He's the last of the singin' cowboys
Singin' songs of inspiration and joy
Yippie Yi Yo, Yippie Ay Aye

            -George Freeman McCorkle

            -The Marshall Tucker Band

            -For B.

            "Set you up with one?" Estevan said. He reached into the well for the tequila, but Brandon waved it away. "On the house."

            "No, but thanks. I'm good."

            Estevan reached next to the register and pulled out a square of paper dampened with who knows how many different types of booze and concoctions and shook it in the air away from him.

            "Don't really drink much, do you?" Estevan said. “Even the fake shots.”

            "No. Not so much, anymore."

            Estevan shook his head. Crazy old man.

            Then he pulled a pen from his back pocket and began tallying up the shots customers had bought the singing cowboy.

            “Today the 13^th?” Brandon asked.

            Estevan looked over his shoulder at the Budweiser calendar with the girl busting out of her zip-up vinyl shirt.

            “Yep,” he said, hitting a button the cash register and pulling out bills. “Been all day, too.”

            Smart ass.

            Thirty years, Brandon thought. Thirty years. When time isn’t fucking dragging ass, it flies.

            “Almost as much in shots as pay,” Estevan said, counting out $63.72 to the old man.

            He’d worked a deal with whatever bar he was playing in. Cash for shots. Sprite for clear drinks, Coke and watered down coke for bourbons and tequilas. Part of his pay.

            Behind him, Dani was stacking the chairs and Chuy was pushing around the mop without much conviction.

            “You played a lot of new songs tonight,” Dani said, wiping her hands on a towel and coming over and sitting on the stool next to him.

            “New to you, maybe,” he said with a laugh. “Old to me.”

            “Everything’s old to you, cowboy,” she said, laughing.

            Time was, a lot of those songs were pretty new. What you’d hear on the jukebox. Time was, he was a pro, not just some old troubadour singing his one gig a week in a shopping mall bar.

            “I really liked that Kentucky moon one. Will you sing it again, sometime?”

            “Blue Moon of Kentucky? Good taste, girly. One of my favorites. Bill Monroe.”

            “I’ve heard of him.”

            Brandon smiled. Dani reminded him of his daughter a long, long time ago.

            “Can I tell you something?” Brandon asked quietly. “It’s not important, but it’s important to me. And I just felt telling someone who might care just a little.”

            “Sure,” Dani said, barely above a whisper.

            “Today? Today’s my birthday.”

            “It is?” she said, loudly. “How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking.”

            Brandon held his finger to his lips.

            “Not my birthday-birthday. My sobriety birthday. March 13^th.”

            Dani sat back and looked at him.

            “How long?” she asked.

            “Thirty years. Not a single drink for 30 years.”

            She leaned forward and kissed his cheek.

            “Forty-three days,” she whispered. “Forty-three days.”

Click the image below  to hear the Marshall Tucker Band's "The Last of the Singing Cowboys"