Fiction Exclusive / The Star Spangled Outlaw

Coachmen, Winnebagos, Jaycos, Fleetwoods, a couple of Airstreams, license plates from Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, all gathered in the muddy parking lot behind the VFW Hall in Centralia, Washington. Centralia, Washington, incorporated in 1886 by freed slave George Washington, no relation to our nation’s first president. Centralia, Washington, famous for the 1919 massacre where pro-union members of the Industrial Workers of the World fended off four attacking Legionnaires. Centralia, Washington, the hometown I reluctantly returned to more than twenty years ago, now full of angry rednecks, unemployed by the recent closure of the state’s last open pit coal mine. Centralia, Washington, whose VFW Hall could be razed in a few short years, but this night, hunters from all over the region have cut their November trips short to see the Star Spangled Outlaw sing another pretty country song.

When I asked my husband, Clay, to come see the Star Spangled Outlaw with me, he refused. Too many rednecks, Charlotte, Clay said. The kind of man who wears utili-kilts with hiking boots, Clay wasn’t afraid rednecks would kick his ass. He was afraid he’d start a fight. He fell in love with me while I gave a demonstration on recycling in the Expo Hall at the Lewis County Fair in the early nineties. My energy was, in his words, equal parts earth mama and motorcycle mama. I’d never ridden a motorcycle before I met Clay, and I’m nobody’s mama.

Of the hundreds of songs the Outlaw recorded, a few with Linda, Lizzie, and me on backing vocals, he is controversially remembered for his self-released X-Rated albums, sold by mail order in the back of biker magazines. One of those dirty records features a rollicking anthem celebrating homosexual relations in prison. The Outlaw stated, matter of fact, that he preferred women with small, flat breasts, because his formative sexual experiences had taken place with other men. He never screwed a woman until he was twenty-seven. This explained his choice of Linda, Lizzie, and myself, freshly eighteen and scarcely a knocker between us. He may have preferred women, but he preferred them all at once, eventually converting to Mormonism to accommodate his polygamy. This never bothered us girls. We were all in bed with him, whenever he wanted.

The summer we sang at county fairs and honkytonk bars, the Outlaw was in his prime, mid-thirties, baby-faced and mutton-chopped, biceps as big as Linda’s skinny thighs. Eyes not hardened by his time in prison but wary, confused, afraid of being tricked.

When I arrived in Nashville, I hung around Centennial Park with the other runaways trying to sell a song or join a studio session. We lined up in the afternoons as if a foreman might select us for a construction crew. Sharing cigarettes, joints, a bottle in a bag, practicing guitar picking and harmonies, making up songs and killing time until dark when we could prowl the bars. Maybe someone would buy us a drink or a chicken fried steak and invite us to join them on the low stage at the back. I was the one with a couple sheets of blotter. I shared or sold hits sparingly, making it last. I had incredible self control.

I’d stolen it from my high school boyfriend, back home in Centralia, along with the stack of bills he and his brother made selling LSD. The night before I skipped town, a week after high school graduation, I drugged Eddie. I can admit that now. In his basement after his parents went to bed, he was distracted. His younger brother and business partner, Bradley, had confessed that he was gay. Did you not…I said slowly, trying not to laugh…know that already? I put a sleeping pill in Eddie’s beer while he was letting the cat outside. Just one, I wasn’t trying to kill him. We slipped up to his room and he never complained of being tired, but his eyes began to close. With some effort, he said, just come up here and kiss me for a minute. By the time I’d crawled from the foot of the bed to his pillow, he was out. I knew where he hid everything. He sometimes sent me to pick up an order while he was at track practice.

Sneaking out the back door, cash rolled in one of Eddie’s striped tube socks at the bottom of my leather fringe purse, I ran into his brother Bradley, sneaking in. We had passed in the night like this many times. Bradley was tripping, ecstatic. In the backyard, he put both palms out for a double high-five and I tapped back, quiet. He entwined his fingers with mine and swung our arms in an arc. He said, Charlotte, I am out of here. Don’t tell Eddie. He’s home? He’s asleep, I said, my guts tensing. Bradley intended to run away with the stash I’d already pilfered. A car idled in the back alley. Did you hear my parents kicked me out? Brad blew his hair out of his face. What? No. He squeezed my fingers. His were sweaty. They caught me with Salton. Keith Salton? Bradley’s smile stretched wide and he swung our hands over our heads. We’re out of here. California or bust. He dropped my hands and gave me a stick of Big Red gum, adding another piece to the wad in his mouth. I almost gave him the money. Maybe he needed it more than I did. But I had a dream of making it as a country singer, and he was just a burnout. A sweet kid, but a bum. He kissed me on the cheek, all spicy and sticky. Love ya.

I couldn’t go to the Centralia bus station. My bus didn’t leave until morning, and that was the first place Brad and Eddie would look when they realized the money and the drugs and the girl were all missing. Salton waited behind the garage. He was as high as Bradley. Salton, I said, Eddie caught Brad with the cash. Their dad woke up. They’re in deep shit. Salton said, oh no, oh no, I told him to be careful. I said, you better clear out for awhile. His trip turned on itself, giddy flight to wretched tragedy. Where should I go? I said, let me drive. He shoved over, pulling at his hair, beginning to weep.

Salton, the baseball star. Who knew.

I said, look, let’s go to Portland. Call Brad in a couple days, he can meet you. I’ll take the bus back, no big deal. I’d meant to go home and grab the suitcase I’d packed, but I could make do. Salton covered his face with his hands. Thanks, Charlotte. He apologized for crying and told me he had dropped LSD. I said, no way. He didn’t stop until we hit the Oregon border. Poor Salton. Poor Eddie. Most of all, poor Brad, no cash, no stash, no boyfriend in a getaway car.

I boarded the Greyhound only two hours later than planned.

On July third, the Star Spangled Outlaw pulled up to the park in his hearse, airbrushed with his name and the spangled stars he so loved. Linda, Lizzie, and I were used to being passed by, by then, for prettier women with acoustic guitars fit snug between their ample thighs and big breasts. We had only our voices. I was a willowy dishwater blonde with a loud laugh who wore trendy wire-framed glasses that looked like they were meant for a man. Linda was as tall as me, permanently stoned, with yellow feathered hair and modest buck teeth. She looked much older than eighteen. Twenty-five, at least. Hell, maybe she was. Lizzie was eight inches shorter than us, thick chestnut hair, angular face, long straight nose. She wanted to know everything about everyone. We made an odd trio, to say the least, but our harmonies were sweet, and what we had in common was the main thing the Outlaw was looking for: itty bitty titties.

The Star Spangled Outlaw bought us ice cream cones and Boone’s and took us right to the studio. He was recording and he’d just fired three other girls. By early morning of Independence Day, when the session ended, he told us he liked us, he thought we’d get along just fine. By the end of the week, he’d hired us to back him on tour.

The Star Spangled Outlaw drove his own bus, using his stage name as his CB handle. He was a steady, alert driver. No one was allowed past the yellow line on the floor, like in city transit. That was his zone. We felt safe to get lost in a book, to catch up on sleep, to take a relaxing morning shit in the tiny bathroom. It was the same size as the toilet on the Greyhound, but the Outlaw drove so smooth, you might have thought you were at home.

Lizzie stretched out on the long bus bench with her head in my lap. I played with her hair. She asked me to tell her about my boyfriend.

Well, I don’t think he’s my boyfriend anymore, after I robbed him.

Before that.

I thought I might marry Eddie. I mean, I would’ve said yes, if he asked.

What did you do together?

Mostly got high. Sometimes we went on hikes. We lived near the mountains.

Lizzie didn’t care about mountains. She was from Corpus Christi, on the Gulf of Mexico.

Was he a football player? she asked.

Ha. No. Track and field. Long runs. Boring.

Did he look good in the little shorts?

I guess so.

What’d you like about him?

He treated me like I could do anything. He didn’t have to encourage me, or tell me he believed in me, he just knew I was good for it, no matter what.

He knew you’d make it as a singer. Lizzie said this like a fact, satisfied.

I shut my mouth. Eddie didn’t know I was going to be a singer. He didn’t know because I didn’t tell him. He changed the station when I put on country music. I told him the Grateful Dead were practically country. He said he didn’t really like the Dead. That was Bradley’s thing.

I’d pictured it, Eddie falling asleep in front of the TV while I made rounds at the bars. Or chaperoning me, hovering when I needed to flirt to get what I wanted. Worse yet, I’d be trailing after him while he sold drugs. I didn’t want to meet people that way. I wanted to impress Nashville with my talent, my wit, my guts.

When Eddie arrived at my parents’ house to take me to prom, I could tell he was on the come up, even though we’d agreed not to do acid that night. Brad brought this good shit from Eugene, he said. We got into his car. Sure you don’t want any? I folded my arms across my chest, my dress tight and scratchy. I’m getting drunk, I said. Under the passenger seat was the vodka I’d stashed earlier when we took my pregnant cousin Jenny to buy us booze. I bent forward and froze when I heard a seam begin to rip. Eddie reached between my legs and passed me the bottle.

I was an angry drunk. I ripped the back out of my dress trying to kick Bonnie Hoffman’s ass. Eddie had to hold me back. He couldn’t stop laughing, which made me more mad. We were forcibly removed from prom. In no condition to drive, we walked in the spitting rain. At least with my dress torn, I could move my upper body, but I wished we had jeans on. Eddie looked so stupid in his powder blue tuxedo. I surely looked worse.

We traded a joint and a cigarette back and forth until Eddie got contemplative and my rage gave way to urgency: I had to get out of town. What’s next? I asked him. Maybe he’d heard about a party we could crash. I wanted another drink.

Well, my grandpa said I could help out around the clinic…make follow up appointments, send out the molds, call the patients when their dentures are ready…

That’s your dream?

He just got a contract with the prison. He’s going to be busy. You got a better idea, Char?

We stopped and he took my glasses off my face, pulled out a shirttail and wiped them dry for me. It was futile. They’d just get wet again.

Anything else is a better idea!

Great! Tell me! Maybe I’ll be into it!

I meant what’s next tonight, not after graduation.

The only party I know of is at Bonnie’s, so…

It’s not like I didn’t know about his job offer. It’s not like I thought he’d secretly applied to college. But that was when I understood he wasn’t going to take me anywhere. I was going into the world by myself.

We were at the edge of my neighborhood. I told Eddie I was going home. My parents looked up from the TV, surprised I was so early, squinting at my ruined dress in the darkened hallway. I said I didn’t want to talk about it. They let me be. I played nice for the next month and Eddie was either too stoned to notice something had changed, or he figured it would pass.

Nashville was funny. There were bright lights and shiny cars, women with big hair and men who looked made of wax, reeking of aftershave. Polyester everything. And then there were the people I hung around with, not so different from the burnouts at high school.

But the Star Spangled Outlaw, he was different. He was an outsider who wanted something bad, like I did. He never spoke to Linda, Lizzie, and me individually, we were always the girls, you girls. He had a dirty mouth, but we did too. The Star Spangled Outlaw grew up in Akron, Ohio, but claimed to be from Dallas, Texas. As a child, his stepmother had him sent to Starr Commonwealth Boys’ Reform School after finding a playing card with a dirty picture in his pocket. Imagine a time when possessing a risqué photo was a crime, before Grove Press, before Larry Flynt. The Outlaw was in and out of carceral institutions for the next two decades. He learned to write songs from his cellmate Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and toured with B.B. King and the Staples Singers. After King told him “Nobody wants to hear a white boy sing the blues,” he moved on to country music.

At the VFW hall, the line to the merch table is much shorter than the line to the bar, which winds around the labyrinthine space while a mediocre cover band plays the opening set. You could select a copy of the Outlaw’s self-published memoir or pastel thong underwear with his face silkscreened on the crotch. I’m not spending an exorbitant amount on Bud Light, so I buy both the book and the panties, although they look terribly uncomfortable and I’ve long moved on to full-bottomed briefs. Maybe Clay would like to see me in them for a minute. For a lark.

The cover band plays forgotten country singles and the crowd thickens in anticipation. A man taps me on the shoulder to offer an aluminum bottle. No glass, they know this audience is going to get rowdy. For a second, I think it’s Randy, the Outlaw’s old mandolin player with the long black hair, the one Lizzie ran off with, ruining everything. But it’s just some well-meaning redneck, a few years younger than me, trying to flirt. I give him a severe look, shake my head, and yell, I haven’t had a drink in seven years!

Not-Randy shrugs and he isn’t going to take no for an answer. I take the beer as if I’m just holding it for him. Aluminum bottles, a stupid invention. You want the weight of a glass bottle, or the chhhsshhh of an can’s effervescent pop-top release. The unfamiliar format triggers no desire. But Not-Randy raises his bottle for a toast, and I mirror him without thinking, as the opening band plays their final chords and thanks us. I’m swallowing Bud Light when they announce that the Star Spangled Outlaw is up next. The men around me holler. I don’t want Bud effing Light. I want a Deschutes Obsidian Stout, a Pyramid Apricot Ale, a McMenamin’s Rubinator, a half-pour of Ruby Ale and a half-pour of Terminator Stout, like a chocolate covered raspberry. Not-Randy gives me a shy grin and my face copies his, failing to convey the depth of my displeasure.

If I’m turning fifty, the Outlaw must be pushing seventy. When I see him ascend the tiny stage, barely a foot off the ground, big Santa Claus beard dyed pink and orange like cotton candy and strung through with beads, my heart hitches. I take a gulp of my stupid beer. The throng tightens and swells forward. When he starts to play, my internal temperature rises to meet the fast breath and body heat on the outside. My pulse plummets to the center between my legs, and I didn’t expect this energetic exchange, the Outlaw and me and all the wild men between us. I look around for the one who gave me the Bud Light. He’s stuck a half-dozen people behind, and I reach into the surge, dragging him to me. He wraps his arms around my shoulders and I press into his sweaty chest, Old Spice and onions, his thigh against mine. We roil in the turbulence and he hoots with glee. I finish the beer and drop the aluminum bottle. I’m not drunk, but I could get there.

Linda, Lizzie, and I got supremely drunk the night the Star Spangled Outlaw did his television special. The producers didn’t want us girls. We lazed around his hotel room all afternoon, watching as he stuffed himself into tight black trousers decorated with thousands of rhinestones. His knee-length cowboy boots were high heeled, the crown of his hat comically tall. Lizzie chewed her cuticles and the Outlaw gently removed her hand from her mouth. He recognized it as a bad habit, not a nervous habit. After they recorded the live performance for a studio audience, Randy, the mandolin player, was going to sweep her off her feet and whisk her away.

Lizzie hadn’t run from home like me. She’d been left with nowhere to go after her grandmother died. Linda thought the whole thing was terribly romantic, Randy offering her a stability she had never known, but I was suspicious of any man who wanted to tie a woman down. I mean that in the figurative sense. The Outlaw tied us up on occasion, but that was all fun and games. He gloated about being good at eating pussy, and he was, though nowhere as good as Lizzie. Clay is better at it than the both of them. Clay’s better at tying me up, too, an expert in Shibari.

Aren’t you happy for me, Charlotte? We three sat in a line at some sticky bar near the television studio. Lizzie gazed into the diamond of the pawnshop ring Randy had given her a few weeks ago, which she never wore in front of the Outlaw.

Neither of you are going to be able to show your faces in Nashville, once he finds out. I was sullen, looking at my own bare hands.

That’s why they’re going to California, Linda said, elbowing me in the ribs. I’m excited for you, sweetheart. Lizzie and Linda clinked glasses. Char’s just jealous.

Why would I be jealous? My voice rose. I’m living my dream. Randy’s got nothing to offer compared to the Outlaw. I think Lizzie’s throwing it all away to get barefoot and pregnant in some fleabag slum. You know why LA has nice sunsets? Because the pollution is so bad.

We’re not going to LA, Lizzie sniffed. We’re going to live in the Redwoods.

Linda later told me I kept the Outlaw occupied that night, first sexually and then by picking a fight, making him tell me he loved me most. That provided the cover Lizzie needed to get away. I remembered none of it. I spent most of the next day on the cool bathroom tile of the hotel room, while the Outlaw ranted and raved over having to find a new backup singer who’d sound as sweet with us as Lizzie did, livid at the idea of auditioning a new mandolin player to match Randy’s exquisite touch. He might’ve been more upset over losing Randy than Lizzie. I pictured Randy’s slim hips and tight butt, and wondered if there was something there related to the Outlaw’s history in prison.

As an old man, the Star Spangled Outlaw’s eyes are sunken, but I catch a glimpse through the jerking limbs around me and can tell they’re different. No longer frightened, he’s hardened, or maybe he’s softened. Maybe it’s cataracts. I’m moving with the writhing horde, flannel shirts and bare arms flapping in my face, Romeos and cowboy boots kicking my ankles, while the Outlaw plays lame covers of popular radio fare and insists he is the real Slim Shady. My lip curls in disgust. Clay’s teenage daughter, with us every other weekend, is always blasting that bullshit. Some young fans nearby boo loudly at his claim, and I join them. This is below the Outlaw, makes a joke of his talent. We want to see and hear the country star he once was, could still be if he had any self respect, not this sagging, bragging, tattooed biker. His charisma, crackling at the opening moments of the show, is being siphoned away. I’m deep in my frustrated analysis when Not-Randy yanks me out of the way of a kid flailing over our heads in a crazed attempt to crowd surf. The kid’s mud-encrusted, steel-toed work boot cracks another redneck’s skull. They go down hard.

The audience roars and scatters, swooping in to help, backing off to avoid what might be a fight, surging and demanding the Star Spangled Outlaw continue his set. The house lights are thrown on, illuminating the chaos. He’s played for less than fifteen minutes, but he’s done. It’s over.

And I’m shaky, shaken, overstimulation demanding more, you can’t just cut me off, marooned in bottomless disappointment, I don’t want to go home feeling this way. Here’s Not-Randy, squeezing my arm with one warm hand, the other cupped around my butt, almost between my thighs, inviting me back to his fifth wheel parked behind the VFW hall, where he has a bottle of Jack Daniels, if you please. I’ll say yes, to the fading itch deep in my guts I’ve neglected so long, and wake up cold and hungover in a mildewed hunting trailer.

Clay, if you were here you’d have kicked his ass by now.

Pre-dawn, Independence Day 1975, Nashville. Linda and Lizzie, arms linked, skip down the street waving sparklers, sandals flapping like little girls. They fall out of sync and double over, laughing. I’m against the brick façade of the recording studio, smoking. The band’s packing up equipment, then we’re all going for breakfast. Pancakes with butter and syrup, coffee with sugar and cream. The Outlaw’s extra-long boot holds the door open while he says something to the receptionist in his whiny baritone.

Then he says, Charlotte, and takes the joint from my fingers. The first and only time he ever even called me by my name. He exhales smoke and says, so, what do you think?

I think my life is coming into focus. I think my dreams are coming true.

I think, I can’t believe it’s going to be this easy.

in memory of David Allan Coe, September 6, 1939 – April 29, 2026

Share

Share Lifeguard of Love