Hal and Diane

There was this one bar, real dive, middle of nowhere, surrounded by desert and not much else, the kinda joint where big men with beards, bikes and facial tattoos can be coaxed into crying into their Jack Daniels by just the right mixture of wide-eyed patriotism and sentimentality where I played a set one time. I did my three hours behind a chicken wire mesh that kept out about a third of all the shit they threw and, while the waitresses were sweeping up the broken beer bottles in front of the stage, I went to the owner for my fee. He looks at me like he’s about to say the cleverest thing in the world and says “Paid in beers, wadnit?” It wasn’t. It was $50, a meal and a bed for the night. Calm like, I tell him this. He grins and by a slight movement of his head, indicates the shotgun hung above the bar. “Seems to me you look like the kind of guy that might come to an outta the way place like this and try and take the register. Seems to me I was to catch you in the act I’d be within my rights to shoot your thieving ass dead. Ain’t that right, Abner?” The bum at the bar says nothing, and without looking round flips open his wallet to reveal a badge. Figures. I look back at the barkeep and say levelly: “Yeah. Beers. I’ll take ‘em now.” The guy looks like he’s about to burst. “Ah, hell son, looks like Abner done got the last one!” He laughs a laugh that says he knows I can’t do shit, and there’s even an accompanying snigger from Abner. In a movie, this’d be roundabout the time where I started to laugh along with them, before pounding Abner’s head into the bar, vaulting over the counter, grabbing the shotgun and turning it on the sniveling bar owner, loading my pockets with greasy dollar bills and strolling out with the shotgun over one shoulder and my guitar on the other. Real easy way to get shot, there, and one of the things about being a strolling player is that the health insurance don’t add up to squat, so high risk things that might look good on a screen take a back seat to things like going outside and round back and taking a leak in the gas tank of Abner’s cruiser, which is exactly what I do.

It’s a hard life alright, but what life ain’t? Try and tell me Johnny Punchclock going to the same cubicle year on year, desperately hoping he can get his nose in front of Baines for when the next VP job comes up going home to his wife who thought she loved him but now maybe likes the stability he provides more and is eyeing up next door’s gardener has it easy? Oh, sure, he might have his fancy shiny toys and a camera in his pocket wherever he goes, and I ain’t denying it’s mighty clever and all, but what’s the point of having the cleverest gizmo in the world in your pocket if all you’re using it for is to take pictures of your dinner? Out where I am, there’s things worth taking pictures of, but I don’t, not least because I don’t have one of them phones, but mostly cos sometimes you just look at the horizon and it stays with you, you know?

Or maybe you don’t believe me, and think it’s a romantic life not being tied down, free to roam and beholden to no-one, but there are times where some of life’s softer pleasures seem real alluring. Plenty of times. Kinda feeling a little old to be sleeping under the stars on cold hard ground these days, but I guess that’s okay – when I started out down this road I was a little young for it, so it evens out in the end. There’s occasionally money enough for a motel, and hell, if I’m lucky I maybe even get invited back to some lady’s house, spend the night there. Thank the good lord I still got my looks. Some of them anyway.

No, I’ll take my hard life over yours. When your concerns are finding enough food to put in your belly and gas to put in your bike, the whole world is simple, simple not being the same thing as easy, you understand, and if you can earn the necessary to do that by singing a bunch of songs to a bunch of drunks about the woman who laid you low, or the sweetheart you’ll always love, you find that everything narrows into three channels: finding somewhere to play, finding somewhere to sleep and finding something to eat.

That don’t mean I’d necessarily evangelise about the life on the road, and that night, after taking care of Deputy Abner’s patrolcar, I sorted through the mess of bills and coins that amounted to my worldly riches and figured that it was a good night to consider the dubious charms of a motel I’d passed on my way to the bar, so I slung my guitar case across my shoulders, got on my bike and headed back towards town. After all that about living simply, and having no possessions, the bike might be a surprise, but it’s both a necessity and a pleasure. It’s a 2009 Indian Chief, and as close as I have to a best friend. Again, if this was a movie, I’d have won it in an after hours poker game, but this being reality, I took all the money my mom left me when she died, bought riding gear and a hard case for my guitar and headed straight to my local used bike lot. Ok, so not romantic, but 99 times out of a hundred, you want something, you get money and you go buy it. Unless you’re in a goddam movie, and the screenwriter needs a way to give you a more interesting back story.

I got to the motel a little after 1, and woke the clerk on the desk. The room he gave me was, well, it was a motel room. What more can you say? You have to try not to think about how many adulterers, addicts and criminals have spent nights in the room you’re renting, but the prospect of a hot shower and a decent night’s sleep after a few nights spreading the bedroll on the flattest piece of ground you can find goes a long way towards quelling those thoughts. Before I could put my plans into motion, I heard an argument from one of the adjoining rooms. Sounded like a rough one, raised voices, one male and angry, one younger, female and verging on tears. There followed a couple of thumps that to my ear sounded a lot like something, or someone, being thrown against the wall. I wondered briefly if I should go and get involved, before sitting on the bed and very deliberately taking my boots off.

I must’ve dozed off, cos I awoke to a tapping at the door. It being still dark, I knew it wasn’t the clerk or the maid come to kick me out, past that I couldn’t conceive who it might be. I opened the door. Stood there was a girl, 16 if she was a day, more likely 14 with an ID that would undoubtedly say she was 21. The clothes she was wearing made it kinda obvious what she was doing in a motel in Suckass, Texas at one in the morning, and the bruise on her cheek was new and angry.

“Listen, mister, I hate to ask…”

“Come in.”

She glanced nervously past me.

“You can trust me or not. It’s your call, but I ain’t standing here with the door open all night.” She nodded, and came in. I sat on the room’s one chair and gestured that she should sit on the bed. “Ask away.”

She chewed her lip and flicked a strand of straw blond hair out of her eyes.

“That your bike outside?”

“Sure.”

“That’s a nice bike.”

“Yup.” I waited.

“You heading out in the morning?”

“Yup.”

“Could you take me with you? Maybe as far as the state line?”

I didn’t like the shape of it already, and maybe if she hadn’t have been so obviously young, I might’ve made a different choice, but although I paused, my decision was made nearly as soon as she had asked.

“Suppose you tell me the whole story. That was you next door earlier, right?”

She paused, weighing it up, then nodded.

“So who’s your friend?” A look of disgust flickered across her face.

“He weren’t my friend. He was my…”

“Client? Or pimp?”

“Frank. He… he looked after a few of us.” She looked about as uncomfortable as could be.

“‘Scuse my noticing, lotta past tense here. Frank still with us?” She rubbed her left shoulder with her right hand and didn’t meet my gaze. I leaned forward in the chair and gently repeated my question. “Frank still with us, honey?”

She looked up, and I could see tears swimming in her eyes.

“I don’t know,” she said, barely above a whisper. I leaned back and let a breath out through my teeth.

“Ah, goddammit. Room unlocked?” A nod. ‘H-okay, you sit tight a minute.” In the short walk to the next room, I think to myself that if the movie plays out like the trailer suggested, it’s gonna be a lot simpler if Frank is already dead. Using the cuff of my jacket, I open the door and peer in. Even from the doorway, and in the low light, it was pretty clear, but I make my way over to the shape on the bed, taking care not to step in the blood and touching nothing, save the place on Frank’s neck where his pulse should have been, but wasn’t. I try not to look in his eyes, or at the place above his temple that is partially caved in. A quick look on the floor reveals the weapon, an aluminium baseball bat, which I’m guessing he brought with him, like he would have needed a weapon to do her damage. I felt like I’d learned a deal about Frank’s character from this detail, so I wiped the handle and the shaft of the bat with my sleeve, checked the room for personal items, and finding nothing, went back to my own room. She was on the bed where I left her, and I resumed my seat opposite.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Ruby.”

“That what it says on your birth certificate?” She looked at me for a second, then at the floor.

“Diane.”

That’s when I knew I would help her, cos I could see that she was a good kid who still had a chance. The tarnish hadn’t all been rubbed off. She had a lot of work to do, and I wasn’t going along that road with her, but putting her in the hands of justice would’ve been the end of her, and no justice at all.

“Well, Diane, Frank’s dead, and I’m guessing you’re more scared about that than sorry right now?”

She drew her knees up under her chin and nodded, but held my gaze.

“You know Frank long?”

“Ever since I came to Texas. Six months. He was nice at first…helpful, like”

“I’ll bet he was. And then?”

She looked away and shook her head just hard enough to dislodge some of her hair, which fell across her face and didn’t quite cover the violet rose underneath her eye.

“Yeah. Where’s home, Diane?”

“I gotta place on…”

“Nah. Home. Where’s home?”

“I… I got an aunt lives in Tulsa?”

“OK. Is the clerk here likely to remember you?”

“I never saw him. Frank rents the room and we use it when he tells us to.”

“Good. Got anything here you can’t leave behind?”

“I guess not.”

“Better and better. Ok, get some rest. You can have the bed.”

In the morning, I woke from a light doze. It was still wanting an hour of dawn. Checking out the window, I saw what I hoped to see; no paramedics and no cops. I woke Diane as gently as I could, and said:

“Time to get ready.” I told her to set out across the scrub and stay parallel to the road east, and I’d meet her a ways down the road.

“Can’t I just come with you?”

“No. It’s important that I’m seen checking out alone. Also, if you’re seen, you can be placed at the murder scene of a known associate. Not a good look.” She looked at me narrowly. “Diane. You can trust me. If I was gonna rat you out, I’d have done it while you slept.”

“How will I know when you’re coming?”

“This early, on these roads, you’ll hear me coming in plenty of time to get up to the road. Just keep the road on your left side and don’t get seen.”

It worked like a charm. I picked her up a little under a mile away from the motel, and we set off on the long ride east. I felt good about helping this girl get a second chance, then I wondered if anyone ever gave Frank a second chance, and what he’d of done with it if they had. I wonder if I’ll ever need a second chance. Still doing ok on my first, as far as I’m concerned.

When we stopped for gas, she got us some food from a burger joint. I tried not to think about how she’d earned the money to buy it, and as we sat by the road eating she nodded at the guitar case and said:

“Play something for me?”

I swallowed my burger and agreed. I started to play ‘Wichita Lineman,’ but before I’d sung the first line, she said:

“Don’t you have any of your own songs?”

“Well, yeah,” I answered, “none with words, though. I ain’t clever enough to write words to ‘em.”

“That’s ok,” she said. So I played this tune I sometimes played out in the desert to no one but coyotes and rattlesnakes, and a billion stars above. It’s a sad tune, always makes me think what it’d be like to share things with someone. Now, I’ve played for some rough crowds and had a dog’s abuse thrown at me over the years, not to mention bottles; food and once even a prosthetic limb (I kid you not) so I can handle a tough gig, but I swear on all that’s holy, I never got so nervous as I did playing for her on that day by the side of the road. She never took her eyes off me the entire time, never moved, never made a sound. It was like no-one had ever listened to me play until that moment. When I finished, I just held the guitar still for a while, till a truck went by and burst the moment. When I looked up, her eyes were wet again.

“I love it,” was all she said, and it was all she needed to say. Contained in her expression and those three words were all I’ll ever need to know about that tune. I’m not given to tears, but I maybe might have bent over the case slightly more than I needed to when I was putting the guitar away, and I maybe might have used the opportunity to wipe my eyes with my sleeve. We set off again, the bike eating up the road like a life eats up the days, Diane’s thin arms wrapped round my belly, desert and towns and towns and desert whipping by and I was conscious that when the journey was done, I was gonna feel the loneliness like I hadn’t before. Maybe it was time to find a place to stop, put down some roots, maybe give music lessons to make a little cash, maybe find that someone to share things with. Another gas station, a diner, more road, daylight fading, miles disappearing, the thought of sharing growing more appealing all the while. We crossed the state line under brilliant stars that made life seem huge and tiny all at once, and a couple hours later, we’re on the outskirts of Tulsa. I followed her directions, and eventually pulled up at an intersection. She got off the bike and stood on the sidewalk.

I looked at the dawn breaking over this fragile girl and felt the urge to take her with me, make sure she was safe from the Franks of the world, but who am I kidding? Her place was back in school, finding a place in the real world, not mine. I figured she had a better chance without me from this point.

“You gonna be ok from here?”

“I figure. My aunt’s place is just down the road. I can walk it.”

“Not what I meant.”

She smiled a smile that made her look like a grown woman for the first time since she’d knocked on my motel room door.

“I know. Maybe?”

“Yeah. Maybe’s all’s anyone can say, I guess.”

She turned, and got a few steps before turning.

“What’s your name, mister?”

“Henry. I go by Hal.”

“Thank you, Hal. It was a pleasure to meet you.”

“Sincerely, the pleasure was all mine, Diane. You take care of yourself, now.”

I watched her slight figure recede in the bike’s mirrors for a minute before opening up the Indian’s 1700cc engine and hitting the open road, racing the dawn, but that’s a race the dawn will always win.