Chapter Twenty-Six

I can resist everything except temptation

—Oscar Wilde

Hunter booked himself gigs with several other clubs in Monroe and Ruston to get back into the Monroe loop. His income was enough to live on, but not enough to provide what normal people liked to have—things like insurance, a house, nice clothes, but he knew that sometimes one must choose between one’s passion and material comfort and security and stability. Music was Hunter’s passion, and sometimes the music provided these other things. As his routine set, so did the grinding physical weariness and mental fatigue. His days became a blur—work till midnight or beyond, unwind until two or three in the morning, sleep and rise late the next afternoon.

After a gig at the Backdoor Lounge, Hunter returned to his apartment and turned on the old television, which only picked up Channel 8, a local station. A late-night movie was on—The Beast with Five Fingers. Hunter studied the detached hand of the composer as it crawled about terrorizing and searching for its victims as if guided by a vindictive memory. He held up his left hand, then closed and opened his fingers twice. He reached for the remote and turned off the TV. There are some things one shouldn’t think about.

Still wired and knowing that sleep would not come easily that night, he took his notebook and walked down to the Waffle House. A waitress brought his menu and water. He ordered coffee and eggs and bacon. The black cook listlessly scraped at the grill, lost in the inner world late night workers travel to. At the jukebox, Hunter selected some songs by Lyle Lovett and Pat Green and returned to his seat.

In a booth sat a mother and two daughters. The girls were very young and wore tiaras. Their tired faces were caked with makeup. One was asleep, face down on the table. The mother lectured the other who wore a filigreed sash across her chest that read, Watermelon Queen.

Stern of voice, the obese mother said, “You got to eat honey. We got a long drive to Atlanta tomorrow.” The little girl with a woman’s face nodded and rubbed her blank red eyes. She nibbled at the grilled cheese sandwich in front of her, then took a drink of her chocolate milk. She smiled at Hunter. A pageant smile—chin up and scarred by some forced facial contortion. She had an enormous puffed-up hairdo and long false eyelashes. Her hair and eyebrows were dyed. Raccoon eyes peered out from her mask of pancake foundation and rouge. Beneath her beaded lace jacket, she wore a blue rhinestone and sequin-covered dress split up the side almost to her hip. Somehow her outfit reminded him of the drag queens he had seen in New Orleans. All baubles and spangles. A painted doll with porcelain grin. Young child-bride of Frankenstein all dressed up.

The mother unbuckled her wristwatch and shook it. Her eyes met Hunter’s. “You got the right time?”

Hunter glanced at the clock on the wall above the grill, then at his wristwatch. “It’s three. I don’t know that I’ve ever had the right time though. You folks traveling?”

“Yeah. Gotta get my pretty babies here to Atlanta. I been entering them in beauty contests. That’s how we’re going to pay for their college education. They already won over a dozen pageants each. Gonna take them all the way to the top.” She gazed out the window like a desert monk who had just seen a vision.

“Yeah, I’m trying to get somewhere myself,” Hunter said. He wanted to tell her that he’s been at it long enough to know that it’s a long way to the top of that mountain. And when you get there, it’s never what you thought it would be. And after you’ve reached the summit, your strength is spent, clouds shroud the view, and what you wanted to see, you can’t. And it’s always a long, precarious way down. But at least the way down is always quicker. He wanted to tell her all these things, some of which he felt better than he knew, but he did not. Elusive horizons, Hunter thought. He remembered an English teacher and a poem of Stephen Crane. You lie, we tell each other, then we keep running for the horizon. One mirage replaces another, and soon you’ve gone so far you’ve lost your bearings and you don’t know where it is you came from. And the horizon behind you fills with other mirages, but if you turn around and return that too will not be what you expected, and you wish you had kept going. And he and other musicians and the beauty queens and the hobos and the salesmen, traveling together toward that horizon, eking out a living, eating fast food or worse, spending weekends cooped up in cheap hotels, were all just moving along a crazy-quilt pattern of existence.

“I competed in beauty contests myself,” the woman said, “until a few years ago. Ever since I was six years old, just like my little Skittles here. Won a whole bunch of beauty contests.”

Hunter tried to envision the obese woman in another life, slim and bikini clad, sashaying coquettishly across a stage to the cheers of the audience and the delight of the panel of judges. Somehow the thought depressed him. “What does their daddy think about them entering these contests?”

“He’s real proud of them,” she said. “Real proud. Wish I could get him to come with us more. But he drives a truck and usually he’s too tired out from working all week. He drives all over the nation. He’s in New Mexico tonight.

“What do you do?” she asked.

“I’m a musician.” He leaned over and pointed at the Backdoor’s neon sign. “Name’s Hunter. I’m playing at that bar yonder.”

“For how long?”

Hunter shrugged. He didn’t know. He never knew. His was the constant movement of the displaced. Even when the crowds loved him, they never asked him to stay. Didn’t expect him to. Didn’t care if he did or didn’t. Only Caitlin had cared, and after things had gone bad, even she didn’t care. Hunter shuddered at the thought of permanently trying to make a living with his music in Northeast Louisiana. On the other hand, he had tried living in Mississippi, in Texas, but it seemed like some dark hand of fate kept dragging his ass back.

“What did you say you did?” the lady asked. “Did you say you were a hunter? I’m tired and I done forgot what you said.”

“Don’t worry about it none. My name’s Hunter. I’m a musician. I’m kinda tired myself but you’ll be slap wore out by morning. Atlanta’s eight or ten hours from here. Depends on if you have a heavy foot.”

“I’ve gotten a few speeding tickets in my day.” The mother left her beauty queens and went to her car. Returning with two plastic hangers and a suit bag, she sat down, lit a cigarette, then poked the sleeping daughter. “Skittles, you wake up now.” She reached into her giant purse and shoved a jar of cold cream and a clothes hanger toward the girl. “You got to change out of your dress and put on your tanning cream. It’ll be cool in the car, so you won’t sweat none and you’ll look real purty when we get to Atlanta. Take your flippers out first.”

The little girl opened her mouth and unclipped a pair of false teeth that replaced lost baby teeth. She dropped the teeth into the mother’s hand, stuffed the jar of cold cream into her own handbag, took the hangar, and vanished into the restroom. She returned in cutoffs and a T-shirt that said, BEAM ME UP SCOTTY; THERE’S NO INTELLIGENT LIFE HERE, and Hunter could see a patina of the cream on her face. She winked salaciously at Hunter as she passed him.

“Okay, Doodlebug, you’re next,” the mother said as she stuffed Skittles’ dress into the suit bag.

“Oh, Mama,” Doodlebug said. “I’m tired. I don’t want to change.”

“Your daddy worked long hours to pay for that dress and we want to take care of it. You’ll get it all wrinkled if you wear it in the car all the way to Atlanta. Now, go on and show the nice Hunter man how a beauty queen walks.”

The girl stood in the classic beauty queen pose, rear foot parallel to shoulder, front foot extended and pointing forward, her eyes scanning the Waffle House and flitting from customer to customer as if they were the judges she would see tomorrow. As she sashayed toward the restroom, she gave Hunter the same forced grimace of a smile she would give the judges in Atlanta. Hunter watched the mother pay for their meal and parade the girls out to their station wagon. Hunter wondered if a normal kid had a chance in winning beauty pageants.

This thought made his mind jump and wonder if he could make it in the music business. He knew a few locals had made it. They had gone to Nashville, gone on the road, and somehow obtained recording contracts. Some were not what Hunter considered great musicians or singers or song writers, but they had some kind of look, some kind of voice that was labeled as commercial. Most had used agents, but Hunter, who had known several of these musicians well, noticed that many things changed when they took on an agent. Every detail of their musical and social life was regimented and determined by the agent. They were told what to wear, where to play, what songs they could play, what to say in interviews, what songs they were to record, and what they were to say in interviews. Hunter knew of performers who hadn’t raised their level of skill since he had known them. Some famous singers and performers sometimes didn’t even sing or play an instrument in their concerts—it was a taped, carefully orchestrated performance full of special effects. To Hunter, the artist’s soul seemed like a lot to give away. Signing the agent’s dotted line was like signing a devil’s book. Too much fine print.

Hunter glanced at a man who sat alone in a booth under a sign that said booths were reserved for two or more. The man muttered to himself. Both of his hands were wrapped around his coffee cup. He thought he looked like the man he had seen at the Sundown Tavern. There were lost and lonely people everywhere.

“You want a refill?” the waitress asked Hunter.

“Yeah. Can I take a booth?”

“No,” she said. “It’s going to be busy before long. The after-hours bar crowd will come in.”

He pointed to the man. “He has a booth and there ain’t nobody else with him.”

“He sure is having a talk with someone. Besides, I want to keep you close to me.” She smiled.

Hunter looked at the tired, but pretty green eyes and sensed some sadness.

“Long night?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

Hunter laid two dollars on the table and slid them toward her. “Do I have to leave now? I’ve got insomnia bad tonight.”

“Like I said, I’d like the company. I don’t get off till five. I heard you say your name was Hunter and that you were a musician?”

“Yeah, that’s what I hope to be when I grow up.”

“I’m Veronica. I like that name, Hunter. What do you hunt?”

“Old joke. But I do like to chase down good-looking girls now and then.”

“You are so funny, and so cute!” She reached behind her and grabbed a Polaroid camera, sighted it at Hunter, and snapped his photograph. The flash blinded Hunter’s eyes. It had been over a year since anyone had taken his picture. He heard an echo in his memory telling him to turn right.

“Why’d you do that?” Hunter asked.

“For my scrapbook,” she said. “I can tell my friends I knew a handsome musician who used to play at the Backdoor Lounge before he became famous.” She wrote Hunter on the back of the picture and then set it on top of one of the coolers.

“Ain’t it illegal to try and scare your customers by sticking ugly pictures like that on the wall?”

“Pshaw. Listen to you. Ugly, my foot.”

Hunter and she talked till her shift ended, and then he left without saying goodbye, knowing if he had asked, he could have taken her to his room. She was truly pretty, and like him, on the low end of thirty. But as he walked back to his room thinking these things, something in him felt bad, like he was being unfaithful to Caitlin in some way.

Caitlin doesn’t own me. Nothing’s been said by either of us about committing fully to a monogamous relationship, he said to himself. If Caitlin wants to go out with someone, let her. It won’t bother me. But he knew it would. And he knew she would cry if she knew how easily he was tempted by this Waffle House girl. Hunter, don’t do this to yourself. Some things are better not thought about. Yes, you could have taken this sweet girl to your room and enjoyed the night, but you can’t do that to Caitlin. Not now. Don’t think about it.

Not thinking had often been his answer to difficult choices. Sometimes it worked.