Just Tragic

The raincloud-colored curtains in the Petroleum Club dining room were pulled tighter than usual that afternoon, and the two monster TVs had been turned way down. There was still the steady jingle of cutlery against china, still the drone of obsequious patter from staff as they fed and watered the local tycoonery. But the atmosphere was eerily subdued, just like it had gotten to be everywhere else that summer. An aged dude dressed in dark tweed two tables away sucked on his dentures and heaved a giant sigh, like he’d just lost a relative. Maybe he had, of course.

My lunch date was fifteen minutes late. Nibbling on parched breadsticks and watching the entrance was making me feel desperate. Eating by oneself at a place like this does tend to give one the aura of a sullen crank or has-been. In retrospect, I was worried over nothing – most downtown people during those days were spending their free time alone. But I was also concerned that the guy I was supposed to be meeting wouldn’t jibe with the environment. How I presented myself in front of the regulars here still mattered to my career, even during those somber, listless days.

When I caught sight of him ambling up to the maître d’s station, I could tell right away I wouldn’t have to worry. His dark peaked-lapel suit was lush, impeccable. He wore a big shiny silver belt buckle and the inevitable dumb cowboy hat, but both were visibly expensive. He could afford to rely on such trappings coming across as charming quirks, especially to anybody there who might recognize him. I was relieved for more than one reason – his garb and the way he carried himself were hints that he wasn’t completely unused to the type of advice I was about to provide.

“Y’all happen to be Brandon McCumber?” He took long strides across the grey carpet toward my table, his arm thrust forward like a cattle prod. These southern guys and their sacred handshakes.

“Yes, sir!” I leapt up from my table and pumped his hand. “Sure is a pleasure to meetcha!” Personality mirroring is what the psych professors call it.

As we sat down, a skinny bowtied waiter glided by, delivering menus. “Sure hope they got steak on here,” said my new companion, as if there could be any doubt. His up-close speaking voice was a surprise, sepulchrally low and a touch gravelly, not at all like the airy, wistful tenor he affected when talking into a live mic. That was something that was bound to trip him up eventually if he stayed in the public eye much longer. Fans of his type of product might not be able to spell “authenticity,” but they tend to have a pretty good nose for it.

I ordered grilled fish; he asked for the porterhouse. I thought I’d give him the first chance to break the ice, but after our water glasses were filled, he just stared across at me with the same folksy insouciant grin you saw in so many of his photo ops.

Well, all right, then. “Shall we start with tomorrow’s setlist? I listened to all of the songs a few times apiece, and it’s mostly just fine.” I pulled a sheet of notepaper from my inner pocket. “I’ve made a few very small suggestions.”

He reached out to take my scribblings from me. Reading them slowly, he seemed a tad irritated at first, but by the time he’d reached the bottom of the list, he was nodding.

“I see where you’re comin’ from with respect to ‘Last Days of Summer.’ Pretty weepy number. Don’ like playing that one anyway – there’s an E7 chord that fucks with my fingers sometimes.” He glanced up at me quickly – checking I wouldn’t mind his ‘cussing,’ I suppose. “I can’t not play ‘Goodbye Wild Ways,’ though, dude – that one’s still in solid radio rotation.”

“I know.” I leaned across the table and pointed. “That’s why I just put an asterisk instead of drawing a line through. I think you should consider skipping the third verse. Or maybe changing two of the lines.”

He stared at me blankly for a few seconds while our food was delivered, then the light dawned.

“You mean, ‘crying at home in the darkness,’ etcetera? I guess because people first saw…I mean, the story first came out…all that screaming, in the video, it came on the news at…”

“A little after sundown that evening, yeah.” I leaned in and lowered my voice, not wanting to violate any taboos while other diners were in earshot. “Then more that same night at around ten thirty. The clip with the little kids in it, too. I’m sure you’ve seen it.”

A little shudder from him at that. “I reckon everybody has, by now. So you really think a single line like that, in a song about…”

“Absolutely. There’ll be fifteen thousand plus in the arena. It only takes a few bad reactions to ruin the vibe.”

“OK. OK, yeah, I get that. I can think of something different to sing. Maybe…”

I passed him a second piece of paper with the replacement couplet I had written that morning.

He read it slowly, sounding out the words, then nodded and seemed to sigh. “Yeah, sure, that’ll work. It’s even a good rhyme!”

I smiled and shrugged. My undergrad degree is in the classics. Before I stumbled into my current line of work as an urban folklore shaman-for-hire, I thought I might become a professor, spend my adult life translating Latin poetry. So yeah, Cowboy Joe, I can actually do a bit better than Moon/Spoon/Love/Glove, when pressed. Though, to be honest, I was also just a tiny bit gratified that he liked it.

He took a couple of extra seconds to swallow his first mouthful of steak, giving me a longer, more considering look. “They usually don’t send me out to talk to…uhh, to guys like you.” I smiled – he wasn’t the first of my clients who struggled with naming the service I provide. “Usually, it’s Claudia, my agent’s PA, who does these meetings. Then she’ll just take me aside about a half hour before I get up on stage and run over any stuff she thinks is worth mentioning. But I guess it’s good that I’m gettin’ it straight from the horse’s mouth in this pa’ticular situation.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

I got to work on my red snapper. Outside the window next to our table, one of the new downtown buses pulled up. As I sipped my sparkling water, an elderly woman stepped out through the rear doors, walked over to the iron bench next to the bus stop, and then sat down and buried her face in both hands, sobbing. Other pedestrians walked around her but couldn’t help doing double-takes. One younger woman reached out as she passed to touch the poor old gal’s heaving shoulders. Pretty familiar type of scene by now. I reached sideways, tugging the curtains closer together.

“How long’ve you been in this line of work, if you don’t mind me asking? Since before the…”

“Oh, yeah, quite a while before. Half a dozen years. In a city like ours, you’d be amazed how many different types of visitors need my kind of advice. Or they don’t really need it but want to ask anyway, just to be sure.”

“Things must have gotten a lot more interesting for you, since the…I mean, over the past …y’know.”

Was that twitch on his face the ghost of a sneer? Was this white suburban butterball who’d gotten famous off four campfire chords trying to suggest I was some sort of callous profiteer? I placed my knife and fork on either side of my plate. “I’d actually have preferred things to have stayed much, much less interesting.”

“Mmhm, yeah, I gotcha – of course, of course.”

My anger dissipated as quickly as it had arrived. Just a dumb, tactless question. I could tell he was already second-guessing as soon as the words came out. Like everyone else back then, I had lost some sleep over the past few weeks, and it had apparently made me cranky.

We talked a little more about stuff like staging and lighting and what the general tone of his banter should be between songs. Needless to say, I encouraged him to keep it light and upbeat while stopping short of anything frivolous. He seemed to have a pretty good handle on what I was trying to convey. He even scribbled some notes on the back of the paper I had given him.

After another half hour or so, he sighed and glanced at his watch as the table was being cleared. “Wanna get dessert?”

I wasn’t hungry but ordered a slice of pie with ice cream to keep pace. He thwacked the top of his crème brûlée with a spoon in a way that might, in other circumstances, have been infectiously joyful. But after a couple of mouthfuls, he got a faraway look in his eyes. At first, I thought he was just contemplating the custard. Then I glanced behind me and saw the local news had come on. There was nothing new in the captions; just rehashing the same grim battery of facts everybody had known since that one night. But conversations in the dining room all died out nonetheless, and everyone there became transfixed in the same way my guest was.

After the first grainy shot of red spattered across concrete, he quickly glanced away. We finished our food and waited for the check in broody silence.

Just after it arrived, he dug out his phone and brought up the image of a QR code. “So, uh, I dunno if it’s your type of thing at all,” he said, rather peculiarly avoiding eye contact, “but here’s two tickets to the show. Plus, it’ll also work as a backstage pass. Some of the folks in my crew said they’d be interested to meet you.”

I scanned the code, and a miniature photo of him appeared on my screen, peering out with vague menace from beneath a pitch black Stetson. Ridiculous stuff – still, I was surprised and touched by the gesture. “That’s very kind of you. I haven’t been down to the arena since I took my nephew to the circus.”

The memory made my breath catch for a second, and I had to look away. I couldn’t tell whether he noticed my reaction as he held his credit card out to the waiter, who was also hypnotized by a nearby screen.

By the time we parted ways, I had decided I actually liked the guy. He seemed genuinely flattered when I mentioned a few of his songs that I’d enjoyed. Or, y’know, found tolerable. I’m an opera guy mostly, and all that fiddlin’ and heartache mostly just strikes me as a poor alternative to thoughtful silence. He caught me for one more jolting handshake out on the sidewalk next to the weeping bus lady and told me the meeting had been a “fascinatin’ experience.” As I walked away, I watched him smilingly exchange words with what I guess was a fan – some twenty-something dude in sloppy denim who’d approached while he was waiting for his driver.

For some reason I no longer clearly remember, I found myself showing up for the concert. Maybe it just seemed like a superior option to sitting around my condo with TV and take-out, which was the only other thing I much wanted to do with my evenings in those days. Or perhaps the advice I’d given him to “keep it light” had gotten under my skin a little.

As I walked out of the parking lot, the downtown core was deserted apart from a slow current of sequined jackets and cowboy hats that wove through the streets toward the arena. Old-timey C&W twanged and crackled from the outdoor PA system. Closer to the ticket gates, the smell of spilled beer was omnipresent, and whoops and yeehaws echoed under the high concrete pillars. But all the fans I made eye contact with had an odd shyness about them, as though their fun was contingent on everyone else’s approval.

He took the stage with his band unceremoniously. The first three songs were all acoustic. He sat on a stool with his guitar and kept his head tilted down while he played and sang, using a wireless mic. The second tune was one of those wordy, multi-verse ballads full of narrative twists that always involve at least one death or personal injury. By the time it was finished, two middle-aged women and a dude in a brown leather jacket sitting close by had huge tears streaming down their cheeks. But it seemed to me a relatively cozy, consoling type of sadness. Just what people probably needed right now, I thought to myself.

When the music got faster and louder, my attention drifted. I fished out my phone and made for a high steel door behind some scaffolding with a sign that said “Staff Only.”

A woman with a long ponytail and spangles on her hip-hugging jeans greeted me there. She introduced herself as Kiki and was effusively friendly while she walked me to a place just offstage where I could see the band. Vibrations from the tall stacks of speakers made the floor quiver under my feet.

Kiki rested her fingertips against my upper arm. “Is he doing good?”

I nodded. The crowd was subdued, just as I had warned him, and only a handful of couples were dancing on the concrete steps between the rows of seats. But everyone there seemed profoundly attentive – heads swaying along with the beat, cautious smiles forming. The rolling waves of applause after each song felt like slow steps up a ladder out of deep darkness. 

“Thank you, everybody – thank you! Oh, my word.” He passed his twelve-string to a roadie and walked to the front edge of the proscenium. I noticed the rusty twang in his speaking voice was more pronounced than it had been both at the restaurant and when he was singing. “If y’all don’t mind, I want to take a break from the music and just get to know you a little better.”

I turned to Kiki. “He never mentioned that he was going to...”

  She flashed a motherly smile back at me. “It’s something you’ve gotta do at this sort of show. He’s always been real good at this type of chitchat, don’t worry.”

He crouched a little so he seemed to be addressing the first few rows, spinning some yarn about the squalid bar he’d played at last time he was in town. He had all his musicians and backup singers trained to smile and beck and nod for this stuff, like he was dispensing unearthly wisdom. I might possibly have advised him to cut back on the self-congratulatory blather about what a glorious turn his career had taken. But people do seem to have a higher tolerance for that kind of stuff now than they ever used to. There was scattered but earnest clapping when he told them about his travels all around the country and how he’d gotten to shake hands with both Garth Brooks and the Vice President. Then, he stood up and let an unusually long silence hang in the air.

“Now, I know that all the good people of this town have been through some hard times of late. And I don’t want to bring you down by summoning up painful feelings. But I want you to know that I truly do feel your suffering, deep in my heart.” He tapped two knuckles against the center of his chest. “What happened here a couple of weeks ago was tragic—just tragic.”  

Kiki’s hand was resting on my forearm arm now, her fixed PR smile still in place but a new look of uncertainly in her eyes. Her breath caught when he said, “Feel your suffering,” and she turned to look me straight in the eyes. I sighed and shook my head. Of course, I hadn’t advised or countenanced what he was doing now at any point during our meeting back at the Petroleum Club. Though now that I look back, I’m amazed I never caught a glimpse of what his true intentions had been all along, beneath the layers of downhome charm and plausible humility.

“Mother fucker,” Kiki hissed under her breath. She released my arm and hurried further backstage.

I was too far from the audience to see anyone’s face clearly. But I could tell from the way he was pacing the front of the stage that he didn’t like what he was seeing. Still, he blustered on. “Now, there’s a song off my very first album that we don’t play a lot anymore. But tonight, just for you, in this city, on this day, I’ve decided that it needs to be heard.”

He turned sharply on his bootheels and mouthed something at them – the title of the song, no doubt.

A couple of band members glanced back and forth at each other. The fiddler raised her bow and felt her way into a predictably ponderous, melancholy tune. But the music was barely audible over a new sound rolling forward from the back of the arena toward all of them. It started as an indecisive murmur, but once it hit a certain volume, the noise took a more coherent form until there was no way of mistaking what we were hearing. A few of the musicians had begun to join in, then quickly set aside their instruments.

“What do we do? What do we do?” Kiki was back alongside me again, trying to get my attention away from the spectacle onstage.

But I wasn’t willing to earn their money anymore. What he had stirred up in the paying customers that night, trying to reach down into them to places where even speech and music shouldn’t be allowed, was rising in me too. Memories from that evil afternoon came rushing back into my mind. I found myself stepping forward almost far enough to reach the visible part of the stage, to join in with the sudden, shattering, but also somehow glorious chorus of boos