It's So Easy | Buddy Holly

Cyrano

January 24th, 1959. 5:27 am, some dinky town in Wisconsin.

I wake up to a loud screeching noise. I sit up from my position on Buddy and look around. I can't see much, it's pitch black.

Apparently Dion was woken up too. "Hey what's happening?" He whispers to Anthony.

"It seems like we done broke down, Imma go check the hood." Anthony responds.

"Damn it." I mumble. "It's already freezing."

"You're tellin' me." Bopper says from the seat behind me. "I've never been so cold in my life. I think there's a hole in my shoe, snow got in there earlier."

"Butter." Dion and I say in unison. We've talked about our ways to keep the cold out. He's lived in New York all his life, and it does get cold and snowy. It didn't really snow in Paris, but oh God, it was freezing. In Chicago, it wasn't unusual to snow over a foot. The Lubbock is just mild. It gets really hot, but the winters aren't bad. Doesn't snow much, but there are tornados.

"Why do I need butter?" Bopper asks.

"Seal the hole. Keeps the insolation in." Dion says. No one else has woken up. I can't say I'm surprised about Buddy, he's an exceptionally deep sleeper.

"Maybe I'll get some at the next place. Where are we?"

I pull my coat tighter around me. "No idea. It looks like some small town, there's almost no street lights."

"Yeah, probably. You know that that means?" I hear Dion stand up and look for something. "No rescue crew for a while. It's only 5:30 in the morning."

"Shit." I say, grabbing Buddy's left hand. I roll up his sleeve just enough to look at his watch. "Hopefully we don't die."

"If we do, we'll go out with pride and dignity." Dion sits back down.

"I feel like I'll just go out like Cyrano De Bergerac." I laugh.

"Who?" Bopper puts his hand on the back of Buddy and I's seat.

"You've never hear the story of Cyrano? You know the whole 'She wants a man made of Hercules and Cyrano' thing?" I respond.

"Can't say I have."

"Well, it is a French story. Basically in France in the 1600's there was a man named Cyrano who was in love with a woman named Roxane. I should mention that Cyrano was ugly, like hideous. Roxane was in love with another guy named Christian who was apparently really hot. Christian loved Roxane but he couldn't talk to women because he was so afraid or something. So Christian confesses his love of Roxane to Cyrano. Cyrano agrees to help Christian get Roxane. Some stuff goes down and Roxane and Christian get married because Cyrano managed to woo her while pretending to be Christian. Cyrano was this super poetic, smart, sensitive guy. Like a perfect gentleman, but alas, he was ugly. So anyways, France goes to war with Spain and Cyrano and Christian get sent to war. Roxane shows up to the war and then Spain attacks their base. Christian dies and Roxane is heart broken because she thinks that he was a major hottie who doubled as a gentleman is dead. She didn't know that it was really Cyrano's words she was hearing. Well, fast forward fourteen years and Cyrano and Roxane are living in a little village. Cyrano gets hit in the head with a brick and stumbles to Roxane to profess his undying love for her, Roxane says that she loved him for his soul. Cyrano dies in vain, he said he always wanted to die in battle, but instead he just dies in the woods. 'She wants a man made of Hercules and Cyrano' means she wants a handsome man like Hercules and a Gentleman like Cyrano.

"I've never heard that story." Dion says.

"Well, it's a poem. A really long poem. It's based off of a real story, but someone made it into a play. The entire play rhymes."