I’m still not back into my routine, forgive me. I still have so many blogs to read and other things to catch up on. Here’s the latest entry into the Lucy Kilgore series. You can find the others here: Lucy Kilgore.

 

I’m the first one at JK Bob’s Hillbilly Shack. True name. The name was enough to make me almost turn on heel and walk away, but when I considered seeing the possibility of Lucy’s cousin or whoever it is, that was reason enough to press through the doors that look like they’ve seen their share of drunken damage.

And yet, the inside is not at all what I expected. For one thing there aren’t any cowboys. In fact, the patrons seem more like hipsters than what I was expecting. There seems to be a contest among the guys to see who can grow the longest, scraggliest beard. Even with a day’s worth of whiskers on my face, I seem clean-cut.

The place is almost packed and it’s still early, but I find a table that should fit us all and sit down. A waitress wearing mighty fine and mighty short denim cutoffs appears immediately at my side.

“What can I get you?”

“Beer on tap?”

She lists around 20 and my head is swimming with the names. “I’ll try the Hillbilly Ale.”

“You won’t regret it. It’s from Central Dominion Brewery.” She says as if I should know. I do not.

I catch movement near the stage. A petite woman wearing the only cowboy hat in the place and red cowboy boots is plugging her guitar into an amplifier and then sets it against a stand. She has straight white blonde hair, but I really can’t see her face due to the hat being so low on her face. I wish I were closer so I could see her face, her eyes. She isn’t very tall, but neither was Lucy. I know this isn’t Lucy and I don’t know why I let the thought keep banging around in my head. The Lucy I knew would never have gotten up and sung in front of anyone. She had issues singing in front of me. Damn, but I miss her.

Finally Billy and the others show up and I find I’m relieved. He orders pitchers of beer and nachos, loaded potato skins, and looks at me and grins. “My friend here with have hummus.”

I grin back and shrug. “What can I say? I got hooked on hummus.”

“Well, you’ll like ours,” the waitress says. “It’s spicy. Kind of like me.”

She leans her hip against my arm and winks. Crap, I didn’t know women still winked. I didn’t know anyone still winked.

Billy is hiding his laugh behind his hand. “You needed this, man. I’m telling you. Getting out. Enjoying drinks with your friends. Fine ladies throwing themselves at you.”

Mandy rolls her eyes. “He thinks everyone needs to go out drinking all the time. Hazard to your liver, he is.”

He pulls her in for a quick hug and kiss on her temple.

Then the petite blonde is on the stage.

“I want to thank you all for coming out tonight,” she says. Her voice is hushed, lilting. It sounds nothing like Lucy’s and I feel momentary dejection. I shake my head and take a long draught of beer. What was I thinking? She was going to be Lucy?

“I’m going to start with one you all probably know and one of my favorites that The Band Perry recently brought back. I hope you enjoy.”

 

end 6/19/2017

Sascha Darlington