The jukebox at the Rusty Spur didn’t play music; it engaged in a form of acoustic violence. It rattled the neon beer signs, made condensation slide off the long-necks, and vibrated right up through the floorboards into the marrow of your shins.

Soap, nursing a lukewarm Schlitz, didn’t even flinch. He just watched the stage. Or rather, the corner where a guy named Ghost was gripping a Shure SM58 so hard his knuckles looked like peeled garlic.

Simon was built like a tank all angles and hinges and dressed in a suit that had given up on its shoulders sometime during the Bush administration. When he spoke to you at the bar, he sounded like a man whispering in a library. A dry, papery murmur. But when he opened his mouth to sing?

It wasn't a performance. It was an extraction. “Lord, you left the porch light burning” Ghost wailed, and the sound tore through the room with the jagged edge of a rusty saw blade.

Beside Soap, a broad-shouldered man with silver threaded through his dark hair winced, setting his whiskey down with a sharp clack. “Jesus Christ” Price muttered, rubbing his ear. “Does he take requests to stop?”

Soap didn't take his eyes off the stage. “He's singing like God did him unwell, Captain.”

Price squinted, watching Ghost heave his entire torso into a high, cracking note that sounded less like country music and more like an old engine seizing up on a gravel road without any oil.

“Huh?”

“Like God looked down at him specifically, reached in with a pair of rusty pliers, and just… tweaked something loose in his chest cavity” Soap explained, gesturing with his bottle. “And now Ghostie's trying to sing the pain of the adjustment back out.”

Up on the small wooden dais, Ghost closed his eyes. Veins stood out on his neck like blue climbing ivy. He wasn’t hitting the notes with precision; he was bludgeoning them into submission. It was raw, ugly, and completely devoid of vanity. He sang about broken transmissions, rusted-out screen doors, and women who left before the coffee pot had even finished gurgling.

He didn't care if he sounded pretty. Pretty was for people who had something left to lose. Ghost was singing from the bottom of a dry well, throwing his voice up at the sky like a handful of gravel.

“And the crows won't even touch what's left of me!” Ghost roared, his voice cracking violently on the final syllable, hovering on the edge of a shriek before he choked it back down. The last chord of the acoustic guitar faded, vibrating out into the sticky night air. For three seconds, the bar was dead silent. Even the ice machines seemed to stop humming. You could hear the neon sign buzzing overhead—B-U-D-W-E-I-Z-E—flickering softly in the dark.

Then Price slowly picked up his whiskey, took a long, respectful swallow, and laid a twenty-dollar bill on the sticky wood. “Yeah” Price murmured, staring up at the empty stage as Ghost stepped down, wiping his brow with a frayed handkerchief, looking instantly small and frail again.