It was three years ago, last time I saw Bullfrog Mullins play live. I had to drive an hour and a half to Atlantic City. Tonight, he’s here in my town, playing at my local spot. The taproom at Lucky Lanes has a long bar with a string of lights shaped like jalapenos over it. Near the pool tables there’s a little plywood platform that passes for a stage. Nights when they bring in some crummy cover band, I usually find somewhere else to drink.
The first legitimate artist they booked in years turned out to be one of my top five of all time. My father has roots near Tallahassee, so he put Bullfrog up there with Willie and Waylon. When we moved to Jersey from Pittsburgh, he let the cassette flip five times and turned it up when I complained. I listened to Bullfrog a lot when I lived in LA, where everyone pretended not to know who he was.
I get a little lit in the bar waiting for him to show. There’s a couple next to me, halfway facing each other where the bar makes a right. The guy has a Hawaiian shirt on, and he keeps looking at his watch. He doesn’t want to keep the sitter waiting. They’re arguing, as if I’m not sitting right here. I’m used to it. Most people’s eyes just slide off a girl like me. Most of the time I like it that way.
At eleven o’clock they turn the lights off at the concession stand. He comes in through a door with a red exit sign over it and walks to the stage leaning right to offset the amp in his left hand. His leather vest shines in worn out patches and a band of sweat circles his felt cattleman. He bought his jeans stiff and dark blue and faded them himself. If he ever walked into a supermarket, he would look exactly the same. Bullfrog is five foot eight inches held together by tobacco resin.
The industrial smell of his cologne, like some kind of machine oil, hits me as he walks to the bar. There are heavy rings, steel, maybe pewter, on the two fingers he holds up like a peace sign. He walks away with two beer bottles and sets them up under a tall black pub stool on the stage. When he grabs a bottle between songs he knows where it is without looking.
The voice that earned him his name wasn’t built to last, but his fingers move alright on an old Gibson. He wears a brass slide on his pinky and opens with a Carl Perkins tune. In the short set Bullfrog plays, he manages to repeat a verse in “Barn Owl” and forget the words to “Guess I Got Lucky That Day.” I can’t tell if anyone else notices.
Most of the crowd waits to hear him play “Florida,” which he does after he makes a half-assed show of leaving the stage. When he hits the first chords people in rented shoes wander in from the lanes. “I love this song. This is him? He’s the Florida guy?”
I never cared for “Florida.” I know, every fan hates the hits because the hits don’t belong to them. “Florida” doesn’t even belong to Bullfrog anymore. It’s a beer commercial, a spring break anthem that sold tourism and orange juice. It charted in the late eighties and became a radio staple on rock and country stations. The song fell in the sweet spot between cowboy boots and boat shoes with enough electric guitar and Southern fuck you to last. It’s the reason Bullfrog Mullins can still make a living as a musician and the reason I get to see him play at the bowling alley thirty years later.
When Bullfrog carries his gear out the way he came in, I shuffle out the front door with the crowd. I stand away from the smokers that gather around the doorway and listen to a voicemail from the pharmacy telling me my prescription is ready. A pickup pulls out of the parking lot with the radio playing. I put my phone away and inhale, catching the smell of weed mixed with tobacco smoke.
A cab pulls to the curb and four people squeeze into the back. I bum a cigarette from a young guy talking to his girlfriend and puff on it a few feet away from them. I can’t think of anything to say to them and when they walk away I flick it into the street. I don’t know what I expect from these nights. Whatever it is never happens. Almost everyone’s gone when I walk back inside to my seat. The bartender hasn’t cleared my empties.
I’m surprised when Bullfrog comes back into the bar and throws a leg over the stool next to me like he’s mounting a horse. Ten years ago, Bullfrog signed my CD at a record store. I met him again before a show in Philly. Even still, I feel a tingle in my pits. I count the bottles on the bar, lined up with wet, wrinkled labels while a fresh one sweats in my hand. Not that I think Bullfrog will disapprove.
“My daddy is from Leon County.” Just like that, it comes out of my mouth. He makes a slow turn on the barstool to face me. For a second I think he might stare until I slink away and leave him alone.
“Where’bouts?” he says.
“Near Lake Jackson. He took me to see you when you opened for Merle.”
“Huh,” he says. He looks at his beer like he wants its opinion. When he turns back to me, he’s back on stage, performing. “Thing about Merle is, he’s full of shit. Every night of that tour we hit a bong the size of a grain silo before he went out to bash the hippies for getting high. What year was that? ’98?”
“’92.”
“How ‘bout that. What’s your name, sister?”
I never get to answer. We both turn when a woman comes into the bar and shouts, “Oh my gosh, you’re still here!” For a second I think she knows him. There are two of them, mid-forties and pretty. The one who spoke has blond curls. The other is shorter and has a stud through her nose.
“I just wanted to say that you were amazing,” she goes on, stretching out the second a. “If it’s not too much trouble, I would just love to get a picture with you.” Bullfrog gives me a shrug and slings an arm around the blonde. The other woman holds up a phone and frowns.
“Not here,” she says. “It won’t come out.” She motions them to a table in the corner. Bullfrog hops down and follows. She snaps a few pictures, and then they switch places. Then they squeeze Bullfrog’s face between theirs and take a selfie. Then they order a round of shooters.
I almost have to admire them. They hunt in a pack, like hyenas. After awhile the short one peels off. Alone in the bar with Bullfrog and the blonde, I start to squirm on the stool. It isn’t jealousy. I didn’t come to screw Bullfrog Mullins. Neither did she, but it looks like she’s thinking about it now. I pull the wallet out of my back pocket by the chain on my belt. It’s time to go.
I hear them as I’m counting out a tip. They sing it together.
“We drink it in the sunshine, made it by the light of the moon
Shootin’ bottles, singin’ loud, sleepin’ in the afternoon”
She mumbles through the rest of the verse and comes back big for the chorus.
“If I’m down and out in Florida, at least it ain’t New York or D.C.
Play my guitar all day long underneath the Cypress tree
If I’m doin’ time in Florida, Florida’s where I gotta be
Long as I can see the Florida sun, it’s good enough for me”
When I hit the air again I know I have no business driving. I drop my keys in the parking lot swinging them around on my finger. It’s almost empty now and it’s not hard to guess that Bullfrog got here in the brown and tan conversion van with Florida plates. I remember reading that he lives in Vegas now.
I get into my car and the CD starts where it left off when I turn the key in the ignition. The song is “Ghost Man.” It was playing when the truck overheated and my father popped the hood, and I could barely see him through the steam. He wouldn’t let me help and he swore at me when I got too close, and then he said he was sorry and he didn’t want me to get hurt.
The trash in the glove box rattles when I open it. I have a flashlight in there, and my registration, and an insurance card I got before I let the insurance lapse. I have lip balm and tampons and napkins from drive-thrus. I have a short, green-handled Phillips head screwdriver. It rolls over my palm and I wrap my fingers around it.
I leave the door open and the engine running when I get out of the car. Even with half the lights out in the parking lot I can see the rust around the wheel wells of Bullfrog’s van. If anyone sees me with my hand on the side of the van to hold me up, they probably think I’m puking. The thought has crossed my mind.
I reach down and stab the sidewall with the screwdriver. When it doesn’t work, I dig it in, twisting as I put my weight on it until I hear the air hissing out. I do the next one on my knees. That one goes quicker and I jump up when the van rocks toward me. I take a few backwards steps before I turn and walk back to my car.
On the way I home I think about the van. It’s a big box on wheels and the curtains in the windows make me wonder how often Bullfrog sleeps in it. I can still hear the music over the wind from the open window that keeps me awake and focused on the road. I pop out the CD.
With my left ring finger wedged through the hole I hold it out the window, angling it up and down against the current of air. I consider letting it go but I pull the CD back in and toss it on the passenger seat. I wonder what will happen when Bullfrog finds out what I did. Maybe he’ll miss a show in Wilmington or Baltimore. Maybe the blonde will feel bad and take him home with her. Maybe he’ll write a song about it. I wonder if he’ll know it was me.
James Hertler lives in Red Bank, New Jersey with his wife and two children and works at the lumberyard. He studied creative writing at the University of Rochester and writes fiction, short and long.