Picking the Ballad's Bones Read Free Page B

from that crazy banjo Willie MacKai
carried. If that wasn't weird enough, Brose, Anna Mae, the
Randolphs, and Hawkins claimed they had been prevented from getting killed or lost
along the Oregon Trail by a series of apparitions Faron had started
calling the Ghosts of the Pioneers, who steered the musicians into
what was supposed to be a permanent and fatal traffic jam. If
Gussie hadn't had almost positive proof that the self-playing banjo
was in fact both bewitched and probably haunted by the ghost of the
late great granddaddy of American folk music, Sam Hawthorne
himself, she would have thought Faron was kidding about the ghosts.
As it was, she took it for the literal truth and a part of the
world as she now knew it. Unfortunately, she not only had to accept
the helpful ghosts, but she also had to accept the insidious
whoever-the-hell-it-was who made the phantom traffic jam. These
troublemakers, they had all come to believe, were responsible for a
variety of circumstances that had virtually extinguished most music
that could even remotely be called folk music from the United
States. It was hard to say whether they'd been able to do the same
thing in Canada since the borders were closed to musicians and
there had been a postal strike for several months.
    Anna Mae watched the land
fall away behind them and fretted. "I was hoping we could split up
again into teams
and rent cars to investigate songs in the various areas of England,
Ireland, Scotland, and Wales," Anna Mae said. "But I guess that's
out of the question. They'd want ID to rent cars."
    "I'm sick of drivin' anyway, after
that mess out on the highway we got into on the way up to
Washington State," Brose said. "Feels good to have somebody else do
the drivin'." He glanced nervously over toward the banjo that
leaned up against the seat beside Willie, who was having his chest
hairs pulled by the redheaded stewardess. Brose was sure glad the
banjo wasn't playing train wreck songs. Though sometimes the tunes
or the lines it played were nothin' more than smart-alecky remarks
about what was going on, sometimes the banjo warned them of
danger—usually after they were already in it. Only once had it done
something more and that was when it helped Willie MacKai and
Julianne Martin write a song—kind of a riddle song.
    "I hope to hell you all were right and
that that song meant we was supposed to come all the way over here
just to get ourselves in bad with the law."
    "We have to reclaim the
music, Brose, you know that," Anna Mae told him. "Don't pretend
you don't. Without it we're helpless against whoever's behind this. You
know the songs helped save Willie and the others—"
    Willie yawned, too sleepy
and too weary from the constant tension to be able to concentrate
while circumstances seemed less than life-and-death urgent.
Julianne Martin, trying to stay alert enough to guess what the
others were saying that she could no longer hear, glanced over at
him and quickly glanced away as Torchy Burns twined her legs around
his knee and rubbed his shoulders long and
hard with her hands, careful to make sure and draw herself up
against him at every opportunity, her wild red hair screening them
both. Julianne shrugged and looked out the window instead. She
wasn't embarrassed particularly—years on the road with her late
husband George, crashing and traveling with other musicians, would
have cured her of prudishness, had she ever been inclined that way,
which she hadn't been. But she did feel a little disappointed in
Willie, that he seemed to be—well—too ready to fall into rather
obvious distraction. Not that Torchy wasn't probably a perfectly
nice person—although Juli thought there was something a little sly
about her. It was just that although Juli had known of Willie for
years and had run across him several times, only since they had
been traveling together had she really begun to realize that there
was something very special about him and she thought maybe he
didn't realize it