Phantom Banjo Read Online Free PDF Page A

worth of gas."
    "I'll have her call you back the minute she
gets here. Now don't you worry. Everything'll work out. You wait
and see." Trust a friend's mother to come up with platitudes.
    Oh, well, at least they had friends, Juli
reminded herself. She'd been taught by her mother, the expensive
child psychologist her mother had sent her to after her father
died, and her guru to count her blessings so, dutifully, she did.
She lit the gas jet on Barry's old stove, made herself a cup of
chamomile tea, carried it with her to the living room where she
scissored herself onto the floor. She did ballet stretches as she'd
been doing since her dancing days, then rolled her head in circles
and rotated her shoulders. Two weeks of riding across country,
eating goopy truck-stop nachos and peanut butter sandwiches,
drinking too much caffeine to stay awake when they couldn't stop
for the night due to the highway regulations of one state or
another. George had the right idea going back to bed.
    Her forehead throbbed and she knew that
pretty soon a tight band would close around her scalp and she'd
have one of her headaches again. But then nobody ever said it was
easy.
    Barry read on, totally absorbed, but the cat
uncurled from his lap, stretched one paw at a time, and hopped down
in front of Juli, its calm little face upturned, waiting for her to
make a lap. She obediently did so, hoisted it onto her thighs, and
petted its lumpy fur. Poor thing was allergic to fleas, she
remembered Molly explaining. Its name was Pyewacket, or was it
Helva, or was that Lettie's cat? No, Lettie's cat was Tan, Satanna,
or one of them. It was hard to keep straight all of their friends'
cats and dogs, there were so many of them. People like the Curtises
and the Chaveses were always taking in strays, cats, dogs,
musicians.
    First they'd come to the club and grin all
through your set, clap hard, and chat a little at breaks. They
might be the only ones all night to leave any kind of a tip, though
it was always only a dollar or so, but they came back every night
of a gig. Long about the third night they'd ask what the
accommodations were and after that there was a bed, a bath, a
stove, and foster animals instead of a sleeping bag on the floor of
the van and a spit bath in the John at whatever restaurant or bar
they were playing that night.
    Of course, some of the people who were
attracted to musicians were kind of weird, wanting to nose into
their private lives and live vicariously what seemed to be a more
glamorous life-style. But the friends she and George had made and
kept weren't like that. They were great. Most of them, like Molly
and Barry and the Chaveses, were considerate of the musicians'
privacy and gave them plenty of space. George tried, for purposes
of both friendship and publicity, to write a newsletter every once
in a while to let people know what was happening on the road. And
Juli usually loved to talk anyway, and to hear about other people's
lives, about the day-in-day-out troubles and triumphs that she'd
thought were so boring when she first went on the road.
    One day she and George hoped to be able to
afford to drive a mobile home or a bus around the country, but in
the meantime they were lucky to have people like the Curtises, who
were always glad to see them but who treated them as casually as if
they were roommates and took little notice of their coming and
going. When Barry and Molly or some of their other friends went on
vacation, sometimes Juli and George got to house-sit for them, and
had a place all to themselves. It was like playing house. But God,
she got tired of playing house in other people's houses. Still, it
just made no sense to maintain a place of your own when you were
never in it.
    Once upon a time, she had heard from older
veteran musicians, gigs had come with room and board. But that
hadn't been the case most places for a long time. So friends across
the country, the Curtises and others, who worked straight jobs and
had an extra