Wednesday, July 05, 2006

I, we, will.


In an alternate universe, she’s living a hand-to-mouth, video-store clerk existence as the fiddler and backup singer in The Most and The Least, an alt.country band pounding out rockabilly, bluegrass and western swing retreads of ABBA and Barry Manilow songs. In that universe, after missing weekend gig after weekend gig at Monsieur Cracklins, the rundown neighborhood honky tonk, her neighbor Todd Newison finally makes it one Saturday night, and calls his friends who show up and sing along during the loud numbers and sway during the ballads.

Months go by, and the shows start filling slowly, and then to bursting; there’s a reprimand and some finger-waggling waiting for her at Blockbuster most Sunday mornings, when she’s usually late, half-dead and half-deaf - and while drifting through a zen-haze of stacking and sorting copies of Hitch, she’s remembering the night before, after the show - exhaling bong hits into her manager’s son’s open, willing mouth, while her lead singer picks out a frenetic banjo rendition of Sisqo’s “Thong Song” to the delight of three Northwestern co-eds, grinning like maniacs, sitting Indian-style, on the floor. A Cheaper By The Dozen 2 case falls to the floor and snaps open - and she watches as the disc jumps out and rolls, wobbily, down the aisle and into Documentaries.

In that alternate universe, she’s remembering tracing the faded edges of a Bob Wills album cover with her fingers, and the cool of black vinyl slipping across her small, soft hands, as her grandfather holds her up so she can put the record on the turntable - and the world a blur of steel guitar and violin and the high, hot whoops of the Texas Playboys; a world where Grandpa spins her in circles, and dances and bows and dances some more - but the last peals of "San Antonio Rose" and her grandfather’s warm callouses are replaced by a gentle plea from someone looking for “that one movie where Bill Murray is in Japan and not super funny,”

The Most and The Least convene one early Tuesday evening, over burgers and chicken and beer, to discuss taking leave from their jobs and touring middle-state college towns. The van is found, the equipment paid for, the dates tentatively booked. Should we go? Can we go? Will we go?

In that elsewhere, walking home to an other-apartment, she notices a thin rivulet of ketchup drying dark and brown on her bright blue workshirt. She flings it off, and just as it lands in a nearby gutter, as the wind thrills through the t-shirt underneath - the season so cold, and the walk so long. She’s pulling her arms in when the world flutters and jumps ahead a few frames and for a moment she can see a familiar figure piling groceries in a car she’s never owned, climbing in and pulling away, a Patsy Cline song fading softly on her lips - and then the world-sprockets catch, and she’s shivering now, with only Patsy’s pleas to remind her of the odd moment afterwards - watching someone she might recognize as herself, if only the song - a brilliant melancholy - was more than some lukewarm aspiration, but something to give yourself over to, as she had, in that moment, decided - I, we, will.