Redneck Rhapsody
Tom Harper

BUTLER WALKS OUT OF THE FUZZY MULE LOUNGE, each bootstep falling off the ends of the earth.  Jeans as worn as time hang on his hips like rags on a scarecrow.  He clears his windpipe with a hacking cough, chest heaving, metal fencepost ribs tugging on barbwire lungs, and liquored breath spews out thick as fog.
 
"Dang!" ricochets off the wooden building and the pickup trucks in the parking lot before dying on the dusty red clay earth.  "Where'd that woman go?"  His voice is raspy as a mountain stream frothing over the rocks at the foot of Paint Rock Valley.  He remembers the woman, her brown bare legs glowing in the stage lights, the mound at the fork of her thighs, shaved so no hair is seen in public, partly covered by the tiny patch of sheer red cloth (a triangle of pearl beads sewn on).
 
Eyes search the night as sinews remember.  The alcohol had numbed his senses and steadied him, a dollar in either firm hand -- she hooked two fingers, slipped lacquer-coated nails under, and pulled the cords suspending her red flag -- and he slipped a dollar bill into simultaneous sides, green notes against the bronze song of her skin.  The memory of her scent mixes with the honeysuckle in the air, and he can almost taste her in his mind.
 
"What you doing out here, Butler Gumm?" shrieks through the night, as the Mule's door creaks and slams.  "You out here chasing that black ass!"
 
"Well, Gail, darling, what if I was?"
 
Gail's pale legs emerge mid-thigh from a blue denim skirt, a red plaid cotton blouse is tied up under her breasts, opened on top to reveal the taut overflow, and scuffed white go-go boots reach halfway to her knees.  Her gold blonde hair hangs in curls down to her pearly neck.  She drags worn leather soles across the dust; she'd fly off into the air if ever a foot left ground; her right leg straggling in a winsome limp.  Planting herself within feeling distance, she looks up at Butler from shoulder high.  Gail's mouth twists from anger to amusement, and the yellow bug lights glint off her jade eyes which turn soft before the man's crooked smile.
 
"Well, you better not do it around me!"
 
"And what'll you do?"
 
"After I clip you...."
 
Butler laughs and his laughter rises into the trees, rustling the mockingbirds.  "Ooooo," cries an owl from the hollow behind the country saloon.  "Coooo," answers a mourning dove.
 
"Come on back in here, darlin’, I'm about to dance."
 
"Well, darlin', you know I wouldn't want to miss that," Butler's voice pours out like syrup.  "You go on back in and I'll be right there.  I just need a breath of fresh air."
 
Gail leans her chest close, almost touching Butler.  "You come on, now," her voice is husky, "and I'll show you what you really need."  She dips her right shoulder closer and pivots the left away, turning her face up to him and revealing her breasts nearly to the nipple.  The wind of her rustled leaving ruffles his shirt and her perfume stirs in the air.
 
Butler hacks and pulls a pack of unfiltered Luckies out of his shirt pocket.  With a flick of his wrist, he frees one cigarette and deposits it between his chapped lips.  He puts the pack back in his pocket and takes out a book of matches.  Striking one in cupped hands and setting fire to the end of the tobacco, he inhales deeply, the head of the white stick a red beacon glowing in the night.  Butler looks down the two lane blacktop, watching a pair of tail lights disappear around the curve some fifty yards away.  His lungs fill and expire in turn, the great grey clouds floating and dissipating into the sallow light.  The raucous beat of drums and bass guitar from inside call him back from a reverie of lithe brown legs dancing, from the exotic to the common.
 
On another night he’d go searching for the slim, beautiful, dark skinned woman; finding his baby blue Chevette amongst the muscle cars and pickup trucks; he’d climb behind the wheel, pull out onto Highway 72 and be hit head-on by two drunk girls in a Mustang – Butler Gumm’s head cracking the windshield, body clinging to life inside the spinning car, arm wrapped around the steering wheel and chest hugging the rib cracking dashboard. He’d gasp for breath like singing.  But that’s a different tune.
 
Tonight, looking once more north and south down the silent blacktop, then up to the sparkling Alabama stars, he takes a last deep puff on the Lucky. With thumb and forefinger, he flips the half-smoked cigarette into the road, then turns and walks back inside the heart beating of the bar.

About the Author:
Tom Harper is a poet, playwright, journalist and editor.  His work has been presented on stages, in newspapers, journals and on the BBC World Service Short Story Programme.  After a two decade hiatus, he has recently published stories in The Opiate and Blood and Thunder: Musing on the Art of Medicine and has a short story upcoming in The MacGuffin, among others.

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