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“Friesen!” the woman exclaimed. “Any relation to Dietrich and Mary? They're over in Sunnyhill.”

This was a touchy point. I knew for a fact that my dad's relatives had moved to Saskatchewan.

I grinned. “Probably. There are so many of us, I'm sure we're all related somehow. 'Them that ain't Friesen is Froese.'”

It was an old joke but they grinned anyway, liked it better, maybe, because they had heard it so many times.

Daniel shifted restlessly. I knew he couldn't understand why I was still talking to these people; they'd already said no. I touched the back of his jacket again, telling him to wait.

I slid onto one of the bar stools. “So, what are you going to do for Jake?” I asked.

Not enough, according to his nephew. The birthday had been remembered at the last minute and the three of them were scrambling for ideas to make the old man's regular Saturday night trip to the Legion a bit festive.

“Well, it's lucky we got here today, then,” I said. I told them my brother was a recording artist and we were traveling through the province promoting his debut release. It was the truth, only stretched out and shaped a bit.

“Recording artist? He looks just like my Kurt when he was in high school. You remember how skinny he was,” the woman said to the farmer.

Daniel's muscles tensed, his chin went up. He was ready to leave right then. I started slapping my jacket pockets.

“You know, I meant to bring you in a tape, but I must have forgotten it. Daniel, run out to the truck and get one, please?”

He gave me a look — he was finished with these people. But he strode out anyway. As soon as the door shut, I leaned forward.

“His producers are really excited about him, his talent,” I said in a low Voice. My audience leaned in, too. “But he's so young. That's why we're building the exposure slowly, at a grass roots level.”

The farmer arched an eyebrow at me. “Starling is grass roots?”

“Well, it's
wheat,”
I said. Their chuckles encouraged me. “This is the big tour,” I continued. “All the performers want to do Starling, Treehern, Portage la Prairie. After that, it's all downhill. You might as well do Vegas.”

They burst into laughter, and it rolled over me like applause. A blinding flash lit up the dusty hall as Daniel came in. He walked up suspiciously, as if we were laughing at him, and tossed the tape at me. I caught it and gallantly handed it to the woman. The others crowded around to see.

“Blue Prairie, Daniel Desrochers,” the
woman read out loud, then looked up at me. “He's your brother? I thought you said your name was Friesen.”

My stomach clenched, the way it had when I'd first seen the tape at Christmas.

“It's my mother's maiden name,” Daniel started. “It –”

He was going to say “sounds better” but I cut him off. “There…there's another Friesen who records…jazz.” This was a real lie. A wave of nausea swept through me. “We don't want to confuse anyone.”

The tape was working magic. The cover of Blue Prairie was a black-and-white art photo of Daniel with the Fender in a wheat field, his face so shadowed by his hat you couldn't tell how old he was, the field around him tinted blue. I had to hand it to Kruse – the package was professional.

“Now, that doesn't look a thing like Kurt,” the woman said with a self-conscious laugh; I could tell she was impressed. The nephew was watching us hopefully now, but I was facing the farmer.

I knew the moment had come.
Ask,
Jens. Ask for the sale.

“I think my brother could put on a good show for you,” I blurted. I could have kicked myself – it was a statement, not a close. The
farmer looked Daniel up and down, still cautious. The words bubbled up nervously inside me — how Daniel could play anything, how thrilled Jake would be — but I bit it back. After the pitch you have to wait for the swing.

“We couldn't afford to pay him, not really,” the farmer said at last.

“For Jake,” I said, “Daniel would be happy to do it.”

By the time I reached the sidewalk I was flying. I'd done it! We had a real booking. I felt the first rush of hope I'd had in a long time. I decided to take Daniel to the Times Change, get a coffee and make a plan.

“Well, thanks a lot,” my brother said. “I love doing shows for nothing, especially for shit-boot farmers who wouldn't know good music if it bit them on the ass.”

My mood hit the ground and didn't even bounce. “What's the matter with you? Weren't you listening? Everybody in town will turn up for this old guy. We'll have a captive audience. And if it weren't for me, you wouldn't even have that. You'd be on the sidewalk with your case open, begging.”

“It's busking,” he muttered, hands in his pockets. “It's an art.”

I'd never had the stomach to watch my brother do it. It always struck me as…desperate.

“Well, not in Starling,” I said. “Believe me, a freebie at the Legion is the best you're going to get, tonight or maybe any night. You're lucky, you know that?”

I was gearing up for a lecture — how ungrateful he was, how he never appreciated what people did for him.
Desrochers
was still lodged inside me like a bullet. My brother didn't care at all about the only thing that mattered to me.

“Yeah, I'm lucky, Jens,” Daniel said quietly. “You're so smooth. Everybody likes you and…you can get anything. But you know, you never even told them I was any good.”

He sounded so hungry. It took me a moment to speak, but when I managed it, my voice was light.

“I did, too. Didn't you hear me in there? I said you could put on a good show.” I pushed open the door to the Times Change. “Buy me some pie, Daniel?”

We got great table service in the cafe. The waitress was about Daniel's age and she came by every few minutes to check my coffee.

“Refills are free,” she said, grinning at me. Her blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail but strands had come loose, brushing her pink cheeks.

Daniel was watching me, dark-eyed. At another table, a group of girls – probably the waitress's friends – were watching, too.

“What do I get if I pay for it?” I teased, loud enough for them to hear. They whooped into sudden laughter. The waitress twisted around, scarlet, to make faces at them. My brother looked away.

When it was time to leave, she gave me the bill and hurried back to her giggling friends. At
the bottom she'd drawn a heart with a happy face on it, and written,
Have a great day! My name is Marcy. Come back SOON
.

I passed it to Daniel with a smile – he was paying. He glanced at it, then crumpled it up. He left the money on the table.

Out on the sidewalk, I couldn't resist elbowing him. “You didn't leave Marcy much of a tip.”

“Leave your own goddamn tip,” Daniel muttered.

The man at the Petro-Canada service station told us there was a rest stop about three kilometers beyond Starling. It turned out to be a half-moon of gravel with two picnic tables on it.

Daniel kicked at the ground, scattering stones. “This is nuts. Why can't we sleep in the truck?”

“Because we'd have to unload it to make room,” I said irritably. “You want your guitars to sit out on the highway all night, for whoever wants to pick them up?”

The truth was, with the Fender gone, I could have squeezed out a narrow aisle through the stuff, enough room for Daniel and me to lie with our backs touching, or to sleep like spoons, the way we did when we were really small and there was a thunderstorm. Lots of kids don't like thunder but for Daniel, who was even frightened of that burger bear's tuba, it was the end
of the world. I remember him pulled in against me, his breath on my back, wincing at every crack and boom. I was always on the outside edge, so that whatever horror was coming in that terrible sound would have to get me first.

But we weren't those kids anymore. I would sooner have died than sleep with my brother.

We'd passed a copse of trees on the way out, and I drove back to it. There wasn't a farmhouse as far as I could see but I knew we were on somebody's land. I felt a guilty pang as Daniel and I unloaded, but if we set up the tent by the picnic tables, in full view from the highway, it might not be there when we got back from the Legion.

The tent was an army green that blended into the brush quite well, even though most of it was still leafless. Setting up camp took us an hour and a half and I was glad – anything to keep my mind from running anxiously to the night ahead.

I was as nervous as hell. I wanted to get to the Legion early, to meet people as they came in. I had a big job ahead of me – there's a difference between what people will clap for and what they'll buy.

Remember FAB, I told myself. It was a buzzword that meant Features, Advantages, Benefits – a progression to lead the customer through to
the sale. “It doesn't matter what you're selling” Sy said. “Cars or toasters or whatever. Product is product. The process is the same.”

My product was playing to the trees. He'd lugged the acoustic out of the truck and was turned away from me, the amp under him as a seat. He wasn't really playing, only strumming, hard bursts over the strings, his left hand leaping up and down the neck of the guitar. It wasn't completely tuneless but it was aggravating. He had a show to do tonight. Why didn't he practice a song or something?

Don't fight, I told myself. Just make dinner.

I dug out a large can of ravioli and started fooling around with the propane stove. I'd never used one before but how tough could it be? Crouched in front of it, I kept easing open the fuel gauge and tried match after match until I was cursing under my breath. What could be wrong? Dad said he'd filled the tank.

The violent strumming was getting to me.

“What is that noise?” I said.

“They're power chords,” he said, not missing one.

“Well, it sucks. Why don't you think about what you're going to play tonight?” Maybe the line from the tank to the burner was clogged.

“I am. This is how I think.”

I cranked the throttle wide open. “Most
people think with their brains, Daniel,” I said, and thrust the match into the burner.

The gust of ignition blew me backwards onto my ass.

There was a half-second of silence, then Daniel began to laugh. Then I began to laugh. We blurted it out at the same instant: ”
Scheisskopf
!”

We sounded so much like Dad that it set us off again, giggling like drunks.

It was Daniel who suggested that if we ate out of the can we wouldn't have to wash any dishes.

It was nearly seven o'clock when he crawled into the tent with his performance clothes to get changed. He'd always been shy like that. I emptied out one of my duffle bags in the truck and filled it with tapes. I made sure I had over a hundred, but in my heart I only needed to sell twenty. Salesmen have magic numbers and tonight this one was mine. If I could sell twenty tapes, that would be a sign – that this would work, that I could do it.

I changed my sweatshirt to something neater. “When you stand in front of a customer, you have to look like you don't need the money,” Sy said. Daniel came up, denim shirt hanging outside his jeans, leather vest open. But I didn't say a word. He had a show to do and the better he
played, the more tapes we'd sell. He was my product and I had to pump him up.

“This is great,” I said as we drove to Starling. “This is a real chance and they're dying to hear you. Don't worry about anything. You just get out there and play your best and I'll do everything else.”

It was full darkness now and I could feel new energy running through me. There is something exciting about the prairie at night. The surrounding fields are oceans of black, magnifying every headlight. The storefronts of a place like Starling can look like Times Square.

The front of the Legion was already lined with vehicles, so we parked farther down the street. I didn't mind – cars meant customers. I was eager to get started when Daniel grabbed his fedora off the dashboard.

“For Pete's sake, don't wear the hat,” I snapped.

“Why not?”

“Because…it's strange. People want you to look like them.”

“But I'm not like them,” he said defiantly.

“Couldn't you fake it for just one night?”

He swung around to look at me, the bones of his lean face strong in the light of the cafe.

“I love this hat. It's my signature. If people don't like it, that's their problem.”

“Oh,
that
attitude is going to sell tapes.”

Daniel stuck the fedora firmly on his head. “Not my job, Jens. You just said so. All I've got to do is play. Well, this is how I play.”

He pushed out. I thumped the steering wheel with the heel of my hand. But as I unloaded the equipment, I said, “At least tuck in your shirt. You look like a poster boy for Child Find.”

He didn't speak to me the long walk up to the hall.

The Legion was busy but not yet full. The walls were scalloped with streamers—green and red, orange and black, leftovers from both Christmas and Halloween. Five men were at the snooker table, two teams plus one grizzled consultant, and the tables were either clustered or completely empty. No one sat alone. There were wives and mothers scattered through the crowd, but this was a place of men. Work pants and blue jean jackets, smoke and beer.

Word must have gotten around that we were coming. When we walked in, the room seemed to dip, conversations changed direction. Everyone looked, yet I knew it wasn't at me. I was just a stranger. Daniel was a
kid
, with two guitars. I grinned hello to every face that would meet mine. Daniel strode up to the bar as if the place was empty.

The farmer we'd met that afternoon was
named Allan Rutley. He was leaning against the padded ledge of the bar, twirling a toothpick anxiously in his mouth. I shouldered past Daniel to get to him first.