Agitation hung in the air like a greasy fog, thicker than the blue cigarette smoke at my latest gig somewhere between Lubbock and nowhere—the great, endless nothing of West Texas. No wonder Buddy Holly saw music as his escape.

A black cloud of doom had descended on the Lone Star beer-swilling wannabe cowboys and cowgirls, as if they’d just come up for air from Fox News and wondered if maybe it really was all an illusion. That there weren’t enough gallons of Lone Star and Hank Williams caterwauling on the jukebox to paper over the fact that they were just working stiffs barely cutting it, paycheck to paycheck, in a world gone woke—though none of them could have even defined what “woke” was.

Just as bad, I had to play more country than I liked. I’m not a country guy. Blues and vintage rock are my thing. But that’s the kind of place it was—redneck to the bone. My country supply was limited and put to the test. It was handy that I knew plenty of CCR.

Rednecks don’t always think it through and realize CCR was a rock band that also appealed to country folks. If you didn’t have a lot of country in your bag of tricks, CCR would see you through. Lynyrd Skynyrd, too. You give a redneck crowd “Simple Man,” and there isn’t a dry eye in the house. They forgive you for not sounding enough like Hank Williams or Merle Haggard. Or even Toby Keith, God rest his fake patriot soul.

I cut my set a little short. That mushroom cloud of apathy creeping around the room caught me in its grip, too. It washed over me. I didn’t think anyone would notice the short set, much less give a fuck. Not even the owner, who’d skedaddled halfway through it. Thankfully, he left an envelope with my money behind the bar. I downed a complimentary Lone Star and counted the bills. A fight broke out down the bar, and knuckle-dragger bouncers dragged somebody out the door.

Alongside me, a couple in full Texas regalia—cowboy hats, boots, and leather vests—went at it over what I gathered to be mutual infidelities. I was tempted to suggest that they effectively canceled each other out and could see it as an opportunity to just start over. But you can’t tell a Texan a damn thing. “Give them an enema and bury them in a shoebox,” Grandpa Bert liked to say. Reason was in short supply. Maybe there was something in the air, the water.

Maybe both.

I finished my Lone Star, a godawful beer, and the bartender asked if I wanted another. I nodded no and turned away.

“You want Sam to call you about a future gig, Pete?” he said.

“I’ll call him,” I lied without turning around.

I didn’t get but a few yards out the door when this roly-poly dude with a silly handlebar moustache and his equally roly-poly wife accosted me, claiming I’d somehow snubbed them over a song request.

“The show’s over, folks,” I said, in a tone more pleasant than warranted. I’d been paid, such as it was, and figured I should at least make a show of civility in a place that hadn’t heard of the concept.

“Are you calling my husband a liar?” Mrs. Roly-Poly screeched.

“No, ma’am. I merely said the show’s over. There’s a difference.”

“Oh,” he said, his voice rising to a shrill pitch. “So, there’s a difference, is there? Splitting hairs, are we?”

“We aren’t doing anything but leaving, pal. Go split your own hairs.”

“That’s a threat,” Mrs. Roly-Poly exclaimed. “He’s threatening you, honey. I hear it in his tone.”

“He is for a fact, dear. That’s not a good tone at all.”

They both crowded closer, right up in my face. Paired up like that, it was like trying to get around the biggest offensive tackle that ever played football.

“He laid his hands on me,” Mrs. Roly-Poly said as I managed to slip away from them.

“That’s my wife, mister,” Mr. Roly-Poly said, telegraphing a wild, slow roundhouse. I ducked under it. His fist crashed right into Mrs. Roly-Poly’s mouth, and she went down like a sack of potatoes.

Make that two sacks.

“Oh, dear Thelma Lou,” he said. “Are you okay, darlin’?”

He helped her to her feet, which was no easy task. I feared they might need a tow truck to accomplish the feat. Luckily, the massive folds of flesh terracing her chin and mouth cushioned much of the blow.

“For Christ’s sake,” I said. “Just what song did you folks want to hear?”

“Try a Little Kindness,” Mr. Roly-Poly said. “You know, Glen Campbell.”

“It’s our favorite,” Mrs. Roly-Poly said while she checked her teeth.

“Well, I’ve heard the song, but I don’t play it—sorry,” I said truthfully. I dug a dollar bill out and handed it to him. “But, comrade, I bet it’s on the jukebox. Enjoy.”

I got in my truck and drove east, toward Dallas. I didn’t want to blow what little profit over expenses I’d made on a room. I drove until my eyes fluttered, and then slept at a rest stop until a car horn woke me around dawn. The morning air was chilly, and I shivered. The first crimson rays streaked from the east, but I’d head north, on home to Michigan.

In the rest stop men’s room, I splashed water on my face and slurped from the faucet. I stared in the mirror and thought about old Glen’s song, and kindness, and the Roly-Polys. I heard bits of the song in my head. It’s not a bad song at all. A line from it came to me:

“Just shine your light for everyone to see.”


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  • Michael Loyd Gray is the author of six published novels and over forty short stories featured in a wide range of literary journals. He is a winner of the 2005 Alligator Juniper Fiction Prize and the 2005 The Writers Place Award for Fiction. His novel ‘The Armageddon Two-Step’ received a Book Excellence Award, while ‘Well Deserved’ won the 2008 Sol Books Prose Series Prize. Gray holds an MFA in English from Western Michigan University, where he was a Phi Kappa Phi scholar and fiction editor for ‘Third Coast’. He is an invited member of the Society of Midland Authors and has forthcoming novellas set for release in 2024.

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