Phantom Banjo Read Free

some damn fool
doesn't make up a song about it or remember an old one that hasn't
even ever been played on the radio.'
    " 'That's disgusting,' said a she-devil with
a delicate shudder.
    " 'That's insulting,' said another.
    " 'Perverted, I'd call it,' the one sitting
next to him said.
    " 'Wait up a minute, something's not right
here,' said another one finally. This one was the one in charge of
drink and drugs and general debauchery. 'I get down there quite a
bit, and lately I can't say I've noticed anything like what you're
talking about. Mostly people don't sing much anymore. It's a
specialty, like everything else. People sing on the radio, and in
concerts, and on television, and sometimes at the movies, but they
don't sing at work unless their work is singing.'
    " 'Exactly,' said the Chairdevil. 'That's
exactly what they do. If they were all still singing the way
everybody used to, do you think we'd be able to have ourselves a
meeting like this? Or make ourselves not only nuclear bombs so that
they can blow each other up but reactors so they can get blown up
right there in their own neighborhoods? All our really good stuff
has come up since they gave up singing on their own and started
hiring somebody else to do it for them. But the point is, the damn
fools still haven't pushed the button, nobody big has invaded,
raped, and pillaged anybody else big for a long time now.'
    "Now all the devils exchanged knowing looks.
They knew he had finally gotten at what was really bothering him.
The shows the musicians gave were getting in the way of the really
big show he was always longing to see.
    "He went on. 'Those songs aren't as strong as
they used to be—fortunately, people have progressed nowadays to the
point where they'd much rather work for a company that dumps crap
into a river than work for free to clean it up. Practical people
know that it is more realistic to have their foot on somebody
else's neck than to lend a hand, which would probably be bitten by
other, equally practical and realistic people.
    " 'But that's beside the point. Even though
those songs don't get sung as often and by as many as used to sing
them, the ones we've had to put up with for all these millennia are
still polluting our atmosphere, destroying the ambience we work so
hard to create. Furthermore, these hired singers are making up new
songs all the time. Despite the example Our Boys made of Victor
Jarra in Chile and of Sam Hawthorne and his ilk during the McCarthy
era, more and more misguided fools want to sing that wretched kind
of song than are able to make a living at it. They have to go. The
songs have to go.'
    " 'Just a minute, Chairdevil,' said the
Debauchery Devil. 'Some of those singers are my best people.'
    " 'Fine. Then they'll be reunited with you
real soon.'
    "And the devils all took a vote and everybody
but the Debauchery Devil raised their hands and then finally the
Debauchery Devil's hand went up too."
     
    * * *
     
    "What happened then?" asked the boy
cautiously.
    Though what the woman had been saying was
funny, she didn't look or sound funny now. Her eyes had a far-off
expression, like his mother's when she was thinking about flying to
the coast for a merger. Her voice didn't sound sweet anymore and as
much as he'd mistrusted that, he preferred it to the one she was
using. It made him think of something baked so hard it got little
cracks all over it, like Oklahoma on the Geographic Special.
    "Well," she said, taking a deep breath and
looking away from them for a moment to look at her hands. Her hands
were small, wrinkled around the knuckles, veined on the backs, and
still looked as if they could make kites, cut out paper dolls, or
pour drinks, which was what they'd been doing most of their life,
though the boy had no way of knowing that.
     
    * * *
     
    "Well, the devils wanted to dive right in and
start after the singers of those songs but the Chairdevil held up
his hand for silence.
    " 'Can't do it,' he told them.
    " 'Why not?' they