Joe's driving and Billy's riding shotgun, keeping him awake with bad jokes and worse coffee. It's two, three in the morning. Some who-the-fuck-cares time of night. Some time when you can't think straight, all you got left is these chopped-off stumps of thoughts. Bloody and going nowhere. Pipe and John are snoring in chorus, back-up bass and drums, just like always. Billy blinks himself back awake for the forty-seventh time and the thought comes from that sink hole in his brain that only wants to sleep: This is no fucking reunion tour. This is a fucking bootleg.

Sure, they're travelling thinking it's real. And maybe it was, for a while, back when they thought Bucky Haight was dead, a fucking cripple even. When they had the money to give to him. Going to see a legend, Joe leading them on some fucking quest. Now, heading out to Edmonton, it's beginning to show. The rough edges and the cracked casing. The places where the fakeness bleeds through.

Joe thinks he can make it real again, Joe thinks he's got the magic still in his thirty, thirty-five year old hands. Hell, Joe always thought it was real. It never looked like a bootleg to him. But he's a chump, a sucker, and he bought it hook, line and sinker from some scalper who convinced him he had the deal of the century.

Only one who ever had magic was Billy, he had it in his hands all along, and now he's bleeding talent into this freakshow, bleeding himself, bleeding Tallent, ha ha.

When Joe came to him saying Hey let's do this again, let's get back on the road, what the fuck, Billy thought he remembered all that raw sound, the real thing, all the glory they had way back when. Fucking powerful. Instead he's hearing the scratches, the places where the voices get tinny and the bass fades out entirely for three beats in the middle of Edmonton Block Heater.

Fucking phony.

The glory's as faded as the bootleg sound. The glory, maybe, was always a fraud--it just took him a while to see it. And maybe, he thinks now, watching the road come up at him like a dream, he's never going to get the real thing. No more glory. No escape.

How the fuck did he get here?

"What the fuck kinda question is that?" says Joe, and it's only then Billy knows he spoke out loud.

"Nothin'." Because Joe's driving.

But of course that's not gonna stop him. Joe gives the van a little shake, shimmying across the center line, back to their lane. Pipe snorts off-tempo but doesn't wake.

"You're here cause you're part of the fuckin' band."

No liner notes, Billy thinks. No story about how we got here, now, this way. Here we are trying to grab the past and we don't even know what it is. He thinks Joe's probably happy with that, happy with forgetting most of it.

"You hear me?" Joe says next. "You fuckin' promised--"

The cover picture's blurred and you think at first it's age. Sure you're older. But then you start wondering if those four guys on that faraway stage are even you. Maybe it's somebody else, anybody else, covering your songs and taking what you had.

"I promised?" His voice talking but it's so far away. "You promised us a fucking benefit concert. You promised us this'd be for real. For once."

Joe's yanking on the steering wheel now. "Fuck you, Billy, don't give me this fuckin' shit," he says. They're all over the place. The road is shit, the asphalt cracked, and for all Billy knows they've already lost half their stuff out the hole in the floor. Then they're on the shoulder, gravel and dirt clods under the wheels. The van's shaking like a skipping CD.

"Fuckin' get back on the road, Joe," Billy says. Calm. Inside he's as awake as he's ever been.

"Where else you think you can be without selling out?" Joe's yelling now.

"What the hell's goin on?" John asks from the back.

"Nothing. Joe's fucking around." Sleep is coming up on him again, even though Joe's slipping through the brush on the road edge now. It's a bootleg, this reunion tour, a bottled cheap-ass replica of the real heat Billy once knew. They're travelling thinking it's real, but after Bucky's farm you can't hide from it anymore. Call it selling out, but what it is if it looks like a bootleg and it sounds like a bootleg it's because that's what the fuck it is.

"Fuckin' sellout," Joe mutters, but he's losing whatever anger he had, and now the ride's smoothing out, they're on the road again. Even that anger's fake. Billy knows what Joe's real anger tastes like.

Strange how he misses even that.

Somebody's made changes, fucked with the play order, left some words out, beeped the swears and the insults. Left them weak, stripped them naked. Nothing left.

Who'd fucking dare? Who shitted on whatever reality they had left?

Joe's knuckles are white on the steering wheel. He's glaring out into the night, leaning forward, shoulders tense. Billy's slumping back into his seat, limp, feet up on the dash, fingers like dead spiders on his knees. He's gonna sleep, but if he does, Joe'll crash. Send them all over the edge. Find a tree or a river somewhere and just go for broke.

Joe doesn't get that it's too late to go out in a blaze of glory. No way they can die young now. No way you can make it real again.

Billy leans forward and slams on the CD player that's juryrigged to the old dusty speakers. The music whines and bumps, the sound fades in and out.

It's Joe, Billy thinks with a sharp suddenness that cuts through the start of sleep. It's Joe made this fucking copy. He wanted it to be real so bad he went in and stole the original, thinking he could fix it up, make it right.

No fucking way. You could sell what's left of them in a Wal Mart and the cashier-girl wouldn't even blink.

Billy's leaving. He'll tell them in Edmonton. He's getting out while the getting's good. He's skidding into sleep and it doesn't matter. The burr of the bootleg CD cuts through the stump-end of thought,

skip skip skip,

and Billy doesn't care.

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April 26, 2004