“You want to know hurt? Wait ’til your ears get a load of that.” She jabbed her finger at Al Lepage’s record, now going round and round on the turntable. Ruth lifted the arm and expertly, delicately, lowered the needle to the vinyl.

A rhythmic crackling came from the speakers.

And then the first song started with a simple guitar. Classical, melodic. And then a drumbeat, like a metronome. At first a slow march, then it gathered speed, intensity. It picked up more instruments as it began to race along. A piano, strings. Horns. The drum became almost militaristic, building to a vigorous, energetic, stirring crescendo.

And weaving through it was the voice.

Beauvoir sat on the lumpy old sofa and stared at the turntable, marveling at Al Lepage’s deep, gravelly voice.

As the first song wound down, Jean-Guy turned to Ruth. “That was incredible. Even you must see that.”

“Did you listen to the lyrics?”

“I think so.”

“Well, if you thought they were great, more than your nuts are numb. Excuse me, I have to pee.” She rocked herself out of the chair. “I’ve been drinking tea all night.”

When she left, Jean-Guy carefully lifted the arm and replaced the needle at the beginning of the record.

A soldier and a sailor met in a bar, Al sang in his raspy voice. The one said to the other, there you are.

Jean-Guy listened as the soldier and sailor talked about war and love, parted ways, then ended up on different sides of a conflict.

Ruth was right. It was painful, but not in the way Al Lepage probably intended. The story was clichéd, embarrassing, cringe-worthy. The rhymes were either obvious or tortured. But the music and voice obscured that, camouflaging it. Making it appear better than it was. Perhaps, thought Beauvoir, like the man himself.

The next song was on. The music was powerful, with piano and banjo and harmonica. A fusion of folk and rock and country.

Now Al was singing about a dog who gets lost and is just about to curl up and die when he’s found by a pack of wild dogs and saved. He’s accepted into the pack but, too late, he realizes they’re wolves and he’s expected to kill other animals. As they do. Not because they’re cruel but because it’s in their nature. Just as he’s about to kill a little lamb, his heart in despair, he sees a light through the trees and runs toward it. A door opens, and it’s his family. Calling to him. Waiting for him.

Jean-Guy sat on the sofa marveling how a story that should have been, could have been, very moving had been rendered ridiculous by infantile and clunky lyrics and silly attempts to force words to rhyme. Beauvoir was not sure “dog” rhymed with “ideologue.”