“Jimmy won’t be going to Gillette tomorrow,” she said. “He’s too weak.” They were standing on the Brands’ old driveway, and Larry felt the news for what it was. You go along knowing, but when you do know, it still is a surprise.
Now, in the car with these people, Larry felt it again and felt it as a test. He was happy to have had this fall knowing his father in a new way, and he didn’t plan on making a new friend and losing him. He listened to Mason talking to Marci about fund-raising and long-term issues at the museum—a donor strategy. And then Kathleen quizzed Mason about when he was returning to Denver. His only answer: “Whenever feels too soon.” And then, unable to be glib about it, he added, “I don’t know. The clock’s off.” Craig was silent, driving, laying out in his head his plan of attack on the construction job he had ahead. Larry wondered if these people would ever be together in this way again, five in a car in the snow late in the year on the old highway. Finally Larry said, “Jimmy taught me four new chords yesterday, and I gave my word to try them in public.”
When they neared Gillette in the gloom, Craig drove right past the Pronghorn. “Dad,” Larry said from the backseat, “that’s it.” Off to the left there had been a sixty or seventy cars parked in a jumble, the pink neon beer signs almost obscured.
“Really,” Craig said. “All those cars? I thought it was a junkyard.”
“No,” Mason said from the backseat, where he sat with Larry and Kathleen. “That’s it. He’s got a crowd tonight.” Everyone in the car was quiet, and he added, “When I was a kid, every time we drove by Mangum’s junkyard west of town, my dad would say, “Oh boy, Agnes must have a roast on—they’ve got company.”
Craig slowed and waited for Frank’s black Explorer. As they pulled U-turns on the two-lane, Frank lowered his window and called out. “I thought the crowd scared you off. We’re going to have an audience!”
As they approached the Pronghorn now, the huge sign lit up suddenly and began to flash, blue and white, the profile of an antelope, and as the two vehicles picked through the overfilled parking lot, snow began to fall, as a sudden graphic mist of a billion dots.
There were eleven bands. Three were from Gillette, three from greater Sheridan, two up from Laramie, one each from Casper and the hamlet of Sojourn, and Life on Earth in their reunion gig. The owner of the Pronghorn was Bobby Peralta, who had taken the place over from his dad. He wore a black satin shirt with silver button covers and a silver cow-skull bolo tie. They’d all met before. The Pronghorn was a place where you stopped on the way home from the antelope hunt, and all season you could see pickups parked there with game in the beds. Bobby had been in high school in Gillette and had actually heard the band the one time they’d played here thirty years before.
“This place used to be out of town,” Craig said as he shook Bobby’s hand.
“You can’t get out of town in this sorry state,” Bobby said. “It’s all found out and built up. How you been?”
“Busy. Oakpine’s exploded, and I supply the paint.” He introduced everybody: Marci, Kathleen, Larry, Mason, Sonny, and Frank, whom Bobby knew because of his brewery.
“We’re only playing,” Frank told the man, “if you can guarantee that there’re no talent scouts here. We’re not interested in being plucked from obscurity.”
“You’re safe on that count. Here.” Bobby gave them all string necklaces with yellow passes looped on each. “All your drinks are mine, including as much of Frank’s new lager as you can drink. And I’ve got a table for you up front.” He looked at his clipboard. “We’ll start at seven and do four bands, break, four more, break and then finish with three. Craig, why don’t you meet me on stage at about ten to, and we’ll draw the order.”