With many thanks to all the great souls of The Craft.

Moonlight Mile

Kat Allison

When the wind blows and the rain feels cold
With a head full of snow      
with a head full of snow
In the window  there's a face you know
Don't the nights pass slow
don't the nights pass slow

The sound of strangers sending nothing to my mind
Just another mad mad day on the road
I am just living to be lying by your side
But I'm just about a moonlight mile
On down the road...
 

Tonight it changes. OK, I still have no fucking idea where we are, except somewhere on 16, good old 16, somewhere between Saskatoon and Edmonton.  I have no idea what time it is, or how many more miles to go.  And it doesn't matter, doesn't matter at all, because I know who this is next to me, and I know where we're headed.  We.  We're headed to Edmonton, Hard Core Logo headed to our next gig, and where I am is in the driver's seat.

I'm driving, which is exactly where I want to be, at the wheel, in charge.  I can manage it, even with no sleep and no food and thoroughly fucked up, I can manage it better than any of them.  They used to think it was such a hot-shit perk, back in the fat days, having a driver.  I never did.  I hate it when anyone else drives.

Pipe's in the back somewhere, snoring like a werewolf.  We better not get pulled over because he's still got that pile of clothes all covered in goat's blood, and the last thing we need is to end up in the slammer in Lloydminster trying to explain that one.  John's back there too, or at least I hope he is, I hope he hasn't crawled out that hole in the floorboards, or up his own ass or something, and disappeared.

And Billy's in the seat beside me, right where he ought to be, asleep, that smart mouth of his shut at last.  I think the acid took some of the edge off him, I think he's finally getting quieted down some, after that Jenifur fiasco.  Hadn't seen him that pissed off in — you hadn't seen him in years, so hell yes, you hadn't seen him that pissed off years.  Felt good, didn't it?  Felt like home.

Which doesn't take away from how good it'd feel to get my hands on each one of those useless little twats from Jenifur and knock the shit out of 'em. I can let that go, though, the person I really need to get hold of is that treacherous pimp Ed Festus, who fucked him over yet again, who put my pretty Billy out on the streets and for five years has been sending him out to turn tricks and taking his money and fucking him into the bargain.  Not fun, not good.  I'll settle up with Ed, one of these days.

One of these days, when we get things solid again.  He doesn't need Ed, I managed us before and I can do it again, and if it means selling off big chunks of myself to do it, then—better I sell them myself than let Ed pimp them for me.   Short-run we're stuck with Mulligan, true, the only guy I know who could make Ed look like an ethical human being in comparison.  Dealing with Mulligan's like sticking my head in the toilet and taking a nice deep swallow, but I can handle him.  Once we do Toronto and have the album deal signed—

All right, John is back there, I can hear him now, muttering and flapping through his notebook.  I throw a little "Shut up, John," over my shoulder and I swear to christ he growls at me. It's like having a fucking circus bear on board, who any minute now is going to figure out—that wire muzzle they put on me? well, hey, that sucker snaps right off!  I need to do something about that situation, real soon.

The road's potholed all to shit and the shocks in this thing are toast, so we keep jolting around, which is fine, it keeps me awake.  We could be orbiting through deep space out here, that's how dark it is, just the moon going down in front of us.  Makes me remember a night, way back—this was way back, one of our first tours—I was driving, just like now, in that old green van, which was even shittier than this one. Billy was sitting in the seat beside me, just like now, Pipe and John sleeping in the back, and it was late at night, just like now.  I was driving along, and I saw—I wasn't even fucked up, just wired and blind from eighteen straight hours of driving—I said to him, "Hey, Bill, we're up in the mountains, look at that, we're up above the cloudline, look, you can see the clouds, down there just below the road."  He kept saying, "Yeah, Joe, mountains, that's it, just keep it between the lines, just keep driving."  And I kept thinking it was so cool 'cause I hadn't known we were going to be in the mountains on this stretch, and . . . it wasn't until after the sun came up and we stopped for gas and cigarettes and I had some coffee that I realized all night, the whole fucking night, we'd been driving across Saskatchewan—shit, it could've even been this same stretch of 16 we're on right now—which is like rolling a pea across a pingpong table it's so flat, and what I'd been seeing all night long was just snowdrifts, in the roadside ditches.  White, like clouds, in the headlights.

But, see, that's what it's like with him.  We can be in flat-as-a-fucking-parking-lot Saskatchewan, and even though I know that, at the same time I know we're up in the high country, way up above the clouds.  Nobody else around, cause nobody else can breathe up here, they'd just turn blue and ugly and die if they tried.  Even John, even Pipe, for all that "we're a gang" bullshit I put around, they don't belong up here.

Just like it is on stage, when we're playing, when we're so far into the music ... I read somewhere once that if you get two sine waves that perfectly match each other up—or maybe it was if they perfectly cancel each other out, fuck, I can't remember, who cares—that when that happens, it goes silent.  And sometimes that's just what happens up there, right in the middle of the noise there's that silence no one else can hear, when there's no sound and no air and it's—perfect.

Let's see Jenifur try to give you that, eh, William?

Jennnn-ifur.  Stupid fucking name.  Sounds like a junior high school girl band.  That story in Spin—you better fucking believe I read that story, as much as I hate fucking Spin—they did an interview with their singer,  what's her name, Ramona.  Nice tits, no brain, sings like a ten-year-old with adenoids.  "He's worked out surprisingly well," that's what she said.  "We knew he was good but we weren't sure how adaptable he'd be."  Adaptable, oh, yeah, I bet you found him adaptable.  Then she made some totally dumbshit comment about playing with him, whining about how he's always wandering around, it makes her nervous, all of a sudden he's right behind her, or way off to the side, or whatever, and she never knows where he is.  Poor baby.  And you never will know either, you stupid cunt, because you don't deserve to know.  There's never been a microsecond when I haven't known exactly, precisely, where he is on a stage, even with my eyes shut and drunk on my ass and not even sure where I am.

"Wandering around"—it should make you nervous, you're too fucking stupid to know he's setting his turf, marking it off.  He'll take all the space you give him, and then he'll give you a shove and take more, he'll take the spot you were just standing on, and then shove you over again and take that one.  He'll take every single thing you let him have. 'Cause that's how it works, that's the game, that's what you have to do.  I don't know if he learned that from me, or if I learned it from him, but what I do know is the only thing you can do with someone who's learned that is to push right back, every time, just as hard—harder.  It pisses me off that he wasted time with people too dumb to understand that, and it makes me delighted that you're too dumb to understand that, because it means even if he wanders off to you for a while he'll get bored with you fast, and he'll come wandering right back to me.  He's a pushy little prick and he needs to be pushed back hard—he needs it or he gets bored, and when he's bored there's trouble.

I've got some paranoid twitch going, I keep looking in the rear-view, not so much for cops, they're thin on the ground out here, but I keep thinking Bruce and the gang are going to suddenly appear, chasing after us like the fucking Keystone Kops.  We ditched them at the diner, still half strung out on acid—amateurs—as smooth a ditch as I ever ran.  Let's see 'em hitchhike their way to Edmonton.  I figure it's the least I can do for Bruce after the little prick went to the trouble of letting me know he'd gotten that last conversation with Bucky on tape, and how well he thought it'd play in the film.

Thinking about that—fucking Bucky Haight—twists my gut up so hard it bends me over, and I have to thump my head a couple of times on the steering wheel, which gets a weird little banshee laugh out of John in the back.  Joe, fuckhead, focus, watch the road 'cause no one else is watching it for you, keep it between the lines for now.  And listen up:  You know Bruce is here for one reason only and that's to use you.  He wants your blood, if he could get that on film he'd fucking come in his pants.  He's going to use you any way he can and what you have to do is use him, first, harder, and nastier.

Prick shoving that mike at me and saying "Joe, I heard Bucky Haight tell Billy that he wished he'd found him before you did," like he was Wolf fucking Blitzer with the breaking news.  "How do you feel about that?"  Like that was supposed to be some kind of surprise to me, like he was sticking the knife in and I was supposed to bleed on cue.

"Well of course he wishes that, Bruce," I told him.  Gave him a big grin.  "Who wouldn't?  Made a play for him, too, when they lost Rafe back in '89.  But guess what?  He didn't get him.  I did.  I won. End of story."  And whatever else went on with that, Bruce for sure doesn't need to know.  Fuck him.

And as for Bucky ... asshole ... let him fucking rot out there on the prairie, doing his I'm-such-a-fucking-martyr routine about how all the awful people tried to uuuuuuse him, like he didn't know the first law in this jungle is do unto others before they do you. Fuck or get fucked.  So, fine, you want to live your pathetic little Green Acres life and act like you're above it all, treat me like I raped your wife and ripped you off when you're the one who tried to— Asshole.  I bang my head against the wheel again, just once, and pull out another cigarette and light it up and keep driving.

What I'd like to do, I'd love to throw that fucking guitar out the window.  Failing which, I'd like to smack that expression right off Billy's face, that "Oh my god I've been living in an orphanage for the last fifty years and this is the first time anyone's ever given me a piece of candy" look.  So it's a sweet guitar, so big fucking deal.  Once we do Toronto I can buy him a better one.

He's a whore; he's for sale.  I have to deal with that.  If I want to stay in the bidding I have to bring more to the table. All that shit about me and you, about family, and ever since we were thirteen, and ... that's what it comes down to.  He wouldn't have said yes to me if he'd had a better offer.  So I'll pay up, but you better fucking believe I'll get value for money out of him. I wish things hadn't turned out this way, but since when has it mattered what anyone fucking wishes.  I'll do what I have to do.

And right now the bottom's dropped out of the Billy-market, the other hands have all folded, and me—I'm holding the Toronto gig.  See you and raise you, fuckers.

Getting that card cost me pretty much everything I had left, and every so often I think I'm acting like some senile fuckwit on a bender in Vegas who throws his mortgage and his bank account and his virgin daughter down on the blackjack table.   So what.  So what.

I haven't told him about it yet; I'm waiting for the right time, when we have a little peace and quiet, when Pipe and John are out of earshot.  Those two might be more baggage than we can bring on the trip, long-term.  Pipe, I don't know, maybe we can pull him around in time.  But John ... fuck. Swear to god I'm going to call Celine, after the show, and tell her to come get him if she wants him, I've had it with dealing with his shit.

He had another brain hemorrhage about honesty, after we got off-stage, he got all flipped out about Bucky and the benefit concert and that little announcement I made before Blue Tattoo.  "You lied, Joe, you lied, you lied to the fans and you lied to the bands and you lied to us and you lied to yourself."  On a real classic psycho-John roll, face paint smeared all over the place and dripping sweat and babbling.  "Just tell me the truth, for once in your life, Joe. Be honest, you wanted to cut Bucky off at the knees.  You wanted to kill him.  I know you did 'cause you said those things, Joe, and you know words have power, words have power, Joe, you said it like you meant it to be real.  You put it all together in your head back in Vancouver and made it real and it wasn't to get the band back together, it's about Billy, isn't it?  Me and Pipe, we're just spare change, aren't we?   Just be honest, just tell me the truth.  It's not about us at all, you could have had us back any time, you didn't need to kill Bucky for that.  It's Billy, isn't it?  It's Bill. Because without him, be honest, Joe, without him you're dead."

I didn't tell him anything, because there's no point in talking to John when he's like this, it's like pissing on a bonfire, but if I had told him, what I would've said ... I would've said, you want the truth?  The truth is—if I'd needed to, fuck yes, I would've shot Bucky Haight's fucking legs off myself, to have this back. Him and me.  Him and me.

I know he thinks I can't manage it, that I'm just going to fuck it up again.  He keeps reminding me, we're climbing up on forty now, we're not kids anymore, until I want to put him through a window.  You think I don't know that, William?  I don't need fucking Bruce yapping at me about What'll you do when you're forty-five? to know it's not kid games anymore.

If this doesn't work out.... It'll work. It'll work. It's working already.  I've—we have Toronto, we have a meeting set up about the album, we have ... well, we have Mulligan, which is sort of like having the clap, but it'll work out, if I can get us through this fucking tour without major disaster I can for sure handle Mulligan.  I'll make some calls once we're done with Edmonton, set up some dates out east after Toronto. Get the new material hammered into shape.  Call Celine.  Start looking around for a bass player.

If people have problems you don't abandon them.  Unless you're a fucker.  Yeah.  Well, I guess if I can flush Bucky down the crapper, I can cut John loose.  Whatever I have to do.

Out of nowhere we hit one mother of a pothole, and it bounces us hard enough to—yeah, that woke him up.  Jesus, he looks owly, squinting around, glaring.  Wait till he finds out we're staying in a band house, that should really ice the fucking cake.  Doesn't matter.  Doesn't matter.  He's back, we're solid, Jenifur's fucked, Ed's history, and I'm driving.  Edmonton's straight ahead, last stop before we turn onto a new road.  The sun's just starting to come up behind us, I can feel it, and for just a minute I'm sure that if I pulled back hard enough on the wheel and stomped on the gas we'd lift off, straight up, back of the van dropping away like the second stage on a rocket, up to that place where we're the only ones who can live.

Just one more night, down here on the ground, and then—we're going places.  Him and me.