Western Swing by Tim Sandlin Page A

you leaving?”
    Whirling, “I’m not going down with you, Loren. You want to go insane, that’s your business, but don’t expect me to go with you. And don’t expect me to be here when you come back.”
    He just looked at me, fingering the lump on his head.
    Since Loren wouldn’t argue with me, all the way out to the truck I argued with myself. “Lana, what are you doing? You love this one. Don’t blow it.”
    â€œI don’t have to put up with this crap anymore. There’s no excuse for living with a metaphysical boogieman.”
    â€œSure there is. Kick the vacuum pieces in the closet. They don’t matter.”
    â€œI’m not killing my marriage so I won’t have to put a vacuum cleaner back together.”
    â€œBullshit.”
    â€¢ • •
    I stopped in Jackson long enough to gas up the Toyota before heading south. South is the secure way to head in a crisis. It’s warm all year in the South. Daddy lives there.
    Rolling down all the windows, I jammed an Emmylou tape in the deck and cranked the truck up to 80.
    Life wasn’t fair all of a sudden. I’d married one man who turned into someone else who forced me to do something I didn’t want to do.
    I screamed into the wind, “My husband’s an idiot.”
    â€œThe others were idiots,” another voice said—a voice from a part of me I don’t see too often. “Loren’s good. Nothing good ever happened to you before. Don’t throw it away.”
    â€œFuck off, who asked you anyway?”
    â€œYou always talk like a slut when you’re upset.”
    â€œLook what’s happened, I’m talking out loud to something that calls me a slut. This doesn’t happen to me… I’m normal.” I turned Emmylou up loud, hoping to drown the conversation, but inner voices are persistent suckers.
    â€œDon’t shout when you’re alone, Lana Sue.”
    â€œShut up, creep.”
    â€œLoren accepts you. He doesn’t judge or want anything from you. He doesn’t force anything on you.”
    â€œHe reads the I Ching out loud. He talks to the moon and it talks back. Do you want to live with a man who talks to the moon?”
    â€œDo you want to live without him?”
    I cranked the truck up to the 95-100 range, which scared me and my voices into shutting up. Wyoming flew past like it was on a video screen and nothing was real. I imagined if the Toyota crashed, a light would flash, a buzzer would honk, and I’d have to put in another quarter—not a good pretend game to play when you’re driving. A stray antelope could have turned the Lana Sue story into a tragedy without even knowing what hit him.
    Emmylou sang a fast song about a pinball machine in Amarillo, Texas. I hummed along, picking the guitar breaks on the steering wheel. Our band played Amarillo several times—I even sang at the Golden Sandies Homecoming Dance way back in another life. I’ve had so many lives and sometimes they don’t connect.
    The high-speed emotionalism wasn’t safe, and I’m not stupid—at least not for more than ten minutes—so I backed off on the accelerator, watching the sagebrush slow to a dull blur. Digging through the glove compartment, I replaced Emmylou with Bru Hau.
    I got a hole in my boot, I got a hole in my coat, there’s a hole in my fancy shirt, I got a hole in my life, where my baby walked out.
    The main attraction, and drawback, to country music is that if you’ve just left a husband, wife, or love of some kind, or even worse, been left by a husband, wife, or love of some kind, every single one of those syrupy, corny, otherwise trite songs touches you. Sometimes I don’t want to be touched.
    Sure, it’s all been said before, but as I try to explain to Loren, all real emotions have been felt millions of times. Nothing sincere is original. Trite is basic, and if your emotions are basic,