Read Online Phantom Banjo by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough - Free Book Online

furthermore, that there are fine writers of songs
who are giving us new ones all the time. Right now, I can't think
of any songs about fires, but I would like you all to sing with me
a song about a flood written by a young man named Bill Staines.
It's called 'Louisiana Storm.'"
    He plucked the banjo with deceptive
simplicity—his was the book and record on banjo playing from which
most of the other pickers in the business had learned. The tune was
oddly upbeat for a disaster song, and Mark thought Sam might be
using it to bring himself and the audience back to a more positive
state of mind from which the concert could continue. Sam gave
particular emphasis to the verse, "If I ever live to be a
hundred/One thing I will remember well/That one time in my life/
Well, I seen enough water/To put out all of the fires in hell," and
the audience, or those of them who understood what he was talking
about, sat silently until then, but as his voice began to crack
they sang with the determination of protest marchers, "Let the sun
shine down/Down on Lou'siana. Let the sun shine down/Let it dry up
all of the rain." The guard was singing along and Mark joined in,
full voice, his rich baritone carrying over the other unamplified
voices, turning a few heads his way.
    The audience's singing visibly buoyed Sam and
his spine straightened, a ghost of the familiar grin touching the
corners of his open mouth. Every other strum or so his fingers
flicked the banjo head so that it sounded like the drum in a
marching band. "Again!" he called out, and bellowed the chorus once
more, throwing his head back and lifting his voice so it sailed
over the heads of the crowd. His Ichabod Crane body bent slightly
backward, as if to gather the emotion he wanted in the song and
hurl it through the microphone.
    For a moment Hawthorne was ageless, and Mark
was conscious only of the ropes of sinew standing out in the strong
forearms that had relentlessly plucked tunes from the banjo in his
hands for the last fifty-five years. But Hawthorne was in his
mid-seventies. A large part of his life's work had just been
destroyed.
    Sam's strong old heart had survived blows as
hard in the past, but in the past, the heart was younger.
    Mark didn't think about how much Sam was
sweating at first. Even with air-conditioning, Austin in midsummer
was hot, and with stage lights, it was a wonder smoke wasn't
rolling out of Sam's ears. And when the old man stopped singing on
the fourth repeat chorus, Mark assumed it was to make the audience
sing louder. But when Sam stopped playing, and grabbed his left
shoulder with his right hand and held on to the mike with his left
hand, Mark dropped his cigarette.
    Hawthorne gasped once and tried to pull the
banjo off his neck but instead fell forward, banjo, mike and all.
People rose from their seats to stare and someone, presumably the
concert producer, ran onto the stage and shouted for a doctor, but
no one came forward immediately.
    Meanwhile, Mark, who had had life-saving
training as a swimming instructor, was already halfway to the
stage. He almost crashed head-on into a youngish man from the other
side of the auditorium. "You an MD?" the man asked. Mark shook his
head.
    "I am," the man said, and turned Sam over
roughly, pulled the banjo off over his head, kicked the microphone
out of the way, and shoved the banjo toward Mark. Mark stood there
holding it while three RN's and a medtech who had just fought their
way forward from the bar in the back of the auditorium joined the
doctor. The four of them took turns breathing into lungs that had
once filled union halls and schoolrooms with unamplified song.
    Mark was still standing holding the banjo
when the ambulance crew arrived. The doctor meanwhile slugged
Hawthorne in the chest in a way that would have excited the envy of
many a mine boss, bigot, and FBI man. The emergency medtechs
brought the portable defibrillator and zapped Sam right there on
the stage. In between zaps they started IV's and