Shotgun Lovesongs: A Novel

by Butler, Nickolas

  He was not finished with his soliloquy, but Ronny yelled, “Party time!” and pumped his fists in the close boozy air. Some of the group laughed a little uncertainly, but Lee threw an arm around his friend and whispered intently into his ear. I watched Lee’s lips move, though I could not hear his words. You stick close to me, buddy, I imagined him saying. We’ll party hearty together, okay? You and me.

  Nodding indulgently at Ronny, Kip moved on. “So listen,” he said, “I got you all a little present, okay? Some shirts. It’s not much, but hey—it’s something, right? I want you to put them on now. Because today, we’re like a team. A team of friends. You know? I want you to have fun. I want you to forget about everything else today, all right? Okay. So that’s it. I’ve said what I had to say. Now, let’s go have some fun.”

  He reached into a black plastic garbage bag and pulled out a multitude of red Polo shirts all specially embroidered across the left breast with two crossing golf clubs and the date. Kip began passing them around. He even knocked on the Plexiglas window of the limousine and passed a shirt up to the driver. Then he passed one to the photographer. It appeared to be at least one, perhaps two sizes too small for her, and I averted my eyes as she gamely removed her button-down shirt to don the confining garment. Some of the assembled cheered at the frustratingly brief exposure of her stomach and bra. And then Kip tossed a shirt to each of his assembled friends. To everyone, that is, except Ronny Taylor, whose face drooped, almost imperceptibly, his hands empty and waiting. Lee noticed it immediately and handed his Polo shirt to Ronny.

  “Here you go, buddy,” he said. “Kip must’ve just forgot about getting me one.”

  But when Ronny looked back at his friend, his face was sad with knowing. Ronny paused a moment before he pulled off the shirt he was wearing, and we saw then the scars of his rodeo days, the meat grossly missing from an area near his shoulder, the crudely sewn stitches of some arena paramedic or small-town ER. His stomach, still admirably flat, was corrugated with muscle, and a tattoo over his heart in blurred blue lettering read CORVUS—Lee’s stage name—along with a roughshod image of a crow perched atop a telephone wire. The tattoo, already almost ten years old, had been there before Lee was even famous, when we were all little more than kids.

  “I still can’t believe you ever did that,” Lee said now, reaching out to touch his friend’s tattoo. He shook his head and smiled.

  “I believed in you,” Ronny said with all the earnestness in the world. “I still do. You’re my friend.”

  All eyes in the limousine were on them. Outside the long automobile, the world continued to move on—traffic slowly blurring by, the occasional tractor, an old farmer walking along the gravel shoulder, perhaps toward the bank or library downtown—but inside, life was a diorama of open mouths, unblinking eyes, and held breaths. Then Kip broke in. “You, Lee. Where’s your shirt?”

  “I didn’t get one,” Lee said. He had a hand on Ronny’s knee. His voice was stern. “But don’t worry about it, chief. It really doesn’t matter.”

  “But,” Kip began, and even as his eyes fell on what had to be Lee’s shirt, right there, on Ronny’s back, we could all hear in the falter of his voice that he wouldn’t push Lee any further. That even though everyone in the limousine was equally uniformed except Lee, who sat heavily against the limousine’s glossy leather upholstery in his omnipresent flannel shirt and torn blue jeans, Kip would not now challenge him. Kip rapped his knuckles against the glass of the limousine driver’s partition and we began to move faster still, the volume of that bass-heavy music increasing even as the giant vehicle picked up speed.

  * * *

  We were farmers, most of us, not golfers. But it was a good day and the course unfolded before us spectacularly, the links verdant and shimmering, the sky overhead unfettered by so much as a single cloud. Kip had rented carts, and we were divided into pairs. Eddy Moffitt and I were to share a cart, and I noticed that Kip had paired himself with Lee. The photographer was quick to snap several shots of the two men standing near each other, clubs in hand. Ronny stood off to the side, examining the sheet of pairings, a finger scrolling down the page, but never finding his name. I watched him scratch his head and then, leaning in close to Eddy’s ear, I said, “Listen, Eddy, I’m going to partner up with Ronny, that okay?”

  Eddy was a good guy, everyone’s insurance salesman, and he understood immediately. “Hey Ronny!” he called out. “Ronny! Yo, you’re over here with Hank.” Then Eddy slapped me kindheartedly on the back with a big thick hand and pulled my head in close to him, whispering, “I don’t know what Kipper’s pulling here, but it’s some real bullshit. Anyways, you guys have fun. I’ll just head over to the clubhouse. See if those strippers have shown yet.” He patted my back again with the slab of his hand. Eddy had farmed for many years before a tractor accident had sent his farm into bankruptcy. He’d hadn’t had any insurance, had never been able to afford it, and the hospital bills had ruined him.

  I shook Ronny’s hand and we found a cart with two sets of bags attached to the back, and then drove off to the first tee. Sitting in a rack just above the clubs was a cooler of beer. I saw Ronny’s eyes go right to it, the ice within jiggling against all that cold aluminum with every bump of the cart. I braked and got out to remove the cooler. The Giroux twins were holding down their own cart, and as they moved to pass us, I handed the cooler to Cameron, who gave us a surprised salute as his brother Cordell stomped his foot on the accelerator, no doubt for a fast getaway before we could change our minds. Ronny seemed to deflate just a bit and I saw him lick his chapped lips as he watched our other friends drink in the warm sunlight, their throats working the beer down, lips wet, the air suddenly perfumed with the sweet aroma of cheap American beer. It was the smell of our childhood: the smell of silos and of barns and of harvest-time fields. Beer was our tonic, and I understood Ronny’s torment. His brain wasn’t so damaged that he couldn’t recall the dim lights of our favorite bars and the boom of our favorite jukeboxes. The nights we had spent parked in the countryside, laying in the bed of an ancient pickup truck, emptying dozens of cans of beer and throwing the empties out into the ditches, into those infinite fields of corn. The drunken lovemaking that ensued: the touch of fingers, the weight of breasts, the caress of legs, the struggles with stubborn zippers, the yanking down of too-tight blue jeans. All our best memories were fueled by beer, and I saw then just how sorely Ronny missed his favorite vice; that somewhere in the broken circuitry of his brain there was still an unquenchable thirst. Part of me wanted to help him, but of course I could not and never would. And maybe we could have offered him a beer every now and then, but no one wanted to take that chance, and what for? What good could possibly come from it?

  We golfed for hours, our faces sunburned, our lips growing dry and cracked. Carts came by with cheeseburgers and hot dogs and bottles of water and Cokes, but it did not matter; the golf exhausted us. The sun arced over our heads and began its descent in the west. We were brutal golfers, Ronny and I. But every now and again, we might light into a shot and send the little ball sailing over the countryside toward some small banner over a minor cup in the earth. We laughed together and I could see all of a sudden why Lee was such good friends with Ronny. Of course, they were both bachelors, natural grown playmates, no children or wives to encumber their fun, and maybe that was why I hadn’t called Ronny more, invited him to go grouse hunting with me, or take a trip to the implement dealer to price out equipment. I don’t know. He was kind and sincere and gentle. All afternoon we rode together over the links, taking our swings and encouraging each other, and he asked me the best questions: about Beth and the kids, my farm and tractors. He was not interested in our scant income or our used vehicles or our paltry investments. His concerns were real. I invited him to come to dinner at our house.

  “Thank you,” he said. Then, “What can I bring?”

  “Just bring yourself, Ronny. Just yourself.”

  Thirty-six holes of golf later, our pal
ms riddled with blisters, we turned back toward the clubhouse, though Ronny seemed content to simply drive around, looking at the different holes—all the berms, sand traps, ponds, long narrow fairways. We were not the first ones to come back. Most of the bachelor party was already there, drunk and on a slide to either camaraderie or savage belligerence. Standing atop the bar were two female dancers, nude, their bodies shining with what appeared to be spilled champagne. I watched Ronny’s face break into a sunburned smile. I smiled, too.

  “Party time!” he announced loudly, at which the entire bachelor party turned to him and roared their agreement. In that moment, Ronny had become their mascot. Someone grabbed him from me and pushed him toward the bar and dancers, where he stood, mouth agape, staring up at their hard, tanned bodies. They were attractive in that more and more familiar way, unapologetically enhanced, the scars of plastic surgery darkening the skin just beneath their breasts, their gaze out over all of us at once energized and stupendously bored. I realized that to them, Ronny must look normal, even handsome. Before his accident he had been our homecoming king, dated the best looking girls in our town. Even now, his body was rodeo lean, his face brutally handsome and carved. He looked at the dancers and I could see he was remembering some previous time in his life, some western town where perhaps he’d fallen in love a night or two. Motel magic in Butte, or Billings, or Bozeman. There were times when it was too easy to forget that Ronny was still a virile man.

  So I retreated to the margins of the party, watching Ronny from a distance as he stared up at the dancing women, his fingers occasionally reaching out for their toned calves, their painted toenails, supple ankles.

  It was dusk before Kip and Lee finally entered the clubhouse, faces badly burned, hair crazily windblown, both of them scowling at each other. They went to either ends of the bar, ignoring the naked women dancing above them, and I saw them both order what looked to be whiskey. As soon as they’d tossed back their glasses, they ordered seconds. Their eyes were angry. Finally, after ordering a third glass, Lee left the bar and slumped into a chair beside me.

  “Fucker made me play every fucking hole,” he said. “All thirty-six. Fuckin’ death march.” The ice cubes in his glass sloshed as if in gasoline. “He throttled me! Every hole. And not by a stroke or two. I mean, by like, six, seven strokes. Every hole. No mulligans, no nothing. Made me count everything. Laughed his ass off at me the whole time. Fucker.” Lee eyed Kip at the bar.

  “Lee,” I said, “relax. Everybody’s got to be friends by tomorrow.”

  My eyes were still trained on Ronny up at the bar. He was holding a single dollar bill in the air, like a torch. One of the women accepted the bill between her breasts, and I could see him sigh with something like ecstasy. The wedding party had moved away from the bar, and they were watching him too. Feeding him singles.

  “Fuck him,” said Lee. “Seriously! Fuck him. I get paid ten thousand dollars sometimes just to show up at a place and play one goddamn song. Fucker treats me like that. Shit.”

  He was quiet then, and I was too, his words hanging in the air like smoke that could not be wafted away. I had never heard him say anything like that before, had never heard him talk about money before. He clenched and unclenched his hands in his lap and then reached up to smooth the hair on his scalp.

  “Sorry, man,” he said. “That was shitty. It’s his big day. Who cares if he beats the shit out of me golfing? I never golf. Goddamn yuppie nature walk.”

  We sat that way awhile, and there was nothing for me to say. It had been a difficult year for me on the farm, with low milk prices coupled against exorbitant diesel and fertilizer prices. I’d also just had to replace my combine and pay for Eleanore’s tonsillectomy. We were at a point with our dairy herd where the general feeling was grow or die. Either we invested more in the farm and took on more cows, or else it was time to think about getting out. Beth and I were mortgaged to the hilt and there was no room to save for the kids’ educations, our investments having tanked along with everyone else’s. Beth had just brought home information about food stamps and state health care. I hadn’t been sleeping well at night, and didn’t know what I’d do if the farm failed. Until that moment I hadn’t had any concept of how much Lee made, though we had wondered, sure. But I understood that his income was like his travels—inconceivable to me. Now, the starkness, the reality of it all made me very sad.

  I had considered asking Lee for a loan in the past, when things had been especially rough; Beth had even encouraged me to do so. But I never had.

  “Look, Lee,” I began, and he looked over at me, his pupils still small and angry. But I could not continue.

  “Come on,” he said, “let’s get Ronny and get out of here. I have to pick up Chloe at the airport tomorrow morning early. We oughta get out of here before something happens.”

  But Kip had come over in that very moment and was now hovering over us, the photographer just over his shoulder, balanced on her toes, snapping photographs in the half-light of the clubhouse. Kip held a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue in his hand, his lips shiny with alcohol.

  “So where’s your uniform anyway?” he barked down at Lee, something between a smile and a sneer on his face. He gave Lee’s arm a gentle jab. “Huh?”

  Lee shook his head. “You forgot mine, remember?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Kip said. “You gave it away’s what happened.”

  Lee shrugged and looked at Kip, and I saw then that something had shifted—that they were no longer friends, or even friendly, just two men who didn’t like each other, two men who shared nothing anymore, beyond a common geography. Any intersection in their lives now, and moving forward, would be like mere coincidence.

  “So, when do I get to meet her?” Kip bellowed over the blaring music. Behind him, the dancers had moved off the bar, grinding their tawny hips against Ronny.

  Lee stared at Kip. “Get to? What the fuck, Kip. What, you want her fuckin’ autograph?”

  Kip absorbed Lee’s words for a moment, and smiled, then turned back to leer at the dancers. “The driver will take you back, if you like, boys. I certainly don’t want you ruining your voice yelling at me.” He took a pull off the bottle and walked back to the rest of the group, though by then, I recognized few of their faces. Gone were the Girouxs. Gone was Eddy.

  We rose, collected a somewhat resistant Ronny, and left the place, ear drums pounding, the smell of strange perfume in our hair, noses throbbing with sunburn. Ronny slumped back against the soft leather seats and looked up into the night sky through the open moonroof. There was a smile on his face and two scraps of paper lodged in the pocket of his Wranglers: both dancers’ numbers scrawled out with their names—Lucy and Brandi—and embellished with red lipstick Os where their lips had kissed the paper good night.

  “Not my first time at the rodeo, boys,” he kept saying. “Nope. Not my first time at the rodeo.”

  Lee put his arm around Ronny and they looked up at the stars in the sky. I smiled at the two of them, closed my eyes, and let the driver take me back home to my bed and my wife and my children.

  * * *

  I can recall that next morning with perfect clarity. The chaos of our house, Beth’s parents downstairs with the kids and the television loud with cartoons. Beth was in the shower, taking a little longer than usual. A radio on in some room broadcasting an early football game. I stood in the mirror and knotted my tie. It had been my father’s actually, and the silk was frayed in places, the design already dated. I did not like my face in the mirror that morning, my nose red from the prior day’s sun, a razor burn beneath my jaw, the first sagging signs of a double chin. I sucked in my gut as I buttoned my pants. I needed a new suit probably, but there was no money for new suits. I knotted the tie over and over again, but each time the silk just ended up looking flimsy, too narrow. In the mirror my hairline looked almost cowardly, creeping away from my eyebrows, and I was suddenly nervous about meeting Chloe. Beth and I had been invited to brunch at Lee’s place be
fore driving out to Kip’s hobby farm. Lee had picked her up from the airport in Minneapolis early that morning. We were supposed to collect Ronny en route.

  Beth changed her ensemble five times that morning, switching out her shoes, her necklaces, her earrings. I understood. Had I owned more than one suit, I would have done the same thing. As it was, I just sat in a battered old chair in our bedroom and watched her. She was beautiful to me. I could see that she had shaved her legs, supple and taut above the easy grip of her heels. She mussed her hair and pursed her lips at the mirror.

  “What do you think?” she said finally, turning to me.

  I stood and went to her, understanding right then that we were already growing older, that we would grow old together.

  “I think you’re beautiful,” I said. I kissed her.

  “Hey—watch the lipstick,” she said, swatting me away playfully before pulling me in close again. She set her chin on my shoulder and we slow danced that way, there in our bedroom, the worn carpeting beneath our best scuffed shoes. “I love you,” she said, “even if you’re not a rock star.”

  “I love you,” I said, “even though you’re not a movie star.”

  We kissed again and held hands as we walked downstairs, our garments good enough. The kids came up to us, hugged us good-bye. Beth’s father shook my hand, and I noticed for the first time in that instant that the skin of his left ring finger had begun to overcome his wedding band. The ring had become part of him, in the way that a fence-tree gradually absorbs the barbed wire wrapped around its bark. I felt happier then—less, I don’t know, anxious. I knew that we would make it together, Beth and I, no mattered what happened to the farm or anything else.

  The town was abuzz. The local B&Bs and motels were full, the VFW and the other scattered townie bars jumping. Even the Coffee Cup Café was busy, with patrons banging the screened door shut as they walked out of the restaurant carrying Styrofoam cups of coffee. Main Street was bustling with strange vehicles adorned with out-of-state plates. Eddy had heard the guest list totaled over five hundred. An entire truck full of kegs had been driven up from Milwaukee, with a separate truck carrying hard booze. The caterers were not local; they’d come all the way from Minneapolis. I suppose Kip didn’t want to take any chances; only the best would do.