I’m For You, If You’re For Me

Published by Jack Smiles at April 25, 2024

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Image by Stephanie Chiavali from Unsplash

The first time Rex heard the song he was in the car alone. He flipped out. He wanted to pull over, rip the damn radio out of the dash and beat it to death with a hammer.

The second time he and his girlfriend Angie were hanging out on a blanket on the state park lake beach. He got up, yelled, “Fuck You Rugbeaters!” and threw his transistor radio into Seneca Lake.

Angie thought he was mad. He was, but it was the Rugbeaters who drove him to it. He was their roadie once. He’d set up the kit, tune the guitars, sound-check the mics. It was a sweet gig.

The Rugbeaters were the hottest cover band from the Finger Lakes all the way up to Niagara. They averaged five gigs a week playing bars, wineries, and private parties, and they had a loyal fan base. The Wells brothers, Jam and Yancey, fronted the band, playing bass and lead and singing.

Sure, they were real pros compared to Rex, but all they did was cover songs. Rex, though he could only strum a few chords, was a dreamer. The chords and melody came to him one night sitting alone in his apartment after a couple hits on a bong. He jotted down some lyrics and a title: “I’m for You, If You’re for Me.”

He played it for Jam and Yancey one night after a bar gig. They laughed and Yancey said, “Rex, you’re a regular Willie Nelson!” Rex didn’t say anything, but quietly he seethed. He bit on a guitar pick to stop himself from screaming in their faces. They didn’t like the song, ok, but why the snarky comment?

Then Rex got a real day job working construction and told Jam and Yancey he couldn’t handle the late nights anymore. They didn’t seem unhappy to let him go – waved him away without so much as a thanks. A month later he and Angie went to hear the Rugbeaters at Arnie’s Roadhouse.

Yancey stepped to the mic and said, “Hey, we got something original we’ve been working on. We call it ‘If Not for You, There’d Be No Me’.”

Rex only needed to hear a verse. He didn’t know what to do. Fighting the urge to fling a beer bottle at the stage, he grabbed Angie’s hand. “Damn it, that’s my song. We gotta get out of here now.”

A couple weeks later, Rex and Angie heard the song on the radio. It turned out that Scepter, a new label out of New York City, was looking for new bands. They’d sent a scout to Arnie’s to hear the Rugbeaters and he’d recommended giving them a contract.

They recorded the song in a real studio in the City and Scepter released it. The Syracuse University radio station picked it up and the next thing anyone knew, everybody’s favorite bar cover band had a regional Upstate hit. A Binghamton DJ told Rex the band probably made 40, 50 grand from all the sales on that song — his song.

Rex tried to confront Jam and Yancey. Called them: Numbers changed. Went to their old half double on Rand Street: Moved. Drove out to the family farm a couple times: Never anybody around. He even went to a few gigs and tried to get backstage, but the bikers they used as guards stopped him. But Rex wasn’t going to give up. An idea formed.

***

“They pay the bands cash. Small bills, dirty money,” Rex said. He dipped a fry in mustard and raised an eyebrow at Angie across the diner table.

“Whatya mean dirty?” Angie said.

“No permits, no advertising, no checks, no tickets, no paper. Man, except for the money – singles, five, tens, 20s maybe even some 50s – it’s all collected at the door day-of. No advance sales.”

“How do they get away with it?” Angie leaned in, pushing her milkshake to a side.

“Ever been to the Wells’ farm? It really is the middle of nowhere. A dirt road off 29, no neighbors for five miles. They cut down a grove back there and left a buffer of woods all around. There’s parking in the cow fields for hundreds of cars. Been running this thing for five years, nothing but word of mouth. Local cops gotta know, but they don’t give a shit.”

Angie nodded. “There’s good running trails around there. How much you figure?”

“Last year I heard they sold about 4,000 tickets, $10 a piece. That’s 40 grand right there. And they sell beer and weed. It’s a regular Woodstock lite.”

“So what? You make it sound like there’s like 40 grand laying in a pile ripe for pickin’.”

“Pretty much there is,” Rex said. He picked up another fry.

“No security?”

“The usual bikers. They pay ‘em beer and weed.”

“How do we get around that?”

“Oh, I got a plan.” Rex grinned.

“Go on.”

“Born to be Wild.”

“The bikers’ song,” Angie said. She broke into a knowing smile. “They’ll be distracted.”

“Now you’re getting it,” Rex said as they laughed.

***

In the festival office that night – really a trailer home backed up to the stage – the Rugbeaters’ gofer Jerry sat at a folding table separating cash into piles by denomination. Josh, the roadie boss, sat next to him counting and banding it.

Roadie and doorman Dan ran the dough back from the front gate every half hour between 7 and 10, when they closed the gate.

“We’re making a killing, man,” Jerry said after Dan had dumped the latest pile of gate cash from his shoulder bag.

“Closing in on 50 grand,” Josh said, “and we still have two joint sellers out there and we’re still selling tons of beer.”

“We’re shutting down the music at 11:15,” Dan said.

“Don’t pull the plug, there’ll be a fucking riot,” Jerry said.

“Not pulling the plug,” Dan said. He turned and walked down the hall to the door. “The Rugbeaters are going to close with a big jam with the other bands and the natives are going to go wild and then, hopefully, they’ll be all worn out and go home.”

***

Getting in was easy. Rex and Angie just paid at the gate like everybody else, sliding in right before it closed.

“Ten freaking bucks, what a rip off,” Angie said.

Rex just looked at her, shook his head, and laughed. “Come on,” he said, “If they run things like normal we’ve only got a half hour to get to the front.”

They snaked their way through the crowd, stepping over muddy sleeping bags and around pow-wows. Rex tried not to check out the girls in cutoffs and halters. They stopped to take tokes on passing joints. As they got closer to the stage they could hear the Rugbeaters playing “Start Me Up,” but were walled off by a 20-person-deep mob of stoned, drunken, screaming dancers.

When the song ended Yancey started some “hey, how y’all doing” shit over the mic. It gave Rex and Angie just enough time to jostle their way to the front row, stage left. To their right three huge, dirty, mean-looking, drunken bikers stood with their arms folded and their backs against the stage.

Yancey yammered on and finally yelled the magic words, “This one’s going out for our favorite bikers, the Vulcans.”

Rex said, “Oh yeah,” as the Rugbeaters broke into “Born To Be Wild.” The bikers turned toward the stage, raising their beers and banging their heads while the dancers went wild spinning, jumping, air-guitaring.

No one was watching. Rex reached down and pulled up the tarp hiding the stage underpinnings. Angie ducked under and Rex followed, then stopped short. Shit, a freaking maze of two by four cross-section supports, way more than Rex had expected. The bass and drum thundered down on them as they began picking their way through the infrastructure.

Angie, lithe, strong, and 120 pounds, moved easily. She looked back and saw Rex. He wasn’t moving, stuck in a cross section.

“You fat fuck, I never should brought you,” She said. They both laughed.

“Come on,” Rex said, “it’s not funny, get me the hell out.” They had to scream over the music.

Time was running out on “Born to be Wild” and Rex’s plan to get rich. Angie got behind him, put her shoulder to his ass and pushed. He didn’t budge.

“We don’t have time,” Rex said. “Go ahead with the plan, I’ll catch up.”

“You want me to pull this off myself?”

“C’mon, Babe, you know you can outwit those lazy assholes. You can outrun ’em, too.”

Heart pounding and hands sweating, Angie crawled out the back of the stage, just as “Born to Be Wild” faded out. Only one more song and 20 musicians would be crowding the trailer for their dough. She kept thinking about Rex’s song, and let it move her along. Otherwise she’d freeze and that would be the end of it.

She was for him and they were for each other. It was their song, damn it! She had five minutes, give or take, while all the bands jammed on “The Breeze.” Pumped, ready to get their due whatever it took, Angie ran alongside the trailer, up the front steps, pulled down her ski mask, and burst in the door.

“Hey, Dan, that you?” came a voice from behind a curtain at the end of the narrow hall.

Angie ran, ripped down the curtain, and jumped onto the table below a huge bay window on the back of the trailer. Just as Rex said, the banded money lay piled on the table in front of Josh. Angie kicked him in the chest. He fell back to the floor in the chair, whacked his head, and stayed down.

Angie shoved the money in her backpack, jumped off the table and turned back toward the hallway as a door midway down flew open. A huge, greasy-haired, pockmarked biker stepped out of the toilet looking down as he hitched his belt. He was blocking the hall. He looked up in time to swing his forearm to knock away the metal folding chair Angie threw at him.

The biker growled and ran toward her, but got his feet tangled up in the chair and went down. Angie grabbed another chair and threw it through the bay window.

She jumped through the opening just as Josh, groggy from whacking his head, stood up and made a futile swipe for her legs. He watched her as she landed on some shards, got up, scrambled under the field’s snow fence, and sprinted for the tree line.

The last song ended, and above the crash of the crowds’ wild cheers, Angie heard Josh screaming through the broken trailer window at everyone on the stage.

It must have made quite a sight. A lone figure wearing a backpack sprinting into the dark woods from a moonlit pasture, while 20 musicians – some wielding mic stands – and a half dozen sloshed bikers poured out of the stage area to race after her. Adrenaline pounded, and Angie laughed.

It was dark among the trees, but Angie knew this trail. She had run it a million times. Her tach light would give her away, but the Rugbeaters would know the trail, too. She switched the light on. She couldn’t afford to fall, and she figured she was in better shape. Training for the Lakes Half Marathon was paying off. And she was sober – though hopefully not for long.

On the smooth but winding path, it didn’t take much to outpace her pursuers. But soon she heard a distant roar of engines. The bikers had broken off the chase and gone back to the main gate for their hogs. She picked up her pace.

The trail dumped her out on 29, and their car still sat on the roadside where they had left it. But Rex had the key and where the fuck was he? Angie glanced around, then crossed 29 and picked up the trail again on the other side of the road. She heard the bikes nearing.

Angie ducked into the woods 20 feet off the trail, then crawled to the edge of the road, hid in the trees, and peeked through the brush. Three bikes slowed as they approached the car, then stopped. Holy crap, it was Rex! He climbed off one of the bikes and waved like he was saying thanks.

Two of the bikes turned and rode slowly forward onto the trail, shining flashlights into the woods. The third turned and putt-putted in the opposite direction as the rider panned his flashlight. Angie ate dirt until the bike disappeared around a bend.

As Rex opened the car door Angie came up behind him. “Open the other side,” she said.

“Jeez,” he said, as he flung his arms around in a bear hug. “You about gave me a heart attack.”

“We better get going,” she said. She got in shotgun and put the backpack between her legs. “What happened? How did you get a ride from a biker?”

“I ducked back in with the crowd and walked out. Got to the main gate. Some bikers came running and gunning, yelling about killing some asshole thief. I knew one of them from the Cat and Canary pool league. Told him I was out of gas on 29, and he told me to hop on. Didn’t suspect a thing!”

Then he glanced at her as the car began to move. “How much we get?” he asked.

“We?” She said. “I did all the dirty work.”

“Hey, I couldn’t help it.”

They both laughed.

***

Jam counted the remaining money: A couple grand out of what had been 50.

“It was Angie, wasn’t it?” he asked.

“Well, whoever it was had a mask, but yeah, Josh is 95 percent sure it was Angie. She had to be working with Rex.” Yancey said.

“Funny, I never thought they had the balls for something like this,” Jam said.

Yancy shrugged and sat down in a folding chair. “From what I hear he’s on the warpath over that song. Telling everybody we ripped it off.”

“So what do we do?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Jam said.

“We can’t call the cops,” Yancey said.

“We could look for him.”

“Where the hell are we going to look? He’s not going home. He’s probably heading out to California as we speak. Him and his girlfriend.”

Jam leaned on the trailer wall and folded his arms. After a moment he said, “The Vulcans aren’t gonna give up.”

Yancey grunted. “They can’t find their own asses.”

Jam pulled the other chair up and sat down, eyeing the small stack of bills. “I guess we did rip off his song.”

“That’s generous,” Yancey said, scowling. “He had an idea, a melody, some chords. But we finished the damn thing.”

“Sure. Written any new ones lately, Yancey?”

***

There’s a part of North Central Pennsylvania nicknamed ‘The Wilds’. It’s full of endless mountains rolling with state game lands, national forests, and parks. An elk herd roams there, one of the few this side of the Rockies, and elk tourism is a thing in one of the little towns. They’ve built a decent restaurant, winery, and brewpub, and they’ve got a cozy B and B.

It’s a nice place to buy a little business with your girlfriend and rename it Antler Inn. A body can sit on the patio there and watch the elk, maybe write a couple songs, and find some well-earned peace.

And every time the radio plays that song now, you can smile, lean back, and enjoy the tune.

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