Outside In (28 page)

In the barn, confident that I know the words, I stand in front of the mirror to watch my body language. Cinch comes up after my second time through. He says, “The first person just walked on stage, but you’ve got seven other people in front of you.”

“Tell me which rendition is more effective.”

He sits down at the table with the lock box. “Do you care if I prepare a few packages while you do it?”

“Do what you gotta do.” I go through both versions. “So which do you like better?”

“The first one,” he says, although he hadn’t been watching. “How about a little boost to get you ready?”

“No way. I’ll be too edgy.”

“A little won’t hurt.”

“I can’t. Bad shit always seems to follow.”

“Nonsense.” Cinch scoops some on a spoon and prances over. “Here comes the airplane. Just a little sniff of jet fuel.”

I stare at the end of the spoon. “Not now. Maybe later.”

“Come on. Be a good boy and take your medicine.”

“Fine. But this is it. No more.” I take a blast in each nostril.

Cinch licks the spoon in triumph. “Now was that so bad?”

The inside of my nose burns. My throat swells. The roof of my mouth and my gums numb. I shake my head and shoulders and wiggle my fingers. A wave of anxiety surges through me. “Fuck. Knew that was stupid.” I put down the guitar and pace around.

Cinch says, “Here’s what you do. Walk on stage with a bucket of beer. Hold it to the crowd and then take a long drink. It’ll get them going and calm you down. When you’re done with the song, dump the pitcher over your head. They’ll eat it up.”

I head toward the door. “Let’s get this over with.”

Cinch walks to the couch and picks up the guitar. “Uh, don’t you want to take this?”

“Shit. I’m such a space cadet.” I take the guitar from him. “This is going to suck.”

Cinch gathers the packages he prepared. He says, “At this point in the season, it would be wrong not to be under the influence when you go up there.”

I wait behind the Round House. Astrid’s voice flows over the PA. I can’t listen to her. Walking back toward the parking lot, I move my tongue around my mouth. But the only moisture in my body streams from my forehead. I repeat the first few words. “Let us be merry, let us be merry.” I walk into the back room and wait behind the curtain.

“And now our final contestant, from the Round House. All
the way from the Show Me state, please give a nice welcome to Brad Shepherd.”

Astrid winks at me from the other side of the bar as Cinch hands me a bucket of beer. A gulp from the bucket prompts cheers from the crowd. I continue to drink, not to encourage their enthusiasm, but because my body soaks up the liquid as I pour it in. Jeers emanate when I stop with half remaining.

The lights in my face shield me from the piercing gaze of the spectators. I appreciate the blindness. Hundreds of eyes are staring at me, but I can’t see them.

I clear my throat, ready to begin, but can’t remember the first word. My smile fades. The lights, which only seconds ago provided cover, now expose me. Again I feel the sweat burst through my forehead. I strum the G-C-D-D pattern, hoping the words will come. After the fourth time through, the first line crystallizes. I sing, “Let us be merry with song and drink, to the point we may not think. Full of laughter and friends abound, here’s to forgotten minds but souls found.” I can hear the shakiness in my voice and the stiffness in my strumming. “Acts of courage and full of nerve, due to the spirits that we serve. To create a shot of particular flavor, or pour a drink for one to savor.” I feel my pace quicken, wanting to get to the end. I need to slow down. “Whether it’s a stein, a glass or ordinary cup, with beers and cocktails, we’ll fill you up. Not in money from tips we receive, but in people is what we truly believe.” Almost there. Just need to hold it together. “Free from the everyday stress and strife, to serve another is a great joy in life. So gather near and tip your cup, I will always do my best to fill you up.” I hold the guitar up to the crowd and pick up the bucket and pour it over my head, putting the bucket on like a hat, just as I have seen the drunks do so many times this summer. The crowd eats it up. I feel more relief that the experience is over than from the liquid on my sweaty skin.

“Great job, Shep,” someone says as I rush out the back door.

I push over a stack of empty kegs in frustration. Cinch comes out the back door. I sit down on one of the kegs. “Fucked up. That really sucked. I stunk up the joint.”

Cinch says, “What do you mean? That was fine.”

“I wasn’t exactly hoping for fine. I spoke too fast. See, I knew I shouldn’t have partied.”

“Fuck it. Who cares? Let’s enjoy the rest of the night.”

“You go ahead. I’m going around front.”

I loop back around and up the alley to the Park Hotel patio. Caldwell is in the same spot on the porch where I left him. I say, “Did you witness that disaster?”

“The bucket of beer was a nice touch.”

I stare at his silhouette, searching for his eyes. “Don’t bullshit me. I choked. I went too fast.”

“You did seem nervous. Maybe you should switch to decaf.”

“I know. You’re at your best when you’re sober and well rested. You told me that before.”

“There’s more to it than that. Somebody like Birch or Mad Dog can get up there all messed up, and most people won’t even notice because they’ve been on stage hundreds of times. That was your first.”

“Probably my last after that suckfest.”

“You can’t expect to do something well the first time. You probably shouldn’t expect to do it well after ten or twenty times.” The rocking chair creaks in time with his words. “When I first started playing guitar, I was seventeen. I was convinced that my fingers weren’t meant to bend that way. And when I could finally make a few chords, it was my right hand that couldn’t hold a pick and strum at the same time. It was so difficult for me to pick up the guitar because every time I did, I had to face how much I sucked. Eventually I realized that it really didn’t matter how good I was. All that mattered was that I played. The more often I practiced, the quicker I’d learn. It took me two years before I
would even try to play in front of other people. And then, even after becoming a pretty decent guitar player and making a living playing in bands, I went through the same process when I learned to play the mandolin.”

Life always seems so simple for Caldwell. I say, “You’ve got natural talent, though.”

“There’s no doubt that some people have a gift for things. It might take you 108 tries at something when it takes another person only eight. You want to be good at things, but that’s not why you do them. If it is, you’ll never be happy because as soon as you get something down, you’ll move to something else. Find something you love doing and do it because you enjoy it. The skill will naturally follow.”

I want to believe him, but things just never seem to work out for me. I say, “I didn’t do myself any favors by being banged up.”

“What would you tell one of your students who was disappointed with a test result?”

Cinch opens the side door to the Round House. “Hey, they’re about to announce the winners to your event.”

Caldwell says, “Be the teacher to yourself you strived to be for others.”

Astrid is standing with Cinch a few feet inside the side door. “You sure you don’t want to wait outside to hide your tears when you lose?”

I smile and turn my focus to the judge announcing the outcome on stage. “In third place, receiving twelve points, is the Boardwalk. Second place and sixteen points go to the Round House.” I smile at Astrid, knowing what is coming next. “And taking the first-place prize of twenty points, and moving into the lead with one event to go, the Boat House.”

Cinch gives Astrid a congratulatory hug. He probably would’ve given her a consoling one if she’d lost; he never misses an opportunity to wrap his arms around her. I walk over to be gracious, feeling the full sting of the loss more because my finish caused our team to surrender first place. I say, “Winner gets what the winner wants.”

Astrid says, “I’ll settle for a hug right now, but I plan to collect tonight. So keep yourself open.”

“Don’t fraternize with the enemy,” Cinch says. “We still have one event left. There’ll be plenty of time for that after we win.”

The last event is the Drink Presentation. Each team creates a unique shot or cocktail for the judges to assess on overall taste and presentation. It’s probably not the most ideal event with which to finish, since drinking throughout the competition has hindered each team’s presentation skills. But in years past, when the event was held earlier in the evening, Haley said the judges were so drunk by the end that some didn’t stick around for the rest of the competition.

The order of presentations is the reverse order of the standings. Our drink, a shot named Perry’s Cannonball, pays tribute to Perry’s naval victory at Put-in-Bay. It’s peppermint schnapps and vodka chilled and strained into a shot glass with a quarter shot of Jagermeister, which coagulates in the bottom to resemble a cannonball.

The key for our team is the presentation. One of our bartenders is a true professional. He’s tended for fifteen years in a variety of locations around the country and even in the Caribbean for three winters. He can do all the tricks—flip bottles in the air, catch them behind his back, whatever.

The clincher with our performance will be how he pours twelve shots simultaneously. He’ll stack thirteen small rocks glasses inside one another and pour only into the top glass. After the glass fills, the liquid will flow into the one underneath
it, and so on until he fills all the glasses. He’ll line up twelve empty glasses on the bar, remove the top glass, pick up the stack of glasses, and tip the entire stack so that the liquid in each of the glasses runs into the ones on the bar. Then, after a couple flips and spins with two bottles of Jager, he’ll drop in the cannonball. The whole time the song “You Dropped a Bomb on Me” by the Gap Band will be playing.

Our team is presenting a simple shot because after a few drinks, the judges won’t be able to taste anything anyway. But they always remember the presentation.

It probably works to our advantage that we’re in second place because we go before the Boat House team. All the pressure will be on them to hold the lead, especially if we nail our presentation.

Cinch and I watch each team through the curtain. Most focus more on the drink than the presentation, and each time, the judges drink less and less, eventually only sipping the cocktails offered them.

As the music starts, our bartender’s flashy moves seize the judges’ attention. He fills the glasses without spilling a drop and tips the stack so that each glass is filled evenly. As he flips the Jager and drops a splash into each glass, I know we’ll be tough to beat. He finishes by sliding a glass in front of each judge, leaving one for him and each team member.

“You guys better have something good to top that,” I say to Astrid, who is standing on the other side of the bar.

“Care to make another side wager?”

“Whatever happened to competing for the sake of competition?” I ask.

The sportive smirk returns to her face. “You’re right; you’re already into me for one favor. You don’t want to make commitments you can’t live up to.”