Highway Song: A Smokey's Roadhouse Novel (2 page)

The men at the table with Rick called him Rex. I
’
d changed my name, too, but it was odd he had. During the course of an otherwise slow afternoon, I gathered a few bits of information as I served them. They were a band
—
a rock band, I assumed
—
and their bus had caught fire in our parking lot. It looked like it wasn
’
t going anywhere soon. My boss, Smokey, said it would probably take the rest of the day for a mechanic to get here to assess the damage. Highway 80 had plenty of traffic, but it was a long stretch of just about nothing from Rawlins to Rock Springs.

The isolation was why I chose to stop here, begging the bus driver on the Greyhound to drop me at an unscheduled stop when I saw the neon up ahead. No one would look for me here, or so I hoped. I had experience as a bartender, and for once luck was with me. Smokey told me that night he was always short a couple of employees. He hired me on the spot. That had been about a month ago. Long enough to know there wasn
’
t much of anything around here.

A dozen small towns with nothing but a few houses clustered around a Mormon church and some scattered ranches were the nearest signs of civilization. One town had been taken over by Smokey
’
s motorcycle club, the Dust Devils. Smokey said they were all old Vietnam veterans to begin with, hiding from the contempt of an ungrateful nation along with their old ladies. But lately some of their offspring were looking to get into outlaw gang shit. He shook his head when he said it.

His own son had died in one of the Middle Eastern conflicts, and he hated that his buddies
’
kids were wasting their lives when his kid hadn
’
t had a chance to live. Old news. Smokey was rough around the edges, but he was a good guy. He didn
’
t ask me any questions, let me live in one of the rooms in a ramshackle outbuilding behind the bar, and paid me under the table. Exactly what I needed.

Around nine that evening, some of the guys from the club came by, as usual, and the man who
’
d knocked over his chair earlier today talked to some of them. I overheard him telling Rick that he
’
d arranged for their band to stay with various club members until they could get a substitute bus up from Denver or theirs could be fixed. Rick shook his head and said he was staying on the bus. The other guys could go with the motorcycle gang if they wanted to. Not long after that, the one they called Mark came in and arranged for one of the other rooms in the outbuilding for their bus driver.

I wasn
’
t paying enough attention to the bar when Mark approached Smokey and asked if he
’
d open early so they could eat breakfast here. So Rick, or Rex as I was careful to call him, was too close to me when I noticed him.
“
How
’
d you like to spend the night with a famous rock star?
”
he said. His grin meant he was kidding about the famous part, but the heat in his eyes meant he was serious about the proposition.

“
I don
’
t think I could handle the competition,
”
I said. I smiled because he was a customer, and because the competition looked like I used to. A handful of skinny, burned-out girls hung on the arms of the younger MC members. From their bad teeth and broken-out skin, I knew they were meth addicts, on their way to checking out of life early unless they found someone to help them, like I had.

He followed my glance and made a sound of disgust.
“
You
’
re kidding.
”

“
Yeah, about the competition. But I
’
m tired, hon. I
’
ve been on my feet since eleven this morning. I wouldn
’
t be any fun.
”

“
Oh, yeah,
”
he said.
“
I get that. But you wouldn
’
t be on your feet, sugar. You
’
d be on your back. Come on.
”

“
No, really,
”
I said, still doing my best to be polite.
“
I couldn
’
t. I
’
m sorry.
”

“
Me, too,
”
he said.
“
Maybe tomorrow night.
”

TWO
 

The previous afternoon - Rex

“
C
ome on, guys, this could be the break we
’
ve been looking for.
”

Ike and Kirk set their faces in stubborn lines. Kirk, who played rhythm guitar, always sided with Ike. Lead guitar Axel and bass guitarist Cole were the swing vote. Usually one or the other sided with me, if not both, and then whoever odd man out was had to break the tie. Mark didn
’
t get a vote, which pissed him off.

“
We
’
re clear across the country from there, Rex. We
’
ll never make it in time, especially if you want us to do that Salt Lake City gig,
”
Ike said.

I sighed. We
’
d been over this.
“
We need that gig to make the rest of the trip. This hasn
’
t been a good year, guys. You know that.
”

“
And whose fuckin
’
fault is that? You spent two weeks in Nashville trying to round up a record deal, while we sat with our thumbs up our asses. We missed a better gig than the Salt Lake one then.
”

He was right. But the one he was talking about wasn
’
t right on the way from where we sat now to where we needed to be, which was Seattle.

“
Okay, that was a waste. I admit it. I fucked up. But that
’
s no reason to fuck
this
up. Top prize is a recording contract. We
’
d be spending the winter in Los Angeles, laying down tracks, instead of schlepping around every little town in the country begging for a gig.
”

“
If
we win,
”
Ike pointed out.

I hated that shit. That kind of attitude never did win anything, much less a recording contract. I pointed at him.
“
I
’
m
gonna win. If you don
’
t think you can, then you
’
re in the wrong band, fucker.
”

“
Hey,
”
said Cole.
“
That doesn
’
t solve anything.
”
Cole was the laid-back one, fitting his instrument like he was born with it in his hands. His deep voice settled over our argument like a blanket.

“
Ike, do you have a better idea than the Salt Lake gig? Are we missing anything that makes us more money if we head that way?
”
he asked. Kirk alerted like a hunting dog and waited for his idol to come up with the idea that would blow me out of the water. Ike looked at the floor and refused to answer.

“
Anybody else got a suggestion?
”
Cole asked. No one answered.
“
Sounds to me like Salt Lake
’
s the only option, then, and why not go on to Seattle after that? Or do we all go home with our tails between our legs and tell our families we washed out?
”

Cole had made the ultimate argument. Because if there was one thing none of the guys would do, it was give up, go home to some shit nine-to-five, and settle down. They were all a lot like me that way. I
’
d rather be dirt poor doing what I loved than dirt poor, tied down to a shitty job, with a wife and two-point-five kids, and a mortgage I had no hope of ever paying off. That life wasn
’
t for me, and it wasn
’
t for any of the guys. It was the one thing that kept us together even when we hated each other at times.

Ike was still grumbling when I gave them the ultimatum.
“
Okay, guys, I understand you think it
’
s a risk. It takes just about everything we have to get us there, and no guarantees. But I
’
m taking the shot, with or without you. If I don
’
t make it, I meet up with you, and we keep doing what we
’
re doing. If I do, I
’
m on my own and you guys find a new lead singer.
”

That brought Axel into the fray. He and Cole talked over each other as they assured me they were with me, whether Ike and Kirk liked it or not. Kirk wavered, and then caved. Ike had no choice but to go along with it. A drummer without a band is nothing.

“
Come on, then, we don
’
t have time to fucking waste. Round up Mark and Joe and let
’
s head out.
”
Forty-five minutes later, we were on the road, the smell of fast food burgers permeating the bus. The rest of the guys were asleep before we skimmed the Colorado border. I wasn
’
t. What if this trip wasn
’
t the right move? We could have booked plenty of gigs nearby. They wouldn
’
t have been big ones, true. None of them would have held the promise of a recording contract.

I
’
d been chasing that dream for almost fifteen years
—
long before I met any of these guys. The kids I
’
d started out with had dropped out of my life. Some wanted college, real jobs, homes, or families. Some wanted all of the above. I was the lone holdout. I picked up my band here and there, and they came and went. These guys had been with me the longest, about four years now. When they signed on, we had a record contract, but I didn
’
t know then what I knew now. We didn
’
t make enough to live on under that contract, and it took us two years to break it. I guess the label had as much faith in us as I did.

I picked up Axel
’
s acoustic sometime late in the evening, just to pluck a few notes and try to set some music to the lyrics running through my head. It was no good. Easier for me to pick out a simple melody on a piano, but the bus was fresh out of pianos.

As we rolled through the dark night, I couldn
’
t help but wonder what would have happened if I hadn
’
t been born to a single mom, or if any of the shitheads she
’
d married or hooked up with along the way hadn
’
t been a shithead. She was gone, dead of pneumonia at thirty-six, and I was on my own at nineteen. I buried her in Oklahoma City and never looked back.  If I
’
d had a father
…
but
if
was nothing. In fact,
if
was worse than nothing, because it meant there was something missing, and there was nothing missing in my goddamn life. My life was just the way I fucking wanted it.

We made Cheyenne by midnight, but there Joe had to stop for his mandatory eight hours off duty. He parked the bus at a truck stop and headed inside for a shower and sleep, while the rest of us, awakened by the bus stopping, pondered what to do for eight hours. We weren
’
t anywhere near whatever passed for night life in Cheyenne, so most of us went back to sleep after a midnight snack at the truck stop
’
s cafe.

The next morning, we set out in pretty good spirits, even Ike and Kirk, who hadn
’
t wanted to come in the first place. That didn
’
t last long. In fact, tempers flared the first time we had to stop for twenty minutes for road construction. When it happened several more times, we were ready to get out and start a fight, just for something to do. It should have been six and a half hours to Salt Lake, plenty of time to check out the venue, have a practice session and a nice dinner before the gig. Instead, four hours out of Cheyenne, we still hadn
’
t made Rock Springs.

When Ike spotted the roadhouse, he told Joe to stop there if he knew what was good for him. Joe had been hearing us curse the construction and complain about being hungry for the last fifty miles. He knew what was good for him. We stopped.