A purple battered pickup with a SMith and Wesson On Board bumper sticker slewed to a halt outside the bar, and a fellow from another walk of life came through the door blinking in the dim light. He wore suspenders that must have run with Polk, about four inches wide each, a baseball cap promoting the 1939 Cincinatti Reds, and a faded yellow button down shirt with sweatstains left over from the war on it and "Phillips Academy -- Exeter" in once-neat letters over the pocket. There was a large hunting knife strapped to his belt. And he carried a black hardshell banjo case.

Lucky coked an eyebrow at me and changed gears. She swirled up to the stranger, all eyes and superstructure and big white purdy teeth and gave him her Number One Disarm and Control routine.

"Well, howdy, Mister! Welcome to the Keg'n'Cork!! C'mon in and set!" She led him to a booth where she knew I'd be ablke to hear them. One of the things I like about Lucky. She has a brain. And she's not afraid to use it.

Lucky came back with the stranger's Heinekin and curled around the ned of his table batting her eyes. The guy smiled politely -- he was thinking of other things, though. He looked like cast iron, I thought -- steely gray eyes, a neatly cut full beard in silver and white, bushy eyebrows, and broad shoulders with a hardened look to them.

"What brings ya to our little town, stranger?" Lucky said with her eyes wide and her voice pitched just so.

"{}I'm a folksinger. Name's Logos, Theet Logos. 'Least, that's what folks call me. 'S a nickname."

"Glad to meet ya, Theet! New one to me!"

"Wal, my ma named me Aesthete, but I couldn't stand the jokes, so I settled on Theet."

"Can't blame you for that!" she smiled. "You gonna be in town long?"

"Dunno. I'm looking for an old friend of mine, a gal I used to know back in North Beaqch a long time back. Name of Rice -- Condolezza Rice. Know her?"

Lucky threw me a quick glance with more meaning than a bale of old Websters. I hunched my stool a little closer and listened harder.

"Isn't she famopus or something? Oh... a singer???" Lucky prompted him. "Where'd you get to meet someone like that??

The tough-eyed old timer relaxed a little. He cracked a deck of Camels, unfiltered, a lit one up. Lucky didn't even flinch. The gal was good.

"Long story," he said, looking into the middle distance at a velvet Elvis painting someone had given Billy as a joke one year, never thinking he would fall in love with it. "A very long story....."