Free Phantom Banjo by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

said. "Looks like you lost your ass this
time. Everything but your banjo."
    Mark swallowed some of the drink Willie put
in his hand, and rallied a little, making a conscious effort to
enunciate. "Naw, unpacked the van last March when I came in off the
road, started staying at Joann's place."
    "You off the road?"
    "Had to. Couldn't afford it anymore. Not
enough money in the gigs to pay for the gas to get there."
    "I sure as hell know what you mean about
that," Willie said emphatically. "But you never used to have any
trouble getting gigs."
    "Look, Willie, about Sam . . ."
    "Sam who?"
    "Hawthorne."
    "What about him?"
    "He's dead, 's his banjo."
    "How'd you get it?" Willie asked.
    "He—gave—it—to—me," Mark answered. "Got to
tell you."
    "Let me try to reach the house one more time
and then I'll listen to what you say while we're waiting for
them."
    The line was still busy.
    Mark was hard to understand at first, but he
was a stubborn man and made sure Willie heard everything about the
concert and afterward. He was concentrating so hard that Willie
knew what he had to say was important to him, and so Willie
concentrated too, until his own mind filled in the details and he
was able to visualize what Mark told him.
     
    * * *
     
    Mark had carried the banjo into the hospital
emergency waiting area. It looked like the aftermath of a battle.
Stretchers lined the walls, people threw up in emesis basins, or
bled quietly into makeshift dressings while they waited their turn
for treatment in one of the rooms. Mark half expected to see
Hawthorne among them, with the paramedics still doing CPR.
    A woman was busily typing up forms at the
receptionist's desk, behind a glassed-in enclosure. Mark tapped on
the glass and asked for Hawthorne.
    She glanced at him, her eyes barely
flickering with the kind of feminine response he usually elicited.
"You family, sir?"
    "Yes," he said, knowing that he'd get nowhere
if he said no.
    She told him which room Sam was in and that
they were preparing a bed for him in the cardiac care unit.
    If they were getting a bed ready, Sam had
made it then. Still carrying the banjo, Mark strode down the hall
before anyone could ask any more questions and opened the door to
the room the lady had indicated. He thought he'd leave the banjo
with Sam, or with the nurse, see how the old man was doing, and
leave.
    A forest of IV stands stood over the bed, and
the steady beep of an electrocardiogram machine dominated the room.
A nurse stooped near a crash cart, checking the drugs and supplies,
replacing items that had been used.
    Sam lay pale and still, a thin greenish
oxygen tube spanning his face like an overgrown plastic mustache.
Mark stood by the bed and watched Sam breathe for a moment, then
started to turn to the nurse.
    Then Sam's eyes opened and he glared up at
Mark.
    Mark, who was never very sensitive when it
didn't suit him, kept his voice pitched low, so the nurse wouldn't
be able to hear. "It's okay, Mr. Hawthorne. I'm not a reporter. I—I
brought your banjo to you."
    The older man blinked and relaxed a little.
"Sorry, son," he said, and his voice rasped from the effort. "I'm
not taking requests right now."
    "Well, I've got one anyway, sir. There's a
whole lot of people getting rain checks on that concert. You get
better now, hear?" And Mark gently laid the banjo on the bed and
started to leave.
    "What might your name be, son?" Hawthorne
asked.
    Mark returned to the bedside, so that Sam
wouldn't have to strain to speak and also so that the nurse
wouldn't hear and realize Mark wasn't family after all.
    "Mark Mosby."
    "You're a picker."
    It wasn't really a question but Mark said,
"Yes, sir."
    "Well, son," Sam said, clearing his throat
painfully. "You may know my wife died a few months ago. My brother
and sister are in England. I always thought when I died, I'd leave
Lazarus there"—he blinked toward the banjo—"to the Archives. But—"
he coughed, then said in such a low whisper that Mark had to lean
over the