Kentucky Heat

“Crazy, I’m crazy for feelin’ so lonely. I’m crazy, crazy for feelin’ so blue......”

A lone singer stood on stage at the end of the barroom, her back to a bank of dark floor-to-ceiling windows that faced Main Street. Hank Brennan hardly paid attention to the Patsy Cline knockoff, but the singer’s rich contralto voice, similar to recordings he’d heard of the old country music star, washed over him, enveloping him in a wave of self-pity.

Once again he was sitting alone at a bar nursing a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Once again he felt as blue as the person in the song.

Hank glanced at the singer and her backup band consisting of a bass, drums, and guitar. The singer clutched her microphone bringing it up to her lips, almost kissing it, her eyes dreamy and far away as if she really felt the words she was singing. Maybe that’s why Hank felt them too. She was good, even though she looked as if she’d stepped out of a black and white TV screen from the 1950s.

Dressing like Patsy Cline must be this entertainer’s shtick. The woman certainly looked the part with her dated cowgirl outfit consisting of a black, long-sleeve blouse and a black, flared skirt with big yellow silhouettes of bucking broncos near the teal fringe that edged the hem. The blouse was also trimmed with teal fringe from the singer’s shoulders to her chest making a V over her breasts. She wore yellow cowboy boots and a teal cowboy hat on top of her black bouffant-styled hair.

She might look like a throwback, but she sure could sing. Probably that and the liquor brought him back to Pappy Smith’s Country Bar. Nobody asked questions here. He was accepted for who he was—a guy with enough cash on hand to buy whatever he damn well pleased.

“I go out walkin’ after midnight, out in the moonlight, just like we used to do.”

The singer struck up another rendition of a Patsy Cline hit, another feeling-sorry-for-yourself song. It spoke to him, letting him wallow in his own depression. Hank turned back to the bar and tipped up his bottle, slowly taking another sip.

He should be going soon. They expected him at dinner. His father and stepmother had invited his beloved stepbrother and lovely bride too. Another Brennan command performance. Another sorry excuse for a happy family reunion.

Hank clutched the bottle, battling the sudden burst of anger that gripped his gut. He had passed his thirtieth birthday this year. Number thirty-one was quickly approaching. What did he have to show for his years on planet Earth? Nothing. He couldn’t even support himself, forced to rely on the trust fund set up for him in his mother’s estate. Hell, he even had to move into the pool house at his father and stepmother’s place because he couldn’t afford his own rent.

What a sorry excuse he was. Compared to his stepbrother, Hank Brennan was nothing. Had nothing. Done nothing. And he didn’t see any way out of the morass that was his life.

“How ya doin’, sugar?”

Hank turned at the sound of the resonant female voice to find the cowgirl singer beside him. She edged a hip up on the empty bar stool and nodded at the bartender.

Close up she was magnificent and younger than she looked from the stage. Hank’s gut twisted again but this time with attraction, the sexual kind. Long, black eyelashes framed her wide, expressive blue eyes. They were rimmed with teal eye shadow. Her skin was pale under the bright red blush that spotted her cheeks, and her lips were red, full, and inviting.

“Fine,” Hank replied, and shoved his empty bottle away. “Let me buy you a beer.”

She cocked her head. “I don’t take drinks from strangers.”

She leaned toward him then so that the teal fringe swayed a little as if she was inviting him to notice.

“Let’s not remain strangers,” he said and offered her his hand. “Hank Brennan.”

She lifted an eyebrow, flirting. “Raylynn Walker.” She took his hand and shook it firmly. “Pleased to meet you, sugar.” She drawled out the word “sugar” as if she were caressing him.

Hank gulped and squeezed her hand before quickly letting it go. The bartender returned with a martini glass. Extra olives were stuck on a plastic sword. Raylynn lifted the sword out of the drink and peeled off an olive. The effect of her sucking the round olive through her red lips almost drove Hank over the edge.

How long had it been since he’d had sex? The last time was with that girl named Tracy. Did he dump her or did she dump him? The details were a little fuzzy.

Most of the turnoff had been when he found out Tracy knew his stepbrother Cam. Too many comparisons on that score, he figured.

“You’re in here a lot, aren’t you, sugar?”

The bartender brought him another beer, and Hank tipped it up, eyeing the cowgirl. Her face was turned up, and she peered at him from under the brim of her hat. She seemed sincere, interested. They held eye contact a moment, and then she popped another olive into her mouth.

He shrugged, embarrassed by her notice of him. He’d become a regular, a damn lounge lizard. That’s how lonely and pathetic his life had become. “I’m in here some.” He shrugged again. “You’ve got good beer and good music.” Hank winked.

She reached over and rubbed his sleeve. “Now aren’t you sweet?”

Glancing down, Hank noticed her fingernails were well-manicured and her nail polish bright red like her lips, but her knuckles looked pink, chapped, almost as if her hands were often in water or out in the cold.

“You’re something else yourself,” he said. “I love your voice. It’s surreal.”

Raylynn sat back. “This ole voice?” she replied with a self-deprecating huff. “I tell you, if I was any good, you wouldn’t find me singing nights at Pappy Smith’s Bar.” She sipped her drink.

Hank toyed with the bottle of beer, running his fingertip down the frosty glass. “I know what you mean. I’m a starving artist myself.”

“Oh, phaw!” She swatted his arm. “You don’t look like you’ve missed many meals.”

He lifted a challenging eyebrow. “What are you suggesting, sweetheart? I’m fat?”

“No, silly. Just well put together. Do you work out?”

That was one thing he did religiously. That and his volunteer work killed time so that he wouldn’t have to work on the next commercially viable oil painting.

“You’re well put together yourself.” Hank gave her the once over, shifting his gaze down her fringed outfit to the pointed tips of her yellow boots. “Where did you get those things anyway?”

She stuck her foot out. “You don’t like my boots? Solid leather.”

He admired the turn of her calf and the bare flesh of her leg that peeped out from under the cowgirl skirt.

“I don’t care for the color,” he said, “but I’m beginning to care for you.”

“Ah, sugar, don’t you think I’ve heard that kind of come on before?”

Hank figured she had, but for some odd reason, he meant what he said. She intrigued him, this olive popping, martini drinking cowgirl. Who was she? What was she doing singing at a bar? Her voice was good enough for Nashville. In that, they had a lot in common. Talent unappreciated and undiscovered. Talent wasted.

The band struck up a song. “My cue, sugar. Gotta go. Maybe I’ll see you again.”

She reached out and squeezed his arm, her nails biting into his wool sweater. Then she kissed him, a swift peck on the cheek, but a kiss anyway. She jumped down from the stool and headed back to the stage.

She belonged up there, looking cute and comfortable with the band. They finished their instrumental, and she joined them picking up the microphone.

“We’re gonna change it up a little. We’re gonna play a few songs by our own Kentucky girl, Loretta Lynn. This song is called ‘Blue Kentucky Girl.’”

“You left me for the bright lights of the town, a country boy set out to see the world.”

Hank listened enthralled. Raylynn’s deep voice, not as twangy as that of Loretta Lynn’s, didn’t fit this song well. But she made it her own, and the crowd in the bar gave her a rousing round of applause when it ended.

Finishing his beer, Hank pulled his iPhone from his holster and checked the time. He couldn’t stay, much as he wanted. Damned family obligation. For all his rebellion, he didn’t plan on biting the hand that fed him. Never mind that inheriting the business was his right as the one true Brennan in the family.

Hank climbed to his feet and tossed a few bills on the bar. Needing one for the road, he picked up the martini Raylynn had left and downed it in one swallow.

Damn! He stared at the country singer and chuckled. She had been drinking water all along.

Yeah, there was more to the little would-be Opry star than met the proverbial eye. Hank left the bar vowing to find out what it was and walked out into the January cold.