“We need to decide on a name before the open mic.”
“It doesn’t have to be permanent.”
“Yeah, but it’s annoying enough trying to decide on one. I don’t want to have to go through this again if we can help it.”
“So we’re seriously going with Sea Slug String Band?”
“. . .”
Post-rehearsal dinner at the Organic Farm is lentil/carrot soup, with bread baked by Tracy and Sally earlier this afternoon, before Walt and I arrived. The bread is heavy and dense but flavorful, a savory partner to the sweet fresh milk provided by the farm’s senior bovine resident.
“So, you’re responsible for this, Sally?” I say.
“More like Rita, but yeah, I milked her,” she says, smiling at Tracy.
“I didn’t know you were such a farm girl,” Walt says. “You grew up in Seattle. Have you ever milked a cow before?”
“I tried a couple of times when I was younger. I have cousins in Idaho, and my family spends a week or two at their farm every summer. Their cows always freaked me out, but Rita is sweet and mellow.”
“Rita likes her,” Tracy says. “She’s not that laidback for everyone.”
“She probably wouldn’t be for me,” I say.
“You never know,” Tracy says. “You should try it some time. Although milking hours are pretty early. This time of year, you’d have to walk down here in the dark.”
“I guess if Sally walked through the forest in the dark, I could too.”
Tracy smiles, and Sally looks sheepish. “I stayed here last night, actually,” she says.
“Oh.”
The conversation lags. Walt presumably understands why Sally spent the night at the farm, but it takes me a minute to understand that she and Tracy are sleeping together.
“OK, so what are we going to play?” Walt asks, a signal that we should move on to the content of our open-mic setlist and ignore the new band romance.
“I’d like to sing ‘Darling Nelly Gray,’” Tracy says.
“Have you memorized the words?” Walt says.
“Yeah, I’ve pretty much got ’em down.”
“I’d be happy with that,” Sally says.
We first tried “Darling Nelly Gray” at our last rehearsal, a week ago. It has a sweet, memorable melody and Walt’s banjo gives it a nice, loping groove. I paid little attention to the lyrics at first, but when we ran through it again at the end of the rehearsal, this verse jumped out at me:
One night I went to see her, but “she’s gone” the neighbors say
The white man has bound her with his chain
They have taken her to Georgia for to wear her life away
As she toils in the cotton and the cane
As I listened to the chorus and other verses, I realized that the song is an elegy for Nelly Gray, a slave who has been “taken”—bound by the white man “with his chain” to “wear her life away” on some plantation far from the singer, who, since he is lamenting that he will never see her again, must also be a slave.
Oh, my poor Nelly Gray, they have taken you away
And I’ll never see my darling any more
I’m sitting by the river and I’m weeping all the day
For you’ve gone from the old Kentucky shore
At the end of the rehearsal, I glanced at Tracy’s page of lyrics, and on my hike back through the woods, I tried to imagine for what or whom “Darling Nelly Gray” had been written—some kind of minstrel show? Tracy called it an old-time song, but are lyrics like this “traditional,” handed down from generation to generation by old-time country musicians? There must have been an original writer—a black man, perhaps, or a white songwriter imagining himself a slave? I don’t know much about minstrel music. Were there black performers? Or just white musicians in blackface?
For Tracy to sing this hundred-year-old lyric with no historical context, as some artifact of a bygone era with no sense of where it originated or why, seems strange to me. Granted, I’m new to the world of traditional folk music, but do people really do this . . . this kind of musical blackface? Tracy hadn’t said anything about the song’s origin. I wonder if he had ever considered it. It’s an old song with a pretty melody, and the lyrics are beautiful, simple, and direct; what more does anybody need to know?
Now my canoe is under water and my banjo is unstrung
I am tired of living any more
My eyes shall be cast downward and my song shall be unsung
While I stay on the old Kentucky shore
The line “my canoe is under water and my banjo is unstrung” is a poetic, poignant evocation of musicianly misfortune, though the verse might be maudlin if you don’t know who is singing it: “I am tired of living anymore”—“My eyes shall be cast downward and my song shall be unsung.”
But place those words in the mouth of an old slave whose true love was taken from him years ago, by force, likely brutally, and the song becomes something else entirely. Clearly the writer empathized with the singer, or he wouldn’t have captured the emotion so well, but with its happy, major-key melody, if you don’t listen to the words, or only occasionally pay attention, the message could be confusing, sentimental, nostalgic:
When the moon had climbed the mountain and the stars were shining, too
Then I’d take my darling Nelly Gray
And we’d go floating down the river in my little red canoe
While my banjo sweetly I would play
After stewing about the song during the past week, finding it in an old songbook in the library, making sure I remembered the lyrics correctly, I decide this would be a good time to bring up my concerns.
“I was looking at the lyrics the other day, after rehearsal, and it seems like it’s about, um, a slave couple, right? The singer is lamenting that his partner, Nelly Gray, has been sold to another master, another plantation.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” Tracy says.
“Does that seem weird to you?” I ask. “To sing a song as if you’re a slave? A black man?” Sally looks up from her soup. She doesn’t seem to have considered this.
“Why should it?” Tracy says. “It’s an old song, it’s not like it’s about me. It’s not like wearing blackface or anything.”
“No?”
“Is that what you think? What about when I’m singing ‘Pig in a Pen’? ‘I’ve got a pig, home in a pen.’ It’s not like I’m talking about myself.”
“That’s a bad example,” Sally says, “because you could—have a pig, I mean. “
“But Walt or you could sing it,” Tracy says, “and it wouldn’t mean anything. These old songs aren’t like Joni Mitchell songs, where you assume she’s singing about herself. It’s like Randy Newman. When he sings ‘Sail Away,’ everyone knows he’s not singing about himself.”
“That’s another weird comparison,” I say. “‘Sail Away’ is sung by a slaver telling his imprisoned soon-to-be slaves how much they’re going to love America. It’s obviously a satire. ‘Darling Nelly Gray’ is sung straight, with a happy, major-key melody, and it sets up this idyllic scene: ‘a low, green valley on the old Kentucky shore,’ where they’re ‘floating down the river in a little red canoe.’ That’s not exactly a realistic account of slavery. They could be lines from ‘Sail Away,’ except they’re not meant to be ironic.”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” Sally says. “I like that line about the red canoe and the banjo, like it’s describing a place I’d want to be. It never occurred to me that it’s a plantation.”
“I think you’re reading too much into it,” Walt says. “It’s just an old song. There are a lot of old folk songs that are basically accounts of real events, all those murder ballads, for instance.”
“In ‘Down in the Willow Garden,’ he poisons her with a glass of wine,” Tracy says. “But nobody’s going to think I condone murder if I sing it.”
“But the guy ends up hanging for it, right?” Sally says. “It’s pretty obvious the song is not saying, ‘Sure, go ahead and poison your girlfriend.’”
We sit in silence for a while. I cut another slice of bread, adding a thick smear of butter, also homemade. Tracy goes to the stove to refill his soup bowl. Finally, Walt says, “What else?”
“Speaking of ‘Pig in a Pen,’ you could sing that,” Sally says to Walt.
“Should we do it with two banjos?” Tracy asks.
“I like it when you guys play banjos together,” I say, trying to make up for souring the dinner table conversation with my thoughts about “Darling Nelly Gray,” though I would rather Tracy stick to mandolin. His banjo style is raw and raucous, and often overwhelms Walt’s more refined playing.
“Fine by me,” Walt says.
“So, if Walt and I are each singing songs, maybe the third one should be a fiddle tune,” Tracy says. “Anything in particular you want to play, Sally?”
“‘Leather Britches’ has been sounding pretty good,” she says. “How about that?”
“Great.” Tracy says. “‘Leather Britches,’ ‘Darling Nelly Gray,’ and ‘Pig in a Pen.’ Sounds like a set.”
My question about the appropriateness of “Darling Nelly Gray” is forgotten, and nobody has asked me what I want to play, or noticed that I’m the only one not featured in the set. But I let it go. I only sing an occasional unison on a chorus, and my guitar playing isn’t supposed to be featured. But it would have been nice to be asked what I thought of the set. I suppose I could have suggested something, rather than simply trying to veto “Darling Nelly Gray.” Maybe next time.
Tracy gets up and starts clearing the table. Walt volunteers to wash the dishes, and I offer to dry. I glance at Sally and she shrugs, as if to say “sorry.”
I’m surprised to see Angelica standing next to the coffeehouse entrance, talking to a woman who looks vaguely familiar. I’ve hardly seen Angelica all week, and, although I told her the band was playing tonight, I didn’t think she would come. She was late for Monday’s book group, then left deep in conversation with Gabe after an uninspired discussion about the first chapters of The Bride and the Bachelors, and she cancelled our regular Thursday guitar lesson.
“I can’t wait to hear you guys. This is exciting,” Angelica says, looking happier than I’ve ever seen her. An arm slips beneath hers, and I recognize the woman waiting with her from Angelica’s dorm room last Friday night.
“You know Dawn, right?” she says.
“We haven’t officially met,” Dawn says. Her mood has improved since Friday and she seems genuinely pleased to see me. “I’m looking forward to hearing your band,” she says. “Angelica says you’re really good.”
“How would she know?” I say, wilting a bit. “She’s never heard us. No one has.”
“Well, she says you’re a really good guitar player.”
“I have to be to stay one step ahead of my star student,” I say, smiling at Angelica, trying to regain my nonchalance. For once, she’s oblivious to my discomfort, but her attention is on Dawn, and it’s now clear why she was so quick to let me run off last Friday night. I wonder if this is a first date or one in a series.
It suddenly occurs to me that Angelica is going to hear “Darling Nelly Gray.” It’s possible that she won’t notice the lyrics, at least not the lines that make it clear it’s set in the antebellum South, but considering her poetic proclivities, I doubt that the meaning will escape her.
“Hey, I should tell you,” I say to her quietly, as Dawn steps away to introduce herself to Sally, “One of the songs we’re doing tonight is . . . uh, I don’t know, kinda weird. I just realized what the lyrics mean, and I tried to get them not to do it, but . . .”
“Jesus, how offensive is it?” Angelica says, frowning.
“I wouldn’t call it offensive, but it’s . . . it’s an old song, you know, like a Stephen Foster song. I didn’t really listen to the lyrics at first, but then it dawned on me that it’s sung from the point of view of a . . . of a slave lamenting his partner’s, uh . . . departure, to another plantation.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? Y’all are going to pull some minstrel-show bullshit on us?”
“No, I mean, it’s subtle, and it’s a pretty song. It’s not like it’s blatantly racist or anything.”
“Well, let’s all be thankful for that, shall we?”
Now I’m sorry I brought it up. She’ll definitely be paying attention to the lyrics now, more than she might have otherwise.
“Anyway, I wanted to mention it, and say that I’m not happy we’re doing it.”
“You’re not singing it, are you?
“No, no.”
“Good, well . . .” She looks at Dawn, who has rejoined us. “Fuckin’ white boys. What are you gonna do?”
“You don’t have to stay. I wouldn’t be offended,” I say.
“Oh you wouldn’t, would you? Good to know. Last thing we’d want would be for you to be offended.” She smiles, enjoying her needling, watching me try to wriggle out of this. Maybe she figures that whatever she’s about to hear is not worth ruining a date with Dawn over.
“Hell, I’m not missing this,” she says. “Maybe it’ll be good fodder for book group. We can see what surfer boy thinks about it.”
I cringe and am about to say something like “Thanks for coming,” but I think better of it and say, “I should go find out when we’re on. Nice to meet you, Dawn.”
“Good luck,” Dawn says, giving me a wry grin. I hear her say “What was that all about?” to Angelica as I walk into the coffeehouse, but I don’t hear the response.
I’m still soggy from the walk to campus. The twenty-minute hike on a narrow, tenebrous trail beneath dripping evergreens has caked my shoes with mud and made a tangled mess of my long, stringy hair. I’m going to need a proper rain hat soon. Fortunately, most of the audience looks like they took a similar route to the coffeehouse.
Sally and Walt are waiting in a small alcove next to a makeshift snack bar where a student is selling coffee, tea, juice, and cookies with little enthusiasm. There are few customers and the cashier is reading a book, Thomas Pynchon’s V, glancing up with annoyance whenever his literary attention is interrupted by someone asking for help. He has abandoned the idea of making change, simply nodding in the direction of a large glass jar containing a few loose bills and a handful of coins whenever anyone wants to pay for what they’ve picked up off the counter. I would love a cup of tea, but the hot water carafe is empty, and when I mention this to the indifferent cashier, he looks up from his book, says “Uh, yeah, OK,” and returns to his reading.
I join Sally and Walt, and Tracy appears a minute later, saying, “We’re on second. They’re going to start in about ten minutes, so we’ve got time to warm up.” He turns toward the door at the back of the alcove, and we follow him into a broad hallway. I strip off my sodden jacket and look for somewhere to hang it, but end up flinging it into the corner where Tracy has tossed his.
“So, what’s the order of the set?” I ask.
“How about we start with ‘Leather Britches,’ then ‘Darling Nellie Gray,’ and end with ‘Pig in a Pen?’” Walt suggests.
“That works,” Tracy says.
“We decided we’re all going to sing on ‘Pig in a Pen,’ right?” Walt says, looking at me.
“Sure, yeah,” I reply. I’m nervous about singing onstage, but it’s only a unison part on the chorus and I figure I can get away with mouthing the words in the general direction of the nearest microphone.
“Is there a PA?” I ask.
“Yeah. There are four mics,” Tracy says. “Walt and I can share one for vocals and one for instruments. We’ll stand in the middle and, Sally, you take the right side, Lucas, you the left. There isn’t a stage, so we’ll have plenty of room. Use whichever mic is closest to you. We’ll have to set up quickly. I don’t think they were expecting any bands.”
We hear faint applause from the other room. The open mic must be starting. Tuning up is difficult in the echoey hallway, and I’ve barely finished when Sally starts playing “Leather Britches.” We join her, one by one, settling into a groove, still a little out of tune.
“Hey, you’re on. C’mon. I’ve been looking all over for you.” A bedraggled, ill-tempered student, looking like her walk through the rain was even longer than ours, stands just inside the door, a scowl on her face.
“You said we were on second.” Tracy says.
“You are. The first act just did one song.”
“Shit, OK. We’ll be right there.”
“Now! C’mon, I’m not your doorman.”
We leave our cases and jackets strewn around the hallway, hoping a janitor doesn’t decide to clean up while we’re onstage, and file past our surly host, waiting like some dreadful Biblical inquisitor, making note of our sins as we enter. Tracy has forgotten his banjo and turns back to get it. As I pass the scourge, she says, “What was your band’s name again?”
“The Sea Slug String Band.”
“Seriously? Well, it’s your funeral.”
As I wrestle my mic stand into position, trying to get the mic near the soundhole of the guitar, the emcee bellows from the edge of the carpeted area that serves as a stage, “OK, everyone, I found them. Here they are, the Glee Club String Band.”
Surprisingly, this elicits applause not laughter. Angelica hoots loudly from a table directly in front of Sally, which means that, since I’m turned at an angle to face the band, I’ll be looking directly at Angelica for the whole set. Great.
We get through “Leather Britches” with no major disasters. The moisture seeping from my wet sleeves turns my guitar strings into taut clotheslines of rust and I miss a couple of bass runs, providing some unexpected dissonance, but the rest of the band doesn’t seem to notice. They’re probably wrestling with their own instruments’ reactions to the climatic changes they’ve undergone in the last half hour.
After enthusiastic applause, I try to tune my guitar again, but Walt launches right into “Darling Nellie Gray,” and we join his banjo a few bars into the instrumental intro. As Tracy sings the first line, “There’s a low, green valley on the old Kentucky shore,” Angelica twists her head toward me, her laser gaze saying, “OK, I’m listening.” I try to stay focused on my guitar playing and to where Walt is putting the beat, my eyes on the clawhammer grip of his hand as it strikes the banjo strings. This is unnecessary, however. Walt and Tracy are locked in and I can hear them well enough, but it keeps my gaze away from Angelica, and I barely notice when Tracy sings, “the white man has bound her with his chain.”
What is noticeable, however, is that Tracy’s voice, and his performance of the song, has changed since rehearsal. The edges of the notes are no longer hard and sharp but ragged, blurred, roughhewn, and the words hover around the beat, some delayed, some early. The cadence of his singing is speech-like, though he hasn’t abandoned the melody; far from it. More importantly, there’s a poignancy to his delivery that wasn’t there before, like he’s consciously telling the story, not just screwing words onto the frame of the melody. I hazard a look at Angelica and see that her face is serious and focused but not angry or offended; she listens carefully, withholding judgment, waiting to see what comes next.
The song ends to polite applause, and while Tracy swaps his mandolin for the banjo lying on the floor behind him, Walt addresses the audience. “Thanks for coming, everybody. We’re not really the, what’d she say? The Glee Club String Band? But hey, I kinda like that. Maybe we’ll use it next time. Anyway, tonight we’re the Sea Slug String Band, and we hope to see you around again sometime soon. We’ve got one more for you, the old Stanley Brothers classic ‘Pig in a Pen.’ You ready, Tracy?”
“I am, Walt.”
“But do you think these fine folks are ready for two banjos?”
“No one ever is, are they?”
“That’s true, that’s true. Well, we usually save the two-banjo number for when we need to clear the room, but here we go. Banjos, do your worst.”
I have no idea when Tracy and Walt worked up this hillbilly comedy act, but the audience seems to like it and immediately starts clapping along, creating a loud, resounding smack on each downbeat that is soon out of sync with the music. We struggle to maintain the beat, looking anxiously at each other until Tracy starts stomping his foot in time, as if to say, “Follow me, not them.” We make it to the end of the song and leave the stage to raucous applause. When we’re back in the hallway behind the stage, Sally says to Walt, “When did you work up that routine?”
“What routine?”
“You know what I mean. That was funny about clearing the room.”
“I stole that from a band I heard in Seattle last summer.”
“Hey, that was great.” A new voice sounds in the hallway, and I turn to find Jenny and Alma, a violin case tucked under Alma’s arm, Jenny holding a small instrument case, mandolin or ukulele perhaps. They appear to have escaped the downpour.
“Thanks,” I say. “Are you playing, too?”
“Yeah, we’re on soon, I think,” Jenny says.
“Hey, quiet back there!” The emcee waves angrily at us from the doorway. The next act has apparently started.
Jenny removes her raincoat and as she does so, one of the buttons on her flannel shirt comes loose, leaving the top half of her shirt unbuttoned and one breast partially exposed. She’s oblivious to her inadvertent disrobing, so, not wanting to stare or embarrass her by saying anything, I walk away to stow my guitar and retrieve my jacket. When I return, Jenny is talking quietly with Tracy. Her shirt is still half open and a large expanse of her right breast is visible, though not enough for an R rating. Alma walks up and says, with maternal impatience, “Jenny!” She grabs the top halves of Jenny’s open shirt and buttons the two top buttons. Jenny tries to pull away, but she seems used to being reprimanded by her older cousin. I pretend not to notice, and when Alma walks off, I say to Jenny, “I’m going to find a seat. Good luck.”
Outside, in the coffeehouse, a seated guitarist is playing a Leo Kottke tune. Angelica waves, gesturing to the empty chair next to her, so I leave my guitar next to the wall behind the stage area and join her at the table she shares with Dawn. She grabs my arm and whispers, “you were great,” then returns her attention to the guitarist. He’s not bad. It’s a difficult piece, but he seems nervous and his tempo wavers occasionally, slowing and then suddenly speeding up as if to join the invisible twin who is able to play the piece in time. When he finishes, he retunes his guitar, and there’s a short, uncomfortable period of silence that is soon filled with audience chatter.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Angelica says.
“Wow, high praise.”
“Not you, the song, ‘Darling Nelly Gray.’”
“Oh, right.” I had forgotten the offending ditty, perhaps distracted by the momentary sight of Jenny’s bare breast.
“I would think twice about doing it again, but Tracy has a nice voice and he sings it well. Although that line, ‘I am coming, coming, coming’ is a little weird. There were a few giggles about that.”
“There were? Why?”
She lowers her chin and looks at me schoolmarmishly, as if peering over horn-rim glasses.
“Oh, right.”
“Anyway, it’s not like it was ‘Dixie’ or anything.”
I refrain from mentioning that Tracy had played “Dixie” on the banjo at a previous rehearsal, although he hasn’t suggested adding it to our repertoire, at least not yet.
The guitarist finishes retuning and starts playing a droning, minor-key blues with no chord changes, just a series of minor-pentatonic licks over a single thumping bass note. He’s able to keep a steady beat this way, and the short, monochromatic performance is pleasant and calming.
After he finishes, I ask Angelica and Dawn if they plan to stick around. “A friend of mine is playing soon, and I’d like to hear her,” I add.
“You mean Jenny?” Angelica says.
“Yeah, do you know her?”
“She’s in my vocal class. I don’t know her that well, but she says her cousin is a fantastic singer. I saw them come in. I want to see what they do.”
“Here they are,” Dawn says.
Jenny and Alma walk onstage, trailed by another woman carrying what looks like a small accordion, but with two rows of buttons instead of a keyboard. A ukulele hangs awkwardly from a string around Jenny’s neck, and Alma holds a violin and bow in one hand while trying to adjust her mic stand with the other. The accordionist looks out of place next to Jenny and Alma, who are dressed casually in faded blue jeans and loose shirts: Jenny’s a blue-and-gray flannel and Alma’s a maroon corduroy. Their bandmate seems to have missed the memo about the dress code or has come from a theatrical rehearsal. Her hairdo is strange: the top cut short so that uneven tufts poke upward in odd directions, and her bangs are chopped in a jagged line. She’s wearing high-top sneakers painted pink and green, an electric-blue tutu, and a man’s “wife-beater” over a black turtleneck.
After adjusting their mics, the trio launches into a slow Spanish-sounding piece. Alma’s violin melody is unsteady and a bit out of tune, accompanied by wheezing chords from the accordion. The tune is familiar but it isn’t until the accordionist starts singing in Spanish that I recognize it as “Maria Elena,” a song from Ry Cooder’s Boomer’s Story, which Eric lent me in exchange for letting him borrow the “Muleskinner” tape. The accordionist is a trained, “classical” soprano; she sings accurately but with little emotion, while Jenny and Alma provide “oohs” in the background. It’s a peculiar performance, and I wonder if it’s meant to be ironic. After they finish “Maria Elena,” Alma sets her violin aside to sing Linda Ronstadt’s “Love Has No Pride,” accompanied by Jenny’s tentative ukulele strumming and pulsing chords from the accordion. Jenny and the accordionist harmonize with Alma on the chorus, and the blend of their voices is affecting and thrilling; the room hushes when they sing the repeat of the title halfway through the chorus. Jenny sings the second verse. Her voice is not as polished as her cousin’s, but her heartfelt delivery excuses her wavering pitch. Alma takes over again on the bridge; hers is the strongest voice of the three: resonant, clear, and confident. The song ends with an unaccompanied chorus and the room erupts after a ritard on the last line: “I’d give anything to see you again.” The audience stands, clapping and cheering, and I join them, smiling at Jenny as she looks toward our table with unabashed pride.
After two more acts—a dour, wan songwriter who sings maudlin, solipsistic songs in a pleasant voice, and a scruffy guitar duo that thrashes through two oddly paired covers, Neil Young’s “Needle and the Damage Done” and Jethro Tull’s “Locomotive Breath,” which exhausts Angelica’s patience for the open mic’s folky, lily white performances—we all find ourselves in a scrum outside the coffeehouse, chattering and laughing, flush from the high of performing to an enthusiastic crowd.
Once again, I’m an observer—on the perimeter, watching impromptu pairings and first meetings: Angelica and the nameless accordionist; Jenny and Tracy, with Sally perched at Tracy’s shoulder; Alma and an effusive Dawn; all interspersed with random friends or fans unknown to me. No strangers approach me to offer their congratulations; I was, after all, just the rhythm guitarist, as anonymous as the snack bar cashier.
“Lucas, hey, how’s it going?”
Janie appears behind me, her arm around the waist of a hulking Jeremiah Johnson type: tall, muscular, long blond hair and beard a little too neatly trimmed. He says nothing, his eyes looking vacantly past me to the group celebrating the show. “What’s going on?”
“Did you hear the set?” I say, assuming she has come out of the coffeehouse.
“What set? No, we were just cruising. This is Derek.” Derek nods at me and then returns his gaze to the group.
“We just played at the open mic in there,” I say, nodding toward the open door of the coffeehouse.
“Who? Your band? Cool. I wish I’d known.” Derek slips away and approaches the jabbering group.
“So, how’s it going?” I say to Janie, her eyes following Derek. “You were kind of stressed out the last time I saw you.”
“What? Oh, I’m fine. You know, school’s got me down a bit. I’m looking forward to the break. Uh, I should go.” Her eyes have been tracking Derek since he wandered off, but she turns to give me a peck on the cheek; the sharp tang of alcohol tickles my nose.
“You should let me know the next time your band is playing.”
“OK, sure.”
She walks over to Derek, who is talking to Alma, but her arrival is unacknowledged; she stands slightly to the side and behind him until Alma turns to her and gives her a hug.
I amble over to the group, but no one notices me. I think about trying to start a conversation with someone, but my mind is blank, devoid of witty openers, so I stand alone, looking vaguely into the distance, as if something has caught my eye, hoping this pose explains my silent, solitary presence. As if responding to my outward gaze, an unspoken call to movement passes through the group, a quiet, hidden voice suggesting we all go do something, somewhere, together. As one, we move toward the stairway and down to the first floor of the Library. It has stopped raining, so the cluster continues out into Red Square, where the mass energy dissipates, the boundaries surrounding it evaporating into the cool, damp air, like an orphaned soul passing beyond reality into shadows. Small groups gradually cohere: Jenny, Alma, Angelica, Dawn, and the anonymous accordionist move toward the parking lot, along with a couple of guys I don’t recognize (friends? fans? boyfriends?), while Tracy and Sally recouple and head toward the path that will take them back to the Organic Farm.
I’m standing with Walt and his girlfriend, Maura, who I’ve met but haven’t spoken to much until now. She asks how I’m dealing with the Northwest weather after a life in “sunny California,” and I answer perfunctorily, almost rudely, my attention still on the departees. Walt suggests we walk toward the dorms and ASH, where he and Maura share an apartment.
“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” Walt asks me as we descend the steps next to the CAB.
“I’m not sure. A friend from high school knows someone heading down to LA, driving straight through Tuesday and returning Sunday, and I may join them. Sounds nuts, I know, but my girlfriend is spending the weekend in the mountains around LA, and I’m hoping to join her.”
I surprise myself by referring to Emily as my girlfriend, but neither Walt nor Maura respond. I’ve said little to Walt about my personal life at rehearsals, and a distant girlfriend is probably no shocker. The holiday trip may be wishful thinking. A few days ago, Janie left a note under my door informing me of the potential marathon drive, but she seemed unsure whether it was really happening.
“If you end up with nowhere to go, you’re welcome to come up to Seattle with me and have Thanksgiving dinner with my family,” Walt says. “Maura’s going to be there, too, right?”
“If my mom doesn’t make a fuss,” she says. “She seemed OK with it when I called her last week, but you know how she is.”
“That’s nice of you to offer,” I say. “I’ll see what happens with the ride.”
“You’d like Walt’s family,” Maura says. “His dad is a little intense but his mom is a total peach and his older brothers keep things lively.”
“An intense dad? There’s a surprise,” I say.
“Ha, yeah. I don’t know if I told you, but my dad’s a retired Air Force colonel,” Walt says.
“Wow! That’s, uh . . .”
“Oh, he’s just a big teddy bear,” Maura says. “His bark is worse than his bite. He’ll give you a hard time about your long hair, and we avoid political discussions, but he’s harmless.”
“For you, maybe,” Walt says. “Growing up under his roof was no picnic.”
“You seem to have turned out OK,” I say. “I don’t imagine a super-strict dad would still be on speaking terms with a bearded, banjo-playing hippie.”
“He hassles me about it, but I’m pretty sure he thinks it’s a phase. If I ever told him I was thinking about a career in music, he’d have a lot more to say about it.”
“I think he almost enjoys your long hair and beard,” Maura says. “It gives him something else to rag you about. What’d he say when we walked in last time? ‘Still incognito? Who are you hiding from?’”
Walt laughs. “Fortunately, the only crimes I’ve committed are against the Air Force code of grooming.”
“Walt doesn’t even smoke pot,” Maura says.
“Some hippie you are,” I say. “But I’m the same. Sally and Tracy don’t seem to get high either, or not that I’ve noticed.”
“You’re right,” Walt says. “We should call ourselves the Old Fogey String Band.”
“Too obvious,” Maura says with a smile. “And redundant.”
I decide to check my mail after leaving Walt and Maura—it’s been a month since Emily’s letter. I find Janie slumped in a chair in the A dorm lobby, across from the mail room, a smoldering, half-smoked doobie between her fingers.
“Busted,” Janie says.
“Really? Do I look like a narc?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen a narc, that I know of. So, I wouldn’t know.”
“You have a point.”
I start to ask about Derek, but Janie appears to have been crying, so I decide to wait and see if she brings him up. They seemed well attached half an hour ago, but maybe it was a temporary liaison.
“About that trip to Long Beach,” she says. “I haven’t completely decided, but I might not come back.”
“What do you mean? Not at all?”
“Yeah, my parents split up last week, and my mom is a wreck. My Dad moved out and I . . . I don’t know, but things aren’t going so well for me up here either, and I thought . . . Anyway, I’m worried about my mom.”
She tears up, so I sit down next to her on the small couch. She takes a long hit from the joint and then leans her head on my shoulder. I put my arm around her and she sobs quietly into my chest.
“Thanks,” she says after a minute of silent crying, notes of desperation in her voice now. She sits up and says, “Sometimes I wonder if you’re the only real friend I have here.” She strokes my hair and then puts her hand on my leg. “But we never hang out. I should have jumped your bones in Vancouver when I had the chance.”
“The night is young,” I say, jokingly. She smiles, but there’s little romance in her eyes, just a bleary sadness. I can’t tell how stoned she is or how much she’s had to drink, or how honest her last sentence was. She moves her hand along my leg, but then she suddenly coughs, removing her hand from my leg, coughs again, gags, and raises a hand to her mouth.
“Oh, fuck!” she says, lurching off the couch and staggering toward the restroom across the lobby. She returns a few minutes later, looking more alert and composed.
“Jesus, what a fun date I am.”
“You OK?”
“Yeah, thanks.” She sits down on the couch again. The doobie has disappeared.
“So anyway . . .”
I wonder if she’s going to address the romantic tension hanging in the air since her flight to the bathroom, but she says, “I have to find out if I can complete the quarter at home. There’s only a couple of weeks left after Thanksgiving and we’re supposed to do a lot of writing. But I don’t know if they’ll let me do it at home. I don’t want to miss out on getting credit. I have a meeting with my advisor on Monday to discuss it, so I should know before we leave Tuesday morning.”
“So, the trip is on, then?”
“As far as I know.”
“Great.”
“I should go to bed,” she says. “This has been a weird day, and I’m afraid I’m going to start crying again.” She touches my knee momentarily, and then stands up.
“Hey, you never told me how your gig went. Well, you can tell me on the drive. Good night, Lucas. And thanks.”
“Hope you feel better.”
Athens, Ohio, 1960
The ground is muddy and slippery. Mom has somehow let me wander over to the other side of the field where some older boys are playing football. They’re slipping and sliding and laughing in the mud and it looks like fun. I want to do the same, but I’m afraid I’ll get in trouble if I just plop down face first in one of the big puddles for no reason. I yell at one of the boys to “throw it here” but he’s not that stupid. I notice that they keep throwing the ball to a particular spot in the field and I trundle over there to wait for an errant pass. I don’t have to wait long, but I’ve forgotten that the airborne ball will bring with it three or four large, charging lumpy bodies, and I’m almost trampled by one red-faced boy who avoids crashing into me at the last minute.
I run for the ball and jump on it, sliding on top for a few blissful seconds until it squirts out from between my legs and I come to an abrupt stop after scooping up a mouthful of mud, pebbles, and grass. One of the boys grabs the ball and tells me to “be careful, little man,” and I see Mom running frantically toward me, yelling something unintelligible, having mistaken my combination of gleeful laughter, coughing, and spitting for convulsions of some kind. I’ve spit out most of the mud by the time Mom gets to me, but she starts pounding on my back saying “spit it out” and “are you OK?” as she does so. I’d be more OK if she’d stop pounding on my back. I wrench myself away from her and say “I’m fine” just before the mud and grass that had managed to make it down my throat come flying back up, accompanied by the remnants of the pancakes and corn syrup I’d had for breakfast, turning Mom’s white rubber boots a dirty yellow.