TEXAS TWO-STEP
The small cardboard sign the manager put up outside read simply "Friday
night--Betty Lou Springer." No photo, which is all right with her.
She's no beauty, never has been, always the last one to be asked to dance
back in high school in Waco, that's for sure. And she's aware, in some
distant corner of her mind, that the years on the road have not been kind
to her. Thirty-nine next February, whether that seems possible or not.
The voice is a little raspy, but why wouldn't it be with all the years
of cigarettes and shots of bad whiskey bought by strangers who expected
something in return. Always the same thing in return.
What really bothers her is that the pukey little sign outside doesn't
even say what she does on this Friday night, whether she sings or plays
an instrument or maybe does some kind of acrobatic half-nude dance while
balancing a plate of apples on her head. Scumbags, most of them, these
old drunks who manage run-down dives like this one all across Texas and
Oklahoma and New Mexico and Kansas. Jonesy's Bar & Grill, though why
anyone added the "grill" part is a mystery since she hasn't seen
anyone eating anything except the free peanuts. Earlier she ate a gristly
hamburger at the bar--"On the house," Jonesy told her magnanimously--but
now she wishes she hadn't because her stomach is acting up. Too bad, because
her ten-minute break--"in case you have to pee," Jonesy said,
looking at her hard as though he expected her to shoot up in the restroom--is
over and she's on stage again. She slings the guitar strap over her shoulder
and smiles through the floor spotlights in front of her, but it's not a
smile that means anything at all.
"S'pose she ever gets any?" Cal Rider says to his buddy Larkin.
They're into their fourth round of Pabst Blue Ribbons at a table off in
a corner of the room.
Larkin shakes his head. "What I wonder is why anybody'd want to.
She looks like ten miles of bad road to me. And look at the way she's dressed.
God a'mighty."
Apparently she doesn't pay much attention to her clothes. She's wearing
a shapeless two-piece black outfit that shows a tiny roll of fat between
her skirt and blouse, and she's got on open-toed sandals that are little
more than flip-flops. "You know, I'd say you're right," Cal says,
"except there's guys that'd put their long john into anything that
ain't dead."
Larkin laughs. "Yeah, cowboy, and you're one of 'em."
They continue to stare at the little stage while they drink their beers.
Betty Lou, if that's her name, is singing and playing an old country western
tune from way back, maybe Hank Williams. "Is that what it sounds like
to you?" Cal says to Larkin.
"How the hell would I know? She ain't got much of a voice, though--she's
damn sure no Shania Twain."
"They're not in the same universe, man."
They order two more PBRs. "I wonder what her story is," Cal
says after a while.
"Who cares?"
"Everybody's got a story. Tell you what--next time she takes a
break I'm gonna ask her to come over and sit with us."
"You're crazy," Larkin says. "There's got to be at least
five, six women over at the bar that's better looking than her."
"Then how come you're sittin' here with me? Because you know you
don't have a chance with those bar babes, and neither do I. We're not exactly
prime, if you get my meaning. We got shit on our boots, you're wearing
the same shirt you've been wearing for a week, we both got sweat stains
on our hats, and I ain't shaved or even combed my hair good since last
Tuesday. We are some dumb cowboys, that's a fact."
Larkin looks around and spits on the floor. "I had me a piece of
Maybelle over at the Dairy Queen last week."
"Then she must've been drunk out of her mind."
"So what? Pussy's pussy."
Shaking his head at his friend's uncool ways, Cal turns his attention
to the stage. It seems to him that Betty Lou Springer has a kind of sweet
face if nothing else. What does Larkin know anyway.
She adjusts the guitar strap more comfortably across her left shoulder,
fingers a couple of minor key chords, and begins to sing a Reba McEntire
oldie because that's what most people like, though no one here is paying
any attention to her at all, except that one cowboy back in the corner.
But because it's the last set of the evening she decides to fill it out
with her own songs, things she's been working on for a while, songs about
lost love and heartbreak and how nobody cares about anything real or true.
And it's obvious to her, if not to anyone else, that playing and singing
her own sad songs makes her happy.
The guitar is barely okay, a Fender Sonoran with the funky bent Stratocaster
head stock and a scratched sound box, like the ones Malibu beach bums played
back in the late sixties. She bought it used last year for three hundred
dollars from a guy who probably also got it used and was about to pawn
it, and the good thing about it is, nobody would bother to steal it. Before
that, and it makes her sick to think about it even now, she saved up three
thousand dollars--virtually every cent from four or five months of terrible
gigs in places like Garden City, Kansas, and Enid, Oklahoma--and put it
all on a gorgeous Gibson J-45 Custom acoustic with the sweetest tone this
side of heaven. On a late-night bus from somewhere in Oklahoma to somewhere
in Texas she fell asleep from exhaustion, the Gibson in its case beside
her because she didn't trust the baggage hold, and woke to find that some
miserable son of a bitch had walked off with it. She cried for weeks after,
but what good does crying do? That's what her songs are about--the unfairness
of it all, people who don't deserve to be kicked in the face when all they've
tried to do is bring a little honest music into the world.
It is times like this, singing her own songs, that everything around
her fades into nonbeing--the room, the people jabbering and laughing but
not listening, even this flat, dusty west Texas town of Plainview--all
of it disappears and there are only the words from deep in her gut, her
words, and her fingers curling over the frets, making the music. The fact
that the tip jar beside her is empty except for the three one-dollar bills
she herself seeded it with, the fact that she'll only be paid a promised
fifty dollars for the whole night's work is, at this moment, irrelevant.
Her voice is getting tired now and even more raspy. Someone suggested
not long ago that she should see a doctor about it, but she has no insurance
and no time for doctors anyway. She glances at the Timex on her wrist and
is relieved to see that she's inching up on that magic moment when she
can quit playing and say goodnight to the brain-dead audience and collect
her fifty from Jonesy.
She plays the last sad chord on the guitar and sings the last sad note,
holding it for what seems a long time. And a strange thing is happening.
One of the cowboys she noticed earlier steps up to the tip jar and puts
what looks like a ten dollar bill into it, then stands there waiting for
her to finish the song. When she does, he says, "That it?"
She looks at him. "You mean am I through for the evening? Yes I
am, thank God."
"Then would you like to join me and my friend for a drink?"
He's rough around the edges, no doubt about that. But not bad looking,
and he has a kind of half-smile that appeals to her. Ordinarily she'd say
no thanks out of habit, but this time, whether because she's dead tired
or whatever, she nods. "Okay. Maybe just one."
"Me, I've never been able to stop at just one," he says, and
the smile gets bigger.
"I've got to go to the ladies and then I've got to get paid, but
I'll be over shortly. And thank you."
"You're welcome," he says. "I knew you'd have nice manners.
Not like some."
She doesn't have any lipstick in her purse but she almost wishes she
did. In the restroom mirror she sees the dark circles under her eyes and
wonders why any man would bother to look at her a second time. Why did
the cowboy bother? Maybe he thinks I'm an easy lay. Maybe the two of them
plan to rape me. She fingers the sharp-pointed letter opener she keeps
in her purse and knows she'll use it if she has to. A time or two in the
past she's had to.
Jonesy gives her some trouble about singing her own songs. "Nobody
gives a shit about your own stuff," he tells her, holding onto the
check. "You were hired to sing straight country that everybody likes."
"Nobody was listening," she says, "so what difference
does it make?"
"It makes a difference to me," he says, "and I'm the
one you have to keep happy. I was thinking about asking you to stay over
for tomorrow night--the guy I had is sick--but not on your life, not after
tonight's crappy performance."
"Thanks for nothing," she says, snatching the check from his
hand. She walks over to the cowboys' table and the one who tipped her pulls
over a chair from another table. "Bastard," she says under her
breath, setting the guitar down beside her.
"Who you talkin' to?" Larkin asks her, frowning.
"This here is my friend Larkin," the other one says. "Don't
pay him no mind. I'm Cal Rider. And I guess you're Betty Lou Springer.
Where you from, Betty Lou?"
"All over," she says.
"But you must've grown up somewhere."
"All over," she repeats. "How about that drink now?"
"You gonna get one of them pink vodka things?" Larkin asks
her. "I'll bet she's gonna get one of them pink vodka things,"
he says to Cal
"No, that'd put me right to sleep," she says. "I'll just
have a beer, whatever you boys are drinking."
Cal motions to a waitress and orders another round of PBRs. "Texas'
own," Larkin says, holding up one of the bottles when they come.
"Not really," Cal says. "Used to be a headquarters in
San Antone but they're out in California somewhere now. Lone Star, that
was the real Texas beer. You agree, Betty Lou?"
If you would like to read more
of Rondo and Fugue for Two Pianos by Lawrence Dunning, order your
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