Desperado

Kings, Mostly

“Somebody loves him,” Jay said. “That’s the whole tragedy. Somebody is standing right there loving him and he cannot feel it.”

Jay cried at two in the morning and I pretended not to notice.

We were living in an upstairs apartment on Third Avenue, the staircase on the outside of the building, wood and cold. The rent was eighty dollars a month split two ways. The record was Desperado. The Eagles. Jay had been playing it for an hour.

I am aware that crying over a record at two in the morning is something people do at nineteen. I am aware that it does not signify. And yet.

There was an ashtray on the floor between us. Chesterfield butts. A box of grape Jolly Joes that Jay had been working through one at a time. Pabst cans. More than a few. We were both on the floor next to the stereo, backs against the couch, close enough to the record player that you could hear the needle. One of my shoes had ended up across the room. I was not certain how that happened. I was not certain about several things.

Jay held up one finger. It took him a moment to get it up there.

“You have to understand what this song is,” he said.

“Okay.”

“It’s about a cowboy. An outlaw. He’s been riding so long he doesn’t know how to stop. He’s got the queen of diamonds, the gambling, the running. He thinks that’s living.” Jay looked at the record player. “But somebody who loves him can see what’s happening. They’re watching him and they know. He’s dying out there. Not fast. Slow. The way you die when you won’t let anybody close enough to matter.”

The record kept turning.

Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses. You been out ridin’ fences for so long now.

“Ridin’ fences,” Jay said. “You know what that costs. Cold gets in. Everything gray and cold and you thinking you’re free.”

He was quiet for a moment.

Freedom, oh freedom, that’s just some people talking. Your prison is walking through this world all alone.

Jay went still.

“Your prison,” he said.

He looked at me. His eyes were wet.

“He hears it,” Jay said. “He hears every word. And he rides away anyway.”

He was crying. Jay never did anything quietly. The Pabst in his hand was tilting and he did not notice.

I did not say anything.

Let somebody love you, let somebody love you, before it’s too late.

Jay wiped his face with the back of his hand.

We were kings. We had nothing and owed nothing and the night belonged to us and nobody needed anything from us before morning. That is a kingdom. You do not know it is a kingdom until you are standing outside it looking in.

It was about to end. We did not know this.

Jay got up. Went to the kitchen. Came back with two Pabsts and sat back down and handed one up without looking at me.

“Poor bastard,” he said.

In the morning he was gone. One of my shoes was across the room. I sat there a while before I put it on.

The wooden staircase groaned all night when the wind came up. The Chesterfields were gone. The Jolly Joes were gone. The Pabst was gone.

We were kings.

Not yet.

The cowboy on the fence has been living in my head for a long time. This is the kind of thing I write when I’m not writing about politics. Which is most of what I write.

If you want more of it, a paid subscription is eight dollars a month. You get everything. The politics, the Panhandle, the people I can’t stop thinking about.

Come sit on the floor with us.