Free Small Town Girl by Patricia Rice

all crapola, but it was good for a laugh to warm up the audience, right?
    She must have been playing cool real well because Flint relaxed.
    "Yeah, some of them were kind of cute. 'Let's all join together, and summon stormy weather, and when the skies fall, we'll bring them to their knees, and make the rat finks crawl.' Silly, but he could change the subject from politics to business, if he liked. Audiences love thinking they can bring the fat cats to their knees and make them crawl."
    Sipping his coffee, Flint was getting into his subject. Jo was a damned good listener. He hadn't had an opportunity to talk music in a while, and he was feeling deprived. He'd had a roaring good time creating the upbeat on those verses. It had matched his vengeful mood at the time and washed away some of the bitterness of his divorce.
    "Silly?" Joella asked silkily, taking the scrap from his hand.
    Still sailing on one of his favorite topics, Flint didn't hear the torpedo coming. "Yeah, some of them. Once I added the bass to the chorus of that one, the audience really got into it, pounding their bottles on the table and singing along when we tried them out in a few bars. The lyrics have the kind of passion that sells. The album's bound to go gold." He might hate the man behind it, but he was damned proud of the music.
    "How nice for Randy." Glaring at the envelope as if it had turned into a spider, Joella dropped it on the counter and started polishing one of the hideous rainbow dishes she'd been raving about earlier.
    Since she was being more rational than yesterday, Flint got a little bolder. Maybe he ought to talk to the Buzzards first, but he'd been a little startled to discover the potential source of the rhyme so easily. That chorus was the cornerstone on which the first release was laid. Maybe Joella really was an angel in disguise and could break it to the guys in a manner that wouldn't get his pants sued off. He prayed they'd only written the one line.
    "Yeah, well, the thing is," Flint said slowly, looking for a cautious way to word his problem, "RJ told me he wrote all the lyrics. He's been singing them around the country for years, so I didn't doubt him. I'd helped him out when he needed it, so he helped me out by letting me compose. I'd been doing it for the Barn Boys, but I quit the group when I quit traveling." Flint heard the front door open and knew the morning rush was about to start, so he hurried. "But right after RJ and I copyrighted the songs and our manager sold them, I found that scrap and asked him about it. He swore it was just a line a friend back home had jotted down. I kinda wanted to make sure everything was on the level."
    "He said that? A friend ?"
    Joella sounded so perfectly calm that the red plate flying past Flint's car caught him off guard. Stunned, he watched as her tanned arm reached across a stack of plates for a green saucer. "If the line isn't his, I'm trying to find that friend and make it right!" he yelled, ducking as the saucer blew over his head and ricocheted off a tin lamp with noisy accuracy.
    " I wrote all Randy's songs, damn the lazy, lying, low-down, conniving—My mama needs that money."
    A yellow cup whizzed straight at him and Flint dropped just in time to save his scalp. More cups, saucers, and plates flew in accompaniment to each pejorative and with increasing strength as she built up steam. Hunkered down behind the counter, Flint caught a glimpse of George Bob fleeing out the front door, and his rage boiled up and threatened to spill over. This was his career on the line.
    " All RJ's songs?" he yelled. A growing terror built behind the dam of rage.
    Jo broke into a wild, high-pitched chorus of "He's my man, and I'm proud to know it. He's my man, so I knew he'd blow it…"
    Except RJ had changed the personal pronoun and said woman instead of man . The line came from the first song they'd done, and she was singing it to the tune RJ had used before Flint had fixed it. No wonder it had sounded