The bright light of a midmorning sun wakes Travis from a dead slumber, its heat warming his already hot face. Disoriented, he opens his eyes to discover that he is not where he suspected he would be. Pieces of recognition slip into place as his dried up eyes wander over walls, photos, road signs and posters, eventually falling on a coffee table running perpendicular to his vision, littered with beer bottles and plastic cups. Shutting his eyes for a moment, Travis knows now where he is, sleeping on the couch in Ian’s room. Across from him in fact, Ian sleeps soundly, precisely where Travis and John had found their errant friend the day before. Travis laughs quietly to himself in disbelief as a cool wind blows in through the open windows.

As soon as he lifts his head to check his surroundings, he regrets it. The small muscular movement required for him to lift his head up sends shockwaves of pain through his skull and sets off a throbbing—a too-familiar pounding. He immediately sets his head back down, and opens his mouth for the first time, only to discover that it is virtually stuck shut by a cottony slime and an evil taste; like he’d licked an ashtray and washed it down with melted styrofoam. Rolling his head to one side, Travis watches Ian sleep, his arms wrapped around his small frame, peaceful like an unplugged blender. In his friend’s current posture, there is no evidence of the dervish nature that normally consumes him.

Someone else was asleep in the armchair, but Travis can make out no more than a pair of legs without moving his head. Unfortunately, the identity of this mystery character, capable of sleeping upright, isn’t inspiration enough for Travis to tease the pain. Gradually, he falls back into a pleasant half-asleep state, from which vantage point he can watch the painted horses spin and kick.

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: Ian Fleming, TKE House, Travis Fleeting

Ian comes up to Travis, John and Nick’s table at the ER with a beer in hand. In a Brooklyn acccent, he says, “Hey, jerkies.”

Everyone at the table greets him in their own fashion as Ian sits down next to Travis to a chorus of ‘fatties’ and ‘assholes.’ “I got your message. You guys didn’t feel like doin’ the house thing?”

“I was just in the mood to see Daphne and Kristin. I couldn’t convince them to come with us to the house.” Looking at his notebook, Travis adds, “I needed to get some writing done, too.”

“Are they coming here?”

“No. They’re primping and going to dinner. We’re suppose to meet them at Mean Mike’s in thirty minutes or so.”

“An hour,” Nick corrects.

“Well… yeah, probably,” Travis concedes. The girls would be a little late.

“Anybody up for darts?” Nick asks.

“I gotta’ concentrate on this,” Travis says, pointing at his half full pitcher.

“Nah,” says Ian.

“I’m game,” John says, getting his beer and standing up. Nick slides out of the booth and they both walk off to the back end of the bar. Ian switches from his seat to the other side of the booth to face Travis.

“What were you reading there when I came in?” Ian asks.

“Some lyrics. You wanna’ read ’em?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: Athens, Engine Room, Ian Fleming, John Riffing, Nick Vaughn, Travis Fleeting

The groove of Widespread Panic is blasting the ER when John asks, “What were you working on there?” gesturing to Travis’s notebook.

Travis shrugs, “Some lyrics.”

“Any good?”

“You wanna’ hear ’em?”

“Sure.”

Opening the notebook, Travis says, “They go along with that riff I was fooling around with ’bout a week ago. That D sharp…” Travis hums the riff, “You remember?”

John nods.

“I’m not gonna’ sing ’em though,” and Travis, taking a breath, begins:

A roundandround weights me like
dim, heavy halos overhead
only human and blind by deed
headed for ruined promised lands
I lost my steed
My hands too dirty
For entrance
though they are better tools
for the peace I seek
which slips from me


slips through stone or verse
beneath skies I fly
over flat and treaded land
with wings I've not yet made

Nick and John both nod quietly when Travis finishes.

“I like that ‘dirty hands’ part,” Nick says. “Nice image.”

Travis thanks him with a quick bob of his head.

“What inspired that?” John asks.

Travis looks around the bar at all the angel’s wings on folks’ backs, and the black space that comes after he knows he screams, “with wings I’ve not yet made!” He hears the wanting of a connection in everyone in the room; some particular piece of the subject of the lyric that will never go over well for the people listening—the audience. It—the inspiration—is more ephemeral than just the space between eveyone, though, and more internal—”his dirty hands”—his “heavy halo.” He turns to Nick and John, smiles, and shrugs.

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: Athens, Engine Room, John Riffing, Nick Vaughn, Travis Fleeting

Finishing a few phrases in a beat-up composition notebook, Travis shuts it and looks toward the entrance of the Engine Room where Nick and John are making their way toward him. ER, as it was more commonly called, is about like it sounds. There is an emergency room sign hanging on the back wall—of unknown origin. The whole place is lit with the bare minimum illumination required for human vision and is filled to the brim with knicknacks and show posters of most of the bands from Athens—everything from R.E.M., the B-52s, 16 horsepower, Pylon, and The Olivia Tremor Control. Despite the atmosphere of the place—black walls built around a barroom brawl waiting to happen—the conversation tends toward art and the meaning of life.

Nick stops off at the bar to order a drink, while John walks up to Travis’s table and sets his hand on it. “Mr. Fleeting,” he says mysteriously.

“Mr. Riffing,” Travis retorts.

“We have received several disturbing reports concerning your behavior as of late.” John is looking around the bar suspiciously.

Travis checks the bar as well, but nervously. “Are you from the Commission?” John nods.

“Look, you tell them that I was drinking four out of seven nights last week. I mean, what do they want from me?”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to…” and John leans in for emphasis, “buy you a drink.”

“No.”

John just wrinkles his nose and nods his head. “I’m afraid so.”

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: Athens, John Riffing, Nick Vaughn, Travis Fleeting

Gradually the light from the afternoon turns a darker shade of blue, the sun reflecting off the west faces of the taller downtown buildings. Further up Jackson Street, running perpendicular to Clayton, the sounds of the sirens of the downtown fire department wail and fade off. The group suddenly notices a tall, lean figure across the street wearing a gas station attendant’s jacket and waving frantically at them. They all laugh and hold up their beers as Nick and a very attractive, young woman cross the street.

“Look who I found lurking around,” she says of Nick to the crowd.

A chorus of hellos and how-are-yous emanate from the gathering, before Ian stands up and says, “You must be Victoria,” and extends his hand.

Taking it, and smiling pleasantly, she replies, “Just Vicky.”

“Why don’t you guys join us?”

Putting her hands together and bending at the knees a little, Victoria replies, “Oh, I would love to, but I can’t. I’ve got to meet my roommate for dinner.”

“I’ll join ya’,” Nick declares, the relief in his voice detectable to the boys.

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: Athens, Ian Fleming, John Riffing, Nick Vaughn, Travis Fleeting

It is early afternoon, but the interior of Flanagan’s seems drastically dark by comparison. Most of the sunlight doesn’t filter in through the tinted windows. The mahogany wood and buzzing neon signs seem to suck up any ambient light for themselves. The cool air makes the room darker still, the moisture of the shadows like a pleasant crypt. Travis and Ian both take a moment to let their eyes adjust to the change as the bouncer approaches them. Most of the bars in town had just opened for the day and wouldn’t normally check identification, but Flanagan’s was one of the more strict bars that always carded. A young man approaches Travis and Ian from one of the tables. He’d been sitting reading a paper. Ian and Travis present their IDs. The young man takes Ian’s first, giving it only a perfunctory glance. He takes Travis’s and holds on to it for a moment, searching for the birth date. The license claimed to be from Montana—that always threw people off. Travis always felt that fact was to his advantage, and in his own mind, it was where he was from anyway or where he was going. Handing the license back to Travis, the young man heads back to his newspaper.

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: Athens, Flanagan's Irish Pub, Ian Fleming, John Riffing, Travis Fleeting

John and Travis come out of Musician’s Warehouse into the heat on the sidewalk and start heading in the direction of the car. “Goody!” John bounces up and down.

“You’re gonna’ have some fun with that,” Travis says enviously, though he knows John will let him use it.

John nods enthusiastically as they make their way down the street where Ian is coming at them at his usual cheetah’s pace.

“Can I play?” asks Travis.

Hugging the box to his chest, John just yells, “Mine!”

“Le’me see! Le’me see!” Travis yells in reply, dancing around John.

They get to Ian and stop. “What’d’ya get?” Ian asks John.

Travis jumps in first though, “He got a new toy and he won’t let me play!”

“You always break all my stuff!”

Suddenly twenty again, Travis replies, “I do not.”

“I know.”

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: Athens, Flanagan's Irish Pub, Ian Fleming, John Riffing, Travis Fleeting

Clayton street shoots through downtown Athens, Georgia like a clogged artery, bringing into central downtown both the oxygen of consumers and the plasma of wares to be sold. There are bars, clothing stores, a few restaurants, music stores and more bars. Clayton street alone has fourteen bars, and most of them are packed on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. (Thursday nights exist as a kind of strained extension of the weekend, probably due to the fact that liquor and beer cannot be sold on Sundays in the state of Georgia.) In the old black and white pictures of downtown hidden in the Spaghetti Store or Rocky’s Pizza one can see the kegs lined up in stacks on horse drawn carts before Prohibition.

The Clayton channel is different from the veins and arteries in a body though, because it accomplishes both tasks of push and pull. On any given afternoon, an onlooker can find the push of at least two beer trucks and a UPS van parked along its five block stretch. By five, the business men and women filter out of town, dispersing from the banks and shops, sometimes stopping in for happy hour somewhere before being pushed out to the suburbs. There is a moment of calm before the storm then. A quiet afternoon requiem settles in around the dogwoods, oaks and old brick buildings before Clayton adjusts its flow and a sucking sound starts. Around seven, the push of the streets becomes a pull, and the drinkers and smokers and partyers of the evening begin to trickle in. By ten or eleven o’ clock, the sidewalks are coarsing. All parking in the city vanishes. The lights go down and the fun begins. The bars fill up and spill out onto the street as twenty-somethings in flocks of friends, gaggles of smartly dressed girls, and herds of late night gentleman thrillseekers, migrate from favored hangout to favored hangout.

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: Athens, Ian Fleming, John Riffin, Thunderchicken, Travis Fleeting

The last part of the drive, the last thirty minutes to Pensacola, is the best part. It’s a flat straightaway; dark walking-papers that funnel you straight into the ocean, or at least that beach road right parallel to the surf—and it’s a pretty stretch. Turn from your headlight’s glare to the side and there white glints of the moon are multiplied in a thousand puddles of the secret bogs on either side of an anonymous two-lane highway. But the other view that Vic has when he turns his head, besides the moon and bogs and all, at his companion, he finds him to be fast asleep, meaning he can enjoy the simplicity of the view without babbling commentary. Ray still has his mouth open though, his head rolled over toward the window. In twenty-six years, Vic had never met someone who was quite as peculiar in their logic as Ray. Even though most of the old war horse’s habits were annoying, Vic had to admit that life was interesting when Ray was around. He didn’t like the state of Ray’s apartment, didn’t like how much Ray drank and smoked, didn’t like how loudly he dressed or how loud he just was, and Vic didn’t like Ray’s work ethic (or a complete lack thereof). But somehow, without Ray around, life’s meaning had to be garnered from a trip to the grocery store or a barbecue, and though Vic didn’t put much stock in such things, he knew there was more to life than that.

Read the whole story so far: Thinstyle

Characters and Places: Pensacola, Ray James, Vic Hauser

Looking around Ian’s room at Ian and Travis with that mischievous grin, John sticks his stomach out, swelling it almost into a ball, and begins stroking it. Travis immediately starts laughing. This time he was in on the joke.

“What?” asks Ian. He could tell something was up, that he was out of the loop.

“Touch it,” John says.

Smiling Ian looks to Travis for some clue as to what this is about, but Travis just smiles idly in return and shrugs.

“Touch it,” John urges more seriously.

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: Athens, Ian Fleming, John Riffing, TKE House, Travis Fleeting