Free Phantom Banjo by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Page A

bed rails to hear him, "suppose you hang on to it for
me."
    "Sure. Don't worry, Sam. I'll be right here
in Austin. I'll call tomorrow and see how you are. As soon as they
let you out of here I'll—" but the old man's eyes had closed and
Mark's ear picked up a change in the beat of the background noise.
He called the nurse and she punched a button at the head of Sam's
bed that brought other doctors and nurses racing in.
    Mark had fled the room then and stood holding
Sam's banjo, watching the door to the room for what seemed like
hours, until the doctors and nurses came out too. This time Sam was
with them, the sheet pulled up over his face. He wasn't going to
need the bed in CCU after all.
     
    * * *
     
    The night Sam Hawthorne died, a woman in
Fredericks, Maryland, got a posthumous phone call from him asking
her to organize a folk festival.
    "Mae, Sam Hawthorne here," the famous clipped
Yankee voice announced when she picked up the phone.
    Even groggy as she was from nightmares about
the explosions at the Library of Congress over in D.C., which was
only about an hour's drive away, Anna Mae would have known who it
was. Only Sam Hawthorne ever called her Mae.
    "Sam, did you hear about the Archives?"
    "Yes, Mae. Yes, I did. And that was partly
what I'm calling about. I'm afraid I didn't take the news so well,
and not to beat around the bush too much, Mae, you might say it
killed me."
    "What?"
    "Heart attack. Hurt like hell and what's
worse, I never finished the concert. But that's not the important
part. The important part is that Dusty and Bill Beresford—you know
Bill—"
    Anna Mae nodded dumbly at the telephone and
then realized what she was doing and said, "Yes. Bill's the
archivist of the folk collection. He was working late and was
killed in the blast."
    "That's the fellow. Good man. Fine picker
too. Anyway, you know I've always kept an open mind about religion,
but it seems as if the bunch of us are sort of stuck at the airport
metaphysically speaking. Don't seem to be getting anywhere. Well,
we don't mind so much because the company's good but we've been
talking it over and we think something's going on down there. Why
don't you have a little get-together in our collective honor and
see what comes up? I hate to give you such short notice, but you've
always been a good organizer. I remember the fine work you did at
the Annapolis festival that one year."
    "Thank you, Sam," she said, glowing with the
warmth the special friendship with that remarkable man had always
given her. "You know I'll do my best."
    "I know you will, Mae. My best to everyone.
Sorry to have to cut this so short but you understand . . ."
    "I understand, Sam. Thanks for thinking of
me."
    "Take care of yourself, Mae. And watch out.
Oh, and about Lazarus . . ."
    "What about Lazarus? Sam? Sam?" Anna Mae had
listened for a long time. When she woke up, she was still
listening, and for a moment she thought it was a dream, but the
receiver was still in her hand.
     
    * * *
     
    Back in Texas, Mark Mosby, dying of a
slow-leaking brain hemorrhage, finished his story in the best dying
cowboy tradition before he joined Sam and the others. "Couldn'
b'lieve it. Didn' know what to do," Mark told Willie. "Slept . . .
woke up 'bout three . . . called you." The injured man was lying on
the couch and looked up appealingly at an increasingly nervous
Willie. Mark should have gone to a hospital right off, Willie
thought. The boy's eyes looked funny—one big and dark, the other
one shinier and greener than was natural.
    "I'm going to try the house again," Willie
told him. The line was still busy. Willie poured another drink,
sloshing the liquid over the sides of the glass and onto his hand.
Drying the hand on his cutoffs, he said, "Buddy, you hang in here a
minute. I'm going to try to drive up to the house and fetch
help."
    Mark lay very still and said nothing, the
empty drink glass resting on its side by his hand, the banjo at his
feet.
     
     

CHAPTER 5
     
    Willie