Bounty

“Okay,” I whispered to the windows. “That was weird and it was a bad weird and it could be a very bad weird.”

It might have just been me, but it seemed the windows agreed.

* * * * *

“We don’t do this that often,” Lauren, Tate’s wife, shouted at me over the band playing at Bubba’s the next night. She was sitting on a stool in between Jim-Billy and me at the end of the bar. “Krys introduced it a while ago. Hit big.” She grinned. “As you can see.”

I looked from her gorgeous face to the bar, which was heaving.

An aside, to say she suited Tate was an understatement. They were like Barbie and Ken in their forties, with Barbie having a killer ass and Ken not being Ken but GI Joe except with longer hair, a beard and a lot more badass.

“Couple of bars in Gnaw Bone have live music,” Lauren kept shouting to me. “They rake it in. We’ve got some friends, Zara and Ham, live in GB. Ham runs one of the bars there. It’s the competition,” she said, still grinning, like it actually wasn’t, or if it was that competition was friendly. “It gave Krys the idea.”

I nodded, shouting back, “It was a good one!”

She returned my nod and twisted back to the band that was also good. Obviously, I’d heard better and this was in my dad’s living room, but they didn’t suck.

I’d done my best to slink in unseen because the peace of being just Jus might be done for me with Krys, Jim-Billy, Bubba, Tate, Lauren, Sunny, Shambles and soon Deke, but it was still there for everybody else.

And with musicians around, I knew better than to waltz in as Justice Lonesome.

I was no Johnny and I was no Lacey but I was a singer, songwriter, producer, guitar player and many in the biz, precisely those who’d play a biker bar, no matter how removed from the glitz (and perhaps precisely those) had no interest in Lacey Town, who didn’t write her own music or play an instrument.

But they’d know the likes of Jerry, Johnny, Jimmy, Tammy, the Blue Moon Gypsies…and me.

It seemed I’d pulled it off, doing it enjoying a few brews and getting to know Lauren better.

Now the band had begun playing, they were loud and there was no getting to know anyone better without shouting.

And I had a strict philosophy. If someone was on any stage and I was in the same room with them, my attention was on them. They deserved that respect. Lauren shouting a few words to me was one thing. But I was not one of those douchebags who sat while a band was playing their heart out or a singer was belting it out and held a full-blown conversation. If I needed to do that, I walked out of the room.

So I was trying to get into it.

But my mind was on other things.

That day Deke had again not been closed off, even if he had, but he could pull this off with Bubba around because Bubba was what I’d clocked him as when I first met him. A good ole boy filled with jokes and stories and a never-ending supply of camaraderie.

They’d be back the next day so I couldn’t sit down with Deke. I’d have to get through more weird and after that wait until I had him on Monday.

And that was a lot of time to be stuck in your head thinking over all the possible reactions, coming up with none good and letting that devour you so you were a nervous wreck and fucked it all up by the time you actually had your shot to set things right.

I’d already fucked up. I should have told him early—about all of it.

Mr. T would be disappointed with me.

I looked to the front of the bar where they’d pushed back and scrunched together the tables so they could lay the makeshift stage. And I watched and listened to the band, remembering Granddad telling me the stories of the road. The dive bars. The honkytonks. Playing for cash handed over at the end of the gig, cash barely enough to gas up the car and buy the band an end-of-gig meal at a late-night diner. Sometimes the cash was short so things would get dicey. So as they got bigger, more well-known, which meant more asses in seats and even traveling groupies, they’d actually had to employ a manager who was mostly an enforcer so no one would fuck them over.

Dad had had a little of that. He’d had to pave part of his own way. Prove his salt. Show he had what it took and could give all he had to give.

I hadn’t had that.

I’d had three record labels gagging for it and my choice of producers.

I looked around the bar, seeing folks chair dancing, others off to the sides on their feet just plain dancing.

And I looked around, a funny feeling in my stomach—the bad kind of nostalgia.

But also the kind of feeling I sometimes got around Deke. Having something so close that I wanted so badly. Something that I had a taste of, a piece of. But I’d never taste it fully, have it be mine.

I was feeling all of this thinking I could have killed the road if it had been like this for me.

People out on a Friday night for a good time, a few drinks and that vibe. Just the love of the notes through the amp, the lyrics through the mic, so close to your audience you could see it move over them. Their heads bobbing. Their lips moving. Their bodies swaying. Loud or quiet, the moment of connection lasted as long as the set. And then the next one. In between and after the gig was through, you drank at the bar amongst your people. You weren’t whisked to a dressing room.

You were always right in the thick of it, creating it, building it, that connection. Music, one of the few things that did nothing but make life good, you were it, down to every note for that night in a bar in the middle of nowhere.

The song ended and I stopped bobbing my head, looking to the lead singer as the band didn’t go right into another song.