The banjo player moved away from the huddle near the vacant drum kit, back to his beer bottle and center stage. The bassist waited in the background, adjusting the position of her instrument. The mandolin player and the guitarist drifted in from the left and the right and from their own bottles. The banjo player clasped his hands behind his back and leaned into his microphone.
“This next song is an ol’ Stanley Brothers tune, called ‘She’s More to be Pitied.’ It’s a waltz, so we expect to see some dancin’ on this one!”
The band counted themselves in and their music spun away, notes and chords sliding over and against one another as if stumbling through water. In the crowded bar the boisterous clatter continued, the patrons wrapped in smoke and beer and laughter. Sharp cracks of billiard balls punctuated the intimately earnest conversations of the drunk. Clumsy hands clapped shoulders of friends and strangers; lopsided smiles leaned across unsteady lips.
“Too much beer and wine, too many good times…”The twanging vocal harmonies of the banjo player and the guitarist straddled the din of the bar. Their music transformed into a shell, a skin to shield the revelry.
A woman near the band rose from a table and extended her thin, lined hands to the man she was seated with. His smile saturated his grey-bearded face as he stood and followed her to the middle of the pinched dance floor, their hands twined together. She turned to face him and they laced their arms around each other, slipping off into the stream of sound.
“She needs to be loved not despised…”They swirled and spun alone before the band, ease and muscle memory stepping into their places. Communication broke down to the pressure of eyes and the trailing of hands on flesh; messages were tapped out across the telegraph wires of skin. Bodies became waves, steps and spins became thoughtlessly dynamic; they rode their own currents.
“She once was the belle of the ballroom, she’d a made some man a sweet wife…”An audience stumbled into existence around the edges of the dance floor, sucked in by the dancers’ undertow. Easily enraptured, the audience watched the dancers shed decades with twists of spines and the precise placement of feet. Strands of hair and folds of clothing became animate, their embraces echoing the deliberate motion of famished fingers and eager eyes. Her dust brown dress meandered through spins and twirls, caressing the calves of his boot-cut jeans.
“The lure of the honky-tonk wrecked her young life…”The mandolin shimmered and clattered over the top of the other instruments, the player shaking every last note from his instrument as he wrung its slim neck. The inebriated audience hooted and clapped, their glassy eyes turning to the action on stage.
His eyes never left her as he led her into one last slow twirl, the ebbing tide of the music washing them closer together. She let her head come to rest on his shoulder as they shuffled slowly in each others arms. The band gently pulled themselves back in, winding down to the final notes.
“Too much beer and wine, too many good times…
The lure of the honky-tonk, wrecked her young life…”Applause spurted from the crowded bar as last note drifted into the rafters. He pressed her fingers to his mouth; the audience returned to their busy conversations. She smiled, gliding back to the table, his hand at the small of her back.
The banjo player took a long pull from his beer. He pushed back his black trucker cap, wiping his sweaty brow across his sleeve. The guitarist and bassist stood by the dormant drums, bringing their instruments back into tune. The mandolin player crouched at the side of the stage, engaged in the spidery business of replacing a broken string. The banjo player pulled his cap forward, gulping from his beer bottle. He slid back to the microphone.
“Well, it looks like the mandolin is out of commission for the moment, so we’re gonna do a little banjo tune for ya…”
