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.

Grimacing when he noticed the last beer at the back of the refrigerator, Boone grabbed the sweaty bottle by the neck. Standing too fast he hit his head on the freezer door. Kicking the door closed he opened the beer with the church key he wore on a silver chain around his neck like the Medal of Honor.

“Who wants pizza?” he yelled.

The four kids all squealed and howled at once, jumping up and down in the kitchen. Boone headed for the door swigging as he went. He could still hear his son Bowie, 5, cheering when daddy tore out of the gravel driveway in the truck spinning rock against the aluminum back door of the house they rented in Newport, PA.

Boone came home drunk six hours later with a six pack and a wet pizza box stained with grease from the cold pie. The kids had already fallen asleep on the floor for their pajama pizza party. Dropping the box on the kitchen table he opened a bottle of beer and stood by the stove.

Lee Ann had already gone to bed.

Bowie appeared out of nowhere, standing in his little bare feet and pajama bottoms staring at his father.

“Help yourself,” Boone said.

Walking hesitantly to the table, Bowie climbed up on the chair, kneeled as if in prayer and opened the box. Reaching for a limp slice of pepperoni pizza he ducked his head under the flopping hunk of dough and took a bite.

“It’s cold,” he said.

Boone snatched the pizza from his boy’s hand.

“Suit yourself,” he said, eating the slice in about four bites before digging in and eating the whole small pie all by himself.

Bowie went to bed hungry.

The pizza box remained on the kitchen table until Lee Ann cleaned up the kitchen the next afternoon and went on with her life in the country. Bowie and the other kids never mentioned what happened that night. Neither did Boone. They all went on with their lives in the country.

Twenty-five years later, laid up in the hospital with cirrhosis and laid off from his security guard job at the dog food factory Boone knew he was going to die.  Weak as he felt, his stomach still growled. He even told the nurse he was hungry. At about six that night the nurse said he could eat some solid food as long as he took his time chewing and somebody helped him. Maybe she could find an aide to feed him. Boone felt so fragile he couldn’t get out of bed to pee. Maybe his appetite was just wishful thinking caused by meds and delirium but, man, he sure wanted to eat.

Half in and out of sleep Boone dreamed about dozens of steamed clams with melted butter he wolfed down at the stock car track, fresh grilled corn on the cob and fat homegrown tomatoes Lee Ann sliced thick with mayonnaise for sandwiches for his lunch pail. Boone missed Lee Ann making his sandwiches for work. But he wasn’t working no more now so what difference did her dying from lung cancer make to him anyway?

Bowie showed up at 7 carrying a small pizza box. He reached up, turned down the volume on Jeopardy and pulled his chair close to the bed. The strong smell of spicy hot pepperoni filled the room

“Hey,” Bowie said, kicking the mattress too hard with his motorcycle boot, startling Boone awake. Then he kicked the mattress again even harder.

Staring at his father, Bowie said, “Who wants pizza?”