Page 68 of And Still Her Voice
I didn’t know what was worse, the smell of manure or the inside of the bus reeking of pot and sweaty humans. I reached into my pocket for the book of matches River had left me. I struck one, shook it out, and inhaled. As the scenery sped by like some sort of emergency, I remembered Maggie telling me that after the ambulance had taken Dad away, Mom raced to the hospital to sit next to him—forever, as she promised, even while some doctor stitched him up. I’d been the one who fought him off and left him with a scar, a reminder of me. And Mom, probably the only person I’d ever truly loved, was there to tend to his scar just as she tended to her vows, forsaking all others, even me. Never mind my scars. I’d tend to them myself. I’d mend. Grandma even said so. At least now I was free. No one could hold me back by promising to love me until death did I part.
Devastated at losing River, I wanted to die.I’ll always love you, HoneyMoon. But it wasn’t to the moon and back. He hadn’t promised to love me forever until death did us part, like marriedpeople do. Grandma was right. Grief was the price you paid for love. I lit another match, waved it around, trying to inhale some comfort.
The bus lurched as the gears changed and I bolted up, my book dropping from my lap. “Where are we?”
“For God’s sake, Honey,” Cindy said. “Pull your head out and pay more attention. We’re headed to New York.”
“Cool.” It didn’t register. After River, life had gone on and the wheels on the bus still went round and round, but now that all the air in my life had hissed out, I lived deflated as a flat tire hiding behind my books, never taking the time to get to know the rest of the band members traveling with us, much less bond with the girls.
I reached down for my book.
“Did you ever finishEmmanuelle?” Cindy asked. “I heard about the scene with the banana?”
“What are you? Twelve?” I said.
Cheryl stuck out her tongue and I rolled my eyes. She then made a “V” with her fingers and flicked her tongue through it.
Cindy and Cheryl seemed nice enough, if not intimidating. Besides lacking social skills, it was a chore making connections. Besides, hovering Grandma had always been there to keep me company. But then, I met River, the one friend I’d learned to trust. He’d opened my eyes to a whole new world and then left me to wander alone.
“You need to call home,” Grandma said.
I pulled a book up to my face and whispered, “I’ll call when we get settled in New York. Besides, what’s the hurry?”
“Very well,” Grandma said, sounding more ominous. “I suppose there’s nothing I can do anymore. What is done is done.”
What’s that supposed to mean? What had she everdonebut make trouble for me? I turned the page and read: “the enormous difference between the relationships you need, and the oneyou deeply want. The need is created out of an accumulation of negativities, planted by traumatic experiences: fears, doubts, anxiety, dependence, weakness in certain realms, inadequacy, incompleteness . . .” Anaïs Nin.
I closed the book. I’d call home as soon as I could.
***
In New York, I saw no tall buildings as the bus traveled out in the boondocks somewhere in the middle of rolling green hills, fringed by forests, corn stalks, and cows. We slowed enough to read the sign. Had I blinked my eyes, I would have missed the ‘Village of Liberty’ altogether. We pulled into a Holiday Inn.
“Woodstock?” It came back to me then, but I’d read how the event had been canceled up in a place called Wallkill, and this wasn’t Wallkill.
Cindy told me how Ralphie, the manager, had gotten a call while we were in Philadelphia. “Apparently, a lot of bands, like Mind Garage and the Doors, are canceling for whatever reason,” she said. “We don’t have to be in Manhattan until next week, so here we are. Come on. Let’s get checked in and then go check things out.”
But before I could even set down my suitcase and guitar in the lobby, Ralphie ran up to me. “Honey, grab your guitar and follow John.”
I turned to see John walking out the front door.
“Where’s he going?”
Cindy shrugged her shoulders and I followed John around the back where the wind nearly knocked me over. A helicopter settled down for a landing. John faced me, his hair whipping up, and shouted something I couldn’t hear as he motioned for me to hurry up.
The next thing I knew, I, with three other male band members, Lazarus, and the pilot, were lifting off and then flying over patches of cornfields and farmlands bordered by ribbons of people, cars, buses, motorcycles, and bicycles like microscopic, psychedelic-colored blood cells traveling through a bucolic artery heading toward a body where I imagined everyone’s heart beat as one.
***
The chopper landed in a field behind a stage.
After disembarking, the helicopter took off again, mud churning beneath it. I wiped my face with the back of my shirt and tried to smooth my hair back just as some curly dark-haired man took me by the elbow.
“I’m Artie, one of the promoters,” he shouted, and led me onto the back of the stage where soon I heard someone performing, his voice booming out of a couple of giant metal speaker towers. “He’s on his third encore,” Artie said, throwing his arms up in exasperation. “The band is stuck in traffic.”
I recognized the voice of the singer from shows where we’d both opened for other big-name bands. He was singing some sort of spiritual song.
“He’s run out of songs to play,” Artie said, lighting a cigarette. “You’re up next.”
