Preacher pulls a Lyla and gives Tim a look that would melt iron, but he settles in and just stares out the window, acting like we aren’t there, and he does not say a word.

Shawn’s also sittin’ there, staring out the window, and Tim’s sitting right next to him, and I got half a mind to let that lie and half a mind to drag Tim outta striking distance from Shawn because Shawn’s vibe is lethal.

The drive to the station wasn’t all that fun.

The last week since Tim went off set in Phoenix hasn’t been all that fun.

The last few months have not been fun.

Now the drive back to the hotel seems like it’s gonna be even less fun.

And Dave can’t hack it.

So, he says, “Are we gonna talk this shit out, or what?”

Then for whatever fucked-up reason, Tim throws at Preacher, “You know, if she wants to get clean, you shouldn’t stand in her way.”

And yeah.

[Lifts eyes to the ceiling, shaking his head before he again lowers them]

Like calling Preacher’s shit out onstage, that is the exact wrong way to approach things with Preacher.

Preacher engages to say to Tim, but, mind you, it’s a direct shot, and a successful one, a damaging one, at Dave, “It wasn’t me who gave her her first taste of that shit. I didn’t want her anywhere near it.”

So now Dave engages.

“Oh, was it a Preacher McCade clone that I saw all those times holdin’ a spoon to her nose? ’Cause if it is, this doesn’t make me too happy seein’ as one of you is more than enough right about now.”

“Close it down,” Tom cuts in. “Everyone go to your corners and cool off. We’ll have a band meeting after we get to Portland.”

“Fuck that,” Tim says.

Now I’m engaging and I say, “Timmy, seriously. Just close it down.”

Then Tim asks me, jerking his head at Preacher, “Wait, now you’re the boss of me after he’s been the boss of me for the last nine years?”

And that was when Preacher lowers the hammer.

“You got a problem with it, Tim, maybe you’ll hand over the keys to your Malibu pad and your convertible GTO and you can go back to Mooresville and flip burgers, which is where you’d be right now if I did not become a member of this band.”

[Sits back in his chair, links fingers in front of him, elbows to the arms of the chair]

Now, mark this, sister, with hindsight, I’m gonna make a grand statement.

But I’ll tell you what, anyone asked, I’d have said the same thing back then.

Tim deserved that.