King of the Normals Ray Jicha
L
ouie got caught stealing pills from Grandma’s medicine cabinet and had to leave the family reunion earlier than he’d planned. He threw a couple of sandwiches and a thermos of coffee into his backpack and asked Mama to drive him to the highway. As they paralleled the river a line of fog hovering over the water took on the blush of dawn just before the sun itself rose above the flat horizon. It would be a long way to Cleveland, longer than he could make in a day, but he had a card to play in Nashville. A girl he knew from school told him she’d be home visiting her folks that week and they could put him up for a day if he passed through. As far as Louie cared the uncertainty was
all to the good. He’d get to Ohio when he got there, hang out with Big Lou and his old-con buddies for a week or so, then head up to Michigan, the UP, maybe fish the Big Two-Hearted, take the ferry across Lake Superior to Duluth, sing on the street in Hibbing, or maybe New England, someplace he’d never been before. It had been two years since his big trip west and he was itching to get back on the road. Columbia would be right where he left it when he got back. School, the band, his girlfriend: they never went anywhere, not like this. His first ride came from a mid-sized country boy with slick, dark hair and not good teeth. He looked a hard forty and the Pall Malls weren’t helping. He was on his way to pick up a semi with a load for
29.
