Marzine Gets Her Band Together

Where Marzine eventually creates her band, with Turfula the harp player. (With an eye-patch and a protruding jaw, she can chill the spine of all but the most drunk lad in the saloon.) Gantry on the stand up bass keeps things respectable, despite a brutal addiction to pain killers after the draught lost his wife in June.

Jeb plays the spoons, and washboard, occasionally revealing the singing saw from behind the crimson curtain. Marzine, while on her smoke break, writes songs with shards of charcoal, puffing on her chesterfield, journaling Hershel's journey from the corn fields to the bottom of the Columbia river gorge. She's had one of her stories published, in a wry little pulp, one only sold in the seediest of malt shops and juke joints.

The gig last week was encouraging, though a few of the beer bottles hurtled didn't make it through the mesh curtain and plopped Marzine square in the forehead. It hurt like hell, but at least there was an audience.