Page 60 of Grumpy Bear

“Go. Do your thing. I’m going to rehearse.”

“Cool. I’ll find you down there.” He hurried to the door.

“You better not miss my fucking show.”

“No way.”

I skipped dinner, running through a bunch of my busking classics, brushing up on the lyrics of a few songs I knew Jim would want to hear, and finishing my new original. I’d been working on it on the road for days, stuck on the first verse, but I thought I finally had the chorus and the final verses to finish it.

God, it sounded good. Maybe it was the relief of playing after two days of deprivation. Maybe it was the quality of the amazing guitar, or maybe I was still buzzed from drinking all day… I just hoped the performance was as good as the rehearsal.

Seeing the time, I threw on my recently laundered Jack Daniels T-shirt with my own damned shorts and grabbed an apple and a granola bar from the stash in Coleman’s cabinet.

It was a long walk down the holler.

I kept reminding myself I didn’t have to capture the attention of strangers on the street or tuned-out college students trying to work on their laptops at an afternoon cafe open mic. This was a captive audience of happy wasted bears on vacation, most of whom had already grabbed my ass. And just like the DJ said, I was going to give them songs they could sing to.

The spring night was perfect. Still too chilly for lightning bugs, but at least there were no mosquitoes. The sky was a deep blue with impossibly luminous pink-gold clouds still clinging to the sunset, not wanting to give way to total darkness.

Laughter and shouts rang out from the tent campers along the trail through The Soggy Bottom. Tiki torches flickered and shadows moved in front of cabin windows in Homo Highlands. Flashlights bobbed along paths in the woods like trooping fairies on the move through Cocksucker Alley.

I felt pleasantly alone and invisible, out of time, like a troubadour with a lyre on his back making his way to court. In reality, I toted the Hummingbird in my shabby case. It was an archetypal link to my chosen role in society. A flush of immense gratitude filled me that I was here in this uncanny place that existed outside the real world. This magic kingdom whose sexy monarch lived like a pauper and shared his bed only with me.

Even before I saw the fire in the open field, a distant drumming pulled my feet into a rhythm on the crunching gravel. Such a completely different vibe than the techno and Top 40 we’d been subjected to all day. It was low and slow, a brooding soundtrack of something primal approaching in the night.

A smaller number of men—the hundred or so who hadn’t passed out—milled around in clustered groups silhouetted against the flames and the lights of Trailer Park Avenue. Most were dressed as I was, in comfy T-shirts and shorts, with their ubiquitous drink cups.

I returned the quiet hellos and white toothy smiles that flashed at me from bearded faces. I didn’t really recognize anyone in particular in the dark, but I heard Jim’s distinctive too-loud laugh, and as I moved toward it, he and Austin announced my arrival by roaring my name.

“Sawyer’s not with you?”

“No. He’s off… doing something.”

“That man’s never off the clock.” Jim shook his head. “But don’t worry about it. He’ll be here.”

Someone shoved a sickly sweet drink in my hand, which I was told was cotton candy vodka. I probably didn’t need it, but my hands were clammy with nerves.

The crowd grew, and the tempo of the drumming picked up, and suddenly Jim’s voice was hot and close to my ear. “You should play before these boys start fucking in the bushes. Is that bench over there good? Okay, go. Do it.”

Austin held up two tiny pill cups and offered one to me. “Fireball shot.”

It wasn’t my first, but what the hell, right?

I wasn’t lying when I told Coleman I didn’t drink much. One shot and I thought I was a rock star, three or four and I was… Well, we were about to find out.

I looked around for Coleman one last time and took the guitar from my case. Jim told the drummers to “shut the fuck up for a minute” and announced me in a big voice not heard since Oprah introduced John Travolta.

There were some whistles and encouraging applause that hushed as I played the pretty opening bars of the Dixie Chicks’ “Cowboy Take Me Away.”

It was the perfect song in a perfect moment in a perfect place.

The obvious point of view of the lyrics, of a woman singing to a man, sung by a man, never failed to get a chuckle out of a room. But I’d never performed it exclusively for a gathering of men this large, men who’d sang it in their trucks at the top of their lungs a million times and meant every word as much as Natalie Maines did.

After the first chorus, I realized a bunch of guys in the crowd were shining flashlights on me in a makeshift spotlight. And I saw Coleman there, standing in front, his hands in his pockets, lit up hot by the firelight, watching me with a soft smile on his face like I was the only person for miles around. He was flanked by Austin and Jim, beaming at me like proud parents.

Busking on the sidewalk, I’d grown accustomed to being ignored when I played. I was numb to that, but this—this attention—made me emotional.

On the last verse, the lyrics became real for me—really real, like, there was no doubt I was singing about my own life. My voice cracked on those lines about being the only one around for miles, except for maybe him and his smile.