Amarillo and Everything After

By Robert Hunter

Amarillo and everything after

Roadtrip - novelle

Release: 27 February 2022

© 2022 Robert Hunter

© 2022 Books and Butterflies

Cover design: Sly Fox Cover Designs

ISBN 9789464510799

NUR-code: 301

Part One

It was a scorching hot day in the desert outside of Amarillo. Route 66 stretched out like a blackened lava flow steaming its way toward civilization, but we weren’t going anywhere.

For all the miles I’d traveled across America that year – 163,237 miles to be precise – I’d never found myself as burnt out and broken as I did at that moment.

“Fuck the music business,” I said to my guitar player as he steered to the side of the dusty highway.

My RV agreed in frustrated hisses emanating from beneath her chipped and dented hood.

Who could blame her?

We were all heading for a breakdown.

I hopped out in a cloud of smoke to curse at the universe for my lack of providence. I had dared anyone to stop me when I started the tour, believing that I had destiny on my side. Now it was clear that I’d misread the signs when I quit my day job to become a Rockstar, a career that turned out to be far less glamorous in reality than what my Instagram, or anyone else’s, suggested.

In fact, it was downright miserable.

“I should have listened to my mother,” I told Slayder as he popped the hood and climbed from the cockpit to assess the damages.

“There is no pot of gold at the end of a rainbow,” she’d been telling me since birth.

“We just need to cool out for a minute,” my guitar player said.

Was he kidding?

“Cool out?” I shouted back!

We were stranded in bumblefuck Texas, with no cell service, no beer, and no clear reason to believe that anyone would even care enough to cover the story if we croaked.

I told him as much.

“Look around you,” I screamed! “We’re at the threshold of hell, only hotter!”

Slayder surveyed the arid territory and then headed for one of the RV storage compartments.

“How many states is it now?” He asked, unlocking it.

“Too many,” I replied.

He laughed while rummaging and said he thought it was 42. Eight away from making history.

I shuddered to think of how many shows. It seemed we’d played every coffeehouse that had a sound system, from Anchorage to Albuquerque, and even a few that didn’t. We poured our guts out. The size of the stage didn’t matter. We were paying our dues on the road to make it big, risking life and limb and a lifetime of savings, all to play songs for the backside of peoples’ cell phones.

It’s a wonder I wasn’t suicidal.

“God help the next guy who asks you to sing Wonderwall,” Slayder joked.

“You know some asshole commented online that my music was cancer and I should kill myself,” I said.

Others had said much worse.

“Fuck those people!” was Slayder’s reply, as he proudly produced a long-forgotten case of warm beer.

“Congratulations to us!” he toasted, cracking two cans at once.

I wasn’t about to ask him what we were celebrating.

When you are handed a beer in the desert, you drink it. I knew that much, for certain, after nine months on the road.

“How does it feel to be this close?” he asked.

“This close to what?” I questioned. “Disaster?”