Willie Read Online Free Page A

drank from the ample supplies of beer and tequila. At some point during the night Zeke and I were about to win the truckstop and the town from Carl.
    I got up to go to the bathroom and took another look around the truckstop. There was lots for sale: sacks of cookies, cans of motor oil, glass unicorns, bronze western statues, a rackful of books by Louis L’Amour, stacks of trucker logbooks. Coffee mugs and T-shirts with Carl’s face on them. There was a jar of peanut butter on every table. Carl had been telling me his plans to open a trucker chapel for prayers and weddings soon, and then a trucker museum and a trucker bank. “Your Picnic,” he’d told me, “will put this place on the map.”
    â€œOkay,” I said. I admire dreamers, being one myself.
    I woke up the next morning on the couch at Zeke’s house. Zeke was standing at the refrigerator making breakfast, which means, for him, popping the top on a can of beer.
    â€œDo I remember telling Carl he could have the Picnic at Carl’s Corner?”
    â€œYep. She’s all done sealed, pardner,” Zeke said. “We’re dedicating it to truckers.”
    â€œWe didn’t win the town, did we?”
    â€œNaw, the game sort of fell apart. We’ll pick it up later.”
    Carl announced the Picnic in newspapers and on TV. Crews showed up to dig ditches and lay pipe for water. Surveyors were sighting out the parking area. My old Austin Opera House pardner, Tim O’Connor, took over as the producer and built a stage, cleared the ground, chose the spots for concession stands and portable toilets.The Hard Rock Cafe jumped in as official Picnic restaurant. Tim started selling tickets. The Picnic at Carl’s Corner was rolling with its own momentum.
    I climbed onto
Honeysuckle Rose
and rode a long way out of town to a series of shows, which I had learned was the best place for me to be while the Picnic was being put together. I had, after all, fifteen years experience with Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnics. They usually ended with me slipping into a plane in the middle of the night and flying off to Hawaii to hide for a week while the damages were assessed. Over the years I realized it could be an advantage to be unfindable before the Picnic, as well. The Picnic grows beyond control, and I try never to worry about what is out of my control—just to give it my strongest positive thoughts and trust for it to turn out well.
    Now I loped back to Dr. Simms’s old house in the early Abbott morning—daydreaming, several voices inside me talking all at once, as they usually do, telling me tales, offering advice; they are my guardian angels mixed in with some malicious spirits. I listen to the voices argue all the time but my inner Mediator makes the decisions unless my ego jumps in front and screws it all up.
    Honeysuckle Rose
’s generators were humming in the yard as Gator Moore, my driver, got the bus ready to roll. Gator is a tall, well-built guy with long hair and a beard and healthy biceps. He’s a good companion on the road and a conscientious driver who always gets me to the show on time, or the movie set or the recording studio or the motel. I depend on Gator.
    I stopped in the kitchen to eat two plums and a bowl of plain yogurt with walnuts and sliced bananas and strawberries on top. I washed down a couple of painkillers with a slug of grapefruit juice, hugged Lana, and talked to my grandkids.
    I climbed onto
Honeysuckle Rose
with a random group of friends. Gator drove us along the streets I ran that morning and headed up the highway until we came upon an enormous Texas flag—I mean it looked like it was ten stories high—and turned down a side road into the backstage area. I climbed out and walked up onto the stage to gaze at what we had brought forth.
    Beyond the stage the ground fanned out in a field that could hold the 80,000 capacity crowd Carl and Zeke had been predicting in the