Moody Food by Ray Robertson Page A

would I make a fine drummer but that Christine, with her beautiful singing voice, would fit in very nicely on high-harmony vocals. She’d have to play bass, though, he insisted. Besides the pedal steel, Thomas had always heard only one guitar in his head when he envisioned the kind of sound he wanted, and that guitar was his.
    â€œChristine doesn’t play bass,” I said.
    â€œI only hear one guitar, Bill,” he said firmly, holding up a single finger. I tried to explain to him how he’d sort of missed my point.

    Since the night at my place spent listening to Thomas’s Woody Guthrie album over the shared bottle of mescal, Christine, it was true, was well on her way to gaining a deeper appreciation of all things twangy. And even if more inclined toward, say, the guitar, mandolin, and high-harmony approach of the Louvin Brothers rather than the straight-ahead fiddle and Telecaster assault of Buck Owens, it wasn’t too long before Charlie and Ira’s “Cash on the Barrelhead” began popping up in her shows right there between Woody’s familiar “Union Made” and “This Land Is Your Land.” But, I tried to point out to Thomas, Christine’s coming around to the idea that folk music and hillbilly duets were actually country cousins didn’t mean she was about to lay down her acoustic Martin and her own solo career just so she could pick up an electric bass and join his band.
    â€œ Our band, Buckskin,” he said.
    â€œYeah, okay, our band,” I said, putting on the patient smile one saves up for young children, the mentally ill, and the very religious. “But you don’t get it. Christine’s not going to—”
    â€œChristine sure cares one heck of a lot for you, doesn’t she, Buckskin?”
    I paused. “What do you mean?” I said.
    â€œC’mon, now,” he said. “That woman of yours, she loves her Buckskin Bill.”
    I was a little confused, and it wasn’t just the ten or twenty glasses of beer. “Yeah, okay. So?”
    â€œNothing, that’s all. She sure loves him, though. Do anything for him, I expect.”
    I set down my coffee. “I’m not going to ask Christine to do something she doesn’t want to do, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
    â€œI wouldn’t dream of it, Buckskin. All a man can do is lead a horse to water.”

    Before I could object that my girlfriend wasn’t a horse to be led anywhere by anyone, a waitress flipped on every light in the room. Thomas already had his sunglasses on. I clenched my eyes tight against the light and frisked my shirt and coat pockets. Since I’d started hanging out with Thomas, a good pair of dark shades had become an indispensable accessory. I finally found mine and jammed them over my ears.
    The waitress stopped several feet short before getting to our table, probably something to do with wanting to have as little as possible to do with two clearly intoxicated men in matching red silk cowboy shirts wearing sunglasses inside in the middle of November.
    â€œFive minutes,” she said.
    I nodded politely and thought about how although it had only been a few months since Thomas had shown up in town, it seemed like a whole other lifetime ago that I was just an inconspicuous hippie boyfriend of a local folk singer who could usually get a coffee after closing time and nurse it in peace until the floors got swept and the tables wiped down. But maybe, I told myself, it wasn’t just Thomas Graham guilt by association.
    Ever since some of my more politically active long-haired brethren, Christine among them, had started slapping posters around the village and making noise in the newspapers about getting Yorkville shut down to all the exhaust-choking cars full of button-downed oglers hoping to get a good look at an honest-to-goodness hippie, the cop presence had picked up noticeably. Not quite “Move along, move