Chapters 1 & 2
A SUN- FADED BLUE CHEVY PICKUP WAS ROLLING DOWN A RED dirt road. No, faded sounds too nice, like a pair of jeans you’ve been waiting to get just right. Besides, it wasn’t just that the deep admiral blue had oxidized into a pale imitation of itself. Point was, this truck was a beater. It had rust holes in the wheel wells, bullet holes in the side, a hole where the antenna used to be, and a wrecked quarter panel that looked like a sheet of crumpled construction paper.
The front bumper hung at the angle of a crooked smile, there were two busted spotlights mounted on the cab, and the passenger door had come from a different truck altogether, which explained why it was pale orange.
In other words, the truck was a survivor from a time when pickups were things used for work on the ranch or the farm, not for tooling around Boston or Miami, or for towing a fifth wheel, a pleasure boat, two Jet Skis, and an ATV. It was built at a time when trucks didn’t come in feminine taffy colors with extended cabs, heated seats, and DVD players. They were made of real metal, not alloy, and they had bumpers like steel I-beams that would bust a hole in a cinder block wall if you hit it right or gave it a couple of shots.
If you were towing anything it was cattle to market or a horse trailer or maybe a bass boat. It had a bench seat, a busted AM- FM radio, and brackets where an eight- track tape player was once proudly mounted. It was a relic from a different age, held together with duct tape, bailing wire, Bondo, and the occasional prayer.
Somewhat like the dark haired guy at the wheel. Howdy looked like the kind who might’ve spent some time on the back of a tractor or a cutting horse or maybe both at one point or another in his day. He wore a black Resistol, a Cowboy Classic with a three- piece silvertone buckle clasp that gave the impression of a guy familiar with working outdoors and, at the same time, one who wasn’t unfamiliar with the inside of a honky-tonk.
As he steered that beater down the road, Howdy couldn’t believe he was still thinking about her. Marilyn Justine, the kind of girl who makes you shake your head later in life. There’d been a time when, if you’d asked him, and if he knew you well enough, he would have said the thing he loved about that girl was her unpredictability. And he’d have stuck to that story right up until she disappeared without any warning or explanation, let alone any reason he could think of. Would’ve been nice if she’d left a note, he thought, maybe some hints on self- improvement, if that was the problem, or that margarita recipe he liked so. But she was long gone, last seen in a crowded coffee shop south of San Jose, according to those who had caught a glimpse.
Howdy looked in the rearview at the cloud of dust he was leaving like a smoke signal to the state of Louisiana that said he’d be back someday, but first he had some things to do.
With Lake Charles over one shoulder and Sulphur over the other, he was heading for Beaumont, Texas, where he heard he might get a better price for his truck, maybe enough to get a good horse to put under the saddle that was bouncing around in the bed behind him. Be nice to put a little folding money in his pocket and get work someplace where all you need is a horse and a stake, like it was for a cowboy in the old days. This was the sort of idealized notion that appealed to Howdy. Truth was, he’d always been a bit of a romantic, it was one of the things that Marilyn Justine had liked about him.
Howdy rested his arm on the beat- up guitar case propped up in the passenger seat like an old friend sleeping one off. He looked down the road and wondered if he was heading toward something or if he was just leaving something behind. Either way, he figured he might get a good song out of all this. He’d be sure to keep his eyes and ears open for the lyrics.
SLIM HAD WORKED HIS WAY FROM WEST TEXAS TO EAST FOR no particular reason other than it was easier to steer straight than it was to turn around. At least that’s how it had started, before that business at Diablo’s Cantina back in Del Rio. After that, with help from some friends who were keeping their ears to the ground for him, he headed east because that’s where he needed to go. That’s where the thing had ended up. East Texas.
Started out on old Highway 90, heading for Hondo, doing all he could to stay off the interstates, not because his old car—a tattered and worn ’69 Chevy Nova SS, metal flake blue with a black vinyl interior, four on the floor with a Hurst stick, and 396 horses—couldn’t handle the high speeds anymore, but because he preferred the scenery offered by the older roads, the Blue Highways as somebody called them a long time ago. He took the long way around San Antonio, past the Verna- Anacacho oil field and down to Jourdanton where he saw the fine old Atascosa County Courthouse.
You can talk all you want about how big Texas is, Slim thought, but until you go across the thing side to side, you have no idea. He just hoped the old Chevy would get him where he was going, which, according to his friends, was somewhere near the Louisiana line.
He’d had the Chevy as long as he could remember, a used gift from his grandmother on his eighteenth birthday. He’d wrecked it good one time, but somehow put it back together. The odometer had retired years ago with two hundred one thousand and change on it. In fact the only gauge that still worked was the temp, always leaning toward overheating. The old engine gave him a scare outside Corpus Christi, a bad case of blue smoke trailing out the pipe for a minute before he hit a pothole and, honest to goodness, it seemed to fix whatever was wrong. He gave the dashboard a pat and kept on driving, though with slightly more clench to his cheeks. He skirted around the sprawl called Houston, gave Galveston a passing thought and Glen Campbell came to mind.
He took the ferry over to Port Bolivar then drove old 87 with the Gulf of Mexico keeping him company on the right. Straight ahead was Port Arthur, and just like that he thought of Janis Joplin singing about how she wished the Lord would buy her a Mercedes- Benz, a color TV, and a night on the town. Yeah, Slim thought, me too. Except he’d skip on the Benz and take a new truck, one of those fancy Silverados maybe, long as the Lord was buying.
He skirted north to Bridge City, where a friend told him he needed to head over to Beaumont. That’s where he’d find the thing he was looking for. He crossed the Beaumont city limits, saw a sign that read, “Texas with a little something extra.” Extra what, he wondered. Maybe it was the spirit of George Jones. And then he started singing in his head, “B double E double R you in?” Always liked that one.
The blue smoke started up again about a mile later. Slim looked for another pothole but things were paved pretty smooth on that particular edge of Beaumont. That ain’t to say it was the glamorous side of town, at least Slim hoped it wasn’t, just bars, cheap motels, and used- car lots. And it looked like Slim was going to have to do a bit of business on this stretch of road before he went on to take care of that other thing.
Copyright © 2008 by Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn
