Garry Boots Goes Berserk Page 2

  * * *

  As the sun started its burn on the horizon at 6:00 a.m., the Kasper’s Jeep Grand Cherokee, boat in tow, was already an hour out of Austin on its way to Lake Livingston. George and Paula sat up front, and Shelly Peters ended up in the back seat sandwiched between Jerry and Andy Mowf.

  “I manage a department in the security division of Austin Stamping,” Andy stated when Shelly asked him about his occupation.

  Shelly wore tight-fitting, faded blue jeans tucked into a pair of polished brown cowboy boots. Her cotton shirt fastened with mother-of-pearl snaps instead of buttons. Her wide leather belt had “Shelly” tooled across the back and a large, shiny oval buckle guarded the front. He long brown hair curled around and framed her face.

  Andy, happy to be crowded into the back seat with Shelly, crossed his legs to reveal his own pair of finely crafted cowboy boots, polished to a butter-brown sheen.

  “Nice boots you have there, Shelly,” he said. He wiggled his foot conspicuously.

  Shelly laughed, “Thank you. And I can’t help but notice yours also.”

  “You know,” Andy continued,” once a person gets used to a good pair of boots, it gets downright uncomfortable to wear anything else.” Shelly agreed with this universal maxim of cowboy boot wearers.

  “Another great thing about a fine pair of boots,” he said, “is that you can dance all night in them.”

  “Oooh, I know that’s right,” Shelly said, smiling; reminiscing about a night of carefree cavorting on the hard pine. “What kind of music do you like, Andy?”

  “I used to like rock and roll, but I gave it up for country western.”

  “That’s my favorite, too! Maybe Paula has some up front.”

  “Sorry, ‘fraid not,” Paula replied over her shoulder.

  Excited, Andy volunteered, “It just so happens I brought along a few CDs of my own.” He quickly reached into a duffel bag at his feet and rummaged through it. Abruptly he stopped and stared out the window.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Shelly.

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” he said. I just forgot to bring a prescription I had filled the other day. I can get by without it for a few days.”

  Paula put her head in her hands.

  From the duffel bag Andy pulled out a CD by Garry Boots, a legend of country western music. He handed the disc to Paula who inserted it into the player. The famous country music singer’s voice came to life within the Jeep, and Andy readjusted himself a little closer to Shelly.

  “Garry is going to be playing The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville next week,” he informed her.

  As the morning sun brightened, Jerry feigned sleep while Andy and Shelly talked about their common love: country western music.

  Andy’s story started innocuously enough with an anecdote about the time he had attended a Garry Boots concert in Austin. “I was sitting in the front row—center stage!” he told Shelly. “And when Garry played his guitar solos, I could see as plain as day his fingers flying up and down the struts. It was like he was possessed, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He must have sensed my amazement because he began to look at me every so often as he played. We sort of had this communication thing going, and I felt like he was playing just for me.

  “After his encore Garry was really pumped up, and he shouted to the audience, ‘Hope to see ya’ll real soon!’ Only when he said it, he looked right at me! I nodded my head to acknowledge him, and he just smiled and walked off the stage.”

  “That sounds really exciting!” Shelly said, “I’m sort of jealous.”

  “But that’s not the half of it!” Andy said.

  In the front seat George shot an amused glance at Paula, and they braced themselves for the impending whopper. Jerry, with his eyes closed, turned his head so that if he opened them he wouldn’t have to look at anyone and possibly start laughing.

  “Well,” Andy continued to the rapt Shelly, “when I left the auditorium, I hung around outside for awhile trying to take in what I had just seen onstage. I mean it was by far the best concert I have ever been to. The band’s bus was parked around the side of the building, and a few people were milling around hoping to catch a glimpse of Garry when he left. What the heck, I thought, so I wandered over and joined them. After about a half hour, the band came out of the bus, and Garry signed a bunch of autographs.

  “Then a long white stretched limo came across the parking lot, and before I could get Garry to sign my ticket stub, he climbed into it and pulled away. He had to pass by where I was standing, so I just looked at the smoked glass and smiled. And would you believe it? The car stopped, the window came down, and there was Garry Boots not more than three feet away looking right at me again through the window!”

  “‘You got time for a beer, buddy?’ he asked me, smiling that same smile I had seen inside during the show.

  “‘Hell yes!’ I said, and I got into the car. A friend of Garry’s was sitting in the seat across from us. Chris was his name. I can’t remember his last name. Well, Chris was throwing a party at his place, so they invited me. Garry said he liked to take a fan out now and then and show him a good time -- kind of in appreciation for everything all his fans have done for him. He said he could tell how much I enjoyed his show, up there on the front row, and tonight was going to be my lucky night.”

  By this time, Shelly was enthralled by Andy’s story, and having just met the man, had no reason to doubt the yarn’s veracity. George looked everywhere except in the mirror at Jerry, fearing some sort of composure breakdown if their eyes met.

  Paula wished she were alone with Andy in her shop. She’d put a stop to his story. But in the Jeep and in front of everybody else, she calculated that she’d make things worse if she embarrassed him, especially in front of Shelly.

  Andy dug himself in deeper. His adventure went on, beginning with the limousine ride out of town and into the Hill Country overlooking the Colorado River. He described in detail the enormous home of Chris, the man with no surname. Strange characters had reveled uninhibitedly through the night at the show-biz party.

  “Garry had been struggling a long time with his song Lightning Strikes, but he just couldn’t find the right sound for the chorus. He had his guitar, and he’d play what was in his head, but when he got to that last line, he’d play it halfway through, then stop and go back to the start. I listened for awhile, and pretty soon I was just humming whatever came to me. He stopped and looked at me, and then began strumming the same thing that I was humming!”

  “‘Hey that’s it! I think you got it, buddy!’ was the only thing Garry said as he played the chorus over and over.” Andy sang badly the last few lines of Garry’s famous hit. “So I kinda had a hand in writing that song,” he said, beaming. Andy concluded his story with an anticlimatic account of his deliverance back to his parked car and a fond farewell to Garry Boots.

  By now Shelly’s suspicion had been aroused by this extraordinary tale, and by the awkward silence of her fellow travelers as they gazed blankly at the passing countryside. In tacit unison they, a jury of his peers, judged Andy guilty of lying in the first degree. The air remained clouded with a lack of finality; no one could really dispute Andy’s recollection of those events without insinuating to his face that he was a liar. He had said nothing that could be disproved, except by the infinitesimal chance that someone would actually ask Garry Boots himself about that particular evening.