Long Way Gone Read Online Free PDF Page A

the stains are part of the romance of what is now the town bar and watering hole. And based on the traffic, this is a thirsty town. The bar smells of stale beer, wet cigarettes, and greasy French fries. The waitresses—who were once rodeo darlings and homecoming queens warmed by their boyfriends’ letter jackets—sell cold draft beer and will bend an attentive ear, provided your tips are generous. But people with sensible taste will tell you that any use of the word grill in connection with the Lariat is a rather liberal definition. There is a griddle, and they do serve food, but that’s about all you can say. The one thing they do really well is live music.
    Daley read the sign and asked, “Is that place also known as ‘The Rope’?”
    “You’ve heard of it?”
    She stared out the Jeep window. Lost in foggy moments that happened years before this one. She chewed on a fingernail. “The manager’ll let you play for tips.” She was still a second, then suddenly sat up straight and checked her wrist for a watch that wasn’t there. “Oh snap! What’s today?”
    “Saturday.”
    She palmed her face with her left hand, closed her eyes, and let out a heavy breath. I pulled over to the curb and pushed in the clutch. The Jeep sat idling. I waited.
    After a minute she said, “I’m playing there tonight. Or I was. But—” She held up her hand and spoke without looking at me. “I could really use that hundred dollars.”
    “Frank got you for a hundred?”
    “You know him?”
    I thought before I answered. “We’ve met.” We were parked on the side of the road next to the railroad tracks. I glanced in the rearview and asked, “How’s your voice?”
    She shrugged. “Not what it once was.”
    “No, I mean from yesterday.”
    “I can sing.”
    I made a U-turn, drove three blocks east toward the river and Sleeping Indian Mountain, and parked next to the Ptarmigan Theatre. “Wait here a few minutes?”
    She nodded. As I hopped up on the sidewalk, she called after me, “Cooper?”
    “Yeah?”
    “If you’re not . . . I mean . . . I don’t know that I have the strength to sit here and . . .” She shook her head ever so slightly.
    Sometimes it’s not what people say but what they don’t say that shows how beat down their soul really is. Somebody, or something, had hurt her. A lot. I set the keys on the seat. “Well, if I don’t come back, you can keep the Jeep.”
    She set her feet on the dash and laid her head back, and the wrinkle between her eyes faded.
    I keep an apartment in the loft of the Ptarmigan. I use it in the winter when the snow and ice drive me down out of the mountains.
    I ran in and grabbed an old Martin D-35 that had become a favorite of mine. Her name was Ella, and she was born in Pennsylvania to German and Brazilian parents sometime in the seventies. She and I met fifteen years ago at a pawnshop in Taos where the chemistry was quick and electric—in an acoustic sort of way. She’s throaty, tender, will bark if you dig into her, and yet she’ll lift you off your seat if you loosen up on the reins and let her voice speak. I’d named her after a character in a book. This guitar reminded me of Miss Ella and her rich, pure, multilayered, resonating voice. Whenever she opened her mouth to speak you’d do well to listen, because what she said would soon find its way to your heart, where it would peel back the layers and either pierce you or heal you.
    I walked back to find Daley sitting at a picnic table beneath an umbrella that spun in the breeze. I unlocked the case, set Ella on my knee, and sat there tuning her.
    Daley watched me with amusement. “You know they now have these little electronic thingies that work pretty well.”
    I smiled without looking up. “You don’t say.” When I finished, I strummed a few chords and then placed my hand flat across the strings, muting it. Abruptly I turned toward her. “Sing something.”
    She spoke slowly, raising one eyebrow. “Just. Sing.