They had been arrested just after four o'clock the previous afternoon, at a truck stop on Interstate 30 just inside the Texarkana city limits. The tour had been on its way from Dallas, where they'd done a show the night of January 27, to Little Rock, where they were scheduled to do a show tonight. It was one of their extended travel period days off and, as such, they had not left Dallas until almost eleven in the morning, which meant the entire band and crew had been able to sleep in and stock up on some much needed rest. Since they were reasonably well rested upon setting out that morning, the band had begun drinking and partying as the bus had rolled down the interstate, all of them eagerly anticipating arriving in Little Rock that night, a night when there was no show scheduled, where they would check into their hotel and lie around watching TV, where they would crash out about eleven and sleep through the night. Extended travel days were something everyone looked forward to, even Greg and Janice. But when they'd stopped at the Texarkana truck stop to refuel the busses and the trucks Jake and Matt - who both had the munchies and wanted to buy a pie - had begged some cash from Greg and then gone into the diner. There they'd encountered a group of truckers sitting at the counter eating their suppers. The trouble began within seconds.
"Hole-ee shit," one of them said, looking at the two musicians. "Look at the hair on these boys. What the hell you boys doing with hair like a girls?"
"Maybe they are girls," another trucker said, causing them all to crack up at his wit.
"Ya'll like to suck dicks, boys?" another put in. "That why you wears your hair so long?"
Things might have ended right there if they'd kept their mouths shut or just left the diner. But they did neither. Instead Matt looked them over and said, "Well Goddamn, if it ain't a bunch of garden variety shitkickers. Everyone named Billy Bob, raise your hand."
The biggest of the truckers stood up so fast his stool fell over. His was in his early forties, about six and a half feet tall, and at least three hundred pounds. Several prison tattoos decorated his arms. "You lookin' for trouble, boy?" he asked Matt. Meanwhile, the rest of the truckers stood up and sauntered over, forming a loose circle around them.
"Uhh... Matt," Jake said, looking from one to the other. "Maybe we should..."
"You think you can give me some trouble, Bubba?" Matt asked. "Come on and give it a shot. I'll kick your fat ass from here to the fuckin' Alamo."
And that had started it off. Bubba (or whatever his name was) swung a roundhouse at Matt, who easily ducked under it and drove a solid right into Bubba's stomach. The catcalls from the other truckers began. The waitress - who was actually named Flo and had an actual nametag on her pink uniform proclaiming this - told them to take it outside. But things were too far gone for that. Bubba launched an attack, driving at Matt with his fists. Matt, a veteran of many barroom brawls, blocked most of them, ducked away from a few others, and then launched a counter-attack, landing a solid right to Bubba's cheek and a solid left to his nose.
The other truckers stayed out of it at first - no doubt driven by some sort of Texas sense of fair play. But when Matt started to really hammer Bubba's face, splitting his lip open, breaking a tooth, making him gag on his blood, they tried to move in and break it up.
"That's enough, boy," one of them told him, grabbing at Matt's arm.
Matt then made his big mistake. Instead of stopping he turned on the man trying to break it up and punched him in the face as well. All sense of fair play ended at the moment.
"Oh shit," Jake said, resigned, as the entire room rushed at the two of them.
Jake - who was not a veteran of barroom brawls, who in fact always tried to talk himself out of such situations if possible - held his own pretty well. He broke the nose of the first guy to come at him, felled the second with a kick to the balls, and held off the third by driving an elbow into his solar plexus. But then a fourth man slipped in from the right flank and delivered a solid blow to his face, stunning him. A fifth hit him with a shot to his kidneys that made him drop to his knees. And then there were fists pummeling him everywhere, hitting his face, his neck, his chest, his stomach. The adrenaline took over and he managed to pull himself out of there long enough to grab a plate from the counter which he promptly broke over someone's head (thus the assault with a deadly weapon charge). And then he was hit with a chair from behind, driving him back to his knees and opening him up for another furious attack.
Matt, meanwhile, had dropped two of the truckers to the ground, knocking them clean unconscious, but the rest had overwhelmed him and taken him down. They kicked him and punched him until he stopped fighting and was barely conscious himself.
Right about then, the cops showed up, pulling into the parking lot, red lights flashing, sirens blaring. And despite Greg's pleas, threats, and other reconciliatory attempts, Jake and Matt were both handcuffed and driven first to the local hospital where they were stitched and examined and then the jail cell where they were now residing. Not a single one of the truckers had joined them there.
"So ya'll are rock music stars, huh?" the deputy asked them now.
"Yeah," Jake said. "I guess we are."
"Ya'll think that gives you the right to come into people's towns and start a bunch of trouble? Ya think 'cause you're rich and famous you kin do whatever you want?"
"No," Jake said. "We don't think that at all."
"Well I guess them boys at the truck stop taught you a lesson or two, didn't they?"
"Yeah," Jake said. "I guess they did."
"I seen that video thing ya'll put out," the deputy said next. "That thing about hell." He pronounced this hay-all.
Jake said nothing. He ached everywhere and just wanted this man to go away.
"Ya'll think its funny making music about the Devil?"
"The song's not about the Devil," Jake said. "Did you ever listen to it?"
"I caught my daughter watchin' that crap on the MTV," he said. "I seen all I needed to see. Why don't you boys try makin' some real music instead of damnin' your souls to hell by peddlin' that Satan worshipin' stuff?"
"Real music?" Jake asked. "What kind of music would that be?"
"There's two kinds of real music. Country and Western. You'll never catch Hank Junior or Waylon singin' about no Devil worshippin' crap."
"No, I don't suppose you would," Jake sighed.
"How old is your daughter?" Matt asked.
"She's seventeen," he said. "Just started her senior year of high school."
"Yeah?" Matt said. "What's she look like? Would I do her?"
"Shit," Jake muttered as the deputy's face turned an infuriated red.
"Boy," the deputy said dangerously, "you say one more thing about my daughter and you gonna find out what an elevator ride is all about."
And of course, Matt didn't let it drop. "I can get her tickets for the show in Little Rock," he said. "I can even get her a backstage pass. Of course, there's a certain price she has to pay for that. Does she swallow? Or would she rather take it up the ass?"
"That's it," the deputy said. He spoke into his radio and less than twenty seconds later four more deputies were there with him. They opened the cell door and pounced on Matt, wrestling him down and handcuffing him. Jake made a move to help him but two more deputies had arrived by then and held him back. Matt was dragged off down the hall, disappearing around the corner.
He was brought back twenty minutes later, barely conscious, and dumped back on the floor.
Slowly he became coherent enough to talk and relate to Jake just what the elevator ride entailed.
"They put me in the elevator," he said, "and put a football helmet on my head. And then they hit me across the head over and over again with a Dallas telephone book."
"Wow," Jake said, looking at Matt's face. Though he had been beaten to within an inch of his life, there wasn't a single mark on him that hadn't been there before. "Those guys have a little more imagination than I thought."