Dark fur stripes on the side of the gravel berm caught Skeeter Dillon’s eye causing him to almost run his pickup off the road. Pounding the brake with his steel-toed work boot, he fishtailed and slid to a halt in a cloud of smoky dust and gray stone.

Wet blood still pooled beneath the dead raccoon’s open mouth.

Didn’t take much to pick up the critter by his tail, though at first Skeeter thought to just cut off the fluffy end piece with the Bowie knife he wore in a fringed sheath on a chrome chain belt. Always ready to gut a deer, he never knew when he might come across roadkill treasure and get free meat for the winter. But he was in a hurry and didn’t want to get innards on the blade he’d have to clean, so he just flung the whole varmint into the back of the truck.

He hadn’t worn his trademark Davy Crockett cap to play at Sonny’s Bar since he came home to Perry County country from two funerals and a failed existence in Nashville. Kept the hat under his bed hoping to dry out the beer stink on the crusty coon tail that to him smelled like cat piss. As soon as Skeeter put it on when it dried and stood in front of the bathroom mirror he felt dead and buried with no hope for the future.

But once his new ’Merican-genre song took off locally, a crack in the clouds opened up wide enough for Skeeter to run through like one of those art films where the hero runs slow motion nekked with arms open wide through fields of sunflowers under a summer sky. Skeeter never saw a movie like that but the scene always came to mind whenever he thought about paradise. Now Skeeter was living heaven right here on earth.

Perry County loved Skeeter Dillon. And that was good enough for him. Really, what more could a simple man want?

Earlene bought him that cap at Boot Barn a week after they met. When he opened the white shopping bag he sang her every word from the Davy Crockett ballad exactly the way he memorized the lyrics in the 12^th grade talent show at the high school when he sang each line in perfect pitch except for the part he left out about “kilt him a b’ar when he was only three.” Skeeter loved bears, especially Smokey, swear on his dead Ma he did, and would never hurt a black bear, brown bear, teddy bear or grizzly.

The kids in his class loved the song that won him first prize, a subscription to Hot Rod magazine he quickly picked out of a selection that included Reader’s Digest and Redbook. All the wars and lousy presidents later, that was the last fame he enjoyed until now. Some of those same kids from school were cheering him on when he debuted his new tune at Sonny’s, rooting for him to keep going and get some of that acclaim they all rightly deserved but would never get because they were just regular nobodies nobody but themselves cared about and they often didn’t care much about themselves, neither.

Those best years were gone.

Earlene dead and gone.

Hound dog Zeke dead and gone.

His Harley, too.

Now the same went for his beautiful Davy Crockett cap that was as much a daily part of his image as eating pickled sausage with his knife from  a jar behind the bar at Sonny’s, the same cap he was wearing when Earlene and Zeke passed on in the scooter mishap, the cap he accidently sat down on drunk during the bus ride home when he spilled beer all over the fur and ruined it and everything else until his local hit song turned his world upside out and set him to living the dream as a country music star in his hometown of Duncannon, PA.

Now all his needs were met.

Maybe.

When Earlene left him he promised himself nobody else, never. No other woman could ever win his silly putty soft heart. Skeeter would keep that promise. But he didn’t say nothing about another dog. Nope. Skeeter Dillon wanted another dog more than he wanted another woman or another motorcycle for that matter, although visions of a new bike was dancing in his head the way Earlene used to wiggle to that “Black Betty” song on the radio.

A state-of-the-art Harley Davidson Freewheeler trike would comfort him and his achy-breaky butt particularly, though he still worried some young brother might laugh at him on a three-wheeler. But he’d cross that washed-out bridge when he came to it. No, he wouldn’t crack the smart-ass over the skull with a pool cue. Maybe he’d finally smile a crooked smile and admit he was getting a little bit older. Not a lot older, just a little. Goddamn if he might not even qualify for a $35,000 bank loan for the Harley he might even pay back.

But now with a fresh raccoon tail to turn into a new Davy Crockett cap Skeeter Dillon figured the time was right to get himself another hound. High school buddy and taxidermist Dr. Tom, who also ran a leather shop and sold fireworks you could shoot like mortars from the tailpipe of your motorcycle, could easily stitch him up a brand new cap.

Skeeter would have to find a new dog for himself. Who’da ever thought he’d pick one up hitchhiking in just a week? The dog was hitchhiking, not Skeeter. Hard as it is to believe, the dog was sitting by the side of the road with his paw raised like he was thumbing a ride or like that lion in the Bible asking the slave to remove a thorn from his paw. When Skeeter pulled over and opened the passenger door the dog jumped right in the truck. And when Skeeter looked into the dog’s eyes he saw himself, until now an old beaten loser. When the dog looked into Skeeter’s eyes he saw the same, a lonely cur all wrinkled and abandoned.

Until now.

“What’s your name, boy?” Skeeter wanted to know eyeing the black and tan Coonhound up and down.

Holding up his paw the miserable mutt looked out the window.

“You want out already to go bum another ride you scrounger? You’re nothing but a big mooch.”

Giving in and suddenly feeling loved, the vagabond pooch dropped his paw. When Skeeter got home the dog refused to get out of the truck. Skeeter fed him leftover Dinty Moore beef stew and white bread heels from his own two-cans-on-sale supper. After finding him asleep in the morning right where he left him the night before, Skeeter fed him a leftover SPAM and hard-cooked scrambled egg breakfast in bed. Only then did the dog get out with a bellyful of pork product and walk into the trailer like he owned the place, falling fast asleep in Skeeter’s recliner.

Skeeter named the dog Mooch — Mooch the Pooch.

Sonny’s was packed to the rafters the next Saturday night Skeeter played, actually over the rafters where Sonny let anybody sit dangling their legs as long as they could climb up drunk or sober. Fall off at your own risk, Sonny warned. If you did fall or get pushed a dozen witnesses would testify in court you jumped. Nobody ever considered filing a lawsuit even though over the years seven people did fall including George Mutzabaugh who did jump after taking an after-hours bet he couldn’t dive headfirst into a rubber kiddie swimming pool the biker regulars filled with beer. Damn near broke his neck, he did. But the bikers ruled he won the bet and Lester Zimmerman had to agree Bobby could date Lester’s common-law wife without having to take over Lester’s child support payments for the next month.

Mooch followed Skeeter into the bar, jumping right up onto the stage to wait for the show to begin like everybody else, first sniffing anxiously and growling at the plastic bag Skeeter placed beside the amp. When Skeeter was almost ready to start he reached into the bag, retrieving his new coonskin cap and pulling it snug on top of his head.

Skeeter wasn’t just wearing a reconstructed cap. This was a whole new cap far better than just a hat with a raccoon tail. Dr. Tom had used the whole dang hollowed-out animal, skinning him, drying him and when he was ready, positioning his whole ratty little raccoon head ears and all so the deceased creature was sitting low on the forehead looking right at you from the front of the cap like two Peterbilt headlights on a runaway diesel tractor trailer coming head-on at you from the wrong lane. Two red beady beastie boy eyes followed you wherever you went, making eye contact no matter where you looked.

Mooch the Pooch took off like a bottle rocket instinctively going after that wild thing — actually two wild things if you include Skeeter. With Mooch sinking still sharp canines into the raccoon’s head, biting straight through into Skeeter’s head (Dr. Tom kept all the raccoon’s teeth in its mouth for authenticity), Skeeter leaped off the stage and raced screaming around the dance floor frantically pulling at the snarling, slobbering Coonhound to make him release his locked jaws.

Thinking the frenzied scene was part of Skeeter’s new nightclub act, somebody turned up the juke box and about a dozen people imitated this new Duncannon dance accompanied by the sound of the stock-car-race-fast-dueling-banjo-twanging hillbilly theme song from the movie Deliverance.

When Mooch finally tore that coon clean off Skeeter’s head, the dog sprinted through the already open door, ‘cause it was a nice soft summer night on the dead end road, dragging the formaldehyde-scented coon corpse carcass into the darkness the way he woulda done when he was just a young pup out on his first hunt.

Sensing light at the end of the tunnel that, thank you Jesus, wasn’t another freight train coming straight at him, Skeeter jumped right back on the stage like nothing happened and kicked into his hit tune, his original rendition of the National Anthem, “Our Trump Was Still There,” he wrote to honor and commemorate President Trump almost getting snuffed by a Communist assassin’s bullet.

Everybody froze on the dance floor. Quickly removing trucker caps they stopped swigging bottles of beer, put their hands over their hearts and started singing along to the words “And our Trump was still there” over and over, doing their Perry County part to make America great again.

When Skeeter got home that night he stood in front of the cracked bathroom mirror looking at himself looking at himself. Image matters a lot to an ornery Appalachian American. You got to know who and what you stand for in order to be what you can. If a man lives long enough to come to grips with the frailty of his own mortality, sometimes there’s still time to change for the better.

Opening the medicine cabinet Skeeter grabbed a half-full jar of Vaseline petroleum jelly. Digging three fingers into the sticky goop he massaged the ointment into his scalp with both hands, running his fingers through what was left of his dyed black hair. Rooting through the toothpaste drawer far more carefully than the night he dug into the kitchen junk drawer looking for a pen to write his now famous song, he picked up a big black comb with a few broken teeth on the thin end, making him think of Mooch who wasn’t home when he got there.

Carefully parting his hair on the right, Skeeter Dillon combed one side back and then the other, trying to make the ends meet in the middle of the back of his head like he wore his hair styled in high school in a duck’s ass DA. For a second there he thought he saw a resemblance to Elvis or Johnny Cash, maybe both.

Never again would Skeeter wear a hat onstage. God only knows what Dr. Tom would create out of a straw cowboy hat with railroad flares shooting out both sides. No siree! Like Earlene, Zeke and his favorite heavy metal beast, that Davy Crockett cap was history, long gone, buried forever.

“I’m a new man,’’ Skeeter said. “Made in the USA.”

The bark came from behind out near the big pink plastic Tupperware soup bowl he used as a dog food dish. Mooch stood there looking like an escaped convict covered in mud, burrs and stickers, wagging his tail like nothing out of the ordinary had occurred at Sonny’s bar, an oasis in the parched lives of locals who didn’t ask for much and, of course, rarely got birthday wishes granted.

Skeeter wiped away a tear getting greasy Vaseline in his eye, but he didn’t care.

“You want a hot SPAM sandwich and a cold beer, boy?” he said.

Mooch barked twice.

“Me, too,” said Skeeter. “Me, too.”

Waking shaking in a hot, dripping sweat on the living room recliner with his brain still a little beery blurry, Skeeter Dillon staggered to his bare feet and rushed to the kitchen.

In one yank, the failed country singer/songwriter accidently pulled the junk drawer completely out of the counter and dumped the contents on the floor. Kneeling like a condemned inmate facing the warden on execution day, he frantically dug through the mess looking for a pencil or crayon, digging into the rusty bottle openers, bent soup spoons, dull steak knives, a handful of .22-caliber bullets, spilled toothpicks, colored soda straws, chop sticks and an upper partial plate of false teeth until he found a green plastic pen bearing the logo of the towing service his cousin lost a decade ago to bankruptcy, embezzlement and a federal tax charge.

With all the urgency of a double-wide trailer fire after an indoors propane accident he scribbled on the front of his overdue water bill, writing a few jumbled lyrics to the new country song that had come to him like a Biblical vision in his sleep.

Misdialing his brother Chigger three times on the wall phone before he got the number right, Skeeter tried to catch his breath. Listening to the phone ring he held back his words like a mudslide ready to break loose until his blockhead brother answered in a voice groggy as a propofol anesthesia patent coming out of a prostate procedure.

“It’s four o’clock in the morning, dipshit,” Chigger said.

“Quick, Google the words ‘bombs bursting in air’ from the Star Spangled Banner,” Skeeter screamed into the phone. “Then read ’em back to me.”

Almost two minutes of silence later Chigger said, “The rockets’ red glare, bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.”

“Goddammit, I knew it,”Skeeter said. “That our flag was still there!”

Chigger sounded agitated.

“So?”

“So I finally hit pay dirt,” Skeeter said.

“For what?”

“Because our Trump was still there,” Skeeter said. “Our Trump was still there.”

“You’re not doing meth and bath salts again, are you?”

“You got me confused with your ex-wives’ children, Chigger,” said Skeeter.

Titled “Our Trump Was Still There,” the finally finished country song came to Skeeter slowly but surely, filling out images in his head sweet as Old Yeller custard in the middle of a homemade doughnut. Within a day he was already trying to decide the color of the tailor-made country western tuxedo he’d wear to the White House when a newly re-elected President Trump would present him with the Medal of Freedom.

After losing at love and lyrics in Nashville, Tennessee, Skeeter came home a failure to Cove, a rural hollow in Perry County, Pennsylvania just five miles from where the Appalachian Trail meanders down the middle of Market Street in Duncannon. After accidently spilling his beer and sitting on his soggy Davey Crockett cap with the real raccoon tail for the last hundred miles or so of the bus trip you could honestly say he came home with his tail between his legs.

Not many men lose their girl, their Harley and their hound dog at the same time. He shoulda never let Earlene drive his bike while he rode behind her drunk holding her tight around the waist with one arm, drinking an Apple Pie Moonshine pre-mixed canned cocktail and squeezing his dog Zeke on his lap with the other. Earlene and Zeke were loaded, too, all three of them drunk and disorderly when they left the bar.

Two out of the three died in the accident along the way when Zeke passed out, had a doozy of a doggie dream and bit Earlene in the butt hard enough for her to lose control of the 1980 Sportster Skeeter bought at a Fentanyl overdosed guitar player’s estate sale for $1,500 Earlene loaned him for the purchase.

Skeeter wrote the song “One Out of Three” when he got released from the VA hospital but the words didn’t make any sense and just made him sadder. His heart wasn’t into picking and singing no more. The only good news in his latest catastrophe was he didn’t have to pay back Earlene the $1,500 he borrowed, not that he had planned on paying her back anyway because he knew she’d understand.

Then he saw President Trump get shot in the ear on TV. Sitting alone, pounding down Reading 16-ouncers and eating Spam singles right out of the pack he cut into squares to put on Saltine crackers with sweet pickle relish, Skeeter immediately felt Trump’s pain. He even ducked hisself losing his “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” baseball cap in the process.

Skeeter loved Trump more than he loved Earlene and his dog put together, loved them even more than he loved Saltine SPAMwiches. After watching Trump almost get killed, providence shined on Skeeter the way it did when President Trump stood bloodied and, as a lame stream media reporter said on the TV, “raised his fist in triumph and defiance.”

Skeeter took Trump’s near-miss fatality as a sign from above, a new beginning for them both. When he passed out after drinking more than his usual 12 bottles of beer he just stayed asleep in the chair until he awoke up in that nightmarish dripping sweat. The rest was divine intervention, just like Trump, with the words “And our Trump was still there” slamming into his head like a backhoe smashing into a hidden septic system.

“Make it or break it time,” Skeeter said to Chigger when he sat his brother down to listen to the lyrics of what he fully believed and expected one day might become America’s new National Anthem. Sung to the melody of the Star Spangled Banner, Skeeter threw back his head and drove into the tune with the same confidence an over-the-road trucker exhibits barreling full-speed into a blinding fog, tearing into the tune with all the intensity of a bad shot Pennsylvania assassin’s speeding bullet.

Hey, lookit, yippie

On the roof a gun site

Coward gunman just failed

Sniper gave him a reaming

Rebel flags and NASCAR

Through our perilous fight

O’er the bleachers we watched

Trump fans gallantly screaming

Through lit Marborlos red glare

Semi-autos bursting in air

Gave proof through the night

That our Trump was still there

O say, does that red MAGA ball cap yet wave

O’er the land of the free and the nation Trump saved

Gave proof through the night

That our Trump was still there

Our Trump was still there

Our Trump was still there.

The first talent agent Skeeter called in New York and sang to over the phone quietly hung up at some point during the performance. The second agent in Jersey City couldn’t stop laughing. The third agent, this one a bail bondsman and right-wing Pennsylvania Dutchman about 40 miles away in York, booked Skeeter into a weekend gig at Sonny’s Tavern off Route 11 and 15 in Duncannon. The agent kept a teenage girlfriend in a hunting cabin up there and enjoyed stopping at Sonny’s to watch Sonny put a smooth finish to the bar fights.

At 8 p.m. sharp, Skeeter took the tiny stage, drained a Mason jar house special cocktail of Four Roses and Cherry Coke, turned up the volume on his amp all the way and kicked right into the new number to open the show. Nobody ever before sang the National Anthem at Sonny’s. The Lynyrd Skynyrd version wasn’t even on the juke box. Within seconds everything stopped, including two women divorcees French kissing by the ladies’ room door, a shoving match between their ex-husbands at the bar, arm wrestling at the waitress station and a contest between two already drunk roofers matching each other flaming shot of Wild Turkey for flaming shot. Men removed their baseball caps and held them over their hearts. A woman removed her hard hat.

Gave proof through the night

That our Trump was still there

Men and women in the crowd lost what was left of their narrow minds as soon as they deciphered Skeeter singing “that our Trump was still there” and began to sing along. Sensing instant approval instead of the prolonged mockery he got in the handful of Nashville bars he played, Skeeter roared that mighty refrain over and over again, the crowd picking up on the words to the line that wasn’t all that hard to remember drunk or sober in the first place. When Skeeter ended the show with his fingers starting to bleed from pulling on his guitar strings so hard, he drank for free until Sonny locked the doors behind them at 4:30 a.m.

Driving home Skeeter didn’t even put on his favorite Tex Ritter “Hillbilly Heaven” CD he always listened to in the truck. Back in 1965 he had seen the famous cowboy singer in person at the Duncannon Centennial firemen’s carnival and fell in love with the music. Tonight Skeeter just sang his own song over and over and over again.

It didn’t matter the new song stunk.

Skeeter knew the song stunk.

But after word got around town the day after Skeeter premiered the tune at Sonny’s, the next night a crowd filled the bar parking lot to greet Skeeter when he pulled in. The divorcees even asked for autographs. By 9 p.m. Sonny’s brimmed so full of customers waiting for the new number they didn’t even mind listening to Skeeter play original tunes he wrote and performed to ridicule down south in the Confederacy.

When time came for the anthem, the people were ready.

So was Skeeter who played out his little pea-picking heart, as Tennessee Ernie Ford used to say on TV in the Sixties, singing the words they all came to hear as they chanted “Our Trump was still there, Our Trump was still there,” even before Skeeter Dillon played the opening chord, chanting both inside the bar and outside in the green glass-and-gravel-covered parking lot.

For the first time in their lives many of the bar patrons felt like they was part of something for a change instead of just hanging at Sonny’s on Friday and Saturday for maybe the millionth time in their lives — which was good, mind you, real good, but sometimes just not good enough like something was missing they just didn’t know what.

Skeeter’s tune got to them as much as it got to Skeeter. Awakening a deeply felt patriotism they couldn’t explain, the song’s words described feelings they felt but didn’t know how to express, kind of like what supporting Trump did to them when they heard him mock, belittle and threaten groups of people they didn’t like, either. They wanted to hang Mike Pence, too, and would build a gallows in Sonny’s parking lot if Sonny gave them the go-ahead. If he didn’t maybe they’d hang him, anyway.

Skeeter Dillon’s song validated them. Not once did the thought of Trump dodging the Vietnam draft while some poor draftee up the road died, committing adultery on his pregnant wife with Playboy bunnies and some unfair-weather porn slut or groping and grabbing women by their TicTics cross anybody’s mind.

Living hard lives makes coming to grips with hardship a little easier.

Within a week Skeeter had made 100 CDs to sell and sign the following Saturday at the gun store before another sold out appearance that night at Sonny’s. The ABC television affiliate from Harrisburg sent a 24-year-old blond reporter with bangs wearing a short skirt and red, white and blue cowboy boots to cover the phenomenon. A crowd had gathered by 10 a.m. for the noon appearance unlike any crowd the gun store had ever seen and the store never lacked for business.

Skeeter Dillon knew he finally made it.  Where he belonged. Nobody could ask for more blessings than Skeeter now enjoyed. Except maybe Chigger who had a preliminary hearing before a magistrate scheduled the following week for an aggravated assault outside the gun shop when some shit-kicker told him Skeeter’s song sounded like a garbage truck crushing a battered couch. Chigger hit him with a beef rib bone he found in his truck, called him a communist and kicked him in the front buttons of his bib overalls just for good measure.

Skeeter agreed to testify that the back country freak attacked Chigger first and appear as a character witness if necessary down the line because he now was as solid a citizen as you could find in these parts. Maybe anywhere else, too, where standing your ground matters.

President Trump would understand — might even give Chigger a pardon the same day Skeeter Dillon picked up his presidential Medal of Freedom.