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

furry golden backs and droopy-lipped furry faces.
"Lions," he finished, gulping. The lions lay like pussycats with
their chins on their massive paws, snoring. Underneath all the
animal noises, and Gussie's questions, the banjo continued
plinking, and as Willie scooped it up he remembered that the tune
it was still frailing at for all it was worth was "Wimoweh (The
Lion Sleeps Tonight)," probably the best-known African lullaby in
the whole United States.
    Gussie had seen the lions too, and as
soon as she had Willie free of the cage, which locked from the
outside with a big old-fashioned key that must have turned itself
when the door slammed shut, she let Willie have it, asking him what
he meant by running off with redheads and messing around with mangy
old circus animals where he might get the banjo damaged or even get
hurt himself.
    Willie agreed with everything she said
without paying any attention to any of it and concentrated on
walking. He was walking kind of funny because by then his pants
were a little messy.
    He only started breathing again when
they left the stench of the circus car and the dark metal corridors
of the cars between and stepped into the soft light of the
passenger car.
    The lions had produced
what you could call a sobering effect on Willie and belatedly he
realized that it was entirely possible that sweet little Torchy
might have deliberately led him into the lions' den. (The woman did
have a warped sense of humor. She always seemed to be laughing
about something. He'd thought she was just good-natured. You never
could tell.) She might also have been mixed up with the bomber at
the airport and might, therefore, have something to do with the
predicament Willie and his friends now found themselves in. He said
as much aloud to Gussie who told him with a patronizing little
schoolmarm smile that he was catching on okay, nothing got
by him.
    The banjo continued a
medley of "Whiskey in the Jar," "Lady of Carlisle," and "Wimoweh"
as the train screamed and screeched down the tracks, leaning into
the curves, its metal straining and the wheels rumbling, jerking
Gussie back and forth as she tried to sleep, or, rather, tried not
to. Willie was sleeping like a baby. He had hardly been able to
keep his eyes open long enough to sit down and Gussie supposed his
lassitude was the aftermath of being scared half to death. If only
they didn't have to keep still about being on this train, she would have told
the conductor a thing or two about letting wild animals on board
where they could scare the pee out of innocent bystanders. That was
the trouble with not being exactly innocent anymore. Not that they
were guilty of anything, really, but they'd been made to feel as if
they were since Anna Mae Gunn's ill-fated folk festival two months
before. Gussie rested her cheek on the rough straw of her Mexican
basket bag and stared out the window, watching the darkness roll
past. Without the others here to remind her, she began to doubt
what she'd been through. If only there'd been time to make plans
before they'd gotten separated.
    The conductor's voice woke
her to watery sunlight wavering through the cracks between the
shades and the windows. "Now arrivin'
Edinburgh," he said with a lot more r's than it normally took to
say such a thing. Willie still slept, his bare legs covered up by
the blanket the railroad loaned people. Sometime while she slept he
seemed to have gotten up and washed his jeans out—they were hung on
the coat hook by the window nearest him.
    Lots of soot-stained chimneys and the
back ends of stone houses and factory buildings hemmed the tracks
as the train puffed its way into the station.
    She shook Willie. "This is our stop,"
she told him. He looked about as bad as she'd ever seen him and
muttered that he felt worse. She had to help him put his jeans on
because he said it hurt his head to bend over. They were halfway
down the steps to the platform when she noticed he didn't have the
banjo and she had to rush