Free I Was There the Night He Died by Ray Robertson Page B

and all of the equipment broke down every fifty miles and local firemen wanted to see permits and the sanitation officials wanted to know where exactly the portable toilets were going to be located and by the end of it they were pawning equipment just to buy enough diesel to get to the next show. Ronnie lost a small fortune and nobody bought the album, but the seventeen people who saw the show or heard the songs never purchased another Rod Stewart LP again.”
    The wind, a barking dog, the frozen moon. And that’s just about right.
    â€œYou talk really fast for someone who smokes pot.”
    I hold up the wine bottle. “I had some help,” I say. “I’ll try to be more mellow in the future.”
    â€œDon’t. Don’t be more mellow.”
    â€œYou don’t like mellow?”
    The girl doesn’t answer. The barking dog does. “I hate mellow,” she says.
    â€œIt has occurred to you that you might be fond of the wrong drug, then, has it not?”
    The girl doesn’t answer; instead, asks: “Then what?”
    The sweetest sound a storyteller can hear, the two words that can defeat even a busted microphone and being clean and sober.
    â€œThen you can imagine then what. Then there were three more records that a year after they came out you could buy in a discount bin for a buck, but now go for close to a hundred dollars each on eBay. Then he found out he had Multiple Sclerosis—MS! The guy’s nickname was Plonk, he drank so much, and what does he die of but MS!—and he decided to circle his broken-down wagons and raise chickens and sheep until the coldest British winter in thirty years and the diseases that blew in with it killed most of his animals and he was forced to sell his farm and move back to London and do the best he could do trying not to hurt too much.”
    My hands are cold and my mouth is dry in spite of the half bottle of wine in my stomach, and I must have said something right because even I’m sad. I get up from the bench without looking at the girl and head home.
    From the direction of the swing set, “What else about Ronnie Lane?”
    â€œThere is nothing else.” I don’t like the way that sounds. I pause at the front door. “Listen to him,” I say. “Listen to Ronnie Lane.”
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    When I woke up the next morning I felt ashamed of myself. You simply don’t talk about your work. It’s bad manners, it’s bad for the writing itself, it’s bad to blather to strangers. Bad, bad, bad.
    That wasn’t me, I’m not like that.
    I’d rant and rave to Sara, sure. Wouldn’t discuss or dissect or delineate, but when something work-related was cooking in my head, I’d occasionally spout verbal steam while we were out walking the dog together or while doing the dishes or over breakfast’s second cup of tea. Which would never detract or impair what I was up to—would only, in fact, turn up the inspirational heat a notch or two higher. Someone to talk at, basically, someone to help you discover what it is you really want to say.
    But that wasn’t someone. That was different. That was Sara.
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    There’s a message on my cell phone from Thames View asking me to please drop by the director’s office as soon as it’s convenient—it’s urgent—obviously the oral follow-up to the written-word warning that Uncle Donny has just sprung on me. I feel like I’m being called into the principal’s office for something I didn’t do but that I know I’m going to take the heat for anyway. That’s what I get for forgetting for fifteen minutes what I was supposed to be so upset about. Bad news is always just one voicemail message away. I’ll call them back once I’m finished at Uncle Donny’s.
    Visiting Uncle Donny is like seeing the Grand Canyon again for the first time in decades: the only thing that’s