A rosy gauze unrolled over planet earth the morning I headed west towards Denver. No map needed: I-70 or bust. I still set the GPS to maintain nine miles per hour above the speed limit.

Music: Tina Turner belting “If I Could Turn Back Time”. 

There’s something mystical about a sunrise. Who was the first to write about a Phoenix rising. Hope. Rebirth. Renewal. The turning of a golden page. Gold pages! What the hell was I talking about? The story of my life would be printed on the paper used to wrap raw beef at the butcher.

I laughed at my brain and how it juxtaposed images. I’d woken up from a dream just as Laramie told me she honestly never saw herself with me because I was too negative, which caused me to grumpily eat a bowl of cereal at hotel breakfast while wondering what the fucking point of any of this was, really. That rosy gauze could just as easily be blood-soaked bandages.

Enjoy the morning, I thought. You’re alive. I focused on the rosy glow through sunglasses while sipping hot coffee. 

Wheels turned. The fields of Kansas streamed past. A battle of billboards waged, between God and the strip clubs. There was another voice in my head. Larry, the drummer. Legs so long they stretched over the edge of the couch on the tour bus. His feet bare and white like albino fish in the ocean depths. He was a large man, Larry, and an energy freak. He’d do an entire show and hop on the exercise bike he required Deacon to bring to every show. Ten more miles on the bike while the others ate and boozed. If he didn’t, he’d keep everyone awake by pacing the bus. I remember Dad bundled under an afghan with a hat pulled over his eyes. Larry hustled from the pisser to the driver, to the driver to the pisser. After the hundreth pass, Dad’s voice boomed. “Get him his goddamn bike, Deacon!”

During another ride to another show, while we drove through Kansas years ago, Larry with his feet up, told me a story. 

“Did you know, Buck, that the owner of that mega-church also owns the clubs and erected the signs to draw attention to both of his businesses? The church is a business, don’t let them fool you. One of the longest running and most successful.”

“How much money do they make?” I asked. Spin Cycle was doing well then. I had no concept of money and what it bought, but I was fascinated by counting numbers, always doing math problems in the margins of magazines. 

“An entire family of Scrooge McDucks swimming for days.”

Paul Newman read an issue of Spiderman on one of two top bunks. “Don’t your parents contribute heavily to the church, Larry? Doesn’t that make them contributors to the Scrooge McDuck fortune? And doesn’t you sending money home to them as repayment for that Cadillac they bought you when we were little shits in Pontiac make you a key investor into said mega-church?” 

The entire time he spoke the Spiderman comic hid the lower half of his face. He looked like a ventriloquist throwing his voice to the curtains fluttering from the window cracked next to him. 

“That Cadillac is the reason you boned Sherrie McCormick,” Lawrence said. 

“Oh, Sherrie,” Paul mused. 

“Oh, Sherrrrie,” Larry crooned.

“Oh, Sherrrrrrrie,” Dad added, sitting up from his sleep. “You should’ve been gone! Knowing how I made you feel.” 

Paul dropped his comic and sang. “And I should’ve been gone, after all your words of steel.”

Dad again. “Oh, I must’ve been a dreamer. And I must’ve been someone else. And we should’ve been over.”

Larry leapt up and threw his long black hair back. “Oh, Sherrie! Our love!”

Dad and Paul harmonized: “Holds on! Holds on!”

Larry belted out, “Oh, Sherrie! Our Love.”

I joined the chorus, trying to make the veins bulge from my neck the way Dad’s did when he sang. “Holds on! Holds on!”

“Turn it up, Karl,” Deacon called to the bus driver. 

The memory faded but the smile held for most of the day. 

As day turned to dusk, the sky bruised and damp, I knee-bopped to Van Morrison’s “Bright Side of the Road”. A truck from the east floated into my lane and abruptly corrected into the oncoming lane. What if it hadn’t? What if it wasn’t a truck, but a semi pulling a full trailer? And during mid-bop, the fast asleep driver veered into my lane and didn’t wake up and instead obliterated me. How loud would that crunch be? What flammable liquids did the semi carry? Would a gas spill ignite and detonate the trailer into a great ball of fire? Could I be a Jerry Lee Lewis footnote in an explosion seen from space? 

What did I have to remember me by? A half-assed half-written memoir? A sack of beef jerky scattered on the highway? A file cabinet at home with documents alphabetized for no reason other than I once laid in bed with foot tapping until I got up to organize the folders in the cabinet. Was Laramie a bad memory then? A reminder that when things are good you should expect them to flip you upside down and hold you by one leg over a cliff edge like Arnold Schwarzenneger does to Sully in Commando. 

“Hey, Fender,” I said out loud to break the trance. “No one cares.” 

Except people did care. Maybe. Probably. Who was to say? 

Mom cared about me, even though she had a weird way of showing it. She didn’t give a damn about Dad’s backstory, not that I’d told her about my quest. And I wouldn’t call it a quest to her. I’d call it a road trip. And she’d wax poetic about the days at home before the touring started. And then the resentment would begin. And she’d start cleaning. And I’d say, “You know what, Mom? You remarried. And things probably worked out how they should have, right?” And she’d say, “I never really cared for their music.” And I’d say, “Oh, I know. You’ve told me.”

And I’d fly home and remember the early journeys on the road with Dad and the band. The laughs and smiles and the hugs. Man he gave good hugs. And Meredith loved when he hugged her after a show. All you need is love, and there was love there. For a time. Warm love.

“Hey, James,” I said, breathing slowly to calm the nerves. In therapy, I’d invented a character who sat on my right shoulder. His name was James. He had a red beard and spoke with a gruff voice. He was the one who listened when my brain took over. The brain, it’s a real asshole.

We’re getting by, Fender. We’re getting by. Keep on rolling down the river. 

My fingers tingled. One hand had turned numb from holding the steering wheel. I flexed it and cracked a knuckle on my chin before wiping away tears and snot with the back of my hand.

I did have Meredith’s story stowed in my duffel bag. And lost music to locate. In a world of basement tapes released every other day on streaming platforms, what good did finding Spin Cycle’s lost album do for me? 

Maybe it wasn’t about me. Never was.

Hey, Laramie.

You sure? Talking to her now, after all this time? 

Whatever, dude. Enjoy the morning.