p. 2 of 8
The night before, I’d arrived too late to be an audience for a Your Exes campfire jam session. When, at the cautious end of my drive through the forest channel that leads to the Exes’ compound, I’d pulled into the cabin clearing and had seen no lights and heard no human sounds, I’d worried that only a troubled or destabilizing explanation of the silence would suffice. Had they forgotten to expect me? Could rock musicians be in bed before midnight? I’d stepped out of my car onto the alien earth, bumpy and strewn with pine needles, and at varying cabin-distances had called out “Hellos” at what I hoped were appropriate volumes – apologetically audible.
I’d been wandering around the perimeter of the clearing and at intervals re-concluding that the place was abandoned when – facing the side of the forest through which came the sound of the creek – I saw a fire
going, off behind the trees. I trudged between those dark conifers and emerged at a campfire before which all five Exes were prostrating themselves, foreheads and palms to the dirt, backs like planks. Near the water’s edge, beneath a tarp spread across some poles, stood an upright piano. Here and there were instrument cases. Tall red and blue flames fleetingly hiss-imprinted the air. Two very pretty and very young blonde women, wearing Himalayan-patterned ponchos and bell-bottoms and cowgirl boots, sat on a log. They looked up at me and wanly smiled and returned to passing a compact mirror back and forth between them. One of them disinterestedly dinged the side of a singing bowl with a mallet.
So as we finished our coffee the following morning, I hadn’t yet seen the compound in daylight or had a chance to get oriented.
“You gonna ask for the tour or what, man?,” Robby Dawkins—cutting off his and Daniels’ singing—teased. And then to the two of his bandmates who were present he said, “Come on, boys, let’s show him the sights. We don’t want him saying we’re lousy hosts, making us look like assholes.”
And he was on his feet. Daniels followed, quietly pushing himself up by his right hand on the arm of his chair. Fairweather went “Mmmm,” and brushed off his pants legs and bestirred himself to rise. We all walked down the dusty steps to the ground.
