PLAYING COWBOY
by David P. Staggs
Playing Cowboy is my attempt to cover the music of Joshua Ray Walker, in particular two specific songs – “Voices” and “Cowboy”. I borrow from the lyrics of both songs as I weave their messages (at least my interpretations of them) into one piece).i
He sat in the cab of his truck while the engine idled. It made the entire truck rumble underneath him. His fingers gripped the steering wheel hard enough that his knuckles were white. Staring out at the lake and the mountains beyond. He felt so small. Infinitesimal. The headlights were off in the truck and he could see the stars and the moon. They looked so close. He felt like he could reach out his window and grab them.
He read somewhere that outlaws used to come here because it was easy to disappear. The land would swallow you up and you’d just be gone and wouldn’t that be wonderful? If he could just be gone. Isn’t that where peace is? The other side of here where no one can follow you. He released the steering wheel and reached for the bottle riding shotgun and knocked back a too-big swig and felt it burn all the way down.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
Did she know something he didn’t? He looked up at his eyes in the rearview mirror. The bags under them had grown deeper. He hadn’t slept well in weeks and slept at all in days. Another swig.
He wondered how cold the water was. It had to be frigid. Would it shock him awake before it choked the life out of him? Another burning swig and he shut the engine of the truck off. He leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He had moved out here for her. She had wanted to go home and he had wanted to be with her, so he traded in his electric environmentally responsible car for a diesel truck that had something called glow plugs. He traded in his downtown loft with views of the ingenuities of man for a clapboard with views of mountains, a septic tank, and the gods and silence. Was that not love? Was it not an act of love to surrender a part of yourself for the other’s happiness?
He opened his eyes and looked down at his feet. In the starlight piercing the window, he studied the boots. He used to have a closet lined with two-hundred-dollar sneakers that he kept in the boxes and cleaned with a rag after every wearing. A different pair of shoes for different outfits. He had always looked so crisp and clean. Now he was denim and snakeskin and a hat that he didn’t quite feel comfortable in. He had done it for her. Transformed for her.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He had been a writer once. Not a particularly successful one by the standards of other writers, but to people who had never set foot on a studio lot or a soundstage he was a success. His name had been in credits. The credits were few and far between and the glory was fleeting. It was who he had been, though. He had prided himself on that. A man with a degree and a love for words and the screen. Hadn’t all his pretty words been what made her love him in the first place? He had written about tortured existences and sin and salvation and all the things people said made good writing but it had never been honest writing. He burned all his scripts in a firepit in Los Angeles. Watched the thick flames float towards the nothingness. His life’s work reduced to ash.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He took a swig. Another long swig and cranked the window down. He let the air flood the cab. It was cool. It was always cool this high up. If not for the liquor warming him, he would have shivered as the breeze floated in. He looked at the dashboard and the .45 that was resting on it. He would have never thought to carry, let alone own, a gun before. There had been restrictions. Rules. Here, everyone had one she insisted. What if they came across a dying deer or a coyote trying to get their chickens or attack their dog? They needed the protection, so he had driven the big diesel into town and parked next to a truck that looked just like his. He had walked in and purchased the heavy handgun, and no one asked him any questions other than the perfunctory form. It was heavier than he had expected and smelled like oil. It was so polished that it shined. The man in the store had shown him how to properly holster it, how to load a clip and chamber a round. How to double check that the safety was on. He’d gotten comfortable holding it. He’d taken it out behind the house and shot at an old street sign. Out here, you could do that. He’d gotten used to the way the big .45 bucked in his hand. The way the slide kicked back and if you held it wrong, could cut you. He got hit in the face by white hot shells being ejected. He got used to the smell of gunpowder on his hands.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He lifted the .45 up and switched it to his left hand so he could let it dangle out of the window. How many times had he held it in his hand while he drove? He had imagined himself The Bandit on the run from Smokey Bear. His truck was a Pontiac Trans Am. I could go for a Dr. Pepper and a Diablo Sandwich, he thought to himself and laughed. He looked back out at the landscape in front of him while running the handgun against the door. He wondered if any of the old outlaws had really come here. Had Jesse? Billy? Butch and Sundance? Would he have been one of them? Would he have been able to hang with them? He pulled the gun back into the car and dropped it back on the dash. He lifted the bottle back up and took a long drink. Somewhere in the distance, an owl called out into the silence and nothing called back.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He had never been much of a drinker until they moved here. Back in his loft with the view of the city lights and the cacophony of noise he enjoyed a cocktail every now and then and only socially. He wouldn’t have been a good cowboy if he didn’t drink, though. That’s what all the movies and the music told him. He had tried. He had tried his best. He learned to drink the beer and the whiskey. He learned to two-step and laugh. His once soft hands were rough and calloused. His fingers were split in places from the cold. His cheeks were wind burned. He learned to ride with the boys who had grown up riding. Isn’t that what she wanted? Isn’t that what she had asked for when she wanted to move home? Didn’t she want him to become a part of her home? To be the kind of man she had grown up drinking with, dancing with, and fucking? Hadn’t he become that?
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He had traded in his laptop and pretty words to work at a bookstore and sit on a porch in the mountain air. He had traded that man she fell in love with for the man he thought she wanted to love. She had asked him if he was okay at least a thousand times and a thousand times he had said yes. He wasn’t telling the truth though. He wasn’t okay, but had he ever been okay? When he wrote, he was somebody else. It was someone else’s story, someone else’s pain. He cashed in on what he knew people wanted. He was great at playing the part. You had to be to survive. That’s what his mama had always said. Play the part and get along and you’ll do fine. He’d always done fine. Done fine but never been fine.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He held the bottle in his hand. It was almost empty. It would be empty before the night was over. His vision was blurring. His chest and eyes were heavy. He had drunk enough that it would look like an accident. He could just shift into neutral and let it roll down the small hill into the lake. It would look like he got drunk and just ended up crashing in the lake. It happened. It would be an accidental death. A tragedy but not cowardly. He could be remembered for all the things he had done well. He could be remembered as being whole and not just the pieces of a man that was left.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He remembered the dim lights of the dance floor. He remembered the smell of cigarette and cigar smoke mixed with the sweet and perfume. The band was loud but good. The red head pressed close to him was not the reason he’d come out here. She wasn’t the reason he’d embraced the open skies and the mountains. She wasn’t the reason there was a .45 in the glovebox of his unlocked truck. She was; however, running her fingers over his chest. Her hand was supposed to be on his shoulder – that was how you two-stepped. Their right hands were locked together. His left hand cradled the curve of her hip. She smelled like sweet wine and flowers. They moved in unison. His left foot slid forward and hers slid back. Then their right foot. It was fast and then they did the same steps slowly. Moving counterclockwise across the dance floor. Their faces hovering close to each other. Hovering close to sin.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
Her fingernails made a mess of his back and the whiskey made a mess of his brain. Their bodies joined together in the back bench seat of the truck. The windows down. Oblivious to everything else. Just sweat and perfume. Grunts and groans. Owls calling back to their song. Her feet hooked around him. Pulled him deeper. Pulled them together and they were one. Bodies connected at the seams and there were stars behind his eyes and he was riding a wave over the Niagara.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
His Meredith had looked radiant in the moonlight. She had tasted like freedom and forgiveness. She had brought him to the land of people who make mistakes and seek out second chances. Wasn’t that what her home was? A place for people seeking out second chances. People who had left their skyscrapers and their concrete and crowds for open skies and clear views to the heavens. She had brought him here and he had tried so hard to be a cowboy. He had drank and danced and fucked and fought but he felt hollow inside. It had been six months since then. Five months since she couldn’t take his lies of being fine anymore. She couldn’t take the hours he stared out into the nothing. The hours he spent trying to be the cowboy he knew she wanted. It didn’t matter how many times she had told him she just wanted him. She wanted him and the mountains. Couldn’t she have both?
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
The bottle was empty now. So were his drawers in the ranch house. He had come home to all of his things placed neatly in boxes in the driveway. She had been considerate enough to pack them for him. Wasn’t he supposed to be free here? Isn’t that what this place meant? Freedom? Didn’t Meredith understand? How could she bring him here and not know what it would do to him? She had wanted to come home. She wanted him to be a cowboy like she had loved and hadn’t he been that? Hadn’t he been what she wanted?
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He threw the empty bottle from the car. He listened until it shattered when it hit the ground. Colors were bleeding together. He couldn’t see. The bed of his truck had all of his things in it. Every part of the life he had packed up and moved out here with. Every part of the life he had built here. It was all in this big diesel that he didn’t want in the first place. He had come here for her and she had tried. He knew that. He couldn’t be mad at her. It was his fault and he hated himself for that, but he had hated himself for a long time. He didn’t know hate could feel this good behind the wheel of a car. Where did he hear that before?
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He replayed the text message over and over in his head. He replayed them over and over in his head. Wasn’t he a cowboy? No, he wasn’t. He had the hat and the boots and the truck. He had the land and the horses that she wanted. He had tried and he had failed. He fired the truck back up. He felt it rumble. He blinked. The lake was glowing now. It was so inviting. He bet it was unseasonably warm. It called to him. It whispered his name to him. Over and over again. It sounded like her.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He shifted the truck into neutral. It would look like a mistake.
David P. Staggs (formerly Barker) is an American writer and teacher. He is from Indianapolis, Indiana, but spent time in Indiana, Arkansas, and Texas. As a child, he was drawn to stories as an escape from reality. He holds a B.A. in History and an M.A. in English with a focus on creative writing. He spent eight years living and writing in Los Angeles where he also began a career in teaching but is now resettled in his native Indiana. By day, he’s a middle school teacher and by night he writes. He’s an avid tabletop gamer and video game player. He’s also a lover of reading and actively reads across all genres. He lives with his wife and five pets.
by David P. Staggs
Playing Cowboy is my attempt to cover the music of Joshua Ray Walker, in particular two specific songs – “Voices” and “Cowboy”. I borrow from the lyrics of both songs as I weave their messages (at least my interpretations of them) into one piece).i
He sat in the cab of his truck while the engine idled. It made the entire truck rumble underneath him. His fingers gripped the steering wheel hard enough that his knuckles were white. Staring out at the lake and the mountains beyond. He felt so small. Infinitesimal. The headlights were off in the truck and he could see the stars and the moon. They looked so close. He felt like he could reach out his window and grab them.
He read somewhere that outlaws used to come here because it was easy to disappear. The land would swallow you up and you’d just be gone and wouldn’t that be wonderful? If he could just be gone. Isn’t that where peace is? The other side of here where no one can follow you. He released the steering wheel and reached for the bottle riding shotgun and knocked back a too-big swig and felt it burn all the way down.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
Did she know something he didn’t? He looked up at his eyes in the rearview mirror. The bags under them had grown deeper. He hadn’t slept well in weeks and slept at all in days. Another swig.
He wondered how cold the water was. It had to be frigid. Would it shock him awake before it choked the life out of him? Another burning swig and he shut the engine of the truck off. He leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He had moved out here for her. She had wanted to go home and he had wanted to be with her, so he traded in his electric environmentally responsible car for a diesel truck that had something called glow plugs. He traded in his downtown loft with views of the ingenuities of man for a clapboard with views of mountains, a septic tank, and the gods and silence. Was that not love? Was it not an act of love to surrender a part of yourself for the other’s happiness?
He opened his eyes and looked down at his feet. In the starlight piercing the window, he studied the boots. He used to have a closet lined with two-hundred-dollar sneakers that he kept in the boxes and cleaned with a rag after every wearing. A different pair of shoes for different outfits. He had always looked so crisp and clean. Now he was denim and snakeskin and a hat that he didn’t quite feel comfortable in. He had done it for her. Transformed for her.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He had been a writer once. Not a particularly successful one by the standards of other writers, but to people who had never set foot on a studio lot or a soundstage he was a success. His name had been in credits. The credits were few and far between and the glory was fleeting. It was who he had been, though. He had prided himself on that. A man with a degree and a love for words and the screen. Hadn’t all his pretty words been what made her love him in the first place? He had written about tortured existences and sin and salvation and all the things people said made good writing but it had never been honest writing. He burned all his scripts in a firepit in Los Angeles. Watched the thick flames float towards the nothingness. His life’s work reduced to ash.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He took a swig. Another long swig and cranked the window down. He let the air flood the cab. It was cool. It was always cool this high up. If not for the liquor warming him, he would have shivered as the breeze floated in. He looked at the dashboard and the .45 that was resting on it. He would have never thought to carry, let alone own, a gun before. There had been restrictions. Rules. Here, everyone had one she insisted. What if they came across a dying deer or a coyote trying to get their chickens or attack their dog? They needed the protection, so he had driven the big diesel into town and parked next to a truck that looked just like his. He had walked in and purchased the heavy handgun, and no one asked him any questions other than the perfunctory form. It was heavier than he had expected and smelled like oil. It was so polished that it shined. The man in the store had shown him how to properly holster it, how to load a clip and chamber a round. How to double check that the safety was on. He’d gotten comfortable holding it. He’d taken it out behind the house and shot at an old street sign. Out here, you could do that. He’d gotten used to the way the big .45 bucked in his hand. The way the slide kicked back and if you held it wrong, could cut you. He got hit in the face by white hot shells being ejected. He got used to the smell of gunpowder on his hands.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He lifted the .45 up and switched it to his left hand so he could let it dangle out of the window. How many times had he held it in his hand while he drove? He had imagined himself The Bandit on the run from Smokey Bear. His truck was a Pontiac Trans Am. I could go for a Dr. Pepper and a Diablo Sandwich, he thought to himself and laughed. He looked back out at the landscape in front of him while running the handgun against the door. He wondered if any of the old outlaws had really come here. Had Jesse? Billy? Butch and Sundance? Would he have been one of them? Would he have been able to hang with them? He pulled the gun back into the car and dropped it back on the dash. He lifted the bottle back up and took a long drink. Somewhere in the distance, an owl called out into the silence and nothing called back.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He had never been much of a drinker until they moved here. Back in his loft with the view of the city lights and the cacophony of noise he enjoyed a cocktail every now and then and only socially. He wouldn’t have been a good cowboy if he didn’t drink, though. That’s what all the movies and the music told him. He had tried. He had tried his best. He learned to drink the beer and the whiskey. He learned to two-step and laugh. His once soft hands were rough and calloused. His fingers were split in places from the cold. His cheeks were wind burned. He learned to ride with the boys who had grown up riding. Isn’t that what she wanted? Isn’t that what she had asked for when she wanted to move home? Didn’t she want him to become a part of her home? To be the kind of man she had grown up drinking with, dancing with, and fucking? Hadn’t he become that?
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He had traded in his laptop and pretty words to work at a bookstore and sit on a porch in the mountain air. He had traded that man she fell in love with for the man he thought she wanted to love. She had asked him if he was okay at least a thousand times and a thousand times he had said yes. He wasn’t telling the truth though. He wasn’t okay, but had he ever been okay? When he wrote, he was somebody else. It was someone else’s story, someone else’s pain. He cashed in on what he knew people wanted. He was great at playing the part. You had to be to survive. That’s what his mama had always said. Play the part and get along and you’ll do fine. He’d always done fine. Done fine but never been fine.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He held the bottle in his hand. It was almost empty. It would be empty before the night was over. His vision was blurring. His chest and eyes were heavy. He had drunk enough that it would look like an accident. He could just shift into neutral and let it roll down the small hill into the lake. It would look like he got drunk and just ended up crashing in the lake. It happened. It would be an accidental death. A tragedy but not cowardly. He could be remembered for all the things he had done well. He could be remembered as being whole and not just the pieces of a man that was left.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He remembered the dim lights of the dance floor. He remembered the smell of cigarette and cigar smoke mixed with the sweet and perfume. The band was loud but good. The red head pressed close to him was not the reason he’d come out here. She wasn’t the reason he’d embraced the open skies and the mountains. She wasn’t the reason there was a .45 in the glovebox of his unlocked truck. She was; however, running her fingers over his chest. Her hand was supposed to be on his shoulder – that was how you two-stepped. Their right hands were locked together. His left hand cradled the curve of her hip. She smelled like sweet wine and flowers. They moved in unison. His left foot slid forward and hers slid back. Then their right foot. It was fast and then they did the same steps slowly. Moving counterclockwise across the dance floor. Their faces hovering close to each other. Hovering close to sin.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
Her fingernails made a mess of his back and the whiskey made a mess of his brain. Their bodies joined together in the back bench seat of the truck. The windows down. Oblivious to everything else. Just sweat and perfume. Grunts and groans. Owls calling back to their song. Her feet hooked around him. Pulled him deeper. Pulled them together and they were one. Bodies connected at the seams and there were stars behind his eyes and he was riding a wave over the Niagara.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
His Meredith had looked radiant in the moonlight. She had tasted like freedom and forgiveness. She had brought him to the land of people who make mistakes and seek out second chances. Wasn’t that what her home was? A place for people seeking out second chances. People who had left their skyscrapers and their concrete and crowds for open skies and clear views to the heavens. She had brought him here and he had tried so hard to be a cowboy. He had drank and danced and fucked and fought but he felt hollow inside. It had been six months since then. Five months since she couldn’t take his lies of being fine anymore. She couldn’t take the hours he stared out into the nothing. The hours he spent trying to be the cowboy he knew she wanted. It didn’t matter how many times she had told him she just wanted him. She wanted him and the mountains. Couldn’t she have both?
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
The bottle was empty now. So were his drawers in the ranch house. He had come home to all of his things placed neatly in boxes in the driveway. She had been considerate enough to pack them for him. Wasn’t he supposed to be free here? Isn’t that what this place meant? Freedom? Didn’t Meredith understand? How could she bring him here and not know what it would do to him? She had wanted to come home. She wanted him to be a cowboy like she had loved and hadn’t he been that? Hadn’t he been what she wanted?
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He threw the empty bottle from the car. He listened until it shattered when it hit the ground. Colors were bleeding together. He couldn’t see. The bed of his truck had all of his things in it. Every part of the life he had packed up and moved out here with. Every part of the life he had built here. It was all in this big diesel that he didn’t want in the first place. He had come here for her and she had tried. He knew that. He couldn’t be mad at her. It was his fault and he hated himself for that, but he had hated himself for a long time. He didn’t know hate could feel this good behind the wheel of a car. Where did he hear that before?
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He replayed the text message over and over in his head. He replayed them over and over in his head. Wasn’t he a cowboy? No, he wasn’t. He had the hat and the boots and the truck. He had the land and the horses that she wanted. He had tried and he had failed. He fired the truck back up. He felt it rumble. He blinked. The lake was glowing now. It was so inviting. He bet it was unseasonably warm. It called to him. It whispered his name to him. Over and over again. It sounded like her.
I love you. He had texted her.
You’re a liar. She had texted back.
He shifted the truck into neutral. It would look like a mistake.
David P. Staggs (formerly Barker) is an American writer and teacher. He is from Indianapolis, Indiana, but spent time in Indiana, Arkansas, and Texas. As a child, he was drawn to stories as an escape from reality. He holds a B.A. in History and an M.A. in English with a focus on creative writing. He spent eight years living and writing in Los Angeles where he also began a career in teaching but is now resettled in his native Indiana. By day, he’s a middle school teacher and by night he writes. He’s an avid tabletop gamer and video game player. He’s also a lover of reading and actively reads across all genres. He lives with his wife and five pets.