‘pass the courvoisier”

We’re in a tour van and there are too many of us in here to be comfortable but we’re passing around a whiskey bottle so I guess comfort is relative and we’re somewhere in Tennessee and I know this because when we pass road signs the numbers identifying the highways are in white boxes that are in the shape of the outline of the state of Tennessee and I remember what the shape of Tennessee looks like because in the third grade I won my class a pizza party by properly identifying forty-four states based solely on the shape of their outlines and Tennessee highways are dead at three in the morning and anyway the only state I wish I was in is one of the six that I missed in the third grade. The state I want to be in is the one that I live in now, Colorado, and it wouldn’t be a big deal, being away from home, except that I haven’t heard from Aubree in two days and I can’t help but worry that the bed we share in our duplex has gone unoccupied the past few nights which means where the hell is she and the bottle of whiskey that keeps getting passed my way by the banjo player isn’t helping any.

And we’re a country band but we’re listening to hip-hop on the radio and every song seems to be about jewelry and bitches and whenever someone is ordered to pass the Courvoisier I start thinking too much and it makes me wish that Davey would steer the van off the road and into the side of one of those Tennessee mountains and maybe then when the promoter of our show in Chatanooga starts trying to figure out where we are he will make phone calls and one of them will be to Aubree and she would realize that wherever she has been for the past two days, I was in a tour van, burning to death with seven people who share my love of Waylon Jennings but probably not my death wish, especially not just to prove a point-

But in order for the promoter to tell her that we never showed up she would have to answer the phone first!

And I am begging Arnold-the-fiddle-player, Arnold, please, please, please, let me use your cell phone, Arnold, just real quick, just so I can call and wake her up and apologize for calling and waking her up, just so I can nod my head to the beat of the music on the radio instead of pounding it on the window and getting less and less patient for that bottle to get passed back my way.

Arnold-the-fiddle-player can not help me, sorry, dude, outta minutes and the battery’s dead and goddamn it, Arnold, I am dying here! Fuck your battery and your minutes and-

Wait, wait, wait- Davey- pull over- next exit- there’s a BP station- they’ll have a phone- please- PLEASE!- Davey-

Thank you- thank you-

Jesus, two-point-four miles. Seven people are moderately annoyed with me but they can see in my eyes I am bleeding. I skip my next turn with the whiskey bottle and we pull over and I grab the coins out of my pocket and feed them to the payphone and I get a dialtone and it just rings and there is no answer and Aubree, where are you at four in the morning while I am in Tennessee and it rings for a minute and a half when Davey asks me if she’s picked up and of course I tell him that she hasn’t and he urges me to hang up and I know, damn it, he’s right.

We get back in the van and everyone is at the end of their rope with me and my heartsick pouting but they indulge me anyway by changing the radio station to some AM talk nonsense. And I know I’ll make it up to all of them in Chatanooga because when I sing “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” it’ll be the most sincere rendition they ever heard.