Phantom Banjo by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Read Free Book Online Page B

the Scot out, it kept
all the American singers in. Even Canada wouldn't allow them to
play there anymore, much less Europe, once it was learned how the
U.S. was 'protecting' the rights of its performers."
    "But what happened to Juli?" another little
girl wanted to know. "If she was so beautiful and so good surely
she rose into a management position in some large corporation
and—"
    "I'll get back to her," the woman
promised.
    "After the cowboys," the boy said. "I wanted
to hear about the cowboys spe-siff-ick-lee."
    His sister rolled her eyes at the woman. "Now
you've got him talking like you."
    He stuck his tongue out at her and looked
expectantly at the woman.
    "Can't imagine why you're interested," the
storyteller teased. "Cowboys are nothin' but no-account
agricultural laborers, after all."
    "You promised," he said indignantly.
    "Well, okay, if you're sure. Tell you what.
Tomorrow's Saturday. If you meet me at the park by the slide I'll
see if I can recollect that part too."
     
    * * *
     
    They didn't recognize her at first because
she was pushing a toddler on the swings and at the same time
minding a baby in a pram. She was dressed like the other mothers in
bright colored soft fleece exercise clothes—in her case the polo
shirt and matching sweatpants were a lavender blue that chased the
shadows from her eyes and made them the same color, made her old
gray curls look like designer hair.
    Since the children's various nannies and
baby-sitters tended to sit together for their own gossip session in
the park, it was no trouble to get away to the play area. As soon
as they arrived, she picked up the toddler and sat down on the
swing herself with the kid in her lap.
    "Now then," she said. "Where were we?"
    "The cowboys," the boy said, glaring at his
sister, daring her to ask for anything else.
    But the boy and his sister and the other kids
soon forgot about each other or anything but the woman swinging and
rocking the baby, weaving a story, using their imaginations to give
life to her memories.
     
     

CHAPTER 4
     
    After thirty years traveling the country
singing the folk songs of the land, Willie MacKai was right back
where he started from and if anybody had been fool enough to ask
him how he felt about it, he'd have told them he liked it that way,
right after he told them to mind their own damn business. Willie
had been brought up in this ranch country, shooting rattlers off
the hot rocks, breathing the dust into his nostrils, learning not
only the traditional cowboy songs but the songs of the Mexican
vaqueros who worked for his father. His father had been foreman of
the spread where Willie worked now as a guide and a guard for room,
board, and whiskey and cigarette money.
    He'd been a mess when the boss had taken him
on and he knew he only had the job thanks to his old man. He'd
counted on that, since his dad had worked for Lafitte Ranch most of
Willie's life and was known to be so indispensable that when the
old man died, fifteen new hands had to be put on to take his place.
Willie also counted on his own past reputation. The boss had always
enjoyed watching him perform. That had almost worked against him
though.
    "I dunno, son," the boss said. "Place has
changed some since you was a kid. I need somebody who's going to
stick around. Not much high life out here, no women except Conchita
the cook and she weighs three hundred fifty pounds if she weighs an
ounce. Not what you're used to."
    "What I'm used to ain't what I want anymore,
Lenny," Willie told him. He was slumped half down in his chair with
a whiskey in one hand and his hundred-dollar hat in the other,
fanning the hat back and forth—not to cool himself; Leonard
Lafitte's office was air-conditioned. Just nerves. "I need to
settle down, have a place to live and a steady job."
    "No woman?"
    "No one woman," he said, grinning like a
lobo. "Can't see depriving all them others."
    He was being careful to keep it light, not to
beg, but Lenny was shaking his head. "Naw,