Survival Of The Fittest

A spotlight shined brightly and she smiled brightly back, brighter than the spotlight.

"Hey y'all. Welcome ta mah little ol' show!"

Tracee Bluebell flicked a piece of wavy hair back over her shoulder as if it had been misplaced. She patted her acoustic guitar fondly and waved at the back where the cameras were.

"Now I know we're goin' through tough times. Nothin' could ever replace the lives of the kids we've lost and I feel your pain like it was mah own," she said, touching the chest of her gingham shirt. "This is our community and when one of us hurts, well, we're all hurtin'. In fact, I'm good personal friends with one of the victims. So besides the 10% of this single that will be going to the families affected, I want to give a very special shout out to --"

Motherfuck. Lauren? Raylenne? Mary? She'd looked at the papers her team prepped before, but it escaped her. Tracee inwardly scowled.

"-- that very special friend," she said, appearing to have been choked up for a moment. "I love you, hun."

Tracee nodded at the band on stage with her.

"One, two three, hit it!"

Spoken intro: "Chatanooga get ready, there's a train a' comin'"

Tennessee whiskey, summer wine
Prom dresses, everything's fine
Got on that bus down that lonely, lonely road
Survival of the Fittest
Then that blood flowed

And the cannon fire couldn't save em
Though he swore to fight the good fight
Vanished without a trace
Just a trail of tears in the night

Our stripes and stars have surely cried
But these colors never run
We will shoot you with our guns
And there ain't no place to hide

It's that volunteer spirit
That rocky mountain high
We all bandin together
Sure as that eagle flies

We’ll come together as a family
‘Cause what we’ve lost’s come at a cost,
Now we’re mad dog angry
And our bite's as bad as our bark

America forever, red blood, white souls, we’re feelin’ blue
Our kids are up in heaven saying “Screw you.”

This is the U S OF A
Land of the brave and the free
We believe in liberty
We believe in Jesus and pray

America forever, red blood, white souls, we’re feelin’ blue
Enhanced interrogation is comin’ for you

Our hearts got as much gold we got at Fort Knox
We've got the strength that will keep us on top


Tracee bowed and waved but tried not to look appropriately somber with her wave. She walked off stage and was met with a spark of flashes. She attractively covered only part of her face as she moved to the next room.

The door closed and she plopped down on the chair set behind the table, which as covered in headshots of her smiling with her unnaturally white teeth.

"How long do I have to do this," she said, viciously swiping an iced coffee from an assistant standing near her.

"Enough for a good couple photos. Prioritize parents and siblings," said the assistant.

Tracee got her pen, stood up, and fluffed her hair. "OK. Go Volunteers! Go Titans! Go uh...."

She paused.

"What stupid fuckin' mascot does this high school have anyway?"

"Owls."

"Go Owls!" she said with a plastic grin.

After the initial crowd of endearing fans assaulted the table, an older lank of a man on the low side of 40 approached. Most of his fox-like facial features were obscured by the shadow cast by his camouflage-print baseball cap, save for the beard stubble that was on the red side of auburn. He had a gentle but firm grip on some sort of glossy sheet of paper, but what was on the reverse side who could truly say.

"Uh, Ms. Tracee?" he drawled a few notches above a whisper, "I, uhm... I wanted t'say I really appreciate you putting on this show tonight. It's real kind of ya, doing this for us."

He sheepishly grinned.

Tracee smiled wider and used her perfect chompers to pull the cap off of a felt-tipped pen.

"Well of course, darlin'. It's the least I can do for y'all. This here's a family." Tracee leaned forward across the table closer to the man for the convenience of a photograph being taken and then eased back.

"What's your name, pumpkin? You got somethin' for me t'sign?"

"That was nice, wasn't it Chen?"

"..."

"Oh! What have you got there?"

"Meilin's notebook."

"Well, I- oh! Look! She's doing signings."

"Uh..."

"Go on, talk to the nice lady Chen."

"But I-"

"Get the notebook signed."

"...dad, that's-"

"Oh, don't be shy. Look, the line's not that long yet."



And so, Chen was herded by his dad over to the table where the "nice lady" was signing things. It felt wrong to deface Meilin's notebooks with the scrawlings of someone who wrote the godawful lyrics Chen was just put through, but alas. Luckily, someone was already in front of her, keeping the singer-hack-songwriter very busy, so Chen cowered behind that man. From a distance. He'd be cowering from Tracee's perspective, presumably, clutching the glittery pink notebook to his chest for all to see.

Hopefully, the line would take long enough that Chen could slip away, fake a signature in the bathroom, and go back to his parents so they could go home and he can lock himself in his room again.

The man turned his attention behind him for a second. There was a little fella hiding behind his own pa. The red haired man flashed another sheepish grin.

He turned back around. Tracee was on a mission, though it made sense since this weren't her first or third rodeo. "Oh, nah, nah," the man shook his head. "Well... it ain't for me. It's for my baby girl."

The hand holding the piece of paper loosened as he passed it over the table.

The paper was a photo of the man standing in front of a railing at night with one of his arms wrapped around a young girl with red hair who looked to be about 14 or 15 years old. Her grin was infectious.

"We took this one at one of your concerts a few years back. Her name's Katelynne... she was a big fan of yers..."

He sniffled and rubbed one of his eyes.

"I'm sorry... I just thought... I don't know. Do ya mind signing and writing somethin', anything? She'd... she'd appreciate it."

Tracee leaned down and picked the photo that the man had passed across the table. She strained her eyes to be able to see herself in the background of the shot. After a moment of that, she then looked at the young girl with the man in front of her, though shy a few years.

"Well, if that don't just dill my pickle and butter my biscuit," she said smiling at the photo. "What a peach."

Behind him she could see a line starting to form, naturally. She waved to a boy who was next who looked a bit nervous -- she did have that affect on people.

"Oh!" she said, having remembered from her previous meet-and-greets. "'Course. How do'y spell that?"

The man smiled sheepishly, even through reddened eyes. "...Thank ya. It's spelled kinda diffr'nt. K, A, T, E, L, Y, N, N, E." He enunciated each letter with a tap of a finger on the table.

Chen stayed back, watching the interaction unfold peacefully in front of him. The lady seemed nice, like that fake kind of nice, same kind plastered over the smiles of the Jehovah's Witnesses that showed up at his family's door every so often as they stood through his mom's awkward explanation that they were already followers of JC, thanks.

The other guy seemed nicer, at least. A little awkward, kinda like Chen, but a dad. And obviously he felt sorry for him because he had to sit through that performance.

Though any goodwill that guy gathered with Chen got wrecked when he revealed how his kid's name was spelled.

Tracee carefully reproduced the letters on the photo as the man said them out loud.

"Mm-hm," she said as the marker squeaked.

She finished the last E, blinked and looked at the photo and the name.

There was something about the unique spelling and the picture. The girl was with the man who was very clearly in font of her; no girl in sight. A big fan. She'd never seen spelling like that. It was weird, wasn't it? It was weird spelling. For some reason, it snapped her out of where she was for a moment. Weird spelling...

Tracee faltered and looked up and the man again with a confused looked, which was punctuated by a tear running over her overly mascara'd lower lash and down her face. Tracee gulped and sniffed.

"I don't know why --"

She pushed the picture back to the man hastily.

"She's real pretty," she said. Tracee shook her head quickly and coughed, attempting to regain her composure.

The man didn't say anything back as the photo got passed back into his hands. He didn't look at Tracee, just stared at the photo with the fresh Sharpie odor still emanating off of it.

"...I, uh...," he finally spoke, through his smile juxtaposed with his bloodshot eyes. He glanced left and right at some of the other patrons now fully watching, before wiping his eyes with the back of his weather-worn hand and hastily walking away from the table.

"Th-th-thank you," he called back. The photo was firmly held in his hand, but gentle enough so as not to crease.