He was laughin' now,
showin' Mo and Savoy how to beat on each other and play "duets."
The rifles lay at their feet in the gutter.

"Whoa, men, I am just about out of marching
chants," he said.

That's when Jaydee noticed that Mama
had come to stand on the edge of the crowd. He expected her to tell
him to come home or tell them to stop that, but instead she smiled
at the man and said, "Shoot, that's nothin' but old jump-rope
songs," and chanted to the slaps, clapping her own hands in time.
"Miss Susie called the doctor, / Miss Susie called the nurse. / The
nurse called the lady with the alligator purse. /
In
went the doctor, /
In
went the nurse. /
In
went the lady with the alligator
purse." And "Apples, peaches, pears, and plums / Tell me the name
of your true love. A-B-C-D—and then you see, you have to guess
which letters spell my true love's name, and then I sing 'Johnny,
do you love me? Yes, maybe so. How many children will you have?
One-two-three-four'—and then you have to guess that too." She
stopped, grinning wider than Jaydee had seen in a long time. "You
know, I had clean forgotten those old things till I saw you sitting
there. Why, I can remember a lot of them now—let's see."

Jaydee looked at the man, who grinned back
at him and mouthed, "Women," with a shrug.

When Mama ran out of jump-rope songs, the
man said, "Well, now, if we put a little melody to it, we could do
another kind of music our people used to do when they felt bad. By
singin' about how bad they felt, it kind of cheered 'em up, see.
Usually they used guitars or somethin', but you can hambone it.
It's a real simple kinda thing—only got eight parts to it, and we
call it eight-bar blues. Try this now." And he started teaching
them songs that sounded very grown up to Jaydee. The m'lisha forgot
to go patrolling with their guns, they got so busy making up new
parts. Now Jaydee could do several simple rhythms and was beginning
to pick up on the special complicated ones that went with the
songs.

Finally it was getting dark, and Mama said
he had to go in. His skin and palms stung all over, but it was a
good sting, and Maurice practiced duets with him all the way to the
door. The man walked back down the street, Harold and his m'lisha
buddies walking along with him, drumming on themselves or on him as
he went, making up new lines and laughing.