“There’s no town drunk here, you meddling son of a bitch,” he said, never looking at me and never missing a beat as he clapped. “We all just take turns.”
And they didn’t. Onstage Son Tidwell had taken the band from E to G, someone began to bang a tambourine, and Sara went from “Fishin Blues” to “Dog My Cats” without a single pause. Out here, in front of the stage and below it, the crowd once more drew back from me and my little girl without looking at us or missing a beat as they clapped their work-swollen hands together. One young man with a port-wine stain swimming across the side of his face opened his mouth—at twenty he was already missing half his teeth—and hollered “Yee-HAW!” around a melting glob of tobacco. It was Buddy Jellison from the Village Cafe, I realized . . . Buddy Jellison magically rolled back in age from sixty-eight to twenty. Then I realized the hair was the wrong shade—light brown instead of black (although he was pushing seventy and looking it in every other way, Bud hadn’t a single white hair in his head). This was Buddy’s grandfather, maybe even his great-grandfather. I didn’t give a shit either way. I only wanted to get out of here.
“Excuse me,” I said, brushing by him.
“There’s no town drunk here, you meddling son of a bitch,” he said, never looking at me and never missing a beat as he clapped. “We all just take turns.”
