Phantom Banjo Read Free Page A

wanted to know.
    " 'Cause it won't work, not that way. Didn't
I just tell you what happens when we attack them directly? You have
to understand that these are not reasonable people we're dealing
with here. They're as crazy about martyrs as your average religious
fanatic. Attacking them directly only encourages them. Besides, the
songs protect them.'
    " 'You mean there's spells in the songs?'
S&I asked.
    " 'Hell, yes, there's spells in them,' the
Chairdevil hollered back, temporarily blowing the
cool-and-in-control impression he was trying to create. The
Stupidity and Ignorance Devil had that effect on everybody
sometimes. 'What do you think I've been telling you? Why do you
think they're so dangerous? They are spells, charms, and a
do-gooder conspiracy so old—well, not as old as we are, but old
enough—so old that hardly any of the singers know what they're
about anymore. Not all of them are important, of course. But all of
these people seem to sing at least some of the dangerous ones along
with the others. Naturally, the singers we most urgently need to
eliminate are the ones that know the most powerful songs, which
will free us to pick off the others at our leisure. But those who
know the spelled ones are difficult for us to cope with,
personally. So we'll have to be careful about this and use minions.
Our best people.'
    " 'Demons?' one asked.
    " 'Terrorists?' asked another.
    " 'I got it! Generals!' said another. 'Or is
it mass murderers or banshees or ghouls we need here? Monsters
maybe.'
    " 'Shoot,' said the Chairdevil. 'We'll need
all of that kind of thing before we're done. And worse.' "
     
    * * *
     
    "Worse?" the little boy interrupted the story
to ask. "What could be worse than mass murderers and monsters?"
    "And demons," his sister reminded him.
    The storyteller lowered her voice and leaned
forward as she told him. "Why, they called out the worst forces all
their hells had to offer, honey: bureaucrats. Bureaucrats and
politicians."
    And with that the recess bell rang and the
woman smoothed her short skirt around her fine legs with her old
hands and left them to go to class.
     
    * * *
     
    She was back the next day though, in the same
place, the place the boy's eyes had gone to as soon as the teacher
let them out the door. It was sort of in the shadows. She was so
small she could easily be mistaken for one of the children from a
distance. They hunkered around her as if they were playing marbles.
It was nice to have an adult, even a small, old, strange one, talk
to them. The mother of the boy and girl didn't have much time
anymore and the housekeeper only spoke Cambodian. Their father had
left a long time ago. Some of the other children wished their
fathers had left too. They came to school sleepless from listening
to fights all night or with bruises peeking out from under their
sleeves or on their stomachs when their shirts rode up during
playtime.
    The woman didn’t wait for them to be quiet.
She just started right in and they had to shut up if they wanted to
hear the story.
    She took up exactly where she left off.
"Since the devils decided to use such a fearsome sort of army as
bureaucrats and politicians, they thought it would be best to start
trouble in one area and then gradually expand it until songs were
gone all over the world. They decided to start with these here
United States of America and with Canada, settin' up trouble
between the two of them, which was not all that hard to do."
    Jennifer Thomsen raised her hand. "What about
Mexico? Mexico is on our other border," Jennifer said. She was just
showing off for the woman how good she was in geography.
    "That's a real good question, honey. But
you're a little smarter than those devils were. Those devils
figured since nobody sung songs in English down there in Mexico,
they could deal with Mexican singers and Central and South American
singers later. Besides, the Latin American devils had a lot going
on already and were wiping out singers right and left.