The Last Singing Cowboy in America

THE LAST SINGING COWBOY IN AMERICA

The last singing cowboy in America was bleeding hard from the mouth. He hadn't meant anything by it, but when he asked the man behind him if he'd be a good sport and shut up and while he's at it think about watching his language what with so many ladies around and all, the guy just stood up in the middle of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and put most of two hundred pounds behind a straight right hand. Buck was surprised at the flash of white light, since he hadn't taken a punch since the third grade, and in a half second he was kneeling on the Pepsi glazed cement floor of the theatre, yelling things like "OW!" and "JEEZ!" The thug who threw the punch, all wired on Jujyfruits and Lee Marvin, mumbled something like, "Yeah...well," and clod-hopped his way across the endless legs before hitting the aisle and getting the hell out of there before a cop came or some high school football player on a first date tried to make a citizen's arrest.

Buck leaned against the salt and buttery glass of the snack bar a few minutes later, trying to slowly wipe at the cut on his lip with the back of his hand, like Magnum P.I. If he'd wanted to reestablish the aura of machismo that he'd brought to the theatre, he had a lot of catching up to do.

"Now, why would a guy want to do that?" Buck asked, covering his lower lip with a paper napkin full of crushed ice.

"I have no idea, sir," the adolescent assistant manager said, hoping that the theater's general manager wouldn't return from his dinner only to find his polyester tuxedoed subordinate nursing a six foot two inch man wearing a blue satin western shirt, cowboy boots, and a silver belt buckle the size of a trash can lid.

"I took off my hat when he asked me to," Buck said.

"Yes, sir."

"And he just wouldn't be quiet."

"Some people are just very rude, sir."

"Well, none that I've run into'll just haul off and deck you if you remind 'em!" Buck said, losing control of the shake in his voice toward the end of the sentence.

"Once again, I really apologize on behalf of Triple Champion Cinemas and--"

"Well, it's not your fault," Buck said.

The assistant manager nervously eyed the spinning Burger King sign through the glass front doors of the theater. "Regardless of that, sir," he said, bumping into the orange whip machine as he filled another napkin with crushed ice, "please come back anytime as my guest."

Buck said nothing, his eyes following a swirl of red on the lobby carpet.

The assistant manager made a tentative move toward the glass double doors, hoping that the confused cowboy would mosey on out of his jurisdiction. "Well, Mister..."

"Harrop, Buck Harrop," the last singing cowboy in America said. He wasn't moving yet.

"You know, I think the swelling is going down already, Mister Harrop!" His lower lip looked like a water balloon.

"Yeah, uh, call me Buck. Anyway, I guess I'll be on my way then," he said, changing the sloppy, freezing napkin from one stinging cold hand to the other. "Hey, do you mind if I take some ice with me?" Buck Harrop walked out of the theatre seconds later with a thirty two ounce "Bubba Thirsty" full of freshly crushed ice.

He waited until he was out of view of the ticket booth girl before bending over and breathing deeply for a minute. The hard lump in his throat wouldn't go away unless he either sat on the curb and cried for a minute or took a long walk and squeezed it out of himself. The well lit street kept him from the easy route, so he chilled the tiny sobs that crept through his chest and got his legs moving. Giant steps clicked him away from the theater, diminishing the rock in his neck with every one.

"Allright, forget about it," he said to himself, but it came out in breathless little sobs better suited to a second grader than a cowboy. "All, uh, uh, right, uh, uh, forget, uh, about it, uh." He walked more quickly, holding the gargantuan waxed cup against his mouth as bracing air swept through his shirt. He found it equally bracing when he remembered that his fake sheepskin jacket was back on his chair in the theater, enjoying the last twenty minutes of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. After considering leaving the jacket there forever in a steel curved fold of fleece and sugar coated velour, he spun his heels in a slow about face and began the two blocks back to the theatre. He couldn't afford to buy a new one on what a singing cowboy in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania makes, and besides, the half roll of cherry lifesavers in the inside pocket would really hit the spot.

The three seconds of neanderthalic violence was almost filing itself under painful life experience until he had to turn around and watch the theater get bigger. The pavement clicked under his plastic boot soles and he practiced various postures with which he would ask for his jacket back. He decided to go with arm waving indifference to the jacket and a thumb-hitched-in-the-belt shoulder shrug concerning the shot in the chops. Then a tip of his light grey Stetson and good- bye forever. He trashed the now pink cup of sloshy ice water and swept open the glass door, striding into the mirrored lobby in measured rhythm to the thumping of his heart.

A young man approached Buck with one hand upraised and the other wiping onion ring crumbs from his attempted moustache. "Pardon me, sir," he said.

"Oh, I just forgot my jacket," Buck said, not stopping to chat, since Jimmy Stewart was a senator now and the lights were about to come up, exposing a cowboy/punching bag groping for his coat.

"Hey, buddy," the manager said, swelling his synthetic blazer to twice its normal size, "you can't just traipse in here." A loyal employee of the Triple Champion Cinema chain, the kid had no intention of letting a trembling, purple lipped weirdo into his particular theatre, the Champion Quadriplex of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

"I just need to get my jacket...buddy," Buck said, growing very impatient with the Triple Champion Cinemas in general.

"He's O.K., Mister Frebb," an amplified voice said from somewhere. The assistant manager knocked on the thick glass of the ticket booth and craned his neck back to the microphone, "he's already been in." He waved at Buck and was given a practiced, nonchalant nod as Buck took big, fast steps into the theatre.

A scene in broad daylight would have been perfect, giving Buck a well-lit escape, but the movie was over with a smattering of applause and a wash of house lights. "Excuse me, excuse me...excuse me," Buck said, his Stetson now at a rakish angle, covering his face. His fellow row members peppered him with suggestions on what should be done with people like the one that did that to his lip.

"Did you follow him out there?"

"I'd sue...one man's opinion, but I'd sue."

"You'd think the ushers would do something."

"Does it hurt?" a pretty girl asked, while pulling on a puffy, blue Villanova Football jacket. Buck's eyes seeped out from under the brim of his Stetson for a second.

"Naw." It hurt like crazy.

The jacket's fleece lining was sculpted to the same chair. Buck checked the pockets and joined the exiting cattle drive, avoiding their stares while walking uphill to the street. His hat's brim covered his eyes well, but his busted lip was on display and the centerpiece of smalltalk during the mass exodus.

"Wow, you ought to have someone look at that."

"That's going to hurt tomorrow!" It hurt now.

A pleasant looking woman sidled over and said, "You deserved it. You shoulda minded your own business!" Of course, a gentleman couldn't just pop a lady in the teeth, although a little movie of him doing so played in his head a few times as the shuffling crowd walked into the night. The air filled with clouds of mist from the mouths of people looking for their cars and stomping their feet, having underestimated the cold when leaving their houses.

Buck stopped outside the glass double doors and smelled the air for a while. His jacket felt good and warm, his hat was positioned just so, and with a fresh cherry lifesaver beginning a cool, sweet melt on his tongue, he felt, well, beside the pumping mass of distressed flesh covering his bottom teeth, pretty good. He didn't have any macho cowboy fight stories before tonight, so with slight exaggerations on the size of the attacker, the length of the bout and, of course, its outcome, he might actually come out ahead. If he could get a little tiny scar out of it, all the better. He clicked away, looking forward to a time years from now, when one beer too many, a question about the scar, or an extended power outage would pull the story out of him.

As his boots snapped on a shuffle of fallen leaves, Buck's eyes locked onto a six inch by six inch space from seventy-five feet away. The knuckles of a man's right hand under the yellow wash of a Chevy Nova's dome light. The blue jacket sleeve and reddened fist sizzled into Buck's optic nerves and alarms of rage rang through his brain. Had he been carrying a machete he would, in a stone flash, be doing hard time in New Jersey with a three hundred pound cellmate who insisted upon calling him Nancy.

He swallowed hard and tried to walk away, getting as far as turning his torso in the direction of his motel, but the red neon hum in his brain commandeered his body and walked him right up to the Chevy. He stood a few feet from the rear of the car and watched the man who scared him more than he'd ever been scared in his adult life shake his hand in the air and massage his knuckles.

"Hey," Buck said.

The monster looked up and jumped back six inches, readying himself for some kind of attack. He quickly scanned the cowboy's hands for a weapon, looked to the left and right for a cop, behind him for a gang of other cowboys, and then relaxed visibly.

"Look, Dale Evans," the monster said.

"I just wanted to know why you hit me," Buck said. His bottom lip was at full swell, so it sounded like "I jus wan to know why you hi bee."

"Hey, don't get in my face, man."

"I want to know why you..."

"Nobody tells me what to do, man," the monster spat.

"Why would you hit someone?" Buck asked, genuinely curious.

"You better back away from the car or you're gonna get hit again, Buck Rogers!"

"Don't you mean Roy Rogers?" Buck asked. A chuckle wafted across the parking lot from a small crowd of the interested, busily feigning disinterest. They slinked behind telephone poles and stalled between cars, watching the intense drama being played within the confines of a poorly lit parking space.

"Well, I'm not going to be hit again, I'll tell you that much, but I just wonder why a person would be so mean," Buck said. The passenger door of the Nova blasted open and a girl hopped out, spilling the contents of her patent leather clutch bag all over the damp gravel.

"You're gonna let him talk to you like that?" the girl said. She chewed her gum hard enough to chip a tooth and scorched Buck with a hard stare, sizzling through false eyelashes.

"Hey, you %@$# piece of cowboy %$**," she said, filling in the blanks with high octane vulgarity, "Who do you *&%$ think you are, telling him to shut up, you &&^% piece of #@@# ! Why don't you go back to ...Chicago or wherever and get the *&^% out of here!"

She ended this litany of filth by hurling at Buck a gesture of, what seemed to her, utter contempt. Extending the little finger of her right hand, she shoved it at Buck, backhanded. He didn't know what it meant, but got the message.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Buck said to the monster, "I guess I'd be mean too."

She gasped and almost made a move toward him, but thought better of it when he lowered his Stetson and looked through to the back of her head. Honey, come near me and they'll be picking Maybelline out of this gravel for three months.

A swipe of red light flew by their heads and a police car rolled up the short hill to the parking lot. The relieved sigh of the assistant manager could be heard from outside his bulletproof ticket booth and the microphone wasn't even on.

As his girlfriend bent to the ground and began throwing stray nail polish bottles and Newport menthols back into her purse, the Nova driver straightened up considerably, assuming his meet-the-police posture. The police car crunched across the gravel lot and stopped behind Buck.

"What's the problem, guys?" the passenger cop said.

"This guy's been threatening me!" the monster said. "Where have you guys been?"

"Yeah! What is there, a sale at Dunkin' Donuts?" his girlfriend said.

"Hey, shut up!" the thug snapped at her.

The interior of the police car was too dark to see facial expressions, but the five second pause made everybody nervous. The cop turned slowly to Buck. "What's going on?" he asked.

"This guy just punched me, right in the middle of the movie and I just wanted to know why," Buck said.

"Did you do anything to provoke him?" the cop asked.

"I just asked him to be quiet 'cause he was talking through most of the movie and he slugged me when I wasn't looking," Buck said.

"That's a lie, I didn't do anything!" the thug said. Murmurs of disagreement wafted between cars and behind telephone poles. The circumstantial testimony of the nosy.

"You ^%$# people don't know a *&^% thing!" the girlfriend said.

"Shut up!" the monster snapped, glaring across the roof of the Chevy.

He walked slowly toward the back of his car. "Look, officer, we're on our way home, O.K.? No problem here."

"No, I'm sorry," Buck said, "but you're not going home until you answer my question."

The driver of the police car got out and rounded the front of the car, standing within grabbing distance of both men. "Allright, fellas, let's forget about it, O.K.?" he said.

"It's forgotten," the thug said.

"I'd love to forget it, but I'll be carrying around this little reminder," Buck said, pointing to his fat bruise of a lower lip, "so I want to know why you hit me."

The cop looked at Buck's lip and winced. The parking lot's yellow vapor lamps helped Buck's case enormously, painting his lip a swirly green.

"So you want to press charges?" the cop asked.

"Nope. Just want to know why," Buck said.

"Allright, why did you hit him?" the cop asked the thug.

"I didn't hit anybody!" the thug demanded.

"You hit him," a man said, from two parking spaces over, hoping desperately that another witness would fill the void with a grunt of verbal agreement. In the deafening silence, he threw the end of a cashmere scarf around his neck and escaped into the leather upholstered safety of his Volvo.

"I want to know why a man would just hit somebody in the face," Buck said, squaring off with the thug and, in the process, realizing that he had four inches on the guy, not including his hat. "All I did was ask you to be quiet and you attacked me."

The girlfriend hurled her purse into the car and high heeled her way toward Buck. "I'll tell you why he ^%$#@ hit you, you--"

"Hey, get back in the car!" the thug shouted.

"You calm down, buddy," the passenger cop said.

"Oh, what are you, good cop or bad cop?" the thug asked.

King of Prussia's finest shot each other a look.

"So what, so you're just gonna believe him that I punched him, right?" the thug said, "I'm the bad guy just because some Trick or Treater says so, right?"

"Why did you hit me?" Buck asked.

"BECAUSE YOU GOT IN MY FACE AND NOBODY GETS IN MY FACE!" the man suddenly burst, wildly swinging his arms over his head. "I GOT RIGHTS AND I TALK WHEN I WANT!" he screamed, completely out of control.

"So, there was no reason, then," Buck said.

"YOU LOSER, WHAT DO YOU THINK HE JUST SAID?" the girlfriend shrieked, standing next to her apoplectic date. The thug pushed her hard on the side of the head and she hit the gravel hard on her palms.

"When I say shut up I mean SHUT UP!" the monster screamed. Buck watched the girl slowly pull her right arm out of the rut it had dug itself in the dark gravel. In the yellow pool of parking lot light, she examined the gritty moonscape that had been made out of her palms. The police looked at each other, and then at Buck, who tried to whistle an 'uh oh' whistle, but his lip hurt too much, so he just hummed it. The monster looked at all three men with sweet, acid arrogance, leaning back against his Chevy.

Buck sucked some thick, cold air through his teeth. "I guess that's it, then. You just get fed up is why," he said, a half second before two cops, three assorted couples pretending not to be watching but were and a passing dog watched Buck Harrop, the last singing cowboy in America, pull a white knuckled fist back to his ear in an arc of blue satin.

The End