On the bus to Caryville all of the guitars were out playing tunes of country jazz and old blues. Angie looked down at her daughter reading a book, a little dark haired thing tapping her foot along to the beat of some muffled John Prine chorus coming from the back seat. It wouldn’t be long before they’d get there, to the old town of empty gas stations and coffee best drank at the curb with a friend and a quick cigarette. Angie could use a smoke right about now but she’d wait until all the guys lit up at the next pit stop. She could hide behind them and tell her daughter the smell in her hair came from Clive the bassist who always exhales his cowboy clove into the wind that blows back hard on whoever dares stand behind him. The bus kept going though, for quite awhile. It passed broken cars on the side of the road and corn fields waiting to grow and little kids standing and watching the traffic come and go. She always loved imagining herself in the little towns that only took a second to go through, the ones that try to say their world is on the main street but really you have to go back in the woods to know what it’s really like. She’d buy a house on some murky pond and plant daisies all up and down the road and drive into town every day for a quick talk to some stranger who would be gone in a minute. She would tell them things like “the winter kills.” You can’t be too kind to the people who don’t understand, it’s easier for them in the end. Or she’d play guitar and marry the man who owns the bar and have a kid or two just so they could start some band that only the people in Bixton the town next door would know about but love. The bus kept going through a field that seemed to never end or know what to do with itself though it abruptly turned into an old baseball field then a front lawn then a plot for a pitched tent, all on the same strip of grass. The guys wanted to go fishing during the night; they asked everybody if it was alright to stop for an hour up by the big river that was drawing near. Angie wanted to teach her girl how to fish so she was very vocal in finding the tackle and telling the sleepy singers they had to stop. Suddenly they all were anxious to drive faster and get there before it rained but they all concluded that if it did rain it would be great and they would keep fishing. They all searched the bus for old beers that had fallen below the seats; they all fixed up their lines with the little light the setting sun gave them. It was a good night, the kind where kids grow up just a little bit and the old get to act young and the people talk about remembering everything and you’ve sipped just the right amount of beer to look at a fish and think it’s the most beautiful thing in the world. They had to get to Caryville by breakfast though so they couldn’t move in with the frogs and the moss that rubs your feet and makes you feel like you’re really outside. It would be hours before their destination, many more towns to go through and many more places to see and watch from behind a window. Angie put her girl to bed and sat up for the rest of the night dreaming of the next stop, hoping for the next stop.