“S’cuse me.” Becky stands gingerly, pushing herself up from the table with both hands.
“Where you goin’, Beck?”
“Outside for a minute. I, ah, need to walk around.”
“Just a sec’. I’ll go with you.”
“No! I mean--no, Hamp, you stay and talk with these guys. I’ll be right back.”
“Don’t be silly, Beck. It’s dark outside. I’ll come with you and have a cig.”
Becky plops back into her chair. “Never mind. I’m not going,” she pouts.
“What’s the matter with you, hon’?”
“Yeah,” says Amy. “D’you feel, like, okay? You look a little flushed.”
“I’m fine. Can we just please change the subject?” Becky turns toward the end of the table. “Mike, didn’t you t ell me you met Butch Tendler once?”
This conversational distractor generates a chorus of Wow!s, Really?s, and No Shit!s from the group.
“There was a picture of him in the paper,” says Amy “He looked pretty dirty--greasy hair and all that.” She wrinkles her nose.
“Naw,” says Mike. “He’s a good guy. That’s just the look those guys have. I met him when I was workin’ in a little bar in Spokane. Before he got well known.”
“D’ya get his autograph?” asks Ginny.
“Naw. I’m tellin’ ya,’ he wasn’t anybody then.”
“I’m not sure he’s anybody now,” says Ted. “I mean, the Hot Flash Burrito Company, Pocatello, Idaho, isn’t exactly the main concert circuit.”
“Oh shut up, Ted.” Ginny flips her straw at her companion, and a few drops of Diet Coke splatter the table. “You’re just jealous.”
Three loud taps on the microphone echo through the room, and the man in the chili pepper apron clears his throat. “As soon as everyone is seated, we’ll continue,” he says. A general scurrying follows this announcement, and everyone at Becky’s table turns to face the stage. “Ladies and gentlemen,” says the man in the apron, pausing portentously, “...Butch Tendler!”
Amid cheers and boisterous hoots, the musician emerges from the tiny Hot Flash kitchen and rushes toward the stage, holding a cordless electric guitar over his head and riffing his own accompaniment to his entrance He takes the steps two at a time, gaining center stage in one long-legged stride. Nodding acknowledgement of the audience’s welcome, he slides into an energetic reworking of John Mayall’s “Gasoline Blues.” He clutches his guitar high to his chest, holding it upright like a cello. One thin, black-clad leg keeps the beat, stomping up and down in its worn leather boot. Long, thick ropes of dark hair jump and sway heavily across his face, brushing the strings of the guitar. Butch jerks and bobs to his own music, rushing from one instrumental to the next, as the remote transmitter bounces wildly on the strap of his guitar. His eyes are narrow slits in his pale, craggy face, and a smear of four-day-old beard darkens his jaw.
“What’d I tell you?” snorts Amy. “Disgusting.”
“Well, I think he’s cute,” says Ginny, clapping her hands in time to the heavy beat.
“I don’t. Looks filthy to me.”
Karl, over by the pop cooler, is distracted for a moment from his attentions to Cherie. The music loops over his head, drawing his body a little away from hers. Karl pays close attention to the way Butch fingers the strings of his guitar. He notes the chords that sound in minor tones, the bluesy ones that touch the gut and move past it to the soul of the audience. Man, if I could play like that, he thinks.
Cherie feels Karl drifting away and renews the pressure of her arm against his body. He turns his face to hers; it’s pinked with excitement and slightly shiny. As if on impulse, encouraged by the music, Cherie kisses him wetly on his neck, where the muscles disappear into his shirt collar. The music is working with Cherie now. She has Karl’s full attention again. They stand together, arms around each other’s waist, their matched pulses in sync with the beat. On Cherie’s other side, Nadine rotates her bar stool a quarter turn back and forth and drags the last of her Diet Coke through its collapsing straw, making the happy, splurpy, sucking sounds of a ravenous baby.
The stout woman fans herself vigorously with her menu, her wrist snapping along with Butch Tendler’s stamping foot. Funny how songs keep coming around again. I remember when this one came out years ago. This is peppier, though--not bad. Good thing Sharla didn’t come after all. She’d hate the noise....
Becky tries hard to concentrate on the music, which seems to her to go on forever, but, as more and more people tap their feet, the vibrations from the floor have a worsening effect on her stomach. The cement mixer image rises before her. She remembers several years ago when her father had their driveway repaved: the lumbering truck with its bloated, rotating tank, the exit chute folded up against the pressure of the newly-mixed cement. She remembers how, when the truck was correctly positioned, her father helped the driver lower the chute, and thick, lumpy cement gurgled down the open tube into the framed-in driveway. Becky’s insides heave to this image, and she half-rises from her chair, just as Butch finishes his set. Stage or no stage, I’ve gotta go, she vows to herself, and pushes her chair back with such force that it knocks against the table behind her. Cheers and cries of “Yes!” break out all around her, and for one disorienting moment she thinks they are for her.
“C’mon!” shouts Ginny, grabbing Becky’s hand and hauling her toward the stage. “Let’s get him to sign our menu!”
A small but vigorous group of other people have the same idea. Becky is pushed and pulled toward the stage where Butch Tendler, his guitar still humming from its final drubbing, smiles and shakes hands and scribbles his name on cocktail napkins, matchbook covers, and copies of his own CD.
“Ow! You’re stepping on the back of my shoe,” Becky says to a beefy young man in a Zildjian t-shirt, but the man only moves closer, and his bulk pushes Becky up the stage steps and against the stair rail nearest Butch. Butch turns her way and holds out one hand, the other poised with a pen to sign his name. “No, really, I just want to go to the....” pleads Becky, but in the tight press of Butch’s fans, her words are lost. The cold, metal bar of the railing presses low and deep into Becky’s abdomen, and with a slow puff, like the popping of a soft, helium-filled balloon, the tired leftover from a birthday party, Becky’s tension is relieved.
Becky gasps and blushes bright red--omigod, I can't believe I just farted!--then takes a fumbling step backward down the stage steps. She loses her grip on the railing and nearly falls, but the bodies behind her buoy her up, then close around her, eager to take her place. She stumbles blindly back to her table, mortified and hot.
Hamp steadies her chair as she drops into it. “What’sa matter, Beck? Couldn’t you get his autograph?”
Becky shakes her head dumbly.
“Have some more to eat.” Hamp nudges the nacho tray toward her, but Becky pushes it away, knocking it into the salsa bowl. Its contents rock up and over the edge. A thick puddle of green chili salsa soaks into the tablecloth.
Karl holds Cherie’s coat for her while she pleads with Nadine. “C’mon, Nadine. We’ll meet you there. You take your car. Karl will give me a ride.”
“You know you’ll never make it to the First Nash. I’m not going in there by myself.”
“Yes we will. Really. Karl just needs to stop by his place for a minute.” Cherie turns a beseeching look over her shoulder at Karl. “To pick up some more money or something.”
“That’s right,” he affirms.
Nadine looks at Karl over Cherie’s shoulder. She says nothing, just stares without smiling or blinking, and Karl drops his eyes.
“See ya,” says Nadine flatly. She picks up her coat, slaps a five-dollar bill on the table, and quickly threads her way through the tables toward the door.
“Nadine!” calls Cherie to Nadine’s back. “Really. We will!”
Nadine doesn’t turn around. She shakes her left hand at her side, as if she were shaking snow off her glove or shooing down the attentions of an obnoxious puppy.
Cherie sighs “She’s so difficult.”
Karl settles Cherie’s coat on her shoulders, then lightly massages the back of her neck with one hand. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, his lips close to the side of her head.
The group at Becky’s table is contentedly listless and quiet. “No need to rush off,” says Hamp. “It’s kinda nice just to sit here.” He turns to Becky. “Unless you want to go, hon.’”
“No, I’m okay now. In fact, I’d like a Diet Coke.”
Hamp beckons the waiter, and the group orders another round.
Mike shakes his head knowingly. “That Tendler was damn good. Much better than last time I heard him.”
“Well, he was all right, I guess,” says Amy. “Did you, like, get his autograph, Gin?”
“Yeah. He signed the menu. Hope they don’t mind me stealing it.”
“Doubt you’ll be the only one,” Ted interjects.
“He was really nice about it.” Ginny pauses and holds the menu close to her face. “But you can’t read his signature. It could say anything. And you know something, Amy? You were right about
him.”
“Whattaya mean?”
“He really is dirty. It’s not just a ‘look.’ When I got up close to him--he really stinks!”
The stout woman joins the crowd inching up the stairs to the outside door. In front of her, the young man nuzzles the neck of his blonde companion, and her arm massages his back, moving sinuously under his Nike jacket. Good grief, get a room, the woman thinks, then she smiles and clutches her sack of burritos-to-go. Actually, the music was really good. I should do this more often. The steaming paper bag crinkles softly, soothingly, under her arm.
[To order a copy of the book, Walking Pocatello, call the Idaho State University Bookstore, (208) 282-3237, or send me an email.]
