“Your group has already checked out,” she said, after finding my name in her register book. She had the local accent, which sounds like a badly tuned banjo. “Left a couple of hours ago. Said they were driving all the way to North Cah’lina.”

“I’m aware,” I said. “I’m no longer with the band.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Creative differences,” I said.

The eyebrow climbed higher.

“I’ll be staying another night.”

“Uh-huh, okay. Cash or credit card?”

I had two hundred or so in cash, but most of that liquidity was earmarked for the dope purchase I hoped to make at the fair, so I gave her my BankAmericard. She called it in and waited, phone cocked between her ear and one meaty shoulder, now watching an ad for paper towels that could apparently drink up spills the size of Lake Michigan. I watched with her. When the talk show returned, Nicole Kidman was joined by Tom Selleck, and the country girl was still on hold. She didn’t seem to mind, but I did. The itches had started, and my bad leg was starting to throb. Just as another ad came on, the country girl perked up. She swiveled around in her chair, looked out her window at a blazing blue Oklahoma sky, and chatted briefly. Then she hung up and handed back my credit card.

“Declined. Which makes me dubious about taking cash. Supposing you have it.”

That was mean, but I gave her my best smile, just the same. “The card’s good. They made a mistake. It happens all the time.”

“Then you’ll be able to rectify it at some other motel,” she said. (Rectify! Such a big word for a country girl!) “There’s four more down the block, but they ain’t much.”

Unlike this roadside Ritz-Carlton, I thought, but what I said was, “Try the card again.”

“Honey,” she said, “I look at you and I don’t have to.”

I sneezed, turning my head to catch it on the short sleeve of my Charlie Daniels Band tee. Which was okay since it hadn’t been washed lately. Or even not so lately. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I left my first husband when him and both his brothers took to smokin the rock. No offense, but I know what I’m lookin at. Last night’s paid for—on the band’s credit card—but now that you’re what they call a solo artist, checkout time’s one o’clock.”

“On the door it says three.”

She leveled a chipped nail at a sign to the left of the calendar featuring Puppy-Giving Jesus: DURING STATE FAIR, SEPTEMBER 25 TO OCTOBER 4, CHECOUT TIME WILL BE 1 PM.

“Checkout is spelled wrong,” I said. “You should rectify that.”

She glanced at the sign, then turned back to me. “So ’tis, but the one PM part needs no rectifyin.” She glanced at her watch. “That gives you an hour and a half. Don’t make me call the police, hon. At state fair time, they’re thicker’n flies on a fresh dog turd, and they’d be here in a jiff.”

“This is such bullshit,” I said.

That was a blurry time for me, but I remember her reply as clearly as if she had spoken it in my ear two minutes ago: “Uh-uh, honey, this is reality.”

Then she turned back to the television, where some fool was tapdancing.

 • • •

I wasn’t going to try scoring dope in the daytime, not even at the state fair, so I stayed at the Fairgrounds Inn until one thirty (just to spite the country girl). Then I grabbed my duffel in one hand and my guitar case in the other, and set out walking. I made a stop at a Texaco station around where North Detroit Avenue becomes South Detroit. By then my walk had become a portside limp and my hip was throbbing with my heartbeat. In the men’s room I cooked up and delivered half my goods into the hollow of my left shoulder. Mellowness ensued. Both my sore throat and the ache in my leg began to recede.

My good left leg became my bad left leg on a sunny summer day in 1984. I was on a Kawasaki; the elderly asshole coming the other way was piloting a Chevrolet the size of a cabin cruiser. He wandered into my lane, leaving me a choice: either the soft shoulder or a head-on collision. I picked the obvious choice and made it past the asshole okay. The mistake was trying to swerve back onto the road at forty. Advice to all you novice riders out there: swerving on gravel at forty is a terrible idea. I dumped the bike and broke the leg in five places. I also shattered my hip. Shortly thereafter, I discovered the Joy of Morphine.

 • • •

With my leg feeling better and the itches and twitches at bay, I was able to move on from the gas station with a bit more vigor, and by the time I got to the Greyhound terminal, I was asking myself why I’d stuck with Kelly Van Dorn and his screwed-up country band as long as I had. Playing weepy ballads (in the key of C, for God’s sake) was not what I was cut out for. I was a rocker, not a shitkicker.

I purchased a ticket on the following day’s noon bus to Chicago, which also bought me the right to stash my duffel and my Gibson SG—the only valuable possession I had left—in the baggage room. The ticket cost me twenty-nine dollars. I counted the rest sitting in a bathroom stall. It came to a hundred and fifty-nine bucks, about what I had expected. The future was looking brighter. I would score at the fair, find a place to crash—maybe at a local homeless shelter, maybe outside—and tomorrow I’d ride the big gray dog to Shytown. There was a musicians’ exchange there, as there is in most big cities, with players sitting around, telling jokes, swapping gossip, and looking for gigs. For some this wasn’t easy (accordion players, for instance), but bands were always looking for competent rhythm guitar players, and I was a smidge more than that. By 1992 I could even play a little lead, if called upon to do so. And if I wasn’t too wrecked. The important thing was to get to Chicago and get a gig before Kelly Van Dorn put out the word that I was unreliable, and the pisshead just might.

With at least six hours to kill until dark, I cooked up the rest of my shit and put it where it would do the most good. Once that was taken care of, I bought a paperback western at the newsstand, sat on a bench with it opened to someplace in the middle, and nodded off. When I woke myself up with a volley of sneezes, it was seven o’clock, and time for the former rhythm guitarist of White Lightning to hunt up some of the good stuff.

 • • •

By the time I got to the fair, sunset was just a bitter orange line in the west. Although I wanted to save most of my money for a buy, I splurged on a taxi to get there, because I wasn’t feeling good at all. It wasn’t just the usual coming-down twitches and aches, either. The sore throat was back. There was a high, sour humming in my ears, and I felt hot all over. I told myself that last was normal, because it was one hot bitchkitty of a night. As for the rest, I was sure six or seven hours of sleep would put me right. I could catch it on the bus. I wanted to be all I could be before I re-enlisted in the Rock and Roll Army.

I bypassed the main entrance to the fair, because only an idiot would attempt to buy heroin at a craft exhibit or livestock exhibition. Beyond it was the entrance to Bell’s Amusement Park. That adjunct to the Tulsa State Fair is gone now, but in September of 1992, Bell’s was blasting away full force. Both roller coasters—the wooden Zingo and the more modern Wildcat—were whirling and twirling, trailing happy screams behind each hairpin turn and suicidal plunge. There were long lines at the water slides, the Himalaya, and the Phantasmagoria dark ride.

I ignored these and idled my way down the midway past the food concessions, where the smells of fried dough and sausages—usually enticing—made me feel a little sick to my stomach. There was a guy with the right look hanging around the Pitch Til U Win shy, and I almost approached him, but caught a narc vibe when I got close. The shirt he was wearing (COCAINE! BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS!) was just a little too on-the-nose. I kept moving, past the shooting gallery, the wooden milkbottle shy, the Skeeball, the Wheel of Fortune. I was feeling worse all the time, my skin hotter and that humming in my ears louder. My throat was so sore I winced with every swallow.