The Adventures of Slim & Howdy (5 page)

10

BRUSHFIRE BOONE TATE WAS PRESENTLY STEWING IN THE
Beaumont city jail, a place that smells about how you think it would, maybe a little worse. By now Boone had been there long enough that he stopped noticing. Or if he noticed, he’d stopped caring, as he had more important things to think about.

He was still waiting to hear back from his bail bondsman. There seemed to be a holdup. Something about credit problems. Something that might leave him in jail indefinitely.

And all this thanks to those two cowboys. Shady Slim and his trigger-happy chum.

What happened is that shortly after Slim and Howdy left the apartment, it had been Boone’s bad luck that the cops who responded to the shooting went to the trouble of running his name through their system. Not surprisingly, perhaps, there was a warrant for his arrest for having failed to appear in court the day he was supposed to answer a charge of simple assault stemming from an incident at a local strip joint six months earlier.

As the cops led Boone away in handcuffs, he was heard saying, “You’re arresting
me
? What about those damn cowboys shot my fridge?”

Adding insult to injury, Boone knew that even if he made bail, he wouldn’t have enough money left for so much as a bus ride home. And, topping it off, Boone knew from experience that he could stand by the side of the road with his thumb in the air all day long and no one was going to stop to pick up anybody as damaged looking as him. In other words, even if he got out, he was walking all the way home.

All thanks to Slim and Howdy.

For the past fourteen hours, Boone had been thinking hard about what he was going to do when he got out, if he got out. He wasn’t the kind of man to live and let live or turn the other cheek. He was more the eye-for-an-eye type. Didn’t care who got blinded, long as he wasn’t the only one. He wanted payback.

Unfortunately Boone presently lacked the information, resources, and freedom necessary to set straight out after those two assholes that put him in jail.

So he just sat there, stewing on it, hour after hour.

11

“WHERE’RE YOU GOING?” HOWDY ASKED, AS HE PULLED THE
radar detector from the box. “I-10’s back that way.” He threw his thumb over his shoulder. “You just shoot down to Houston, then hop I-45 up toward the I-20 loop around Dallas, take that over to Fort Worth.” He clapped his hands once and pointed straight ahead like he’d sealed the deal.

“That’s one way to do it,” Slim said, as he shook his head. “But we’re taking old 69 up to Lufkin and Athens and that route.”

“You’re crazy. That’s two-lane the whole way. It’ll take twice as long.”

“
I’m
crazy? You want me to go south so we can turn around and go north.”

“Houston’s
west
of here,” Howdy said.

“
South
west.”

“Okay, fine, southwest, but at least you’re on the interstate doing seventy or eighty.” He held up the Viper RX-650. “What’s the point in having a radar detector if you—”

“Look,” Slim said. “When it’s your turn, you can drive backwards at a hundred’n ten for all I care. But right now, I’m driving.”

Howdy threw up his hands and tried to keep his mouth shut. Problem was, he had pretty definite opinions about the proper way to steer, accelerate, brake, pass, and signal. It took only about twenty miles for Howdy to discover that Slim shared not a single one of these opinions, and it damn near drove both of them crazy.

Howdy kept leaning over to look at the speedometer, telling Slim he could probably get away with eight over the speed limit instead of just the five he was doing and that he didn’t need to keep four full car lengths between the truck and whoever got in front of them. “That just invites people to pass you,” Howdy said. “And then they get in that space you left and then you have to back off some more and next thing you know, hell, we’re going backwards.”

“Nobody asked you,” Slim said.

Howdy held up a hand. “Just trying to help.” He got quiet for a couple of miles before he resumed his suggestions about when to pass and how to tell if another driver was going to make a turn without benefit of a signal. “It’s all about their body language,” Howdy explained. “That slight glance to the mirror as they decelerate but
before
you see any brake lights. And keep your eyes on their hands, they’ll reposition ’em on the wheel—”

“I tell you what,” Slim interrupted. “When we get to Fort Worth, you can open a damn driving school. Until then, I’d appreciate it if you’d just . . . shut . . . up.”

Howdy was surprised by the depth of Slim’s ingratitude and insulted by his disinclination to embrace all of his observations and suggestions. It got his blood up to the point he was tempted to compare Slim’s driving skills to those of his own beloved grandmother who was eighty-three, half-blind, and timid to begin with, but, being the accommodating soul that he was and not wanting to get off on a bad foot, Howdy just pulled out his lyric pad and started working on rhyming the name Tony.

Slim observed the technique out of the corner of his eye. Howdy would kind of look up at the roof of the cab and mumble possibilities. “Bony . . . phony . . . pony . . . macaroni.” Then he’d get quiet for a few minutes before trying something else. “Crystal . . . distal . . .-distal? That’s a medical term or something, innit?”

Slim just gave him a slow sideways glance like he couldn’t believe how long it was taking him to find the word.

Finally, Howdy blurted it out, “Pistol!” He wrote that down. “Hell, yeah. Crystal with the pistol.” Like he was the first one to think of it. For the next half hour, Howdy kept his nose stuck in that notebook, working on the narrative line for “The Ballad of Black Tony.”

Slim, meanwhile, seemed lost in thought, as if considering one of the great truths. When Howdy finally closed his notebook, Slim said, “I been thinking.”

“Never hurts,” Howdy replied.

“I guess you’re about half right.”

Howdy smiled, glad to see Slim had finally come to his senses. “Hell, I’m completely right and you know it.” He grabbed the radar detector and slapped it on the dash, said, “Now we’re talking. Let’s make some time.”

Slim shook his head. “I’m talking about what you said earlier, that I must have a plan of some sort to be in the music business.”

“Oh, yeah, well I just had a feeling—”

“But that’s not why I drove across Texas,” Slim said. “That Martin belonged to my dad. It means a lot to me.”

“Well, okay.” Howdy was momentarily at a loss on how to respond to Slim’s sudden willingness to share personal information. But once he gathered his thoughts, he said, “Good to know that family’s important to you. Says a lot about a man, I think.” He waited for Slim to respond, but he didn’t. He’d said all he was going to on the subject. Once Howdy figured that out, he said, “Does this mean you’re not going to drive any faster?”

Over the next five hours, though Slim and Howdy were both sorely tempted on several occasions, neither one of them threw a punch at the other. Slim, because he preferred keeping two hands on the wheel at all times, and Howdy because he was smart enough to recognize that rendering unconscious the driver of the vehicle in which he was riding was the fabled cutting off of one’s nose to spite one’s face.

And his mama had taught him better’n that.

To Howdy’s dismay, however, Slim stuck to the farm roads and the state highways and the speed limit, passing through old east Texas sawmill towns and mining communities whose promises were broken long ago, settlements that were killed when railroads or highways bypassed them or when the iron foundry turned unprofitable for one reason or another. Most of the current economy was based on the regional state hospital, a little bit of agriculture, some tourism, and naturally, the occasional bar.

Texas, of course, has a proud tradition of dance halls, roadhouses, and honky-tonks. And the one Howdy had in mind was called the Piggin’ String, a watering hole and dance hall about halfway between downtown Fort Worth and the Texas Motor Speedway. It had been around since the early fifties and its modest stage had featured everybody from Ernest Tubb and Willie Nelson to Jerry Jeff Walker and James Hand.

The place was owned by a former champion steer roper by the name of Skeets Duvall who found he enjoyed cold beer and country music a lot more than wrestling with rampaging bovines in sawdust soaked with horse piss. Skeets also had the good sense to recognize that he could make more money and break fewer bones as a saloon owner than a rodeo rider. And get just as many girls. What he considered a win-win.

The Piggin’ String was in the middle of nowhere when it first opened, but eventually the city sprawl had just about moved it smack into the middle of the suburbs. The wide red-plank building looked like an old seed-and-feed store with rusty Coca-Cola and Lone Star beer signs hanging onto the exterior walls for dear life. There was still a place to tie your horse out front.

As Slim pulled into a parking spot, Howdy eyed the key in the ignition. During the long drive he had come up with a new plan. He was thinking it would be more equitable for them to alternate based on number of miles driven instead of just every other trip. That way Howdy would get the next 350 miles. He figured he’d float the notion next time he got behind the wheel.

12

THEY WALKED INTO THE BAR LIKE A DANGEROUS PAIR OF
cowboy gangsters, guitar cases in hand. Howdy first, all serious with his bold mustache, black Resistol, and matching duster draped over blue jeans and a work shirt. Slim followed, tall and menacing behind the dark shades, wearing his short brown leather jacket over black jeans and T-shirt with that little silver cross at the neck.

They paused for a moment as Howdy looked around the place. Then he nudged Slim and pointed toward the old guy sitting at the end of the bar, skin like beef jerky and scars you could match to hooves, horns, and a stirrup. “That’s him,” Howdy said. “Skeets Duvall.”

Skeets had his head down, reading the paper. His right hand rested on the bar within easy reach of an ivory-handled Colt six-shooter, an old black rotary telephone, and a glass of sweet tea.

Howdy came to a stop and thumped the heel of his boot when he did. He dropped his voice an octave and said, “FBI, Mr. Duvall.” He paused before saying, “I ’spect you’re aware it’s unlawful to display a firearm in a public place in a manner calculated to alarm.”

Skeets didn’t even bother to look up, just licked the tip of his index finger, flipped to the next page of the paper, and gestured at the pistol with his thumb. He said, “If this alarms you, maybe you need to go slip into a dress, missy.”

Slim and Howdy looked at one another and laughed, causing Skeets to look up. As the two men approached, Skeets waited for some light to catch their faces. When it did, he seemed pleased enough at what he saw. “Well if it ain’t Howdy Doody and his . . . much taller friend.”

Howdy made introductions.

“Pleasure,” Slim said, shaking the older man’s hand. “I saw you at the Mesquite Championships when I was a kid.”

“How’d I do?” Skeets asked.

“The way I remember it,” Slim said. “Whoever came in second was so far back, he almost got third place.”

Skeets slapped his hand on the bar. “Glad to hear it,” he said with a chuckle. “Ain’t no shortage of stories where I managed to embarrass myself from the back of a horse or a bull or a barstool or any number of other places, come to think of it. In fact, there was this one time . . .” Skeets paused, gestured for his bartender, held up two fingers. “Bring my friends here something cold to drink.”

Slim and Howdy nodded their thanks and pulled up a couple of stools as Skeets proceeded to weave a wild tale that he swore took place at a rodeo near Prescott, Arizona, involving a half-pint of whiskey in his back pocket, a Brahman bull by the name of Butt Pucker, and Zippy, a capuchin monkey in a cowboy outfit who, between events, rode around the ring on the back of a Scottish sheepdog for the entertainment of the crowd. “I was done riding for the day,” Skeets said, “which explains why I was as drunk as I was. So me and some buddies was just messin’ around and one of ’em dared me to get on the back of this big damn bull sitting in a chute, everybody knew was mean and sorry as the devil.”

“So naturally you accepted the challenge,” Slim said.

“Hell yes,” Skeets replied. “What’s a man gonna do? I got up on top of that big SOB and he acted like I wasn’t even there. So I spurred him a couple of times, which tells you how drunk I was, but he just stood there.” Skeets shrugged and said, “Well how much fun is that? So I started to get off, when all the sudden, the show started and that dog with the monkey on his back started racing around in the ring, ole Zippy shooting his cap pistols like Buffalo Bill or somebody.”

“Lemme guess,” Howdy said. “Old Butt Pucker spooked.”

Skeets assumed a grave expression and said, “That he did.” Skeets laughed and said, “Busted out of the shoot with me barely hanging on like dirty laundry. That little half-pint of whiskey broke in my back pocket, I got glass chewing into my ass, I’m cussing a blue storm, and you should’ve seen the look on that monkey’s face when he saw us coming his way.” Skeets did his best capuchin monkey impression, which just about brought tears to everybody’s eyes.

When he could talk, Howdy said, “How many stitches you get?”

Skeets shook his head. “Damned if I remember,” he said. “But I tell you what . . .” He stood up and gripped his belt buckle as if he might drop his pants. “You want, I’ll show you the scar. Maybe you can count where the stitches were.”

“Thanks,” Howdy said. “I’ll pass if it’s all the same to you.”

Skeets sipped his tea and looked down at the guitar cases. “So what brings you two to the Piggin’ String? You on a tour to see all your old rodeo heroes? Sing us all a song?”

“Yeah, you bet,” Howdy said. “That and lookin’ for work.”

Skeets scratched behind his ear and thought about it. He looked at Howdy. “You singing duets now?”

Slim was quick to say, “Naw. We’re just traveling together.”

Howdy added, “But I was thinking, if you had any openings we could split whatever you got.”

“Well, the bad news,” Skeets said, “is that I got Junior Hicks and his band coming day after tomorrow for a couple of weeks. Good news is, I ain’t got nobody for the next two nights. Now I know it ain’t much . . .”

“But we’ll take it,” Slim said.

“Well, now, hang on.” Skeets gave his chin a rub, then pointed at Howdy. “I know from previous engagements that you can’t carry a tune in a number nine washtub. What about your friend?”

Howdy figured it wouldn’t look too good to say he’d never heard Slim sing, so he said, “What do you care? You’re tone-deaf and everybody in this rat hole’s a drunk. Not to mention how bad the sound system and the acoustics are in this place.”

Skeets held up a patient hand. “Sweet-talk all you want,” he said. “I still want to hear the boy sing before I commit to making both of you rich.” Skeets looked at Slim. “What do you play, son?”

Slim pulled out his guitar, ducked his head under the strap, and gave it a strum. “What do you like?”

Skeets smiled at that. “I like you already,” he said. “You do any Lefty Frizzell?”

Slim nodded as he tuned one string, then another. “Let me think how this starts,” he said. After a moment he took a breath and glanced down at the fret board as his fingers started to jump like spider legs on hot strings.

The guitar had a beautiful tone, Howdy thought. It was no wonder Slim had driven all the way across Texas to get it back.

It took Skeets a moment before he recognized the opening guitar line, as Slim had done a sly rearrangement of the Harlan Howard/Wayne Walker classic “She’s Gone, Gone, Gone.”

As for Howdy, he tried not to show it, but Slim’s voice hit him like a freight train flying down a track. He’d never heard anything so pure, strong, and unexpected. Warm and gold as backlit amber, honey, or something akin to the real Frizzell but with an added edge that cut clean and deep. Howdy’s reaction to the performance was electric and visceral. He wasn’t sure if it was admiration or jealousy or, more likely, some of both.

Skeets knew he was going to hire Slim before he’d finished the first verse. But he let him sing the whole song ’cause it sounded so good. He smiled and nodded and sang along in his head until Slim hit the last note and laid his palm on the strings to still the vibration.

Skeets held out his hand to shake. “You’re hired,” he said. “Twenty-five bucks a night, any tips you can get, plus a hamburger and beer. You can do one night each, or alternate both nights, however you want to do it.”

Slim just gave a grateful nod. “Fair enough.”

“Skeets, you got a deal,” Howdy said. “Now”—he leaned closer and tipped his hat toward a door at the far end of the room—“how’s the action in the back these days?”

Skeets shook his head. “We don’t allow that sort of activity on our premises,” he said gravely. “It’s illegal, the way I understand it.” He looked at his watch. “And it usually gets started around nine.”

“Anybody I know?”

“Most likely gonna be some regulars, Charlie Pepper, Mack Osborne, ole Gutterball for sure,” Skeets said. “Last few nights, some old fella name of Dempsey Kimble’s been playing. Probably be glad to have another wallet in the game.”

Howdy looked at Slim and said, “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll do tomorrow night if you’ll do tonight.”

Slim didn’t care one way or the other. He shrugged and said, “Fair enough.”