Phantom Banjo Read Online Free PDF

room were godsends. And then there was Lettie, who had
a small record distribution business for privately produced
records, which she not only sold but promoted to the few folk radio
shows and all the festivals she and Mic could attend, kept club
lists, and wrote reviews for folk music journals. Her husband Mic
was willing to drive all night so he and Lettie could attend a
festival, where he introduced everyone to everyone else whether he
knew them or not, was quickly on first-name terms with all of the
luminaries at any given event, and was just as quick to turn them
on to the music of less celebrated friends. Other friends were
musicians themselves, but not on the road. Some helped friends with
bookings or were willing to type newsletters. Then there were
people who organized concerts and festivals, open mikes and
referral lists, printed newsletters or journals. Several folks she
knew of were involved in that in Chicago and Lettie said her mom
knew of a guy who did that kind of thing in Tacoma too.
    Juli's reverie was interrupted when the door
banged open and Molly Curtis jogged in, her dark brown hair
escaping from its braids to cling in damp wisps to her sweating
face. Her legs were bright red under her blue running shorts, her
tank top soaked. She thrust a paper bag into Julianne's hand,
"Here, girl. You looked like you needed this and they had your
favorite flavor at the 7-Eleven." Inside were two plastic cartons
of vanilla almond frozen yogurt with a couple of plastic
spoons.
    Juli grinned up into Molly's dripping face.
"You're wonderful," she said, but her gut was in knots from
exhaustion, tension, and caffeine and she knew she couldn't eat a
thing.
    She pulled the plastic spoons from the bag
and tapped them together idly, then deliberately arranged them
between the fingers of her right hand. "Hey, you know, I was
working on a story to tell about magic spoons while we were on our
way down here," she told Molly. "What do you think of this
rhythm?"
    Tapping the spoons across her left hand and
clicking them against her thigh and forearm, she ticked out a
rhythm. They didn't make as much noise as her metal or wooden
spoons. "Well, you get the idea. It goes like this, ba da da, ba da
da, ba da dad dad dad dad da, ba da da, ba da da, ba da pow pow
POW!"
    "Amazing what that girl can do with frozen
yogurt," Barry observed.
    Molly threw a stack of letters at her. "Here,
girl, stop playing with your food and read your mail."
    Juli tore open the letter from their
accountant, a friend named Pete Zimmerman in Chicago. This must be
the tax refund they'd been waiting for since April. But it wasn't.
It was a letter. "Dear George and Julianne, Don't get upset. I'm
sure we can work things out and there has been some
misunderstanding. But you need to be back here by July 10 for an
IRS audit. They claim you owe $30,000 in back taxes and fines from
1987 on. Unless you can show you maintain a permanent home, they're
disallowing your travel expenses as business deductions. Call me
ASAP and we'll work out strategy. Love, Pete."
    Without a word to the Curtises, Juli threw
the opened letter on top of the pile of mail, left the yogurt
melting in the cartons, and strode back to the spare bedroom, where
she threw herself on the bed next to George and buried her face in
the pillow.
     
    * * *
     
    Meanwhile, the Chaveses had been having a
good time driving another musician friend down from Canada.
    Mic drove and Lettie sat in the back seat
while their guest, Hy MacDonald, regaled them with bawdy stories of
his travels from Scotland through Australia and New Zealand, and
his previous successful tours in the U.S. Hy did not look like a
man who wrote and sang romantic, mythic ballads full of Celtic
folklore and imagery that made sensible young women with good
careers in banking want to climb into his lap and light his
cigarettes. Short, thin, and balding with limp sandy hair covering
only the back two thirds of his scalp and his front teeth