Road Trip Pt. 04

I spoke in a pleasant but matter of fact voice, hoping to pull her out of her despair over the tire, "Hard to fix something like that? Do you have spare?"

The dirty blond looked up at me. Mascara streaked the pretty features of her face along with the glistening tracks of many tears. She talked and sobbed simultaneously: "No ... spare ... no ... money. I'm done for."

I thought for a moment and looked around. About a block away I could see the sign for an auto and truck center. Almost in answer to the situation I could see the word 'Tires' below the larger letters in the sign.

"Do you have a jack? You know, so we can get the tire off your car?"

Again, she spoke through her choked up voice, "In the trunk ... I think." She held up a set of worn car keys in my direction.

Her cries slowed as she watched me get the car jack and lug wrench from the trunk. She stood, sniffled, and kept asking me what I intended to do because she had no money for a replacement tire. I popped the small hubcap off the wheel, loosened the lug nuts, and then jacked the car so the tire rose off the ground. Two minutes later the tire fell off the car into my hands. I'd left the knife in it so the hole would be easy to find.

As I'd worked, I'd extracted a few pieces of information from the pretty woman: her name was Shaye, she'd had a boyfriend up until that morning – they'd argued, he punched her, stuck a knife in the tire, and left for points west. He'd also taken all her money. She was from Texas, miles away, and knew no one in the town.

I suggested she stay with the car while I got the tire fixed. I carried the tire the block to the repair shop. A no-nonsense man met me at the door; he'd seen me approach with the tire in hand.

I started to speak, but he held up his hand for me to remain silent. He read the tire size, touched the knife, and then led me into one of the large empty garage bays. He pulled a tire off a metal rack and verified the size, then turned to me: "It'll cost you $80 - mounted and balanced. The tire you've got is no good; couldn't even put a tube in it with the gash the knife left."

I smiled and told him to go ahead. He stood still until I peeled four twenty-dollar bills from the small roll in my pocket and passed them to him. He smiled at me and went to work replacing the tire.

When I got back to the woman's car rolling the new tire in front of me, she had disappeared. I shrugged, resigned to complete my second good deed for the day. I got halfway through mounting the tire when Shaye appeared next to me.

She said in a dejected tone, "I had to wash my face. I know I looked a mess - runny makeup and all. I'm not normally like that; it's just that today's a low point in my life. The guy I've been living with for two years took off this morning, and I know I'll never see him again. He took my half of some money we'd saved - over two grand. I have about thirty bucks. We were supposed to play a gig down the street, so he's screwed them over too. I can't work alone, and I'll never get a chance to work here again now that their Saturday night's entertainment is a no-show. I also can't pay you for that tire. I'm sorry."

"Whoa!" I said, "Slow down; one thing at a time; how do you know your boyfriend's gone and are you sure he took the money?" I asked as I started to get the lug nuts in place to hold the tire on the car.

She said in a sad voice, "He told me; said he'd wasted his sorry ass taking care of me, and that I owed him the money. I think he got it all backwards; I took care of him and deserved at least my share of the money. I was the one getting us guest appearances. I have the better voice. I just let him takeover – I'm such a loser."

She squatted down so she was more at my level as I knelt to put the tire on the car. I noted how nice her blue jeans hugged her perfectly shaped ass. The muscle tone of her shapely legs also showed as they stretched the denim. When she leaned forward, the fullness of her breasts also showed through the open neck of her western shirt. I wanted to open more of the western snaps to see more. I struggled to keep my eyes on her pretty face – she was easy to look at.

She kept talking about her situation, "He and I sang country music. We traveled around in the central states - even did appearances a few places in Canada. My guess is he went after some little tramp he went ga-ga eyes over in Calgary a week ago. He said he was headed up that way."

I asked, "And why can't you appear solo tonight or get a job after this?"

Shaye thought a long time before answering; I struggled with a reluctant lug nut. "I've haven't sung alone in years. I can play guitar and sing, but I've always been part of a duet or larger group – I take comfort in numbers on stage, otherwise I'd be too nervous. Hank and I were together for two years. God, I'm dumb!" I could see the self-directed anger starting to emerge.

I volunteered, "Show me that you can sing, and maybe I'll sing some with you to get you started. Some folks think I can sing, although I should warn you, my guitar playing is pretty basic."

Shaye stared at me a long time, getting outside her self-pity and really taking in what I looked like for the first time since we'd met. "Oh, shit," she muttered loud enough for me to hear; "You're him ... that guy ... Crystal Lee and you ..."

"Hi, again. Jim Mellon at your service."

Shaye sputtered about. I had to stop and tell her to calm down. "Look, I'm just a guy who happened to have a string of good luck - meeting Crystal, recording songs, and all. Don't go all flaky on me. You're as special as I am and as Crystal is. Heck, Crystal tended bar and waited tables and sang in between, then someone happened to like one song she did –'Flirty, Flirty Cowgirl.' It can happen to you too."

She spoke with awe in her voice, "You're riding your motorcycle through all the states, right? Where's your motorcycle?"

I gestured down the block to where my over packed motorcycle sat in a parking space.

Shaye fell back from her crouch next to me onto her butt. She was overtaken. "I've never met anyone so famous."

"Get over it," I implored. "I'm just a guy - a nice one, I hope, that's helping a stranded lady fix a tire. Now, I'm also offering to do a little impromptu singing with her; if, and I mean a big 'if', she can prove to me that she can sing, and we can get our act together before you go on tonight."

Shaye sputtered some more and finally said, "Oh, God, I'd be so honored to sing with you. What do you want me to do, sing for you right here, right now?" Her tone of voice told me that if I'd asked her to jump off a building, she'd immediately leap right off without a second thought.

I responded, "No, let's go somewhere a little more private. Is there a park near here?"

She replied, "I saw one two blocks that way." She gestured to the north.

I tightened the last of the lug nuts, popped the hubcap on, and let the car down off the jack. As I stowed the jack back in the trunk of the car, I said, "You lead, I'll get my bike and follow you. I see the guitar back in the back of your car; bring that too. Let's find a nice place to practice."

"Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. I can't pay you now for the tire, but when I can, what will I owe you for the tire?"

I shook my head as I walked to the bike. I said back at her, "Pay me back by singing up a storm tonight. Now, come show me what you can do."

I followed Shaye a couple of blocks to a little park with a bandstand in the center. The park was empty aside from a mother walking two small children near one corner.

I took my small travel guitar from my motorcycle and walked to where Shaye had parked. She sprang from the car and quickly retrieved her rather beat up guitar from the back of her car. We went over to a park bench.

After getting our guitars in tune, I said, "OK, now, let's see what we can sing and play together." I could see the color rise in her face. I went on, "Name some of the songs you like to play, particularly in front of the audience we'll have tonight." The more I thought about singing that evening, the more I got into it. It'd be fun to accompany her and see whether anyone noticed my celebrity status.

Shaye pulled a tattered piece of paper from her pocket. On it were the names of about fifty country music songs. She explained, "We'd keep this list in front of us when we played. I'd call out a number, and we'd play that one. I learned a lot of these when I played in a group down in Texas five years ago. The leader taught me this system."

I looked at the list and spoke, "So if I say 'forty two'?"

"We start playing 'Amarillo By Morning,' you know the one by George Strait. Hank could sort of sound like him too."

I said, "I love that song, but don't know the chord progressions."

Shaye said, "Oh, it's easy. C-G-Am-G-D7-C. Watch me, I'll chord, then you join in." She launched into a slow version of the chords as I watched trying to follow her rapid changes on the frets. After three passes, she said, "That's it, you're getting it now. Do you know the words?"

I did. We did a slow duck walk through the song, and then started all over. As we did, she said, "This is a song a guy should really sing. I'd sing the background on it."

After our fourth pass, we stopped and I looked at her carefully, "Shaye, you have a good voice. It's easy to listen to. People will take notice. You shouldn't be background; you should be foreground - take the lead or at least be equal to your onstage partner. Pick another song that you can take the lead on."

She glanced at the list and said, "Number thirty;'Your Smilin' Face' - it's jazzy the way James Taylor did it. Hank didn't like playing it, so I'd sometimes end up almost doing the whole number alone."

"Do it."

Shaye launched into an upbeat and jazzy guitar intro to the piece, a combination of rapid picking and strumming, plus some slapping of the guitar face to emphasize a backbeat. I was impressed. Her voice rang out and had a fine melodic character to it. She got a lot of sound out of the tattered guitar too. Towards the end, I said, "Again," to her. She started to go through the song again, and I joined in, doing some simpler strumming as I watched her chords, and adding some background to her. We sounded good.

When we were finished, I said, "Put that one on the list for tonight."

Shaye broke into a huge smile. "You'll do it?" she asked excitedly, practically jumping up and down.

"Yes. Honey, someone has done a number on you about your talent and capability. You have a nice voice – you can go far just by yourself. With the right break, I think you could even get on the charts and into something bigger than roaming around eking out a living doing weekend gigs. If you could get to Nashville, I think I could get you plugged into the music scene. I could at least introduce you to my agent and a few other people. I know they'd like you and route you to the right people to make something happen for you."

I got a big hug and kiss for those remarks after she searched my face to make sure I was serious. Then, she sat, expectantly awaiting my next instructions. The kiss had seriously distracted me for a few seconds. I was wondering ... wait, put that aside for now.

Rather than instruct, I prompted her; "If you'd just hired me to do this gig with you, what would you have me doing now?"

Shaye spoke, "Why, we'd run through the numbers we know together."

"And if that didn't make up a full evening's program?"

"After that, I'd pick the songs I'd sing alone to fill in the gaps."

"Then, do it."

She said, "OK, start at the top of the list. Do you know number one?" I could see her sitting up a little straighter as she took command of the situation.

The rest of the afternoon, with a couple of breaks, we worked our way down the list. Fortunately, as I told her, I knew many songs because I'd done them with Crystal or knew them from earlier in my life. We 'x'd' off songs I didn't know or that had a decided male flavor to them. In the end, we had thirty-seven songs on the list: twenty I could play in some way, and seventeen Shaye could do alone or maybe with me in the background. We had to fill from eight o'clock to midnight, with two half-hour breaks - three hours worth of music if we went straight through.

We talked about how to extend songs beyond their normal three or four-minute length, and what kind of between-song dialog we'd do. Then, I dropped a big idea on her: "Have you ever had others in the audience join you on stage – either singing or with instruments?"

Shaye laughed, "Only when they've been drunk as skunks and want a piece of my ass. What are you thinking?"

I said, "After the first half hour, the audience will be used to us. We need to break the pace with something different. One of us should ask whether anyone has a musical instrument with them that might want to join us for a few songs. This is a small town; I bet many of the people know each other."

"THAT's a great idea! But, what if no one comes up?"

"We just keep doing our own thing, but work at audience involvement. You know, get them to sing the chorus of some songs, and so on. Play it by ear."

We broke for dinner at six. I made a couple of local phone calls while we were waiting for our food. I had a gift to give – an important one, and more so than the tire. I also needed some western clothes to complete my onstage image. My others had been left behind various places.

We were in the backroom at Buck's Roadhouse at seven-thirty, waiting for our eight o'clock start. One of the barmaids stuck her head in the door, and said to someone outside the door, "They're in here. There you go."

A young man in his twenties walked in carrying several large bags, a box, and a guitar case. Shaye gave me a puzzled expression. I paid the courier and gave him a generous tip for following my instructions to the letter. I took the guitar case from the courier and ceremoniously presented it to Shaye. She looked shocked when she opened the case; inside sat a brand-new Fender T-bucket acoustic-electric guitar – shiny and bright. At first she shook her head and said, "I can't accept such an expensive gift". I explained to her that I thought she needed a better guitar than what she had, and that I'd play her old one on stage that night. A small amplifier also came with the package. Shaye then began crying in earnest, and I had to hold her for a few minutes as she sobbed into my shoulder and kept saying 'Thank you. I'll never be able to pay you back. Thank you.'

In the bags were matching western clothes that I had bought us. I guessed her size. She took the ensemble and ran off to the ladies room to change with a bad case of the sniffles. When she came back, I'd already changed, even adding some new western boots to my outfit. Shaye looked gorgeous, a bright glittery 'show biz' silk top that glistened even in the dim light of the backroom. Her skirt fit – denim with glittery sequence and metal studs all over; it was intentionally short. She protested its length, but I explained that she had great legs, and her sex appeal was part of the show and her new popularity. Our new boots matched.

Shaye threw herself into my arms, and planted several long and generous kisses on my lips. I felt that resonance deep inside that later tonight might be interesting to pursue. I shoved the idea aside. I grabbed Shaye's old guitar so I could have a couple of minutes to get used to the instrument before we went on stage.

At the stroke of eight, the canned music ended, Shaye and I walked out on stage, and the owner of Buck's Roadhouse introduced us with a portable microphone. The sound echoed around the building, a conversion from a large old auto garage. I guessed a hundred to a hundred-fifty people were in the large bar: two-thirds guys and a one-third women. A lot of flirting and eyeballing had already started. We were introduced as 'Shaye and Jim.' No one paid me any mind, much to my delight. I'd made Shaye promise not to divulge my identity, but I expected it would come out somehow before the end of the night.

The first number was a long toe-tapper. The idea was to get people dancing on the large square wooden floor in front of the stage. As we sang, I even gestured to some of the reluctant couples sitting at side tables to come and dance. They came to the dance floor and started some good gyrations to our music; others started to follow.

Shaye introduced the next number, one where I'd join her again. We belted out the upbeat lyrics as she took the lead with the guitar music. Her new guitar and amp sounded great. I chorded along with her, but my guitar music was only background to her melody. Shaye did a solo on the fourth song, a fast number called'Summer Sent You,' a song more Irish than western, but the crowd loved it. I did some accompaniment from ten feet behind her. Now, when a number finished, some people started to applaud. I wanted the evening to change from 'bar music' to a concert by 'Shaye and Friend.'

After two more numbers, I asked the audience, "Any of you musicians out there want to join us up here, maybe do a little country music jamming?" Much to our pleasure, three guys hooted and waved at us to show they were accepting our offer. They exited the club and returned only seconds later: one with harmonica, one with an electric base and amp, and the third with another acoustic guitar. I got us some more microphones as everyone tuned up.

We caucused on stage and found we all knew some John Denver songs. We launched into a jazzy version of'Country Roads,' trading the lead back and forth between the five of us. We kept the pace of the song on the up tempo side. We had dancers on the floor, but gradually many of the couples started to cluster around the stage and watch our impromptu antics. We were all having fun performing. At the end of the song, we got a really strong round of applause.

One guy from the audience asked me, 'Do you want some drums; I can have a set up here in ten minutes.' I nodded enthusiastically to him. He disappeared, and true to his word reappeared at the end of the next song with three of his friends. He set up a complete drum set on stage as we planned the next song. Now, there were six of us on stage.

I noted that more and more people were flowing into the bar. The owner of Buck's appeared a couple of times at the edge of the small stage and gave us a big smile and a thumbs up sign expressing his approval.

I did a solo song backed up by Shaye and the rest of our hodge-podge musicians. Of course, the song I picked was one I was becoming increasingly well-known for,'Texas Dawn.' Shaye did some of the background singing, the way the backup singers had done for Crystal and me when we sang on stage.

As I got into the third verse, a reprise of the first, I saw the whispers start to go through the crowd. The entire saloon gathered in front of the stage, then maybe three hundred people. More were flowing in the door at a run.

As I sang, the audience started to join in on the chorus - at least, those that knew the song did. When we wrapped up the song, everyone cheered. I could hear my name shouted from the crowded, "Jim. Jim. Go, Jim!" I gestured for Shaye to come and join me. She came up, and I gave her a hug. I whispered to her, "Introduce the next song; one you and I do together." The others can join in as best they can.

Shaye picked, 'Mexico,' a favorite by James Taylor and Jimmy Buffet. The two of us had rehearsed the song in the afternoon. The drummer knew the song and gave us a strong backbeat to get started. We launched into the fast paced number. I gestured for the audience to join in singing, and soon at least half the people in the bar were singing at the top of their lungs and dancing in place as we sang. The others gradually picked up the beat and started to join in. The song turned into a fifteen-minute triumph. We got a huge round of applause, and then went on our planned break.