Chapter 20: New Song

Tuesday night, the Rusty Spoke was full to the walls.

Dot had put a chalkboard out front that said Songwriters' Night, and by seven o'clock it was standing room.

I had mixed this room for Dot for six years, from a little board behind the pool table.

Tonight it felt like the only place I still owned.

August stood at my shoulder with a beer he wasn't drinking.

"You don't have to do this," he said.

"I'm the sound. It's my job."

"You could hand it to a kid and go sit down."

"Then he'd get the room to himself."

He nodded, and stayed beside me.

Six singers went up before Beau, and I mixed each of them cleanly, and forgot them.

I'd seen Beau come in at eight.

He wore jeans and a plain gray shirt, and no hat, and he looked ten pounds thinner.

He had a guitar on his back and a man with a video camera behind him.

The cameraman set up by the jukebox and aimed at the stage.

"Oh, you son of a bitch," Dot said, loud enough to turn heads.

She marched across the room, but I put a hand on her arm as she passed.

"Let him," I said.

"He's filming!"

"I know. Let him."

The emcee, a bearded kid with a banjo, read the next name off the card.

"Beau Bledsoe, with a new song."

The room went quiet in a different way than it had for the others.

Beau walked up the two steps to the little stage and sat on the stool.

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