Picking the Ballad's Bones by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Read Free Book Online

backs of grimy, very smelly fingers. Then he shoved her to
the side of the car where she almost sat on a sleeping child. At
that moment the people who were awake jerked to attention, however,
and the man made a gesture and a woman near her handed Juli a
soiled bandanna and motioned for her to tie it over her hair, which
she did. The woman also handed her a moth-eaten sweater and
motioned her to put it on and pretend to sleep, which she also did.
She peeked only once as the policemen
inspected the car, and wondered if she shouldn't give herself up
then and there.
     
    * * *
     
    Faron and Ellie Randolph simply
disembarked with the rest of the passengers and walked over to the
station, right past the policemen who were busy looking for
clandestine departures of several members of a desperate gang and
were paying no attention to a normal-looking tourist
couple.
    "Wait," Ellie said. "Shouldn't we
stick around and see what happens to the others? Look over there!
Isn't that Brose—"
    "Shhh. Keep your eyes forward and try
lookin' like you're late for work or something," Faron said. "And
watch for a phone booth."
    "Good idea. Only do you have enough
change to call home?"
    "I wasn't going to do that right away.
Remember the last Silver Dollar Days when that Brit group was
playing?"
    "'Old Hag You Have Killed
Me'?" Ellie asked.
    "Yeah, them. I remember talkin' to
Terry Pruitt about how they ought to play 'Lady of Carlisle' since
she lived here. Hope she still does."
    "I don't think it's such a hot idea to
involve other people with the cops after us and
everything."
    "Maybe not. But if this thing is what
it sure seems to be, I bet any musician who's still trying to play
traditional music is going to be involved whether they want to or
not."
     
    * * *
     
    The ghost of Sir Walter Scott was
dimly aware of all of these goings on, as if seeing a play from a
great distance, through a crowd of other conversations and street
scenes. He heard Julianne Martin's silent prayers, which she would
have called drawing on the collective unconscious, as she lay
huddled in the midst of a bunch of Gypsies. Across the ether he
also heard the wild beating of Mae Gunn's heart as she dodged and
ducked her way from the station and into the town, heard the coin
drop into the telephone with a little jingle as Faron Randolph
placed his call, and heard the phone ring on the other end, at
Terry Pruitt's house, on and on, ring after ring as she played her
electric guitar with the sound going into headphones. And he heard
the train pull out, pick up steam, and, as night-came on, squeal
and scream down the tracks.
     
    * * *
     
    The troubles of the living in
Carlisle, a ride of several days on horseback; came to the ghost no
more sharply than a daydream, for now, during the day, when his
house was filled with visitors, he was much less able to find
distant vibrations than he was at night when there was little
activity to mask such subtle emanations. The daylight diminished
him, as he supposed it was proper that ghosts be diminished by the
sun, and even on the gloomiest day he could scarcely see his hand
in front of his face for the light. The banjo songs tolled in his
ears like the knell of church bells, however, and as day carmined
to dusk and the lady of the moon flung her tow-colored tresses
across the carpet in his study, the events within the banjo's ken
became his own dreams, sometimes vague and filled with symbol and
portent, but other times as clear as if the people were staging a
play for his benefit.
     
    * * *
     
    The Shriners sprawled
around the hotel room long after the party was over and the
bartender had cleaned up. They were still listening to her story.
She was a good bartender and quite the little entertainer too.
Wally Haskell hadn't even had a chance to tell her the one about
the Fuller brush saleslady and the Avon man and he was still
keeping quiet, listening to her. Probably
his vocal cords were para lyzed from those
margaritas she'd been