Fiction Week, Day 2

I’d gotten a fresh Bud Light from the bar and was talking up a fine young cowgirl from the next town over. Her name was Sandee, and she’d come with three of her best girlfriends. What I didn’t know, at least until Lester told me, was that Lucinda was sweet on Sandee.

“Ya know,” Lester said after pulling me aside. “Sandee here is one of them bisexuals.”

I laughed nervously. “What? No way. Look at her ...”

“I’m tellin’ ya. Lucinda’s got her eye on this Sandee chick. You better watch out.”

Well, I don’t give a jimmy crack corn about what Lucinda wants. Especially since Lester told me she liked women, which meant she wasn’t looking for company with me. So I continued to chat with Sandee and move in real close, so that she could smell my beer breath and almost feel the hairs of my mustache tickle her neck. I felt the heat on the back of my head, and turned to see Lucinda staring at me something fierce. She stormed out of there without saying a word. I had to get to the stage for our soundcheck, but got Sandee’s phone number. She winked at me and told me to call her sometime.

Lester glared at me when I picked up my bass guitar. “Where’s Lucinda?”

“I don’t know. She stormed out of here without saying anything to me.” I wondered what he was so hot for; Lucinda played the freakin’ tambourine. I don’t think she’d be missed. She had trouble finding the beat anyway and would confuse Jimmy. Then we’d all be off the beat. Nothing sadder than a bunch of white cowboys and cowgirls, most of them rhythm-challenged from birth, trying to dance to a random beat. Nothing sadder.

We played some of our standbys, the songs that get boots to scootin’ and rowdy boys to go “yeehaw” at random moments and then clumsily twirl their gals around in the sawdust. Lester’s singing was not up to its usual par, so after the set was over I took him aside.

“What’s going on, Lester? That set sucked the big one.”

“None of your business, you stupid goat roper. You’re a stupid, no-good son of a –”

Well, that’s all it took. Something powerful came over me and I got all mad. My now empty longneck was sitting on the table, and I picked it up and smashed it square on his melon. It shattered into a zillion tiny brown pieces, Lester fell in a heap on top of the shards, and I decided it was time to leave. I went up to the stage and put my bass into its case. Jimmy and Bill kind of looked at me funny but didn’t say a word.

Sandee was sitting next to the door with her friends. I passed by on my way out. “Hey Sandee, wanna split with me and go to the bridge and dance?” She shook her head. She had witnessed my shenanigans with the bottle, and apparently wasn’t too impressed.

Rejected and dejected, I went outside to my truck and flung my bass in there so hard it thudded hard against the passenger door. “Screw this,” I muttered, as I stepped on the gas, throwing rocks against the front door and peppering the bouncer standing outside. I didn’t hear the bouncer cuss me, but I saw him flipping me off in the rearview. What an ugly man that guy is, I thought.

I headed to the bridge to do some thinking. Sometimes a man has to be alone, and the gentle sound of water passing under a bridge is sometimes all he needs to reach nirvana. I had to get away, and distance is something you just can’t find nearby.

I put my truck in park and sat there a minute, breathing in the fresh, crisp air that smelled nothing like cigarette smoke, stale beer or heavily hairsprayed beehives. Was reaching for the door handle when Lucinda’s right hook through the open window caught my head and pushed it into the steering column. I felt blood oozing from my nose, which may also have been broken. “Lucinda, what the –”

“You stupid, countrified, hayseed, cross-eyed son of a gun!” Lucinda was about to throw another punch, but I swung the door open and knocked her on her butt. She started to cuss a blue streak, calling me all sorts of names I’d never heard before. Some of them were pretty creative.

“Just wait a minute. Hold on, Lucinda!” I touched my nose and felt its soreness. “You went and broke my nose, you, you ... why’d you do that? Are you mad because I was hitting on your girlfriend?”

“What??!” Lucinda got up faster from the dirt than any human ever has before. “What gave you that idea, you stinkin’ piece of cow crap? I don’t have a girlfriend! You think I’m gay or something? How dare you!”

“Uh, well, that’s, uh, that’s what Lester told me.”

“And you believe everything Lester tells you?” Lucinda shook her head. “That’s my brother. He just doesn’t want me to have any fun, so he tells all the guys I like that I’m gay. It’s his way of protecting me or something. Boy, that explains a lot!” She looked thoughtful. “I know why this happened.”

“Huh?”

“I told Lester that I have a little crush on you.” She smiled sheepishly. “I thought he’d told you that when you were talking to that horse-faced chick at the bar. So that’s why I got all mad.”

“Oh,” I said. “And your first inclination was to hop in the back of my truck and then break my nose? I’m really feeling the love, Lucinda.”

“I’m sorry about that.” She stepped toward me and I put my fists up. “Relax. I’m not going to hurt you again.”

I’d always found Lucinda attractive in some strange, talentless way. What I said about her tambourine playing is true – she is absolutely dreadful. I’ve seen sheep with more sense of rhythm and musicianship than she has. Her face was sort of pretty in the moonlight, though, and a stray curl fell over her left eye. I reached out for her hand. “Wanna dance?”

“Sure.”

I reached into my truck and turned on the radio. Tim McGraw’s “Sing Me Home” was playing, a song the Holstein Tumbleweeds had mangled a few times. I pulled her close. We two-stepped around the truck, stirring up the dirt in a meandering circle. When the song was over, she pulled away and looked into my eyes. I gently ran my fingers over her lips, then we kissed. I felt it all the way to the tips of my sterling-tipped boots. I think Lucinda got something out of it, too. She got all giggly and such after.

We were sitting on the back of the tailgate, talking, kissing and listening to the river flow when we heard an approaching vehicle in the distance. I wondered if it was Lester. I told Lucinda about the altercation involving the beer bottle and she laughed. He probably deserved it, she said.

“Nah, that’s not him,” Lucinda said. “Lester’s truck’s got a hole in the muffler, and you can hear the spare-tire bracket underneath rattlin’ from 10 miles away. He drives a Ford, and that there sounds like a Chevy.” Whoever it was, they were driving right toward us. Fast.

“I’m not liking the looks of this.”

Sure enough, a black longbed Chevy pulled up, and I recognized the bouncer’s ugly, shiny bald head behind the wheel. My stomach was doing somersaults and the rest of me was going limp. Lester and Jimmy scrambled out of the passenger side.

I leaned over to Lucinda and whispered, “Get in my truck.” I stood up and looked at Lester, who was madder than a tar-covered bull about to charge toward me. “Lester! How’s your head, man?”

“I probably need stitches, you lily-livered leaf-licker. Why’d you go and hit me with that bottle?”

“I’m not sure,” I said slowly. “Just sort of happened.”

“What are you doing here with this idiot, Lucinda?” Lester spat hard on the ground. “This guy is nothing but trouble. He’s about to be nothing but trouble in a hospital bed.” The bouncer was now standing between Lester and Jimmy, glaring at me with mean-spirited eyes that caught the moonlight and hurled it at me with full fury.

They all took one step forward, and that was when Lucinda started up the engine. “Get in!” she hollered at me. The three stooges rushed me, but I kicked the bouncer in the groin and he went down like a full sack of grain. Lester and Jimmy tripped over him, and that allowed me time to hop in my truck’s bed just before Lucinda gunned it. She drove about a mile down the road before stopping so I could join her in the cab.

“Are you OK?” she asked me. I told her I was, although my stomach was still in knots. I hate confrontation, and that fear was probably the root cause of my use of the beer bottle on Lester’s noggin. I didn’t want him to say something ugly, so I hit him before he could. “You men and your violent ways,” she said without irony, putting the truck in gear and driving slowly down the dirt lane.

“What do we do now?” I asked her, hoping she had a palatable answer.

“Let’s go back to your place, pack up everything of value and hit the road.” She laughed. “I’ve got nothing I want at my place. It’d be easier just to walk away at this point rather than sorting through all the junk.”

“Wait, Daddy!” Sheila interjected. “I don’t get it. You hit Uncle Lester over the head with a beer bottle, Mommy broke your nose, you got in a fight, and that’s when you and Mommy fell in love?”

“It’s not polite to interrupt, girlie,” I said gently. “But yeah. That’s about how it happened. There’s a little more to it than that.” I smiled warmly at my daughter. “Now, come on, it’s about time for you to go to bed.”

“But Daddy, I want to hear more about how you thought Mommy was pretty in the moonlight!”

“Maybe tomorrow,” I said. “Besides, I still think she’s pretty in the moonlight Now go wash your face and brush your teeth or else I’ll tickle you!”

Once she was ready and tucked in, I went back to our bedroom, where Lucinda was also getting ready for bed. She stopped what she was doing and gave me a kiss. “You gettin’ ready to go?” she asked me.

“Yep. Gotta be there by nine or we won’t have time to set up.”

“You be careful tonight. And be nice to my brother.”

Lester had more or less forgiven me, and I’d pretty much forgiven him. Even though I’m still not sure he did anything wrong. He had mellowed out ever since finding the love of his life, Jed, who was once a bouncer at the Broken Boot. I got along pretty well with Jed, who more or less forgave me for kicking him in the groin that night nine years ago. Plus, Jed plays the tambourine much better than my Lucinda ever could. Jed is still horribly ugly, though, and I wonder what Lester sees in him.

Love is a crazy thing, that’s for sure! Who would’ve thought a beer bottle could change my life so much? I haven’t had a drop of alcohol since that night, and I don’t miss it. Nope, not at all. Not at all.