Most people in my music world assume that I must have just started writing poetry recently, but I wrote my first poem just three years after I joined my first full-time bluegrass band (Laurie Lewis and Grant Street). Writing poetry isn’t exactly the kind of thing that comes up when you’re hanging around the beer tent at a bluegrass festival, and I’ve only really talked about it to a few close friends.

After first attempting to translate a few of my English poems into Spanish a year or so ago, I considered trying to write poetry in Spanish. I have a much more poetic sense of English than I do of Spanish, and my first few attempts didn’t go anywhere. But one morning last January, while I was in Valparaiso with my wife, Claudia, who was competing in the Chilean Masters Swim Championships (she won five gold medals), I went to a café with my notebook and the poem “Adicto” started appearing on the page. The coffee and pastries at the café were fantastic so I returned the next day and had a first draft by the time I paid my bill. In some ways it was more like a short story (cuento corto) in verse than a poem, but it does rhyme, though not strictly.

I follow a couple of Latin American publishers on Instagram who publish themed poetry and short story collections, and there had been a recent solicitation for a poetry collection called “Sins” (“Pecados”) and I thought this poem might qualify. I had doubts about my ability to write anything decent in Spanish, but I figured it was worth a shot. I worked on the poem a bit more and got some advice and grammatical corrections from Claudia and sent it off a day before the deadline. About 10 days later, to my great surprise, I got an email saying it had been accepted.

I agreed not to publish it online until the book had been published, but now it is out (in Latin America). The hard part came when I realized that most of my friends/fans would want to read a translation. Translating it literally proved to be disappointing, so I decided to write it the way I might have first written it in English. So here it is: in Spanish first and then English.

Adicto

Addicted

Lacking these qualities, I have elected to call these poem-like objects “Curiosities.” They could also be called “Field Recordings from Remote Counties of My Brain” or “Detritus Lining the Mental Pathways of my Confused Internal Twin,” or some such pretentious gibberish. (If you have read this far, you apparently have some affinity for this kind of perfumed refuse).

I’ve decided to publish some of them, if for no other reason than that it will allow me to stop trying to turn them into poems. I’m not going to say much about them. I’ll just publish them at random intervals and let them speak (or mumble incoherently) for themselves.

The one thing I will say is that they usually have some meaning to me, although if I could better express that meaning, I probably would have written something else.

Curiosity the First:

Photo by Scott Nygaard

Photo by Scott Nygaard

So I’ve decided to start The Collecting Poetry of SDN as a section on this Substack to house my poems, new and old, English and Spanish, as well as some “unclassifiable” things I’ve been writing.

You’ll notice there are now three “sections” (labeled Evergreen, Music Talk, and The Collecting Poetry of SDN) at the top of the home page). “Evergreen,” is of course my serialized novel Evergreen (eventually my Spanish translation will make its way there). Music Talk is my music writing. And I’ve called the poetry section The Collecting Poetry of SDN 37.5 to signify the ongoing nature of this (it hasn’t been collected yet; it’s “collecting”), and the fact that I’m publishing poetry under my full name Scott David Nygaard (Scott David Nygaard Damuth in Chile).

To initiate The CP of SDN here’s another recent poem that appeared just after I turned the light one night last week (I did pull my notebook and write this one down).

Photo by Scott Nygaard

Poetry needs time and space and quiet. You don’t crank out a 5,000-word poem in an afternoon. (Not that I’ve written a 5,000-word poem, nor do intend to.) Two of the most recent poems I’ve written I wrote almost in my sleep. One night I woke up around 4 am, and as I was trying to get back to sleep, a line came to me.

Beneath the moon and stars, the horrors of daylight appear calm and docile

I usually keep a small notebook by my bed, but reaching to the bedside table, I couldn’t find it. I didn’t want to turn on the light, but my hand did find my phone, so I opened the Notes app and dictated the line, closed the app and my eyes and . . . another line came to me.

Above the naked plain, the universe waits with trepidation

This kept happening until my semi-conscious mind decided I was done. But then another line came to me . . . for another poem, apparently.

Her ears are frozen in daylight.

And so on. When I woke up, I checked my phone and to my surprise and bewilderment, there were two nearly finished poems waiting for me.

I’m not really sure whether either of these are finished, but they seem to be. I have learned over the many years of my life that I can’t direct things as people often wish to. What happens to me is often more important than what I try to make happen. For example, you’ll notice that I have signed these two poems Scott David Nygaard. I recently received proofs for the poem of mine, “Adicto,” that will be soon published in an anthology of new Latin-American poems called El peso del deseo. I was surprised to see the inclusion of my middle name, but it seemed fitting. Possibly because people in Latin America are often referred to by three names: their first name, their father’s last name, and their mother’s last name. To register for health care here in Chile, I had to do that, so my name to the medical bureaucracy here became Scott Nygaard Damuth. Anyway, I decided to make Scott David Nygaard my poetic nom de plume.

I also recently created a new Instagram page dedicated to my poetry, to differentiate it from my personal page, where most people know me as a musician. I called the new page scottdavidnygaardpoeta, in part because I intend to include Spanish and English versions of all the poems I post there.

I’ll end this Substack post with an “older” poem (pre-2000) I’ve posted there.

Photos by Scott Nygaard

I started writing poetry in the early 1990s, inspired by a few conversations with a poet/musician friend who at the time was trying to get her first book of poetry published, and who has by now published a handful of collections of excellent poems.

Over the years, I’ve shared some poems with a few people, but I’ve never tried to get any of them published. By now, I’ve written 50+ poems. Poetry seems to fit the rhythm of my life now, and I’ve developed better ways of working on the kernels of inspiration once they have moved from my brain to the page.

The first poet whose work initially inspired me was Pablo Neruda. I had read very little poetry before, on a whim, buying a Neruda collection in a small bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on a day off at the end of a tour. I had read his autobiography, a gift from my mother, and wanted to “see what all the fuss was about.” I quickly became a fan, if not a disciple. A couple of years later, I was in Santiago, Chile, on tour with Tim and Mollie O’Brien and the O’Boys, and I bought the original Spanish version of Canto General, having no idea, of course, that almost 20 years later I would move to Santiago.

This past January my wife, Claudia, and I spent a long weekend in Valparaiso, where she was competing in the Chilean National Masters Swim Championships. While she was busy winning five gold medals, I walked the steep, colorful, cobblestoned streets of Cerro Allegre, which I later learned was close to La Sebastiana, one of three houses owned by Neruda. Stopping for a cortado and a dulce de leche-filled croissant at what quickly became my new favorite café (the oddly named Wip Coffee), I pulled out the notebook I have dedicated to poetry and started my first poem written in Spanish. I finished a first draft of the poem the next morning at the same café.

I had been wondering if it made any sense to try writing poetry in Spanish. Technically, I am fluent in Spanish, but I have no aesthetic sense of the language, at least not the way I do in English. My English poems are definitely “modern,” and somewhat abstract. (I’ve included one of my older poems below.) This first Spanish poem is more like a (very) short story, much different than any of my English poems. I also used a simple rhyme scheme, a first for me (besides the terza rima I used for the poems in Evergreen, which are based on a few cantos from Dante’s Inferno and used as a supposed inner monologue of Ted Bundy’s.)

The poem is called “Adicto” (addicted) and a week or so after I finished it, I noticed a call on Instagram from a South American publishing house for poems to be published in a collection of new Latin-American poems with the theme “pecados” (“sins”). I worked a bit more on “Adicto” and sent it in the night before the deadline. A week or so later, I received notice that “Adicto” was one of 90 of 250+ poems chosen for the collection. I hadn’t expected anything, so for me the acceptance meant that writing poems in Spanish was not entirely an absurd idea.

I’ve since been writing in Spanish more than in English. It just depends on what language the first phrase is in when it appears in my head, and these days I think in Spanish as much or more than in English. I’ve also been reading more Chilean poetry, from Neruda to Chile’s first Nobel Prize poet Gabriel Mistral and the “anti-poet” Nicanor Parra, trying to get a sense of writing poetically in Spanish, or castellano as the language is often called here. Unfortunately, there are few English translations of Mistral’s or Parra’s work available and my favorite collection of Neruda’s, Canto General, is also not available in English (when we moved to Chile I donated 98 percent of my books, including all of Neruda’s) to a local Marin County library (“Why would I need to bring Neruda books to Chile?”).

After I started seriously trying to learn Spanish about ten to 15 years ago, I began to read books originally written in Spanish (often alongside the English version). I soon realized that not all translations are accurate. I had wondered about this after we visited Neruda’s house (now a “museum”) in the coastal town of Isla Negra, which I had always thought was an island. While reading his autobiography again, in Spanish and English, I discovered the reason for my mistake: the English version contains the phrase “he returned to the island.”

I have since discovered many other instances of poor or egregious translation. The English translation of El Italiano, by the popular Spanish writer Arturo Pérez Reverte, is kind of amazingly bad and makes me wonder how often AI or Google Translate is used to create cheap translations of books for which there may not be a wide English audience. The protagonist in El Italiano is a woman, but the translation always defaults to “he” or “him” whenever the sentence in question does not specifically indicate the gender (non-binary readers of “The Italian” would be furious). For example, “se fue al mercado” does not indicate the gender of the person who went to the store. If you want to make clear that the person going shopping is a woman you have to say, “ella fue al mercado,” but in this disappointing translation “se fue al mercado” is always translated as “he went to the store.”

I’m a fan of Anne Sexton’s poetry and I was delighted when I recently found a Spanish version of her complete works, with an English translation in footnote-size type at the bottom of each page. It wasn’t long before I found a mistranslation when the translator used the verb “robar” (to rob/steal) for the expression “steal away,” which should be translated as “moverse sigilosamente.” This made me wonder about translating my own work and the general problem of translation. The worst part of the Spanish translation of Sexton’s poems is that it often translates Sexton’s quirky English in a quotidian way.

For example, in her poem “For John Who Begs Me not to Enquire Further”

This section:

Could be translated as:

I suppose it could be worse, but the meaning changes significantly in a few places. In the original, the bowl’s cracked stars “shine like a complicated lie,” but in the translation, the phrase becomes “I will hold my bowl . . . like a complicated lie.” Huh? And the phrase “as if I were dressing an orange or a strange sun” becomes “as if I were wearing an orange or a strange sun.”

I’ve been trying to translate some of Parra’s and Mistral’s poems, and I fear that I’m often guilty of the same thing: that I am making mincemeat out of their poetry. But at least I’m in good company.

As promised, here is an example of my “early” (1990s) poetry.

And here is one of my recent “story” poems, originally written in Spanish and translated (by me) into English. For those who are interested, it is followed by the original Spanish version (written in a loose terza rima).

“This is KING TV, Luke Wardlow reporting. Last night, the House Judiciary took the long-anticipated step of recommending that the President of the United States be impeached and removed from office. In the first recommendation of impeachment in more than a century, the committee charged President Nixon with unlawful activities that formed a course of conduct to obstruct the investigation of the Watergate break-in and to cover up other unlawful activities. The vote was twenty-seven to eleven. Six of the committee’s Republicans joined all of the Democrats on the committee to send the article to the larger House.

“In addition, an article accusing the President of abuse of power is expected to be approved Monday when the committee reconvenes. Approval of a single article of impeachment by the House is enough to send the case to trial in the Senate. While reports from San Clemente, where Mr. Nixon is staying at the moment, confirm that the President is confident that the House will recognize that he has not committed any impeachable offenses, Senate Democratic Leader Mike Mansfield will meet Monday with Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott to begin preparations for an impeachment trial. ‘The line of demarcation has been reached,’ Mansfield said earlier today.”

“In other news, closer to home, Seattle Police have announced that they have been gathering more information about the disappearances of 23-year-old Janice Ott and 19-year-old Denise Naslund from Lake Sammamish State Park in Issaquah on July 14, and may be close to identifying a suspect in the alleged abductions. Witnesses have described both girls as leaving the area with a man bearing the same description. The suspect, pictured here in this composite artist’s drawing, was seen wearing a white tennis outfit, with a sling for what was presumably a broken arm, though detectives doubt that it was actually broken, and driving a tan or beige Volkswagen. One of the witnesses overheard the man introduce himself, with a hint of a British accent, to one of the girls as ‘Ted.’ Seattle police chief Robert Hanson has asked anyone with knowledge of a man fitting this description to contact the Seattle Police Department immediately.”

July 31: 19th Birthday

My hands are aching, but the day is almost over. We should be getting picked up soon.

“Hey, why are you chopping down the dandelions?”

“They’re not dandelions. It’s Scotch broom.”

“Whatever they’re called, those flowers are pretty. You shouldn’t be destroying them.”

The driver of a beat-up Rambler station wagon has stopped on the Parkway next to where I’m working, pulling long, reedy Scotch broom plants out of the ground and stacking them by the side of the road to be picked up later. We get this complaint from passersby at least half a dozen times a day.

“They’re weeds. They’ll take over everything if we don’t get rid of them.”

The Rambler pulls away. I watch it drive off and notice that Alice, one of my co-workers, is walking toward me through the tall grass along the parkway. She points behind me, at the grounds-crew truck arriving to take us back to headquarters, our day of “destroying pretty flowers” done. The truck pulls up, and Tony, another co-worker who’s sitting in the bed of the pickup, says, in a high, pinched voice, “Why are you killing the dandelions? They’re so pretty,” as if he hasn’t said this at least once a day this week.

“C’mon, you two. Let’s go. It’s starting to rain.” Arnie, one of the permanent grounds crew staff, is in the passenger seat. He’s right, it is raining now, but this doesn’t mean that he’ll let us sit with him in the cab. Alice and I know to join Tony in the back.

When we pull into the small parking lot next to the grounds-crew headquarters, a temporary trailer attached to a large concrete multi-vehicle garage, Jenny is sitting on the rear bumper of Ezra’s pickup, parked next to the trailer. I haven’t seen her all summer. Today is my nineteenth birthday, but I don’t remember who I’ve told. I wonder if she knows.

“Hey, what are you doing here?”

“I wondered if maybe you’d want to get some dinner? Something easy? Like the Blue Night Café?”

“That’d be great. Let me get my bike.”

“You can throw it in the back.”

After retrieving my Clubman ten-speed from behind the trailer and hoisting it into the truck bed, I give her a quick, chaste hug and walk around to the passenger side, kicking the mud off my boots on the front tire before I climb onto the seat bench.

“How’ve you been?” I ask. “Where have you been?”

“I’ve been at my mother’s most of the summer, and a couple weekends in Seattle with Alma. I’m good. I’m waitressing at a restaurant near the university in Moscow, but just dinners, so it’s not too bad. I spend a lot of time with Mom, helping her out around the house, and practicing the piano. It’s been good to get away from Olympia. How about you?”

“Things are good. I’m living on the Westside in a house with Eric, playing a lot of music.”

“I heard. You guys get along pretty well, right?”

“We do. He’s not working. He practices all day, figuring out things from records and learning tunes. When I get home, he shows me what he’s learned, so I’m picking up a lot without having to work too hard for it.”

“Why isn’t he working?”

“His parents told him he didn’t have to. They’re happy for him to just practice all summer. And rent on our place is probably nothing for them. But he thinks the real reason they’re cool with him staying in Olympia is that they’re in the process of splitting up. His dad moved out, and they probably didn’t want him to have to choose which of them to live with if he went back to Portland. He seems OK with it, though.”

“That’s good. How’s the job?”

“It can be a bitch. It’s exhausting, and we’re out in the rain a lot, of course, but I like it. I’ll be happy to be done, though. I spent the last three days swinging a machete and pulling weeds, clearing out all the brush and debris along the Parkway. My hands get sore and stiff—I have to massage them at night before I can play the fiddle or guitar—but I’ve only got another month, and I’ll have a couple weeks off before school starts.”

“Have you been doing anything else? Other than playing music with Eric?”

“Sally and Walt come down from Seattle now and then. Walt’s driving a cab, and he has Sundays and Wednesdays off. They should be here now, actually, at the house. A couple of musicians from Eugene are staying with us, a banjo player and fiddler, Delia and Butch. They met Liam at a fiddle contest in Idaho, and he told them they should look us up on their way home. Sally and Walt were planning on coming down today anyway, so there should be a big party going by the time I get home.”

“Is it OK we’re having dinner?”

“Of course. I don’t know what their dinner plans are. They’ll probably just order a couple large pizzas or something. Eric doesn’t cook much. But it doesn’t matter. If you can drop me after we eat, there’ll still be plenty of time for tunes. It’s just off Division.”

“Sure, of course. How about Sofía? Is she around?”

“No, she’s been in Seattle most of the summer. She came down a couple weekends ago, and she might be coming down again this weekend, I’m not sure. She decided to live with her parents for the summer so she can bone up on her Spanish; she’s doing that program next year that goes to Guatemala spring semester. But she says it’s hard to get her parents to speak Spanish around the house, they’re so used to English now, so she may be regretting she decided to spend the summer at home.”

“Guatemala, huh? So, are you two . . .”

“We’re good friends, and . . . she’ll be gone a lot next year, so . . . It’s funny, sometimes I feel like she started sleeping with me because she thought she was supposed to, because we were hanging out all the time. We slept together when she came to visit last time, but it was mostly just easier than making her sleep on the couch. It’s probably best I don’t get too attached, you know. I have trouble with that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. That’s not what I meant. You know, I understand . . . about all that.”

“Actually, you don’t. Remember? I never explained.”

“It’s OK, I . . .”

“That’s why I’m here . . . why I wanted to see you.”

“OK. Should I be worried?”

“No, no.”

We pull into the gravel lot outside the Blue Night Café. It’s nearly empty, and the café is quiet. We take one of the booths at the back of the room, and a college-age waitress, probably a ’greener, brings us menus and water. Jenny’s reason for the visit has silenced us. I feel like I should try to make small talk, but I can’t think of anything to say. My heart is pounding and my mind careens between thoughts of nights at Willowberry, Ezra, and Jenny’s secret meadow full of princess flowers.

We order sandwiches and soup and when the waitress disappears, Jenny says, “This isn’t easy for me. I’ve only told a couple people about this, and . . . I didn’t want to have to tell you, but it . . . but, you should know. I want you to know.”

I reach across the table and lay my hand on hers. She smiles and our fingers entwine.

“I told you about my stepfather, right?”

“A little.”

“So, he used to be a heavy drinker, but when he married my mom, he stopped. They both did, for a while. But when I was fifteen, he started again. Actually, it was my mom who did, and I guess he figured, what the hell, if she’s going to drink, he might as well, too. Anyway, after a few drinks my mom usually gets sleepy, and if she’s at home, she’ll just nod off, wherever she is—the couch, her favorite armchair. But not him; the booze seems to give him some sort of weird energy. That summer, I got grounded for a couple weeks. They found out that I had been hanging out with a couple friends, our next-door neighbors, who got busted for pot. I left just before the cops showed up, so I didn’t get arrested, but, of course, my mom found out.

“So, I had to stay home with my folks at night for a couple weeks; I’d watch TV with them or listen to music in my room, mostly. One night, after whatever we were watching was over, and I was getting ready for bed, my stepfather came into my room, like he wanted to talk about something. Mom must have been asleep in the living room, and I think he waited until he heard the toilet flush or something, so he knew I’d be in my room, ready for bed. That summer was super hot, and we didn’t have air conditioning, so I’d go to bed in just a thin nightgown, no bra or panties. He came into my room, sat on my bed, and started asking me questions about school and boys I liked, pretending he cared about me. But I don’t think he listened to anything I said. I could smell the alcohol strong on his breath, and I was lying on top of the quilt. The window in my room doesn’t open, and I was probably sweating. I’d just gone through puberty that year, I’d just . . . you know, gotten breasts. So, then, uh . . . oh, fuck, this is harder than I thought it’d be.”

She looks around the café, which is still empty, and grips my fingers like she’s holding on to something she doesn’t want to lose.

“OK, I’m just going to . . . He molested me, almost nonchalantly, while he talked. He put his hand on my knee at first and then slid it up my leg, under my nightgown, and . . .”

“Oh god, Jenny, I’m so sorry.”

“Let me finish. Please. Don’t interrupt, or I’ll never . . .” She looks around the room again to make sure no one is listening.

“After a few nights of this, he raped me. Maybe because I started wearing panties and a bra under my nightgown. And he would have had to remove them to get at me. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t really struggle, he’s a big guy, and his breath made me sick. Sometimes I thought I was going to throw up right on him. He always managed to leave my room before my mom woke up. After the two weeks grounding was up, I would spend most evenings with friends, and my mom would always wake up when I came home, and if she didn’t, I’d let the front door slam, so she would wake up. And then I talked my mom into letting me visit my dad in Seattle for a few weeks.

“There were a few nights after I got back when I didn’t have anywhere to go, and he did it a couple more times. But when school began, he stopped. I don’t remember what happened. Maybe my mom stopped drinking, or she was just more vigilant at night, making sure I finished my homework. Maybe she could sense I needed her—we kind of got closer there for a while, I don’t know why. Or maybe he got tired of me. He told me that if I ever told anyone about it—‘what we did’ he called it—that he would beat me. And I believed him. He’d get this look in his eyes that was almost subhuman, like he’d do anything, to anyone, like he didn’t care what happened to anyone but himself. I only saw that look a couple times, but it terrified me, so I never said anything, not till last summer anyway, when I told Alma. I’d gotten afraid of him, again. He had started brushing against me when he passed me in the kitchen or somewhere, groping me. And he came into the bathroom once when I was in the shower. I could have sworn I’d locked the door, but . . .

“Anyway, Alma came out to visit, to help me pack up and drive to Evergreen, to spend a few weeks with her at Willowberry before school started. She could tell something was wrong. One day, she went out to the backyard and laid down on a blanket in the sun, in her bikini. I was helping my mom with something, but when I saw Alma out there, I went out and sat with her. She told me I should join her, put my bikini on, but I wouldn’t, and I got really nervous. You know how beautiful she is, and I was afraid my stepdad might try something with her, especially if he saw her in her bikini. I just sat there, shaking, so she asked me what was going on, and I told her. That night, she confronted him and threatened to tell my mom. I don’t know why she didn’t just tell her, too, but we were going to be leaving in a couple days anyway.”

“I’m so sorry. I can certainly understand why you’d have trouble with sex then. I had no idea . . .”

“But I haven’t explained. Let me finish.”

“Sorry.”

“I don’t have trouble with sex. Sometimes it feels like I should, but . . . I’ve had sex with a few guys since I was sixteen, some regularly, most just flings, one-nighters. Maybe I was trying to find something good about it, not have it be so horrible, so wrong. But I can’t compare those affairs with . . .”

“But then, why . . . ?”

“Because you smell like him.”

“What?”

“When you and I had sex. The reason I couldn’t go through with it was . . . was that you smell like him, and the smell would bring it all back. I couldn’t get it out of my mind, that horrible summer. It was like I was transported right back there, his horrible breath, the sticky sweat, the . . .”

“Jesus, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. You can’t help how you smell.”

“So, that means, I guess . . . there’s no chance you’ll change your mind, is there?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so, but . . . I tried, you know. That last night you slept over? When I suggested we take a shower, after that walk in the rain? I thought maybe a shower would wash away the smell, and that would make it OK. It’s not that you smell unpleasant, I don’t normally dislike your smell, but when you’re . . .”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“No, not really. How could I? But I feel bad that you had to go through that, my fault or not.”

The waitress brings our food, and we sit in silence for a while, eating our sandwiches. A family has come into the café, but they ignore us. Their two hyperactive boys bounce up and down on their seats in a booth across the room, chattering nonstop. I’m stunned and saddened by Jenny’s story. I suppose part of me thought, when I saw her standing by Ezra’s truck earlier, that she wanted to try again, that she’d missed me during the last couple months, that . . .”

“So, do you think we can still be friends?” I ask, finally, needing to get out of my head and the spiraling dread rushing up from some dark, interior cave.

“I hope so. I was hoping you might want to play guitar with me a bit next year. Maybe just you, me, and a bass player? Something small and acoustic? I’ve been learning some Linda Ronstadt country songs and simple swing tunes on the piano, Billie Holiday songs.”

“I’d like that. Are you going to keep singing with Angelica and Alma?”

“Oh, maybe you didn’t hear. Angelica is staying home next year, or at least for the first semester. Her dad is sick, emphysema, I think, and she’s going to stay and help take care of him.”

“Oh man, no, I hadn’t heard. She wrote me a month ago, but that’s the last I heard from her.”

“She seems fine with it, staying home I mean. She can take classes at the University of Illinois, and she has friends in Chicago she’s been hanging out with. They have a band, funk and Motown covers mostly, and they want her to join, but she doesn’t want to leave her family.”

“I’m sorry to hear it. I’ll miss her.”

“Me too.”

Silence returns, my mouth dry, struggling to form banalities. Jenny turns to her soup, her gaze downcast. She has cut her hair since I last saw her. It still reaches to her shoulders, but some of its wild beauty has been tamed. And she seems surer of herself. Her eyes, still languid and deep, no longer search the room for something, for someone, as they used to.

“Can I ask you something?” I say. “The reason you can’t have sex with me? Is that what happened with Tracy, too?”

“No, it’s not.”

“What happened?”

“I’m not going to tell you. That’s his story, not yours. This is your story, our story. But there is something else I want to tell you. I’m leaving tomorrow for Europe—Italy. I’m going with Ezra for six weeks, but I’ll be back before school starts.”

“I thought you and Ezra were . . . I don’t know, since you’ve been in Moscow, I figured you’d broken up.”

“We did. I needed to get away from here, go where it’s quiet, some time alone, some time to sort things out with my mom. I finally told her about my stepdad last week, and it’s helped. She was horrified, of course, but we’ve become closer. I think she understands me a little better. She’s forgiven me for . . . for things she didn’t like about me. I’m still working on forgiving her, but . . . She told him she doesn’t ever want to see him again, and that if he comes to the house, she’ll call the police, and she’ll tell them what he did to me.

“So, it was good to be away from all the drama here, away from Ezra, the Fruits, all that. Ezra asked me at the end of school if I would go with him to Italy, and I told him no then, but he and Alma came out to visit two weeks ago, and he asked again. I feel stronger now. It’s like I woke up one morning and everything was clear.

“I’ll have to borrow money for the plane ticket, but Ezra has some friends with a place in Italy, on the Adriatic coast, where we can stay. He met them in Mexico. They have some sort of restaurant or villa, by the edge of the sea, and they’re hiring him to play music on the weekends for the guests. I’ll be singing with him, too, maybe playing a little piano or ukulele, so it’ll cover our room and meals, and we can spend the weekdays exploring Italy, going to the beach, whatever people do in the Italian summer.”

“That sounds idyllic.”

“I hope so. I hope we get along. He asked them for two rooms, so if it’s not working out, at least we’ll have separate beds. He’s been good about it. He knows about you.”

“What about me?”

“That we were . . . that I fell in love with you and . . . and you broke my heart.”

“Is that what happened?”

“I don’t know. But that’s how it feels.”

I know how I want to respond, or wish that I could respond, but . . .

“That’s how it feels to me, too. Only . . .”

I watch Jenny’s truck pull away from the curb in front of my house.

“Are you going to wish me Happy Birthday?” I call out to the bits and pieces of us lingering in the sky above.

I walk slowly toward the house, stumbling as I wheel my bike around the side to the dilapidated storage shed in the backyard. Entering through the back door, I’m greeted by the sounds of a raging old-time session. Eric and Sally are in the kitchen, sitting at the kitchen table, chatting, laughing. The jam is in the living room: Walt, Mike Breedlove, Delia, and Butch. I pull out my fiddle without saying anything and pull up a chair. The circle of four expands to let me in.

We play “Old Molly Hare.” Eric and Sally join us in the living room and Eric asks if I want a beer. I nod and he returns a few minutes later from the kitchen with three bottles. We’re playing “Western Country” when he returns. He puts a beer on the table in front of me, atop a small pile of New Yorkers.

When we finish playing “Western Country,” I take a long pull from the bottle, an Oly. It’s cold. I haven’t had a beer since New Year’s Eve. I don’t know if I’ll be able to stomach it, but it tastes good.

We play “Sugar Hill.”

Then we play “Black-Eyed Susie.”

Someone suggests “John Brown’s Dream,” but it’s in the key of A, so the banjo players, Walt and Butch, have to retune. I don’t want the music to stop. I’m afraid someone will ask me something—how my day was, how I’m doing—so I go into the kitchen to get another beer from the fridge, and one for Walt.

I return to the living room and set my beer down next to the first, which is still half full. Eric gets out his guitar and Sally picks up her banjo-uke, which has been lying on the couch.

We play “John Brown’s Dream.”

Then we play “Candy Girl.”

Then we play “John Henry.”

Then we play “June Apple.”

Mike and Delia get up and go into the kitchen. Eric says he has to pee.

We play “Bull at the Wagon.”

Eric returns.

We play “Grey Eagle.”

Then we play “Breaking up Christmas.”

Walt sings “When Sorrows Encompass Me Round,” an old hymn, and I lean the fiddle on my leg and let my long hair fall over my eyes while I drone a few open strings to accompany his singing.

When sorrows encompass me round

And many distresses I see

Astonished I cry “can a mortal be found

Surrounded with troubles like me”

When the song is over, I get up and go into the kitchen. Delia and Mike are laughing. They ignore me. I go out to the backyard. It’s raining steadily now, and the raindrops join the tears sliding down my cheeks. I wait till I’m good and soaked before I return to the living room and pick up my fiddle again, forgetting that I’m now dripping wet. I go into the half bathroom off the living room to dry my hands and grab a clean, dry washcloth to use as a shoulder rest.

Mike and Delia have returned from the kitchen. Sally has switched to fiddle, so there will be three fiddles now. Before I take up mine, I stand at the bathroom door and gaze with affection at the group in front me, my throbbing heart subsiding slowly. These people, playing music in my living room, celebrating my birthday—though they may not know it—bound by something I can’t explain, and wouldn’t want to if I could. Are they the ones I’ll love? Is this what will get me through, hold me up?

I sit down and Mike launches into “Ways of the World.”

Then we play “Cluck Old Hen.”

Water drips from my hair onto the top of the fiddle, creating pale circles on the tea-stained maple.

I start “Little Billy Wilson” while the last note of “Cluck Old Hen” is fading away.

Then we play “Old Bunch of Keys.”

Then we play “Rye Straw.”

The water dripping from my hair has found my bow, which squeaks as it skids up to the high E string.

Someone starts “George Booker.”

Then we play “Camp Chase.”

Then we play “Dance All Night.”

Then we play “Lonesome Road Blues.”

Then we play “Let Me Fall.”

The End

Acknowledgments and Sources

While many of the events in Evergreen are invented, some are based on actual events, and for those I relied on a few essential sources.

Quotes in the Watergate sections are either invented or come from the following:

• The Watergate Hearings: Break-In and Cover-Up, Proceedings of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, as edited by the staff of the New York Times. Bantam Books 1973.

• The Nixon Tapes 1971–1972, Edited and Annotated by Douglas Brinkley and Luke A. Nichter. Mariner Books 2015.

• A transcript of Nixon’s November 17, 1973 “I Am Not a Crook” speech.

• A transcript of Archibald Cox’s October 20, 1973 press conference resigning his position as Special Prosecutor.

• An article by George Lardner Jr. in the Washington Post on December 7, 1973 about Alexander Haig’s December 6, 1973 testimony about “sinister forces” that may have caused the 18-minute gap in the Watergate tapes.

Of course, I also relied a great deal on Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s All the President’s Men and The Final Days.

For the Ted Bundy sections, I relied on:

• The Stranger Beside Me, by Ann Rule, Pocket Books, 1980, 1989

• The Bundy Murders, A Comprehensive History, by Kevin M. Sullivan, McFarland and Co., 2009

I am also thankful for the online archive (https://archives.evergreen.edu/1973/home1973-01.htm) of Evergreen State College student newspapers (first called The Paper and later The Cooper Point Journal ) and Evergreen’s weekly “Newsletter” and “Happenings.”

Stokely Carmichael’s speech is a combination of quotes from the October 11, 1973 issue of The Paper, Carmichael’s Black Power, and a speech Carmichael gave in an address to the Organization of Arab Students conference held at the University of Michigan in August 1968 as reported in “African Americans and the Palestine Solidarity Struggle, by Abayomi Azikiwe” published on the Workers World website, workers.org, January 21, 2009.

I also quoted Matt Groening’s “Whole Dearth Catalogue” from the May 9, 1974 issue of the Cooper Point Journal and the article “Expo: A Look at Dick” in the May 23, 1974 Cooper Point Journal. I also relied on the April 4, 1974 Cooper Point Journal for information about the disappearance of Donna Manson, who would not be identified as one of Ted Bundy’s victims until he admitted to murdering her just before his 1989 execution.

The “cantos” in the first four Ted Bundy sections in Part 1 are inspired by sections of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, particularly Cantos 1–9 and 13. For a while, I thought of them as “rewritten” versions of sections of those cantos, but then I realized that I had revised them so much that they, in fact, bear little resemblance to the originals, and only occasionally coincide with them.

I relied on two translations of Inferno, the first by Allen Mandelbaum, published by Everyman’s Library, 1995, and the other by Robert Pinsky, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994. I followed Pinsky’s example by writing in terza rima, as Dante did, but with “a more flexible definition to rhyme.” Pinsky said that his “translation is based on a fairly systematic rhyming norm that defines rhyme as similar consonant-sounds—however much vowels may differ—at the ends of words.” For example, in the first “Ted” section, I rhyme “mother” with “farther,” “death” with “path”, “seen” with “cervine,” but also, much more tenuously, rhyming “balm” with “daemon” or “moon” with “rustling” and occasionally I abandon the terza rima scheme altogether for a line or two, usually at the end of each “canto.”

The short poetic inserts in the fifth, sixth, and seventh Ted sections are also inspired by excerpts from Inferno, but are, obviously, not in terza rima.

Throughout Evergreen I used the concept of “echoes” that Valeria Luiselli uses and talks about in her novel Lost Children Archive. I used some very short phrases from three Bob Dylan songs (“You’re Going to Make Me Lonesome When You Go,” “I Don’t Believe You [You Act Like We Never Have Met],” and “Farewell Angelina,”), the cantos from Inferno mentioned above, and Farid Ud-din Attar’s The Conference of the Birds. In most cases, these are no more than two-to-four-word phrases, which in revising, may have become no more than allusions or echoes consisting of one or two words.

I am deeply thankful for the input and advice I got from my wife, Claudia Campazzo, and my mother, Phyllis Daniel, in writing, editing, and revising Evergreen. I’m also deeply thankful for the influence all the musicians I first met at Evergreen from 1973 to 1975 have had on my musical and personal life, including my teachers Tom Foote and Bill Winden. I hope that if any of them recognize parts of themselves in any of these characters, they understand that these portraits come from a place of deep love and affection.

“Good, I found something that feels like a breakthrough.”

I’m surprised to see Mr. Coleman outside the cafeteria on a Saturday morning. I’ve just had a quick breakfast with Sofía, before heading to the Northwest Folklife Festival in Seattle with Eric. One of the Folklife Festival organizers heard the Sea Slugs at the street fair last weekend and gave them a slot on the String Band Stage tomorrow morning. Eric, who joined the Slugs for the street fair gig, is also competing in a guitar contest at the Folklife Festival this afternoon. Walt and Sally drove up yesterday with Tracy and his new girlfriend, leaving Eric to take the Greyhound, and since Walt told me that the entire Northwest old-time music scene will be at the festival, I decided to tag along with Eric. I’m hoping to find some people to play tunes with, if only by following Walt and Sally around.

“That’s great. What have you found?”

“Well, I borrowed this record from Mr. Emerson called Anthology of American Folk Music, recordings from the 1920s and ’30s, country music, blues, folk ballads, gospel songs, and some fiddle tunes. But this one tune, ‘Sail Away Lady,’ stood out. It’s a pretty common tune, but the version was striking, with a consistent kind of syncopation I hadn’t heard before. The fiddler seemed to be dividing every two bars into groups of three beats, two beats, and three beats, but starting on the fourth beat of the measure, so the accents are four, one-two-three-four, one-two-three four, one-two-three-four, one-two-three, and all the phrases are accented in the same way.”

“Interesting. What are the other instruments doing, rhythmically?”

“It’s just one fiddler, Uncle Bunt Stephens, and he’s quite good. People say that old-time fiddle music comes from Scotland and Ireland, from immigrants who ended up in the southern Appalachian Mountains. But none of the Scottish- or Irish-sounding tunes we play at the square dance have a rhythm anything like that. I asked Liam about it—he’s been learning traditional Irish fiddling—and he says he hasn’t heard any accents like that in Irish music.”

“So, you think it might be African in origin?”

“Exactly. There’s also this weird fiddle tune called ‘Indian War Whoop’ that has phrases in groups of three and five, with a couple of guitars playing a fast 2/4 bum-ditty rhythm. So, you have these 3/4 and 5/4 phrases against 2/4, which makes them sound more like 6/4 and 10/4, I guess. The liner notes say it’s not Native American music, but more like the kind of music you hear in old westerns. It doesn’t sound like corny fake-Indian movie music to me, but it also doesn’t sound African.”

“So where do you think it comes from?”

“I have no idea, but again, it’s doesn’t sound Scots-Irish.”

“OK, so . . .”

“And then there’s a song, ‘Old Country Stomp,’ by a singer and guitar player named Henry Thomas, who’s black, I think. It sounds like it’s going to be some sort of blues, but the first words he sings are square dance calls: ‘Take your partners, promenade, promenade all around.’” And the guitar rhythm is close to old-time guitar rhythm.”

“So, you’re definitely finding some mixing of white and black music.”

“Yeah, and the fact that you have this black man singing square dance calls, which . . . why would he do that if he hadn’t played for square dances? . . . and these white fiddlers playing rhythms that definitely didn’t come from the British Isles, it made me think that maybe slaves could have played for dances in the South. They could have been playing tunes from the British Isles that their masters made them play, but then, maybe they evolved a way of playing with rhythms and phrasing that were more natural to them. And maybe after Emancipation, poor whites became the dance musicians in the South, but they were so used to the way slaves played the tunes, they kept playing them that way. Or something like that. It’s a wild guess, obviously.”

“Do you have anything to back this theory up, other than those particular tunes?”

“No, not at all.”

“That’s OK. Great discoveries have sprung from less.”

“I’ll keep digging around. But after I noticed that syncopated rhythm on ‘Sail Away Lady,’ I started hearing it on other things, though not as pronounced, like this fiddler Tommy Jarrell, who’s from North Carolina, I think. But I guess I’ll have to, I don’t know, try to find historical accounts or newspapers from the 1800s, to see if there’s any record of black square dance bands.”

“There are a few slave narratives you might check out. In Frederick Douglass’s autobiography he talks about a group of slaves walking up to their master’s house to receive their monthly allowance, singing as they went. He described them as ‘wild songs, revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness.’ I always remember that. I don’t know if there’s much else about music in his writing, about slaves playing stringed instruments or for dances, but you should check it out.”

“I will.”

“Did you see this article in the Cooper Point Journal about the Vice President being in town?”

“What Vice President?” Eric says.

“Ford. The Vice President of the United States? He was at a fundraiser in Lacey for some congressman. There were protestors, seventy-five of them, and twenty-two policemen.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s a good story. Tell it again.”

The Greyhound passes the Nisqually exit and I search the Delta for a flash of white, though the great snowy owl I saw in December is probably hunting in the Alaskan tundra at this time of year. Eric is deep into a book, The Philosopher’s Stone, by the English writer Colin Wilson, but he humors my interruptions.

“Here’s another fascinating, action-packed story about Nixon speaking at the Spokane Expo,” I say, trying to adopt an ironic tone. “There’s nothing about Watergate, or the impeachment hearings, or anything political, but the reporter did find a good pizza joint in Ellensburg on his way home.”

“The CPJ is well-known for its groundbreaking journalism,” Eric says ironically, his eyes still on his book.

“Listen to this: ‘Outside the pavilion where Nixon addressed the crowd, a small coterie of poorly dressed hecklers and puerile protestors made noise. I suppose that some consider it necessary to produce a physical manifestation of dissatisfaction in order to maintain a facade of balance, so the news coverage can acknowledge it, so the public can be made aware. Personally, I find the manifestation of dissatisfaction distasteful and shabby. When something lacks esthetics, it lacks effectiveness.’ Jeez, who does this idiot think he is, Henry James?”

“Henry James wouldn’t have said ‘manifestation of dissatisfaction’ twice in one paragraph. Sounds like some sort of parody.”

“It’s more like a parody of the things the CPJ used to run, back at the beginning of the year. The Journal has been so boring lately, full of articles about internal Evergreen politics, but nothing outside the ’greener bubble. I heard there were rumors about Nixon resigning, but you wouldn’t know it from this rag.”

“You heard a rumor there was a rumor?”

“Pretty much sums up the kind of political news I’m privy to.”

“You know, my problem with politics is that to defend a political stance, you have to earnestly believe that what you’re saying is actually true,” Eric says, closing his book, “that there are no mitigating factors, or contradictions, or large numbers of situations in which what you believe is absolutely not true.

“For Americans, politics is like religion. People hold these beliefs, cling to their inherited ideologies, and just accept whatever they’re told. The one thing about religion I can understand, though, is that we’re all just trying to figure out what the hell is going on, why we’re here on this particular orb, what the universe is all about, how we should live in the world. For some reason, humans were given this whole consciousness thing, the awareness of ourselves as individual beings with finite lives. Which makes us aware that we are going to die. Or, not that we are going to die, but that I am going to die, and that you are going to die. So, then, we want to know why. But nobody ever seems to get that the reason we all die is that there’s just not enough room for everybody on this planet. If new humans are constantly being created, we have to get rid of some of those who are already here. That’s why the idea of immortality is ridiculous. Imagine if everyone ever born on Earth were still alive. Earth would be a hellhole. Where would you put everyone?”

“Underwater?”

“Huh?”

“I’m kidding.” Eric is often startled by interruptions to his train of thought.

“I think the fact that there are so many religions and belief systems is evidence that humans will never understand existence,” he continues. “Individual humans create their own worlds, their own realities—they decide which things to notice, which things to care about, which things to ignore, or pretend don’t exist. Every experience is unique. Tell a hundred people to, I don’t know, walk from the dorms to the Westside, and you will have a hundred different stories about their walk; everyone’s experience will be different. But politics ignores that.”

“But,” I say, “where politics matters is that everyone’s experience of this hypothetical walk of yours will be determined by, say, whether they have sturdy shoes, or a raincoat, whether they can afford to get something to eat on the way, whether they can summon a chauffeur to pick them up if they get tired. And it’ll be different for people who have spent their lives working outdoors at some backbreaking job than for privileged white folk for whom a lazy stroll through the countryside is a refreshing break in a day spent lolling about their country estate or poring over their ledger books.”

“But politics is so freaking tedious and pointless and . . . stupid. On one hand, you’ve got the ‘everybody should have the same opportunities in life’ people, which, have you read any history? Has this ever happened, anywhere? You are familiar with the great communistic experiments, aren’t you? The Soviet Union? China? How did those work out? The people in power just threw up their hands, walked away, and left the po’ folk in charge, did they? And on the other side, you’ve got the ‘teach a man to fish, and he’ll never be hungry again’ swindlers, whose great-grandfathers probably built the fisheries and who now control access to the rivers. That kind of dogmatic thinking is so confining and unimaginative.”

“Agreed, but . . .”

“I’m interested in music, stories, experiences, sounds, structures, interactions—things that change, that evolve or devolve, that mirror existence, that aren’t set in stone, that affect everyone who experiences them in a different way. That, to me, is a truer way of being in the world and a closer link to whatever the thing is that people call God.”

“Can’t argue with that. Hey, not to change the subject, but where are you staying tonight? I forgot to ask.”

“Sally said we could stay at her house. Her parents are coming to the festival, and they can give us a ride afterward.”

“Perfect. Did I tell you I got that job on the Evergreen grounds crew?”

“No. So, you’re staying in Olympia then?”

“If I take the job. I have to let them know by Wednesday, but I don’t have a place to live yet. I’m going to ask Walt if he knows of anything.”

“Maybe we should get a house together.”

“Why? Are you thinking of spending the summer in Olympia?”

“Maybe. I don’t have any job prospects in Portland, and my parents said they would be fine with me not working this summer. I just want to practice all day, and read, but no commitments.”

Living with Eric could work. He’s eccentric and a bit of a windbag, but he makes me think; his rants are surprising, neither the usual back-to-the-land, post-hippie, escapist blather or square-chinned, libertarian paranoia. And he’s not always “on”—he’s comfortable with silence, and he’s a reader. He’s always recommending books I’ve never heard of. And while I’ve submerged myself in the old-time fiddle world lately, living with Eric would be good for my guitar playing. He’s always working on new things and is happy to share what he’s learned.

“There they are, next to that crowd.”

“Hey boys. You just get here?” Sally asks as Eric and I join the amoebic clump clustered around some musicians playing a breakneck square dance tune.

“Pretty much. We walked through that Food Circus thing and got sandwiches.”

“Do you know who that is?

“Who? Where?”

“The band that’s playing, there, in the middle.”

“It’s not a jam?”

“No, it’s the Skunk Farm String Band, with Clyde Demuth.”

“Far out.”

“Let’s try to get closer.”

We insinuate ourselves into the mob surrounding the band, waiting for someone to move so we can wedge our way in closer. Soon, Sally and I are right at the front. Six musicians—two fiddlers, a banjo player, a mandolinist, a guitar player, and a bassist—are playing a familiar-sounding dance tune. I recognize a couple of them from the square dance we went to on spring break. They all look to be about ten years older than us. Most of the guys have long, stringy hair and droopy mustaches and are wearing colorful long-sleeve patchwork shirts, though one of the fiddlers is dressed more conservatively than the others, as if he’s just fled an institutional desk job. The rhythm section is female: the guitarist, dressed in a light-green flower-print dress, has short, curly brown hair; the ponytailed bass player is wearing a red-and-gray flannel shirt and worn blue jeans. Their groove is ferocious, but they have the blank expressions of surfers waiting patiently for the next ridable wave.

The plainly attired fiddler appears to be leading the tune—the rest of the band watch him closely, while he stares intently at his fingerboard—but the goateed banjo player, his long, straight hair restrained by a maroon-and-yellow-checked headband, seems to be the soul of the band: his infectious, unwavering smile exudes a welcoming beneficence and joy.

When they finish the tune, they mill about for a few minutes, chatting with various people in the ad hoc audience. The next song, “If I Lose, Let Me Lose,” sung by the mandolin player, who never stops bouncing on his toes, begins raggedly: the long-haired fiddler, whose round, wire-rim glasses frame a scowling face, impatiently kicks off the song while the banjo player is taking a sip from an audience member’s brown paper bag and the bass player bids a friend goodbye, her arms transferred temporarily from the behemoth stringed instrument to the shoulders of a tall, attractive blond man.

“These guys are great,” I say to Sally.

“Aren’t they? The fiddler with the short hair is one of my favorites, but he doesn’t usually play with them.”

“What’s his name?”

“Clyde Demuth. The bass player isn’t in the band either. She plays with the Deep Gap String Band.”

“Really? I love that band. Walt has one of their records. I didn’t know they were from around here.”

“They’re not. They’re from New York—Ithaca, I think. Maybe she’s visiting.”

Someone taps me on the shoulder—Mike Breedlove, the fiddler we met in Kent.

“What do you think?” he asks. “You heard these guys before?”

“A couple of them played a square dance we went to, but I haven’t heard the whole band.”

“They’re about the best around, and it’s fun to hear them with Clyde. There’s a party at their house tonight. You should come. Everyone will be there.”

“You can do that? Go to a party uninvited?”

“You can come with me, or tell them I invited you, if anyone asks. There’ll be a big crowd, and the house has lots of rooms to play in. Nobody will notice you, and once you pull out your fiddle, you’ll be more than welcome.”

“Did you know about this party, Sally?”

“No. You really think it’s OK for us to come, Mike? Where is it?”

“It’s not far, out Madison on 39th. Like I said, you can come with me if you want.”

“I’ll be with my parents, but we’ll figure something out. You’re staying with us tonight, right Lucas?”

“If you’ll have me.”

“My folks are planning on it. You’ll have to sleep in the living room, though.”

“You know how I feel about parties,” Eric says. He’s a bit glum about not winning the guitar contest, having placed second to an impressive guitarist named Dudley Hill, who Dieter, the guitarist in Quantum Repair, had told me I should check out.

“What do you mean?” Walt asks.

“I can’t deal with small talk. Whenever I enter a room full of people, whether I know any of them or not, I immediately assume that I must be the least interesting person there. But being interesting, or saying anything of interest, is so uncool these days. Small talk is a way of saying, ‘You’re not worth wasting my incredibly perceptive thoughts on. I may be brilliant, but I don’t need to prove it to you. To do so would be to admit that you might be interesting yourself.’ And then if I do meet someone who is as bored of small talk as I am, it’s unlikely that what I’m interested in will be of interest to them, since I generally don’t care much about things that most people like. So, you know, I’m kind of a drag at parties.”

Walt, Sally, Eric, and I are having dinner at Morningtown Pizza in Seattle’s University District. We left the Seattle Center when it began to rain heavily, just after dark. Sally’s parents decided not to come to the festival after all, but Walt has his parents’ car and we’re trying to decide whether to go to the Skunk Farm party or skip it and go straight to Sally’s house. The three of them are worried about getting a good night’s sleep before their set tomorrow morning. I have nothing to do in the next thirty-six hours but play as much music as I can.

“Sally, why don’t I drop you and Eric off at your parents’ and then Lucas and I can go to the party,” Walt says. “You can stay at my house tonight, Lucas.”

“Sure, if that’s easier.”

“Eric said you got the grounds crew job and you’re thinking about finding a house together,” Sally says to me.

“Yeah, I guess.” I look at Eric, and he shrugs. “I’m not sure I’m going to take the job, though.”

“Oh, of course you’re going to take it.” Sally says. “Sofía will be thrilled, won’t she?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, don’t be coy. I saw you last Sunday. You guys couldn’t get enough of each other.”

It had been Sofía’s first visit to the Sunday-night square dance. I thought we were discreet, but the rarity of a new face at the dance must have drawn attention, not to mention that we hung out at every break and left together without waiting for Walt and Sally, with whom I usually walk back to the dorms.

“Are you two dating?” Eric asks.

“Dating?” I say, laughing. “Do people actually ‘date’? What does that even mean?”

“Whatever you want it to mean, I guess,” Walt says.

“Well, then yeah, we are, uh, hanging out,” I say.

“Called it,” Sally says, winking at Walt.

I don’t know what’s going on with Sofía and me. We did sleep together both nights last weekend, and again on Wednesday and Thursday. It was nice, but a little awkward and dispassionate, like just something else we do together, more convenient than mind-blowing. Although having sex without a puzzling and chilly aftermath is a pleasant change. When spring quarter ends in two weeks, she’ll be moving back to Seattle, and I don’t know what that means for us. But whatever happens, I’m happy to have found a female friend I feel so comfortable with. And it feels good to be taking things so easy and so slow.

“This must be the room Jack was talking about. Hey Mike, nice session you got going here. It’s the talk of the party.”

“Amos, how are you? Do you know Lucas?”

It’s four in the morning, and I’m in a small upstairs bedroom at the Skunk Farm house, playing tunes with Mike Breedlove; Louie, the guitar player I met on Vashon Island; and a banjo player I’ve just met named Corinna. I extend my hand to Skunk Farms’ banjo player, whose twinkling eyes are bloodshot but who still sports the gentle smile I remember from the afternoon.

“Nice to meet you,” I say. “You guys sounded great this afternoon.”

“Thanks. Yeah, Folklife is a great hang. Welcome to Skunk House. Where are you from?”

“Uh, Southern California, I guess, but I’m going to school in Olympia.”

“He’s in a band with Walt,” Mike says.

“Oh, you guys are playing tomorrow, right? Or rather, today?” Amos laughs, acknowledging the late hour.

“No, that’s the Sea Slugs, a different band.”

“Groovy. Well, I’m going to turn in,” Amos says. “Stay as long as you want. You’re welcome here any time, and if you’re ever around town on a Thursday night, come sit in at the square dance. In fact, Mike, why don’t you get him to play with you and Louie when you do those two dances in August? You sound great together. You too, Corinna. You’ve got a tight little band right here.” The four of us smile shyly at each other.

“So, see you all tomorrow?”

“Most likely,” Mike says. “Hazel said that Lucas and I can crash in the attic.”

“I meant at Corinna’s party, but that’s cool,” Amos says. “I take it the party is still on at your house tomorrow night, Corinna?”

“Definitely,” she says.

“All right, good night.”

“Are you going to be in town?” Corinna asks me. “If so, you should come. Mike knows where I live, so does Walt— at the bottom of Queen Anne, not far from the Seattle Center.”

The room Mike and I have been allowed to crash in turns out to be a small attic with a couple of beds sandwiched between stacks of old records and books, a few rickety chairs, what looks like a pirate’s chest, and some unlabeled cardboard boxes. Hanging from the wall are two old banjos, each missing a string.

I let Mike take the single bed in the corner, while I’m on a mattress on the floor, next to a small window, from which I can see what will soon be a quarter moon. The smell of pot is either wafting up from a floor below or is baked into the mattress I’m lying on. It’s not much of a bed, but its stack of blankets keep me toasty in the chilly attic.

I explained my theory of the Afro-American origins of old-time music to Mike while we were getting ready for bed, but he was not impressed.

“Well, weirder things have turned out to be true. I guess you know what you’ll be doing next year, at any rate.”

“What do you mean?”

“Walt told me about this country music thing you guys are putting together at Evergreen next year. He tried to talk me into coming down. But I told him that unless it could help me get a teaching certificate, I would pass. My plan is to find a job teaching high school math in some college town and spend summers in the South, hunting down old fiddlers.”

“Is that what you’re doing this summer?”

“No, I have to make some money first. Although I intend to find a way to be at Galax the second week of August.”

Mike is asleep now, but the pot smell is keeping me awake. “Skunk” is right. I also don’t want this day to end. I seem to have become a member of the Pacific Northwest old-time music community in the space of a few hours simply by showing up. It’s a strange feeling to be accepted so unequivocally, like a long-lost cousin welcomed without reservation at the family reunion. It’s enervating but disorienting. I don’t trust it, for some reason. But the thought of spending the summer working and playing music, with no other real responsibilities—no school deadlines, no pressure (internal or external) to “figure out my life,” wondering what I’m “supposed to be doing”—is both exciting and calming.

When I told Walt that Eric and I were thinking of looking for a house on the Westside, he said he had a friend who needed to sublet his two-bedroom house for the summer. He also offered me the use of his bicycle, so I could get back and forth from the Westside to campus for the grounds crew job. I called my parents from a pay phone at the Seattle Center, and they were happy that I might have found someplace to land, especially since the job would pay for my summer in Olympia. My father also seemed relieved, admitting that he had neglected to enquire about a summer job for me at Long Beach State College like he promised.

It’s not any kind of life I envisioned when I boarded the northbound Greyhound eight months ago, but it feels right: spending my days outdoors in the Northwest woods I’ve come to love and my nights playing music with a new crew of friends, a girlfriend an hour away, the wounds of Long Beach a dim memory.

NEXT: Chapter 25: Coda: July 28 and 31

“Close enough. I heard they had a rehearsal the day after Ezra returned, and it was a disaster. Ezra and Sid want to totally change the vibe, get away from the country rock/Grateful Dead thing and more into primal thrash rock—like Iggy Pop, Velvet Underground, some band called Big Star,”

“I’ve never heard of any of them, but then I wouldn’t have, would I?”

“Probably not. The Velvet Underground is the only one I know. But you’ve heard ‘Walk on the Wild Side.’”

“That’s the Velvet Underground?”

“Well, Lou Reed. He was in the Velvet Underground.”

“Ezra and Sid want the band to sound like that? I hate that song.”

“Yeah, not my favorite. Anyway, Angelica said the rehearsal got so loud that Alma walked out; she couldn’t even hear herself sing.”

“What about Jenny? What does she say?”

“I haven’t talked to her, but I assume she felt the same way, because she quit, too. They’ve been doing all this jazzy stuff with Angelica, so Ezra and Sid’s new thing must have been a shock.”

“So now Lulu is singing with them?”

“How did you know?”

“I ran into her a couple days ago, and she told me about the gig tonight. She didn’t say anything about Alma and Jenny leaving the band, though.”

The waitress brings our dessert: chocolate cream pie for me, and apple pie à la mode for Sofía. The Brown Derby is quiet this afternoon—a lot of singletons at the counter and older couples apparently disinclined to engage in small talk. After our late lunch, we’ll walk up to the Westside to hear Angelica and her band open for the Fruit Stand Band at the DeLuxe. I haven’t talked to Jenny since our breakup a week ago, and I haven’t been to the DeLuxe since the December debacle, so I’m nervous about it, although I won’t have to worry about being underage. The DeLuxe has set up an outdoor stage in the empty lot behind the bar to cater to younger Evergreeners, and this is the first of their Under-Age Happy Hour shows: Saturday concerts starting at five in the afternoon.

Sofía and I have been hanging out a lot this week. Our attempt to play tunes from 84 Chorinhos Famosos last weekend was frustrating: she’s an expert sight-reader, so she sailed through the intricate melodies while I struggled to simply play the chord changes in time. We tried again on Thursday, and it was a little more successful, but without much recorded evidence of how choros are supposed to be played—what a rhythm guitar should do, for example—I felt out of my depth, bumbling and incompetent. After my ejection from Angelica’s band, I’m reluctant to spend more time with another style of music I can’t play.

Sofía, however, has become a welcome companion. Monday morning, she stopped by my dorm room to walk with me to book group, and after a couple of days of finding excuses to hang out together or accompany each other around campus, we’ve settled into an unspoken routine that begins when she comes by my room sometime in the morning and ends when I walk her back to her ASH apartment after dinner or an evening event, which this week included two movies and a reading by writer Kate Millet, as part of the Children of the Seventies gay culture festival. We often eat together. Meals at the dining hall are expensive if you’re not on the meal plan, but we’ve adopted a scheme in which Sofía pays for a salad, or a bowl of cereal at breakfast, and then helps herself to the food on my tray, which I happily overfill for her sake.

It’s a platonic relationship; there’s been no hint of any romantic interest from her, at least none that I can tell, but I’m happy with that. Not that she’s unattractive, but I’m still recovering from the breakup with Jenny, and Sofía either understands that or is not interested in me romantically. We talk about our lives before Evergreen and even a bit of politics: she was happy to hear my recounting of the Watergate affair, with commentary, since this has never been a topic of discussion among her college social circle or parents. And since we’ve seen many of the same movies in the last few years, we discuss those, too, though we don’t always agree (she finds Woody Allen annoying, for example).

We also like to make fun of what she calls “the greenery,” Evergreen’s various political and social dramas, which are tediously documented each week in the Cooper Point Journal. In the last few months, the Journal has become a forum for academic intrigue and upper-class outrage, with some exceptions. For example, we’ve just been reading a satirical article in the CPJ called “The Whole Dearth Catalogue,” a lampoon of next year’s guide to the Evergreen curriculum written by someone named Matt Groening, although I wonder if this is a pseudonym (“groaning”? “greening”?). There have been sporadic attempts at humor in the Journal before, but this is the first that is actually funny. It begins by juxtaposing a list of current Evergreen programs with next year’s “new-and-improved” versions. For example, American Music will evolve into How to Build a Dulcimer. There are also new programs such as A Year in the Dorms, in which “students will live, eat, and sleep in the Evergreen dormitories, studying the other inhabitants in an attempt to explain their peculiar lifestyles.” In the new program Rhythm, Recipes, and Revolution, students “will concentrate on Country Music of the Mid-Sixties, Organic Home Economics, and Left-Wing Political Science” and “will be expected to sell their stereos and send the money to Chilean revolutionaries.” My favorite line is, “there will be instruction on cowbells, hand-jive, and celery.” Walt, Sally, and Liam have been trying to get a group study program called Old-Time Country Music approved for next year, with Mr. Emerson as faculty adviser, and I wonder if Groening was privy to some behind-the-scenes curriculum planning.

“Do you know what you’re going to do next year?” Sofía asks.

“No, although Walt and Sally told me I’ll have a spot in the country music thing if it gets approved.”

“Is that what you want to do?”

“I don’t know. I could still play music with them even if I was in another program. It feels a little weird to pay to study old-time music. There I go sounding like my dad. Why, what are you’re thinking about?”

“I thought about Images of Women in Twentieth Century Art and Literature, but I saw the reading list, and the authors are all white, oddly, and not just women.”

“I was considering Two Cities of Destiny: Renaissance Florence and Elizabethan London. Immersing myself in history for a year seemed like it would be a nice change, but studying sixteenth-century England and Italy all year seems like some kind of regression in time, escapism, which might be good for me, or not, I don’t know. Is there anything else you’re interested in?”

“I’m thinking about the Xequiquel program.”

“That’s where you go to Guatemala for the year?”

“Not for a year, just spring quarter.”

“That’d be an adventure.”

“It would, and I’d like to improve my Spanish.”

“I thought you were fluent?”

“Not really. When we moved here, my parents insisted we speak English around the house as much as possible. I still remember a lot, but I don’t know if I could have a serious conversation in Spanish. I’ve thought about going to live in South America after I graduate, not Chile, although maybe eventually, but somewhere like Colombia or Peru, maybe teach music or English.”

“I don’t know anything about Guatemala. Is there any kind of musical or literary tradition there? What would you study, other than the language?”

“I think it would be more about history and culture. It starts with the Mayan civilization, and then, well, I’m not sure. One problem is that, for winter quarter, there’s a Spanish-language immersion thing where all the students live together. I like the immersion idea, but I want to have some say about who I’m living with. I had a bit of a disaster with my first-year roommates. It’s funny, the thought of living with strangers in Guatemala for a few months doesn’t bother me, but sharing a kitchen and bathroom with random ’greeners does.”

“I hear you. I’ve been talking to Eric about getting an ASH apartment next year. A friend of his from Eugene is transferring to Evergreen, and they’re looking for a third roommate. Anyway, I’m going to have to look at the catalog again. The only music program is Interplay: Music, Art, Theater, and Dance, which is supposedly designed for students ‘with an inclination toward experimental work.’ I don’t think that’s me anymore, if it ever was, at least not until I get better at non-experimental music.”

“I think you made the right choice.”

“What do you mean, what choice?” Angelica says. She’s just finished her set and we’re watching the Fruit Stand Band set up. Sofía has gone to get something to drink from the outdoor bar.

“Replacing me with Andrew. He locks right in with Gabe and Charlie, and putting Alma on electric piano, that’s a great sound.”

“That’s sweet of you to say. Who are you here with? Walt? Sally?”

“No, the Slugs had some kind of street-fair gig up in Seattle. I came with Sofía.”

“Nice. I like her. But don’t let Jenny see you. She’s had a bad day, a bad week, really.”

I follow Angelica’s gaze to the stage, where Jenny is talking to Ezra as he sets up his gear. She doesn’t look happy. Ezra appears oblivious to whatever she’s saying, leaning down to adjust his amp while she talks to his back.

“Why would Jenny care? She broke up with me. And nothing’s happening with Sofía and me anyway.”

“Maybe not, or maybe not yet. But Jenny won’t know that. And Ezra’s being a raging dick to her. He insisted she sing on a few songs tonight even though she quit the band. You know that, right?”

“You told me.”

“Right, well, he’s saying he wouldn’t have come back from Mexico if he’d known she was going to quit—typical male control-freak BS.”

“I assume he’s not pulling the same thing on Alma.”

“No, Alma wouldn’t stand for it. Besides, she probably saw it coming. Sid hasn’t been shy about what he’s into, and Alma knew he was in touch with Ezra. But I don’t think Jenny did, or she didn’t pay attention.”

“How would she know? He’s been in Mexico for the last four months.”

“He wrote her every week. He says she knew they wanted to change the sound of the band.”

“He wrote that often? She never mentioned it.”

“Well, she wouldn’t, would she? Hey Sofía, thanks for coming.” Sofía has returned with Cokes for the two of us.

“You were wonderful. Your voices are heavenly,” she says.

“Thanks.” Angelica looks back at the stage and says, “I should go rescue Jenny. Are you going to stay for the Fruits’ set?”

“I think so,” I say.

“Hey girlfriend,” Angelica says to Lulu, who has just walked up to us.

“What it is, sweetums. Way to go. You kids rocked.”

“Thanks, good luck and have fun,” Angelica says and then turns and walks toward the stage.

“I can’t wait to hear the new band,” I say to Lulu.

“Well, kiddo, I just hope we don’t suck. Or at least that we suck with passion, right?”

She leans over to Sofía and gives her a kiss on the lips. She appears to be quite high. Sofía seems taken aback, but doesn’t move away or say anything. Lulu laughs and skips away toward the stage, waving a conductor’s baton over her head. She’s wearing a black, sleeveless t-shirt with no bra underneath; a short, green-and-white cheerleader’s skirt; torn, black stockings that come up to the middle of her thigh; and her usual pink-and-green hightops. As she takes the stage, she flips her skirt up behind her, revealing that she’s not wearing underwear. Sofía looks at me, grinning, her eyes wide. We laugh and she collapses against me, her chest heaving against mine. A shriek of feedback from the stage propels her away from me and she backs right into Jenny.

“Oh, sorry.”

“That’s OK,” Jenny says. “So, what did you think?”

“The band is great,” I reply, realizing too late that Jenny may have been addressing Sofía. But neither seem to notice or care. “I like the new songs. And I’m glad you get to sing lead on a couple. It’s no longer just Angelica’s backup band.”

“Yeah, we’re thinking about a new name: Angelica’s Angels, or the Angel Band, or something. Anyway, I have to go get ready.”

She removes a ball of cotton from her pocket and pulls it apart, placing half of the ball in one ear and half in the other.

“What’s that for?” Sofía asks.

“My hearing. The band has gotten so loud. I had a horrible headache after our last rehearsal. This won’t help with the headache, but it might save my ears.”

“Wow,” Sofía says to me as Jenny walks away. “Do you think we’re ready for this?”

“We can always leave if we don’t like it.”

A discordant wheeze bursts from the speaker. I look at the stage and see Lulu seated in front of the electric piano that Alma had been playing in the first set. She has a full-size accordion in her arms and is opening and closing it with no discernible beat, moving her fingers slowly and randomly from key to key. As she does so, her elbows crash down onto the piano keyboard, which sounds like it’s hooked up to an overdriven guitar amplifier. Charlie’s arms whirl around his drum kit spasmodically, hitting as many things as he can in the shortest amount of time possible and then stopping abruptly, before resuming his percussive flailing seconds later. This continues for no more than a minute, but I wish I had asked Jenny if she had any more cotton balls. Lulu and Charlie cease the onslaught as if on cue and Sid begins playing a low, throbbing distorted bass drone. This could be a sign that a song is about to emerge, but it goes on for far too long. Lulu sheds her accordion and begins fiddling with some tubes attached to her wrists. As she struts to center stage, I see that she has attached a vocal microphone to each wrist. She yodels into one and growls into the other, then slams both into Charlie’s cymbals. The sound is excruciating, and I think of suggesting to Sofía that we leave before we permanently damage our hearing, but I doubt she would be able to hear me. Lulu leaps into the air and when she lands, the band launches into a conventional mid-tempo rock ’n’ roll groove. Ezra ambles to the middle of the stage, strumming the Starfire I had played in Angelica’s band, and starts singing.

The song sounds familiar. Sofía looks at me quizzically and mouths, “I know this.” Then suddenly the band stops, except for a pulse from the drums, and the title of the song is revealed by Ezra’s whispered chorus, harmonized by Lulu and Sid: “I Think We’re Alone Now.” After the chorus, the band kicks back in, Ezra, Sid, and Charlie venomously attacking their instruments. Ezra and Sid jump straight up and down in time, as if on a trampoline, while Lulu prowls the stage, howling like a bandsaw and banging her mics on whatever she can, the audience cheering with each brutal blast. At one point, she sticks a mic under her skirt and pretends to hump it, until a peal of feedback becomes unbearable, even for her.

The rest of the set proceeds in a similar manner, bursts of almost unendurable noise framing melodic pop songs, some of which are familiar, some not; a couple of memorable refrains emerge from the din: “when my baby’s beside me” and “you can’t hide behind your makeup.” The band regularly punctuates its basic, furious groove with quiet moments. During one of these interludes Jenny strums a ukulele into her vocal mic (in general, Jenny only appears onstage when she has to harmonize on a chorus), and during another, Lulu plays what sounds like a Bach Invention on the electric piano. By the end of the set, I have to admit that, except for the ringing in my ears that began about halfway through the set and the pain now nesting immediately above my left temple, I almost enjoyed it. Lulu, Ezra, Sid, and Charlie are all good musicians and many of the songs were catchy.

Sofía and I instinctively move toward the back of the crowd as soon as the audience begins chanting for an encore. Behind the makeshift bar and Porta Potties at the side of the stage there’s an empty field, sheltered from the noise by a stand of trees, and when we get to a place quiet enough to talk, Sofía says, “I can see why Jenny and Alma quit. That was weird.”

“I wish they would have played at a normal volume. I might have enjoyed it,” I say.

“You’re kidding? You liked that?”

“I wouldn’t say I liked it, but I might have if I hadn’t been in pain.”

“I’m sorry, I just can’t get past the volume, and the posturing, the robotic jumping around and Lulu’s whole schtick.”

“I guess I’d be bothered more by Lulu’s weird thing if it didn’t seem like exactly who she is.”

“I guess. Anyway, should we get going, or do you want to stay and talk to people?”

As Sofía says this, I see Jenny approach the bar. She’s carrying her ukulele and has put on her jacket, as if she’s on her way home. She must have been given a reprieve for the encore. I wave at her, she waves back, and after getting something to drink, walks over to us.

“Sorry you had to endure that,” she says, shaking her head.

“I would have liked it if it weren’t so loud,” I say.

“I don’t know how you can stand it,” Sofía says to Jenny. “Are you going to keep singing with them?”

Jenny looks at me for a second and then turns to Sofía. “I don’t know. Ezra wants me to. And yeah, like you, Lucas, I’d like it if it wasn’t for the volume. Plus, I’m not sure what to do when they’re all jumping around and Lulu is . . . doing whatever that is.”

Angelica appears from between the trees, trailed by Sandy.

“I don’t understand why Ezra insists you sing with them if you don’t want to,” I say. “They have three good singers.”

“Maybe Ezra likes Jenny’s singing,” Angelica says, joining us and raising her eyes at me in her old “I can’t believe you said that” fashion. “Or maybe he’s on a power trip.”

Nobody responds to this, but Sandy says to Sofía, “Hey, I know you. Haven’t seen you at any Gay Alliance meetings lately. How are you?”

“I’m good,” Sofía says, neglecting to elaborate, or look at me.

“Are you going to the party at Willowberry?” Sandy asks me, friendlier than I’ve ever seen her.

Angelica elbows her, but I say, “No, I need to get home. I’ve got a bunch of work to do. I got up late and we went to the Brown Derby for lunch, so I haven’t done anything productive today.”

“How about you?” Sandy says to Sofía. “You up for a party?”

“I should get home, too,” she says.

“Too bad, I was going to offer you two a ride,” Sandy says, her eyes still on Sofía.

“There’s no hurry to get to the party,” Angelica says. “We could give them a ride up to school and then head over to Willowberry.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” Sandy says.

“A ride would be great,” Sofía says. Jenny has been silent through this negotiation and now she gives me a wan smile. Sofía sees it.

“I’m in ASH, and you know where Lucas lives,” Sofía says, as if to dispel any notion that we might be a couple. Sandy heads off toward the parking lot, and after Angelica and Sofía say goodbye to Jenny, they follow. I linger momentarily, and Jenny touches my arm.

“It made me happy to see you here today. I know it can’t be easy. I’m glad to see you’ve got someone to hang out with, or . . . whatever.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it.”

I want to ask about Ezra: how she’s handling his return, if he’s harassing or pressuring her in any way, if they’re sleeping together. But I don’t. Instead, I say, “I should go. I wouldn’t put it past Sandy to drive off without me.”

Jenny laughs. “Yeah, go. I’ll see you around.” She leans over and kisses me on the cheek, then walks back toward the stage, where the sound crew is starting the teardown, a large crowd in front clustered around Lulu and Ezra.

“I didn’t know you were gay,” I whisper to Sofía.

“I’m not. Would it matter if I were?”

Sofía and I are in the back seat of Sandy’s car, the noise of which, along with Sandy and Angelica’s chatter in the front seat, masks our conversation.

“No, of course not. I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.”

Sofía is silent for a few minutes and then says, “I haven’t had much luck with men. In high school, I was . . . nerdy, I guess—shy, awkward—and people made fun of my accent. And puberty was not kind to me. When I got to Evergreen, I thought maybe I was . . . you know, that I liked women, but that maybe my upbringing kept me from realizing it, or admitting it. But it turned out I didn’t . . . like women . . . you know, that way.” She takes my hand, staring straight ahead, as Sandy turns onto the Parkway.

When we drop Sofía off at ASH, she says to me quietly, “See you at the square dance, if not before,” looking into my eyes as if expecting a response.

“Good night,” I say, as she closes the car door.

Sandy and Angelica have been discussing the concert for most of the trip, dissecting its implications and possibilities, most of which I’ve tuned out, but as Sandy pulls into the dorm drop-off circle, I hear Angelica say, “Oh, yeah, they’re definitely fucking.” I don’t ask who she’s referring to, afraid that she’s talking about Jenny and Ezra, or maybe me and Sofía.

“Thanks for the ride,” I say as I get out of the car. “Enjoy the party.”

My dorm room is quiet; I’m the only one here. There isn’t really any work I need to do, but there’s no way I was going to the Willowberry party. I should practice; I haven’t played the guitar or fiddle at all today. But instead, I pick up the Dostoevsky book I’m reading, The Idiot. After ten minutes, I realize I haven’t retained anything I’ve read. The latest Cooper Point Journal is lying on the coffee table, so I pick it up and leaf through it. It includes a detailed schedule for the gay festival. Tonight, there’s a gay puppet theater and a concert by Lavender Power, a lesbian rock band. I page to the back to see what else is going on and see that the ASH coffeehouse is showing Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run in half an hour.

There’s a quiet knock on the door. I wonder who this could be. Most of my friends are otherwise occupied, but I open it to find Sofía, smiling.

“Oh, good, I was hoping you’d be here,” she says. “Do you want to go see the Saturday night movie?”

“I thought you didn’t like Woody Allen?”

“Actually, I didn’t even look to see what was playing, but I’d watch anything.”

“Do we have time to make popcorn?”

“Sure,” she says, closing the door behind her. “Oh, and um . . . My roommates won’t be home tonight. If you wanted, you could, uh, I don’t know . . . bring a toothbrush?”

NEXT: Chapter 24: May 25: Folklife

Last night, we went to the ASH coffeehouse to see the Sea Slugs, which are now a trio, with Tracy and Walt sharing guitar duties. I haven’t seen Tracy much in the last few months. He rarely comes to square dances, and our few encounters have been . . . well, terse. He’s one of those guys who takes no pains to be sociable with people he has no interest in, an affliction I’m not immune from, though I can’t match Tracy’s solipsism. It felt good to make an appearance with Jenny, to show our support for our friends, and to confirm our coupledom. Although I would learn later that this was not Jenny’s intent.

Ezra returns today. Alma and Jenny are driving to SeaTac this afternoon to pick him up. So, I was happy to have Jenny on my arm last night. But after leaving the coffeehouse around eleven, walking back to Willowberry in a gentle rain—splashes of stars making sporadic appearances through rents in the cloud cover—and a hot, reviving shower, the night neared peaceful completion with Jenny and I comfortably in bed.

Until she said she thought we should stop seeing each other.

Her timing was confusing. We had just taken a long shower together, soaping each other playfully, with no attempt at sex. It felt like a fitting end to a pleasant evening spent together as a couple, as friends, chatting easily, with plenty of affectionate touches and embraces; Jenny likes to lean into me as we walk, trying to match her gait to my long strides, and the long walk from ASH to Willowberry gave her plenty of opportunity.

So, I was taken aback when, as we lay together, half-naked, she turned to me and said, “I don’t think I can do this anymore.” My first reaction was to wonder what “this” referred to, but her downcast eyes answered my unvoiced, naive question. I pressed her for a reason, asking if it had anything to do with Ezra’s return. She said that it didn’t, but she wouldn’t tell me why she was breaking up with me. I should have been angry, but instead I felt a deep sadness and a bit of relief. We’ve been spending the night together regularly, but without attempting sex since the unfortunate night after the square dance a month ago. I’ve been reluctant to instigate anything that might result in tears and an awkward silence, happy to make do with fond caresses and the feel of her naked body against mine as we spoon ourselves to sleep. But I knew that this couldn’t last.

When another uneasy silence followed her refusal to give me a reason for the breakup, I suggested that I leave, but she said she wanted me to stay, that she wanted to cook me breakfast in the morning. I had no desire for a long, late-night walk back to the dorms in the rain, so I agreed, feeling more confused and forlorn than on those nights when our attempts to “make the beast with two backs” had ended in tears.

The sun is out, light streaming through the kitchen’s east-facing windows, and the house is quiet. It’s Saturday, and Jenny’s housemates are sleeping in, though I expect the smell of pancakes and coffee will draw someone from their bed. But I’m glad we’re alone for now.

As Jenny puts a plate of steaming pancakes in front of me, I say, “I have to ask. Are you still sure you want this to end?”

“Yeah, I am. I’m sorry. I feel like I’ve misled you somehow, but . . . I really care about you, you know.”

“Yeah, I do, I think. But you still can’t tell me why you want to break up?”

“No.”

“The way you say that makes me think that you know why, but you don’t want to tell me, or you can’t bring yourself to tell me. That you know it will hurt me. And that makes me like you even more.”

“Aw, sweetie. The thing is, I’m not exactly sure, so I don’t want to say anything I might regret. You know, something that might turn out not to be true. Does that make sense? Do you ever just have a gut feeling about something you can’t explain, but you just know is true?”

“I suppose, yeah.”

“That’s how I feel. I don’t want to put into words something that might hurt you and that might not be true.”

“OK. The timing just seems weird. Like, why would you say that while we’re in bed and have just had what I thought was a pretty great time together?”

“I know, that wasn’t nice. But I didn’t plan it this way. I just . . . I just had to be honest. And as long as I’m being honest, I have to say one other thing that I know but that I can’t explain: I love you, Lucas.”

“What?”

“I love you.”

We sit in silence for a few minutes. She takes my hand. I try not to cry, and Jenny appears to be doing the same, but I can’t watch her cry or I’ll lose it. I lower my head, staring at my plate, blueberries scattered like oases in the pale desert of the pancake. Soft footsteps sound above our heads. I look up at Jenny and say, “I love you, too.”

We continue looking at each other, as if waiting to wake from a cruel dream, until we hear the door at the bottom of the stairs open and close. I drop Jenny’s hand and reach for the pitcher of blackberry syrup.

Youngstown, Ohio, 1972

I haven’t seen her for four years. I hope I recognize her.

The Youngstown airport is smaller than the Long Beach airport. I had to stop in Chicago on the way, so I spent a couple of days with my grandma and cousins in Oak Park. The last time I was there, the protests at the Democratic Convention kept us from doing anything in the city, but this time my uncle took me and my cousins to see the Cubs at Wrigley Field. He was impressed that I knew how to keep score, which I learned from my other grandmother at Dodgers games.

I don’t know how it is that I can not see my mother for four years, not since I was thirteen. But she doesn’t fly anymore, or won’t. I don’t know why.

I’m going to spend a month with her and her family. The last time I was there, my half-brother Martin was only five. I wonder what he’ll be like now. Apparently he’s into sports—basketball, football.

Mom says there’s a kid my age across the street who’s interested in meeting me. He seems to think that California is full of hippies and freaks and beach bunnies. I don’t know what he’s expecting, but I’m afraid I’ll be a disappointment. At least my hair is long. Mom says he likes to ride bikes, and that there’s an extra bike I can use that belongs to his older brother, who is in Vietnam. There’s also a county fair with rides and games and cotton candy. We’re going tomorrow.

I’ll be a senior in high school in the fall. I’m pretty fed up with it. I had a hard time picking any classes for next year. I’ve done all my college requirements, so it’ll all be electives, but nothing looked appealing. I liked my AP American History class this year, but there was nothing comparable next fall. During spring vacation I told my parents that I wanted to drop out of school, but they freaked out, so I said I’d reconsider. Then Mom heard about this alternative-school program at Poly, so I’ll be doing that, taking the bus after PE in the morning. I don’t know who else from Millikan will be going, but I’m ready for a change of scene.

My two best friends at Millikan, Eddie and Ron, are into different things now. I got into working for McGovern this spring, before the California primary in June, but I couldn’t get either of them to join me. And they’re into music I don’t really like, bands like Yes; Emerson, Lake, and Palmer; and Zeppelin. They went with me to the Jethro Tull concert at the Forum last month, where Tull played the entire Thick as a Brick album. An English band called Head, Hands, and Feet opened the show and they had an amazing guitarist, better than Clapton, but my friends thought they were boring and that Tull was silly. I told them I thought that was part of the point of Thick as a Brick, but they didn’t agree.

There she is, waving, smiling. I recognize her immediately.

“Lucas, it’s so great to see you! How was your flight? Are you hungry? We can stop for ice cream on the way if you want. It’s about an hour drive. And we’ll pick up pizza for dinner. Martin can’t wait to see you. Oh, I’m so glad to have you here.”

“Can I join you?”

“Of course.”

“I thought you might be here. Beautiful day, huh?”

“Certainly is,” I say to Sofía, my response a little too glum.

I’m surprised to see her in the cafeteria for lunch, although I know she sometimes eats a meal here when she’s run out of food and doesn’t have a way to get into town.

“How are you?” she asks, putting her tray, which holds a large salad and a cup of coffee, down opposite me at the small table.

“I’ve been better.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I . . .”—I might as well tell her—“Jenny broke up with me last night.”

“Ugh, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, it’s . . . it was unexpected, although maybe I should have seen it coming. Ezra gets back from Mexico today, but she says that didn’t have anything to do with it. But she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell me why she wanted to break up. She’s been insisting that she doesn’t want to be with him, but they will be living in the same house now, and playing in a band together.”

“Maybe she just doesn’t like confrontation. I know I don’t. Maybe she feels like it would be easier for her not to be with anyone right now.”

“I suppose. At any rate, it’s a drag to feel so sad on such a beautiful day. I walked back from Willowberry this morning, and now I know why people put up with the weather here. Everything was so crisp and sparkling. The time went by so fast, I hardly minded the long walk. But you probably know that feeling, right? You’re from . . . Seattle?”

“For the last ten years or so, yeah.”

“And before that, Chile?”

“Yeah. I was born there. In Valparaiso.”

“How did you end up at Evergreen?”

“I often wonder that myself. Politically and socially, it feels strange here. My family’s pretty conservative, good Catholics and all that, and not very political at all. It would have made more sense to go to the U Dub, but then I probably would have had to live at home, and I needed to get out of there. I still don’t know exactly what I’m doing here, or what I’m going to do after college. Music is fun, but I don’t think there’s any future in it for me.”

“No?”

“Not really. How many professional clarinetists can you name?”

“Good point.”

“Anyway, it does feel comfortable here. The feminism thing is so strong. I don’t like a lot of the politics around it, but I like that people don’t question me here—you know, wonder why a woman would want to do something ‘a man is supposed to do.’”

“Do you get that from your family? When you were growing up?”

“Definitely. My parents just want me to find a nice, rich husband, so they weren’t too happy when I told them I wanted to go to Evergreen. Not many doctors and lawyers come out of ‘the hippie school,’ right?” I think the only reason they let me come here was they figured I wouldn’t last. My freshman year, they were still talking about going back to Chile.”

“But not anymore?”

“No, no, of course not. They’re conservative people, but they aren’t happy about what’s going on down there now. One of my cousins disappeared right after the coup, so my parents will probably wait to go back until things have settled down, if they ever do.”

Sofía’s hand is resting on a music book of some sort. It has a colorful, crudely drawn cover, and the title is in Spanish, I assume: 84 Chorinhos Famosos.

“What’s that book?”

“Actually, that’s why I was looking for you.”

“Really? You were looking for me?”

“I was. It’s a book of Brazilian choros. Mauro picked it up for me in Buenos Aires. It’s older Brazilian music, before bossa nova, from the 1930s and ’40s, I think. It was the dance band music of the time, although I don’t know much about it. I think a lot of the music was written for flute or saxophone. Mauro also gave me a record of an Argentinian guitarist named Oscar Alemán, and one of the tunes in the book is on it: ‘Tico-Tico No Fubá.’ It’s fast and syncopated, and it reminded me of the fiddle tunes you play, but with almost a ragtime feel. Here, let me find it.”

She flips through a few pages and then hands the book to me.

“I was thinking it might be fun to play some of these with clarinet and guitar.”

The page is packed with sixteenth notes and a lot of syncopation—sixteenth notes tied across the beat. I’m not a good enough sight-reader to hear the melody in my head exactly, but it looks intriguing.

“I don’t see any chords.”

“Let me see.”

“Oh, yeah, there are a few pages like this. See, it says MI7 and here, LAm. I think LAm means la minor. You know, as in do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do?”

“So la minor would be the relative minor of the key, which is C, so A minor.”

“Yeah, and MI7 would be E7, I guess. But they’re not all like that. Most of the tunes have standard chord symbols.”

“What’s the rhythm like? There’s nothing about how you’d accompany them.”

“The Oscar Alemán record might give you some ideas.”

“I’d like to hear it. These look difficult. It would take me awhile to learn any of them. I can read, but I don’t sight-read that well, especially on guitar. Oh, wait, you probably just want me to play rhythm?”

“You could play the melodies if you want. I don’t have any firm idea beyond just trying to play through a few.”

“I’m game. And I’m curious to hear that record.”

“What are you doing now?”

“Now? Nothing. It’s too early to find a place to cry in my beer.”

“You’re funny. I’m sorry, I’m being insensitive. Maybe you just want to be alone.”

“No, that’s OK. I spend plenty of time alone.”

“Do you want to come to my apartment?”

“In ASH?”

“Yeah, we could stop and get your guitar on the way.”

Sofía’s roommates are home when we arrive, but they appear to be on their way out. She introduces me and asks if they mind if we listen to some music.

“Of course not, girlfriend, but I figured you’d want to host this fine young dude alone in your room.”

“Teri, please.”

“That’s OK,” says Charlene, the other roommate. “We’re leaving. Brian and Max are taking us kayaking. You’ll have the place to yourself, until dinner at least. Even longer, if we can get them to buy us dinner somewhere.”

“Maybe we’ll see you later?” Teri says to me.

“Maybe so. Have fun. It’s a beautiful day out there.”

“Kinda beautiful in here at the moment,” Teri says, winking at Sofía as she puts on her jacket.

Sofía rolls her eyes and then walks across the room, pulling a record from a stack of discs next to the turntable that sits atop a low bookcase.

“They seem nice,” I say, as the door closes.

“They find a way to tease me any chance they get, but yeah, they’re harmless.”

She puts the Oscar Alemán record on the turntable and hands me the jacket. On the cover, a dark-skinned man with a thin mustache and slicked-back hair, wearing a white suit with a black bow tie, is playing an odd-looking acoustic guitar. It’s a black-and-white photo and resembles photos of old movie stars from the 1930s and ’40s.

“Here’s the one I mentioned, ‘Tico-Tico No Fubá,’” Sofía says. The recording is scratchy and muted, sounding even older than it probably is, considering that the copyright date on the music is 1941. Alemán is a virtuosic guitarist, but his tone is not to my liking, almost as if his guitar is made of plastic. He takes the lead for most of the song, a piano playing sparsely and quietly behind him, along with two or three percussion instruments that create a simple but propulsive, syncopated groove. The melody does sound like some fiddle rags I’ve heard, but much more syncopated. The tune ends with wild, virtuosic triplets and a few percussive effects.

“What do you think?” Sofía says.

“It’s cool. Are there more like it?”

“Most of the record is jazz, or swing, but there’s another one like that called ‘Apanhei Te Cavaquinho.’ Unfortunately, it’s not in the book, but I’ll play it for you.”

It has the same rhythm and long sixteenth-note lines, but the melody isn’t as compelling as “Tico-Tico No Fubá.” The guitar now sounds to me like a nylon-string guitar, but played aggressively, probably with a pick. All the song titles on the record are in Spanish, or maybe Portuguese. Sofía lets the record run as she goes into the kitchen and I realize that the song called “Cielos Azules” on the record jacket is the jazz standard “Blue Skies.”

“I like this,” I say, as Sofía returns with two glasses of water. “Have you played through any of the tunes in the book?”

“I’ve read through some, but they’re kind of relentless, with barely any rests at all. Which makes me wonder if they were really written for wind instruments. But this one, ‘Ingênuo,’ has more space, and the melody starts with the same basic rhythm the band is playing on ‘Tico-Tico No Fubá.’”

“Let’s see what it sounds like if I play that rhythm with the chords.”

The chord changes are wild and change almost every measure, moving rapidly through a circle-of-fifths progression and chromatically descending dominant chords. I have trouble keeping up with Sofía, so I suggest we take it section by section. We sit close so we can both see the music, which Sofía has put on a music stand. I have to lean in to decipher the chords, and we occasionally bump arms. After a few awkward collisions, we stop and smile at each other.

“If we’re going to do more of this, I’ll have to write out the chords, so we can both see the music,” I say. “Or memorize them.”

“Unless you want to try playing the melody.”

“That would be a challenge, but it’d be good for me. I’ve only been playing old-time music since Angelica fired me. It’d be good to try something new.”

“Great. Let’s try ‘Tico-Tico.’”

NEXT: Chapter 23: May 18: DeLuxe Gig

“I started to, but I couldn’t remember whether Lucas and Eric are playing two guitar duets or one.”

“I thought it was two, right guys?” Walt asks us.

“Yes, two, if we have time to run over ‘Alabama Jubilee’ before noon,” I say, as I wash my hands in Walt’s kitchen sink, trying to remove the sticky traces of Maura’s blueberry pancakes, slathered in maple syrup, a delicious but not ideal meal before a gig.

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Eric says. “When do we need to be up at school? 11:30?”

This isn’t so much a last-minute rehearsal as a warm-up before our noon concert in the Library, a gig that Walt snagged when the band slated for today’s concert suddenly broke up. Forced to find a band name quickly, we went with Eric’s first suggestion, inspired by the reason the other band gave for the cancellation: Reconcilable Differences.

Sally and Walt have finished breakfast and are playing “Tucker’s Barn,” the quirky fiddle tune we’ve decided will open the concert. My hands are tender and raw from the nearly scalding dish water, but I pick up my fiddle and join Sally on the raggy, eccentric melody. Eric completes the quartet on guitar, still chewing on a piece of homemade toast.

“I think we’ve got that one down,” Walt says when we finish. “Let’s run the set.”

“I haven’t written it out yet,” Sally says. “I was hoping you’d tell me what you think first.”

We spend five or ten minutes finalizing the running order for the twelve tunes and songs on Sally’s list. I play guitar on half of them, including the two duets with Eric, and fiddle on the rest. Sally picks up the banjo-uke for two of the old-time songs that Walt is singing—“I Ain’t Gonna Work Tomorrow” and “Raleigh and Spencer”—as well as the fiddle tune “Sandy River Belle.” She’s also singing two old-time country duets with Eric: “Beautiful, Beautiful Brown Eyes” and “Short Life of Trouble,” for which Eric switches to mandolin. Eric and Sally are not particularly strong singers, but their voices blend nicely on these sweet, sentimental songs, which Sally learned from a reissue of some 1930s recordings by the Blue Sky Boys that she found at a Seattle record store on winter break. Walt is also singing Charlie Poole’s version of the old blues song “Frankie and Johnny” and the uptempo murder ballad “Poor Ellen Smith.”

The guitar duets are short, mostly showcases for Eric’s virtuosity, although I play a solo on each. His arrangement of “Alabama Jubilee” is based on Clarence White’s, and I play a version of Clarence’s most straightforward break. The other duet is “Say, Old Man” a four-part, minor-key fiddle tune that Eric has been working up for a guitar contest in Seattle next month. Our arrangements are the same for both: Eric kicks off the tune, I follow with a solo based on the melody, and Eric finishes with two breaks, the final a repeat of the melody. The only other song with two guitars is “River Blues,” a novelty swing ditty sung by Eric, on which I play a short bluesy solo I came up with a few weeks ago. The set ends with a rollicking two-fiddle version of one of our favorite square dance tunes: “Mississippi Sawyer.”

We manage to run through everything before we have to leave, and I feel good about everything except “Alabama Jubilee,” which Eric wants to play much faster than I can manage. It’s not an unusual tempo for the tune, according to Eric, and a fair amount slower than Clarence White’s recording, so I can’t legitimately suggest he kick it off any slower. I hope I can find a few minutes to practice it again when we get up to the Library.

Though I’ve only been playing fiddle for a few months, the repetition of playing tunes over and over at the weekly square dances, with a full band keeping me in line, has made me more comfortable on the fiddle than the guitar, especially when I have to play anything other than rhythm. Compared to Eric, who’s much more accomplished and confident, my solo attempts feel like trying to cross a rickety suspension bridge above a deep ravine while people watch impatiently from the opposite side. As fiddler, when I’m playing a simple song melody or a tune I’ve played numerous times at the square dances, the banjo, guitar, and banjo-uke give me a comfy musical bed to relax on. Playing double fiddle with Sally is even less taxing, like having an understudy ready to jump in at any time, or a prompter ready to whisper the next line in my ear.

“I’ve never heard you play fiddle,” Angelica says, as I step down off the stage in the Library lobby. “When did you start doing that?”

“During Christmas break.”

“You’re kidding. That’s all?”

“I played cello in junior high, so the whole bowing thing isn’t totally foreign.”

“Well, you sound fantastic. Hey Sally, I love your singing with Eric.”

Angelica wanders off to talk to Sally, and I look out into the audience, spying Jenny next to Alma in the front row. They seem to be arguing.

“You should play fiddle more often,” Sofía says, appearing at my side as if from nowhere, my blinkered gaze obscuring everything but Jenny.

“Thanks. That’s mostly what I’ve been doing lately. You could probably tell.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, just that my guitar playing sucked.”

I had gotten through “Say, Old Man” without mistakes, but I choked on “Alabama Jubilee,” which Eric kicked off even faster than in rehearsal, and when it came time to play “River Blues” I was so nervous that I barely made it through what should have been an easy solo.

“You could have fooled me.”

“Thanks. Hey, you had your conference with Mr. Coleman yesterday, right? How did that go? I’m meeting with him this afternoon.”

“It was good. We just talked, no big deal.”

“Do you have a subject for your term paper yet?”

“Of course.”

“That’s the thing, I don’t. What are you doing?”

“I’m writing about George Gershwin and Benny Goodman, the intersection of jazz and classical music.”

“Nice. Mr. Coleman liked that idea?”

“Yeah. I showed him an outline and a couple rough pages I wrote. I played ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ in high school, so I’m familiar with the music, and I found a couple Benny Goodman records in the library I can write about.”

“Wow, you’re way ahead of me. I have no idea what to do.”

“Don’t worry about it. Mr. Coleman will help you figure it out. And it’s not like we get letter grades or anything. As long as you hand in something, you’ll be fine.”

“Thanks. Hey, are you . . .”

“What?”

“Uh, nothing, I don’t know.”

I like Sofía, and the feeling appears to be mutual, but I can never think of any excuse for us to hang out that might not be misconstrued as a date. I’m hoping something will eventually suggest itself.

“Hey Sofía, they were great, weren’t they?” Angelica has returned.

“Yeah, absolutely.”

“What are you doing this afternoon?” Angelica asks me. Sofía smiles at me in farewell, ceding my attention to Angelica.

“I’ve got a meeting with Mr. Coleman at two. Why?”

“I was wondering if I could have a guitar lesson today instead of tomorrow?”

“I think so. How’s four? I should be done by then. But I don’t know if there will be any practice rooms open.”

“How about I come by your dorm room?”

“Sure. I think Eddie’s off somewhere. I heard him leave early this morning and it sounded like he was dragging a bunch of camping gear.”

“Great, see you then.”

I’m glad to see that Angelica has returned to her old self, almost as she was before Dawn’s disappearance. It’s been six weeks, and there’s still been no word, or even guesses as to what could have happened to her. I’ve long since stopped asking Angelica about it. She’s been a little more vocal in book group lately, although her wry wit seems to have vanished along with Dawn. But that’s about the only time I see her. She’s been more likely to cancel her Thursday afternoon guitar lesson than not, and there have been no band rehearsals since our Library gig, although this may be because she’s busy working up new material with Alma and Jenny.

The thought of Jenny compels me to turn back toward the audience, but neither she nor Alma are in their seats, and a nervous scan of the lobby indicates that Jenny has left without saying anything to me.

“You know, Lucas, old-time music, bluegrass, all that, may have come from poor and working-class whites in the South, who yeah, would have been slave patrollers, overseers, etc., in antebellum times. But most Americans in the first half of this century were not exactly friends of the black man. There’s a lot of problematic music from that time.”

I’ve been talking with Mr. Coleman for almost a half hour, mostly about how I’m feeling stretched in too many musical directions. When he asked me which of my bands I enjoyed most—Angelica’s band, Reconcilable Differences, the weird trio with Lulu and Sofía, the Sunday night square dance band—I told him that playing with Walt, Sally, and Eric is the most comfortable and inspiring, but that I still have questions about playing old-time music, given its origins.

“Have you ever heard Louis Armstrong’s recording of ‘Darling Nellie Gray’?” he asks.

“Really? You’re kidding?”

“No, from the late 1930s, with the Mills Brothers, as I recall.”

“I guess I can see that, since it’s sung from the point of view of a slave who’s lost his partner.”

“That could excuse it, but Armstrong also recorded ‘Old Folks at Home,’ a Stephen Foster song in which the singer longs ‘for the old plantation.’”

“Wow! Why would he do that?”

“It’s controversial now, but it was a different time back then. Black musicians had to sing and play whatever the record companies wanted, and, of course, they were all run by white men. Armstrong could excuse it on the grounds that he was expressing a longing for the place he was born, the South, even if he had to swallow his pride to mouth the racist lyrics.”

“But that was forty years ago. I know there’s still a lot of racism in this country, and in the music business, I’m sure. But that would never happen now. And I don’t see how that helps me figure out how to deal with music that comes from racists.”

“Well, I’m not saying you give a pass to racist sentiments because they’re from a time when racism was common—that’s not what I meant by bringing up Armstrong. And I wouldn’t say this to every student, but, because we live in a racist society, everybody, certainly every white person, is racist to some degree, or benefits from racism. You are a white man born into a racist society in which you are a member of the dominant, privileged class. And you have to figure out what that means, and what, if anything, you’re going to do about it. In your case, as a musician interested in music that originated in much more blatantly racist times, does that mean just not singing racist songs, even if the racism is subtle, or going further and deciding not to play music born in the heart of white supremacy? Does it mean acknowledging the origins of the music, but trying to make it your own in some way, potentially transcending or illuminating its racist origins? I don’t know. Is such a thing possible? I don’t know. Those are hard questions, questions you’ll either decide to face or not. I’m guessing that few old-time and bluegrass musicians ever think about this. But you have, which puts you in the minority. You may not get much help from your fellow musicians. Have you talked to Walt and Sally about this, other than your objection to ‘Darling Nellie Gray’?”

“No. It hasn’t come up.”

“And you haven’t brought it up. Look, all art is based in culture, because art is a reflection of human experience, and no human can escape the culture they’re a part of. While you can’t choose the culture you’re born into, you can, to some extent, in this country at least, choose the culture you want to be part of as an adult. Not entirely, of course. But . . . I’m sorry, I don’t mean this to be a polemic.”

“No, no, I appreciate it, and you’re right. That’s one thing I’m trying to do: figure out what musical culture I want to be a part of. But I wonder . . .”

“What?”

“I was thinking about what you said about record companies getting Armstrong to record those racist songs. It’s weird to me that a record company would want him to sing folk songs. Maybe there was more crossover between those worlds than we realize.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure. But I’m wondering where ‘Darling Nelly Gray’ comes from. Was it an old popular song, or minstrel song, or something like that? I don’t know, but I should find out. Anyway, it also made me think about the control record companies had over the music that got heard. If they could get a popular black musician to record racist songs, they might also ignore music that didn’t fit their stereotypes of what white music was and what black music was. Country Music USA says that early country music was influenced by black music. But, for them to be influenced by it, white musicians must have heard black music that was something like what they were playing, or they wouldn’t have paid any attention to it. So, there must have been black string bands—black fiddlers and banjo players. Maybe they weren’t recorded for some reason. Maybe the record companies didn’t think there was a market for black string-band music, black country music? Or maybe they only recorded black string-band musicians if they were playing blues or jazz.”

“That’s a good question. Would you want to write about that?”

“Maybe.”

“It would depend on what you could find out, of course. Maybe you could try to find something about how early record companies determined what did and didn’t get recorded and promoted. It might have been a financial decision. If there were early black string bands, they might have been recorded, but if the records didn’t sell, the record companies would have stopped making those kinds of records, and we wouldn’t have heard much about them.”

“It’d be interesting to look into.”

“You’d have to do some digging.”

“What if I don’t find anything? What would I write about then?”

“You could write about what inspired your search: the experience of being a white anti-racist in a band singing songs with racist origins. You know, the only person likely to read your paper is me. And obviously I’m not looking for some kind of publishable or definitive article. The important thing is that you try to find out about things that interest you, that inspire you to get deeper into the music. Whether you find anything worth writing about or not is almost beside the point. You’re trying to find your place in music, even determine if there is a place for you. Just keep that in mind, because, for you, it may be a lifelong activity.”

Gonna blue my eyes

Champagne your lies

Put pepper in my stockings

Vaseline my face

When winter comes a calling

It’s the same damn place

I know, you know, she knows

I know, she knows, you know

We’ve spent the last fifteen minutes of Angelica’s lesson working on a guitar part for a new song she’s written, a simple pop song I’m guessing is about Dawn. But the guitar part she came up with is complete as is, and I only made a couple suggestions about her technique.

“That sounds good just like that. Is there anything else you want to work on?”

“Actually, I kind of just want to talk.”

“OK.”

“I’ll be blunt. I think I need to find another guitar player for the band.”

“Uh . . .” This takes me by surprise, but in a way it feels like a sort of reverse déjà vu, like I unconsciously knew this was coming, but the possibility hadn’t yet burbled up from my subconscious, passing beyond shadows to reality.

“I assume you don’t mean an additional guitar player?”

“No.”

“So, you’re firing me?”

“To be brutal, yeah. I don’t know, Lucas, you just don’t seem like you’re into the music. Listening to you play the fiddle today made sense. It’s obvious that’s where your head is at.”

“Oh, come on. Don’t pull that ‘you just don’t seem that into me’ thing. You’re not that cliché,” I say with a grin, but without looking at her.

“But it’s true, isn’t it?”

“I suppose, yeah. I’m sorry. I never spent enough time working on your music, and I couldn’t keep up. That dismal gig proved it.”

“Look, this is difficult for me. I’ve been avoiding talking to you about it. Gabe said I should have kicked you out of the band a while ago. But . . . I lost Dawn and . . . and I don’t want to lose you, too.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“OK, maybe not, but . . . fuck, just don’t be mad at me about it, alright?”

“OK.”

“Honest?”

“Yeah. I don’t know. It’s kind of a relief. If you’d come to me today and said we had a gig this weekend, or something, I’d have freaked out.”

“Good. I mean, not good, but . . . Actually, I do have a gig, at the Deluxe, opening for the Fruits when Ezra returns.”

“Fuck!”

“Oh, sorry. Not a good time, huh?”

“Not the best, no.”

“How’s that all going, with Jenny?”

“You honestly want to know? You haven’t asked and it’s been almost two months.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve been . . . you know.”

“Yeah, I don’t mean to get on your case. I just thought it was weird that you never asked me about Jenny. It seemed like something you’d be curious about. Do you talk to Jenny about us?”

“Uh . . .”

“I’m sorry, you don’t have to tell me. I probably don’t want to know what she says about me. Or maybe I do. I would love to know why we can’t seem to ‘consummate the relationship.’”

“What do you mean?”

“She hasn’t told you about that? That’s good, I guess. Anyway, every time we’ve tried to, what’s the technical term—‘have intercourse’?—she’s either feigned exhaustion or started crying.”

“No, she didn’t tell me. I’m sorry, honey. What do you think the problem is?”

“I don’t know. Last time she said it was something her mom said . . . about me, or her. She accused Jenny of cheating on Ezra with me, and some other things I shouldn’t repeat. Jenny told her mom she and Ezra are done, but . . .”

“That’s what Jenny said? That she and Ezra are history?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t say, but that’s not the impression I get.”

“Why, what has she said?”

“Nothing specific, I just get this feeling she doesn’t want to be tied to anything right now, not with music, not with school, not with . . . men. But she doesn’t really want to exclude anything either.”

“So, you’re saying that what you told me way back in November is right . . . again. You were right about Emily, and you were right when you said I shouldn’t be thinking about ‘relationships.’”

“‘I told you so’ is such a fucking awful thing to say.”

“But so appropriate.”

“Look, I may be wrong. I know Jenny digs you. She thinks you’re cute as hell, but . . . I think she still feels the same about Ezra, and she may still feel something for Tracy, too, although Tracy has the added turn-off of being a macho prick, which you don’t.”

“Thank God for small favors. So, who are you going to get to play guitar?”

“Andrew said he’d be into it.”

“Makes sense. He sounded good with you three at the . . . ”—I almost say ‘jazz concert’ but I catch myself, realizing those words could ignite emotions I would prefer to steer clear of—“ . . . at the rehearsal I heard.”

“Glad you approve.”

“You know, I tried. I listened to this James Brown record Gabe gave me—a lot. And I get it. But listening isn’t the same as playing, and it didn’t make much difference. It just made me more aware of how off I was.”

“Which wouldn’t help.”

“No.”

“It’s OK, babe. You’ll figure it out. Maybe this fiddle stuff will be your thing. You sound like a natural to me.”

NEXT: Chapter 22: May 7: Breakup

“What about it?”

“That story about the student who was raped?”

“Shit, where?”

“On campus, last Sunday. She was hitchhiking out on Mud Bay Road and this guy picked her up, took her to some place in the woods near school.”

“That’s horrible,” Sally says.

“The campus police caught the guy in the ASH parking lot later that night.”

“Maybe we should reconsider hitchhiking so much.”

“Well, don’t hitch alone,” Walt says. “That goes without saying.”

“Are you saying it’s her fault?” Sally says.

“No, of course not. I was just . . . I was responding to what you said about us not hitchhiking. I think it’s OK as long as you’re with someone.”

The four of us are walking up to campus for the Sunday night square dance after our usual potluck dinner at Walt and Maura’s. As we enter the dark, tangled woods between the dorms and the Rec Center, the thought of a rape occurring nearby stifles conversation.

I spent spring break in Seattle, sleeping at Walt’s parents’ house and exploring the city and playing music with Walt and Sally—making forays to the University District, Green Lake, Gasworks Park, Pioneer Square, Ballard, and even Vashon Island—and we got around by bus or by hitchhiking, but never alone. After my escapade on the way to the Dylan concert—and an uncomfortable ride from downtown Olympia to Evergreen in March, in which the driver, a middle-aged bachelor with an ochre tan, flowery silk cravat, and wispy blond hair, tried to get me to go home with him (for a glass of white wine?)—I’ve sworn off hitchhiking by myself.

The last day of break, the Sunday before classes began, we hitchhiked from the Vashon Island ferry dock in West Seattle back to Evergreen. We spent the previous night on Vashon with a couple of old-time musicians, Louie and Sylvia, playing tunes until dawn, and by the time we were up and out the door, with a breakfast stop at a diner near the ferry, we realized we would have trouble making the Greyhound back to Olympia, so we tried hitchhiking the whole way. A ride from one of the cars leaving the ferry (solicited with a primitively scribbled “Olympia” on one of the diner’s paper placemats) took us all the way to the Westside. From there, we just had to find a ride out to school. That took a while. After an unsuccessful half-hour wait outside the Westside Lanes, we decided to walk up Division, and it took a long time before we got a ride. Fortunately, the sun was out, we were in good spirits—a bit loopy from sleep deprivation—and dinner was waiting for us when we got to Walt’s place, courtesy of Maura, who had stayed in Olympia during the break.

I left my guitar in Olympia for the week—Walt borrowed one from his brother for me to use while I was in Seattle—and I spent much of the break playing the fiddle. Sally’s attraction to a banjo-uke Walt picked up in a Seattle pawn shop at Christmas had encouraged me to play fiddle at most of our Sunday afternoon sessions, which have become informal rehearsals. Walt, Sally, Eric, and I are now a band in all but name. After the Sea Slugs naming debacle, we’ve delayed the selection of a band moniker as long as possible.

I’ve become obsessed with learning new fiddle tunes and my repertoire has surpassed Sally’s, at least in number. Walt’s collection of old-time fiddle records is better than the Evergreen Library’s or Mr. Emerson’s, and in the last few weeks I’ve learned at least a tune a day from my favorites of his: Down to the Cider Mill by Tommy Jarrell, Oscar Jenkins, and Fred Cockerham; an eponymous platter by Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers; Texas Farewell, a compilation of 1920s recordings of Texas fiddlers; and a recent recording by West Virginia fiddler Clark Kessinger. My Panasonic cassette recorder has also become a constant companion. I coerced Liam into sitting down one night after the square dance and recording all the tunes he could think of that I didn’t already know, and it came in handy at the fiddle show Walt and Sally and I went to on our way to Seattle.

Put on by the Washington Old-Time Fiddlers Association in Kent, Washington, a small, working-class town southeast of Seattle, the show was similar to a fiddle contest, according to Sally, except that there was no judging or prizes. For the evening concert, fiddlers took turns playing a tune onstage, delivering their renditions with the same stony demeanor they would have exhibited during a contest. Aside from a few flashy vintage western outfits and an occasional pun-laced “aw, shucks” introduction, there was nothing showy about it, no attempt at entertainment, which I appreciated. During the afternoon, in addition to informal jams in the classrooms surrounding the community college auditorium that hosted the concert, Texas fiddler Benny Thomasson gave a workshop. His smooth style is precise and complex, and while I taped his hour-long workshop, his tunes are beyond my current technical ability, though I added a few to a mental list of music to aspire to. At one of the jams, I met a friend of Walt’s, Mike Breedlove, a fiddler from Bellingham, Washington, who has spent time in North Carolina and Virginia, even visiting Tommy Jarrell, the fiddler on Down to the Cider Mill. Mike played a lot of tunes I didn’t know, and I got him to play some of them into my recorder before we left that night.

“Maybe one of us should get a car,” Eric says.

“Like any of us could afford one,” I say.

“What if we all chip in and buy one together?” he says.

“So, who would get to keep it for the summer?” Walt asks him. “You’ll be in Portland, I assume, and Sally and I will be in Seattle. Kind of hard to trade off when we’re three hours apart.”

“And Lucas will be in LA,” Sally says, looking back at me as we enter the lighted plaza next to the CAB. I must have a puzzled expression on my face because she continues, “I assume you’re going home for the summer?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Until now, I’ve been able to avoid thinking seriously about summer. The end of spring quarter is still two months away, and I’m hoping that something will compel me to stay in Olympia. But I never considered that my friends might not be here, that they’ll be going home to their parents for the summer, as mine undoubtedly expect me to do. I haven’t even asked Jenny if she’s planning on staying at Willowberry or will be going to her mother’s house in Moscow.

“If you’re thinking of staying here, we could try to get some gigs around Seattle,” Sally says. “The Skunk Farm String Band sometimes needs subs for their weekly square dance at the Inside Passage. I heard that half the band was out of town last summer. Mike said he filled in for their fiddler a few times. We could tell the Skunks we’d be available if they need someone.”

“As a band?” Eric asks, sounding irritated. “I’d have to come up from Portland.”

“It’s only a three- or four-hour bus ride,” Walt says. “If we got a gig, you could come up for the day. Or we could find another guitar player if it’s just a dance.”

“I’d like to stay in Olympia,” I say. “But I’d have to find a job. My parents wouldn’t pay for me to just hang out all summer.”

“You should apply for the Evergreen grounds crew,” Sally says. “I did it last year.”

“What’s that?”

“You know, they take care of the campus: mowing the football field, weeding, making sure the paths don’t get overgrown, getting rid of downed trees, that kind of thing. It’s fun and you’re outdoors all summer. It’s hard work, and of course it rains a lot, but I liked it. They always hire a few extra students for the summer.”

“You’re not going to do it again?”

“No. I want to spend the summer in Seattle with my family. And I think I have a line on a waitressing job in the U District. But I could tell you who to talk to about the grounds-crew gig. One of the old regulars took a shine to me. They might hire you just on my recommendation.”

“That’d be great, but if an old lech has the hots for you, I’d be a big disappointment.”

“He’s harmless, a sweet old guy. Not everyone’s a creep, you know.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“If you get the job, you could maybe find a room in a house on the Westside,” Walt says. “There will probably be a few group houses with vacancies after graduation. I can ask around.”

“Thanks, but I have to find a job first, and make sure my parents won’t freak out. They wouldn’t have to pay for plane flights, though, which should make them happy. I refuse to take the bus again.”

When I see Jenny sitting at the bottom of the central staircase in the Library lobby, reading a book, a mix of elation and anxiety whirls up and around my ribcage. She looks up, alerted by our gabble echoing off the cavernous chamber’s concrete walls, and bounds over to me.

I didn’t see much of her over spring break. She went home to Moscow at first and returned to Seattle to hang out with Alma for the last few days of break. Walt’s parents’ house is in north Seattle and is more than a half-hour drive from Alma’s—much longer by bus—and I didn’t feel comfortable staying with Jenny at Alma’s. But I met her at a square dance Thursday night at the Inside Passage Tavern in downtown Seattle, and went back to Alma’s with her on the bus, sleeping again in the basement, but without a surreptitious nighttime visit this time. Ezra, it turned out, is the son of an old family friend and Alma’s mother was under the impression that he and Jenny were still together. Jenny and I spent the next morning and afternoon together, but she was out of sorts, often uncommunicative and sullen, and after a late breakfast we went thrifting with Alma in West Seattle, not my favorite activity, although I picked up a dog-eared Thomas Hardy paperback, The Return of the Native, for a quarter. Jenny apologized for her mood later, but didn’t explain her dampened spirits, and when I left on the bus to meet Walt and Sally at a Seattle Folklore Society concert in the University District, she declined to join me. I invited her to come with us to Vashon the next day, which would have been convenient for her—the ferry dock is just down the hill from Alma’s house—but she begged off. I was disappointed, but it was probably for the best. She has no real interest in old-time music or bluegrass, other than square dancing, and the trip to Vashon would have bored her.

“I wondered if you’d be here,” I say, as we walk up the stairs arm in arm.

“I borrowed Ezra’s truck. Do you want to come home with me after?”

I’m elated that these are among the first words out of her mouth, but a bit surprised. She often comes to the dances, but I haven’t gone home with her afterward because my book seminar is at nine on Monday morning, and I can’t count on catching a ride back to school in time.

“You remember I have to be at book group at nine tomorrow?”

“Yeah, but I can run you up to campus in the morning. Alma and I are going to sing with Angelica at noon in one of the practice rooms, and I can hang out in the Library till then.”

“Just the three of you?”

“Yeah, we want to work on some new songs.”

“For Angelica’s band?”

“I don’t know yet. Angelica said we should each bring a song. I want to try Nina Simone’s version of ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.’”

“Who’s Nina Simone?”

“Oh, you’d love her. I’ll play the album for you sometime.”

We’re running a little late and when we get to the fourth floor, the square dancers are ready to go. Liam and Bruce usually arrive early, and the two of them can get the dance started by themselves, if necessary, Bruce calling while backing up Liam’s fiddling on guitar or banjo until other musicians arrive. But as we walk over to the makeshift stage area, Bruce tells us that Liam is sick and implores us to get going as soon as possible, as he has already taught the first dance. Sally stopped at the restroom on the way, so Walt and Eric and I scramble to get our instruments out. When Sally arrives halfway through the first dance, she picks up the banjo-uke and joins us on “Old Molly Hare,” and this configuration remains in place for most of the first set. Sally switches to fiddle only for a contra dance that requires a particular Irish tune I don’t know well enough to lead by myself, but for most of the rest of the night, I’m the main fiddler, and it feels great.

“You guys were killing it tonight,” Bruce says afterward. “And I could tell the dancers dug it.”

Bruce’s judgement is confirmed by a few dancers who compliment us on the way out. Approval from them is a rarity and surprising whenever it’s offered. Most of the dancers are regulars and have come to take the music for granted, but one of them, a hirsute, overall-clad townie, says, “Y’all cats were far out. It was like a whole new vibe tonight.”

Outside, a few stars flicker between the clouds and Jenny takes my arm as we walk across the square toward the parking lot.

“How’s Angelica?” I ask. “She cancelled her last two guitar lessons, and I’ve hardly seen her since break.”

“I don’t know, but she was still pretty messed up when she was at Willowberry on Wednesday.”

“Has there been any word about Dawn?”

“No, nothing.”

“Jesus. I can’t imagine what she’s going through. She was pretty quiet at last week’s book group, and we barely said anything to each other. I wonder if she’s still mad at me for skipping out on that big campus search party on the 23rd. I should have been there, but Walt and Sally wanted to go to this fiddle show in Kent.”

“There were plenty of people there. Over a hundred, I think. One more wouldn’t have made a difference. And I don’t think they found anything.”

“Still, it would have been a good show of support, especially after that miserable gig.”

Angelica’s noon concert had been a disaster. It was like we were determined to disprove the maxim that a bad last rehearsal guarantees a great gig. The set had been even worse than the rehearsal, if that’s possible. I had just as much trouble locking in with the band, and Angelica seemed to disappear at times, missing cues and chord changes, forgetting lyrics. Her voice, which I’d thought unassailable, broke more than once on “La-La Means I Love You,” presumably from the trauma of Dawn’s disappearance. In that light, her performance was unsurprising and forgivable, but it left her thinking the set had been a fiasco: sloppy, embarrassing, and pointless. I don’t know if, as she intimated afterward, my subpar playing had distracted her, or she had been overcome by the emotion of “La-La Means I Love You”—the line “If I ever saw a girl that I needed in this world, you are the one for me” had become heartbreaking since Dawn had gone missing. I apologized profusely for my performance afterward, but Angelica didn’t want to hear it, disappearing into a protective cluster of sympathetic friends after handing me her guitar, as if to say I might as well be her roadie if I couldn’t cut it as her guitarist.

“I’m sorry, can we . . . ? I just want you to hold me. I need to know that you want to hold me.”

Our attempt to have sex has again resulted in tears. I tried to take it slowly, and Jenny seemed to enjoy my oral attention, moaning and writhing with pleasure, but when I moved up on top of her and slid between her legs, she erupted in loud, tortured sobs. I immediately rolled off her, as if stung, and now we’re lying side by side, sweaty and starting to shiver, blankets still heaped at the foot of the bed.

“Is it something I’m doing? If I’ve done something wrong, I wish you’d tell me what it is. I know I’m new at this, but I’m happy to try whatever you want.”

“It’s not you. I mean, it’s me and you, but . . . Oh, I don’t know. Maybe . . . I keep thinking of my mom. She said some really awful things to me the last night I was home. She got pissed drunk and . . . I don’t know, I think she ran into my stepdad in town that day.”

“What did she say? I mean, you don’t have to tell me, if . . .”

“She thinks I’m cheating on Ezra with you. I told her about you. I didn’t say we were sleeping together, but I think she could tell. Ezra’s mom is her best friend. They came to visit us a few times when I was a teenager. I guess his mom told my mom something about the thing that happened with Tracy. I can’t believe Ezra would tell her, but . . . Anyway, my mom likes Ezra a lot, and she’d like you, too, if she didn’t think you were luring me away from Ezra.”

“That’s understandable, I guess, if she likes Ezra, I . . .”

“She called me a ‘slut’ and a ‘manipulative little cunt.’”

“Holy shit, I’m so sorry.”

“And then the next morning she acts like nothing happened. I don’t know whether she blacks out and doesn’t remember what she says, or whether she just thinks she can get away with pretending shit like that didn’t happen.”

“Did you confront her about it?”

“Are you kidding?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to . . . Here, darlin’, don’t get mad. That was a stupid thing to say.” She starts crying again, quietly, turning away from me, then reaches down to pull the quilt up to her chin.

“I don’t know why this is so hard for me. Maybe when Ezra gets back from Mexico, he can explain to them what’s going on.”

I’m not sure what she means by “what’s going on” but I ask, “When will that be? Do you know?”

“He said he’d be back the first week in May. I got a letter from him last week. He sounds bored. He’s been there almost three months now and he’s sick of playing for tourists. We have a gig at the DeLuxe next month that he promised to be home for.”

“The Fruit Stand Band?”

“Yeah.”

“Will that be awkward?”

“Why?”

“You know, playing in a band with him when you and I are . . .”

It occurs to me that when Ezra returns he’ll most likely be living here, at Willowberry. His truck is here, along with his musical instruments and gear, and likely most of the belongings he didn’t take to Mexico. But will he move back into his old room? With Jenny? Or will she move somewhere else? I wonder if some of the books I’ve glanced at on the bookshelf in this room are his (Steal This Book, Catch-22, Goodbye Columbus, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Dune, a book by Philip K. Dick called Ubik), and if the guitar in the corner is as well. I’ve never seen Jenny play it.

“I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

Her answer is strange. It’s hard to believe that she hasn’t thought about the potential problems posed by Ezra’s return. Maybe she’s not ready to talk to me about it. I look around the room, searching for evidence of Ezra. A pair of beat-up hiking boots on the closet floor look too big to be Jenny’s, and the three side-by-side piles of blue jeans on a shelf above them seem like more than one person would own. I notice, not for the first time, a small box on the dresser that contains a roach clip, an opened packet of Zig-Zag rolling papers, and the remains of a doobie. But I’ve never seen Jenny smoke pot, or even mention it.

I feel her gaze on me as I scan the room, but she says nothing.

“I have to pee,” I say, feeling a sudden need to be somewhere else, anywhere, to keep the unasked questions filling my brain from escaping into the room.

“Do you want a glass of water or anything?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

I pull on jeans and a t-shirt, but no socks, which I soon regret. The floor is cold and damp, and the wood on the stairs is rough and splintery. I use the downstairs bathroom and then fill two glasses of water from the kitchen sink. On my way through the living room, I stop at a bookshelf in the corner and, after scanning the titles, most of which are science fiction, I grab a book called Vermillion Sands, a collection of short stories by someone named J.G. Ballard, and tuck it under my arm.

When I get back upstairs, Jenny is reading A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. LeGuin.

“I see we both like science fiction,” I say, handing her a glass of water and showing her Vermillion Sands.

“I guess so,” she says. “Ezra and Sid are both sci-fi nuts, but there aren’t many books written by women, so I thought I’d try this. It’s more of a children’s book, fantasy, but I like it.”

“I found this downstairs. I don’t know anything about it, but I like the title.”

After trading my jeans for underwear, I slide under the covers, as close as I can get to Jenny without bumping her elbow, as I don’t want to disturb her reading. She has only looked up at me once since I returned, her eyes fixed on the paperback she holds with one hand, the pages splayed, a thumb and two fingers pinching the bottom of the spine.

The first story in Vermillion Sands, “Prima Belladonna,” is a futuristic, bachelor-pad tale about singing flowers. It’s beautifully written, the language a little eccentric, and I wonder if some of the obscure references (“yarning”? “turning the beer”?) are part of the world the author has created or are things I would know if I were English, as Ballard is. The idea of singing plants (“choro-flora”) and the main character’s apparent ability to “tune them” is intriguing, but I have trouble concentrating on the text.

My mind keeps returning to the question of where Ezra will live when he gets back from Mexico. I want to ask Jenny, but I’m nervous about the answer, and this seems like information she should volunteer. As far as I know, Willowberry currently has four residents: Jenny, Alma, Sid, and Charlie. When I first met them, I thought that Alma and Sid were a couple, but if they are, they’re one of the least romantic couples I’ve ever seen. I’ve counted four bedrooms, all on the second floor. So if Alma and Sid share a room, that would leave one for Ezra. If they don’t? Perhaps there’s another room downstairs I haven’t noticed. Or one in the barn. But if there’s an extra room, wouldn’t Jenny have taken that one when she moved in?

Jenny closes her book, leans over to kiss me, and turns back to her side of the bed, taking a sip of water from the glass on her nightstand.

“Oh, sorry,” she says, after pulling the chain hanging from the small table lamp. “Do you want to read some more?”

“No, that’s OK. I’m tired, too.” I’m not, but I’ve lost the thread of “Prima Belladonna,” and I can just as easily stew in my paranoia and self-doubt in the dark.

“I’ll make oatmeal and coffee tomorrow morning,” she says. “You can shower while I make breakfast. I set the alarm for eight.”

She turns off the light and rolls back toward me, laying her head on my shoulder, pressing her bare breasts against my side. She slides her hand under my shirt, and as it moves in slow circles down my chest, then slips beneath my underwear, the question of Ezra’s future living quarters evaporates into the cold, heedless air.

NEXT: Chapter 21: April 24: Noon Concert

“What?”

“Nobody’s seen her since last Tuesday. Her roommates reported her missing yesterday, and the police were all over the dorms last night. They talked to me for a long time.”

Angelica has joined me at breakfast before the last book group of winter quarter. She rarely eats in the cafeteria, but now she’s nursing a coffee and nibbling on some toast.

“Holy shit. That’s awful!”

“I just thought, I don’t know . . . she takes off sometimes. She goes home to Seattle a lot, and not just on weekends. When she didn’t show up at the concert, I figured that’s what she must have done. She’s been having a hard time with school, and focusing on anything. I think PORTALS is too broad and amorphous for her.”

“What does that mean again? PORTALS?”

“Personalized Options Reaching Toward Affective Learning Skills.”

“Yikes.”

“Yeah, how Evergreen is that? It’s kind of all over the map, a lot of random reading and writing assignments, lectures, a film series. She hasn’t been able to decide on a subject for her individual project, which she’s supposed to have started by now. She’s kind of gotten into witchcraft and the occult, Madame Blavatsky, that kind of thing, and she wanted to do a paper on this Russian spiritualist P.D. Ouspensky, but her adviser thought it was a bad idea. I don’t know why.”

“What do the police think happened to her?”

“I don’t know. They won’t tell me anything. Her roommates assumed she had gone to Seattle. But then one of them realized she hadn’t taken her big winter raincoat with her—it was still hanging behind the door of her room—and when they looked around her room, they found her backpack and flute, and some other things she probably would have taken with her. They called her parents in Seattle, but they hadn’t heard from her in weeks, so that’s when they called the police.”

“When did you last see her?”

“Monday night, a week ago. Nobody has seen her since she left for the concert on Tuesday. One of her roommates helped her decide what to wear. I saved her a seat, but she never showed up, as far as anyone can tell. I was pissed off about it. I wanted her to hear us sing. I thought she’d dig it.”

The concert had been a success for Alma’s band and Lulu’s trio. We played the Webern piece and the weird “Blackberry Blossom,” and the audience’s response had been positive. But later I realized that not a single one of my friends, including Alma and her band, ever said anything to me about our performance. It was as if it never happened.

I sat with Jenny for the main jazz band set, and she had been flush with excitement about her performance with Alma. But she never said anything about Lulu’s trio, or acknowledged that I had also just performed. At the time, I was so happy to be sitting next to her—huddled together, holding hands, in public—that I didn’t think much about it. But a few days later, after discovering that Walt, Sally, and Eric had also been at the concert, but never said a word about the music I’d played with Lulu, I started to wonder. Did they think what we did was bad or weird but were too polite to say anything about it? Did they think my oddball, “out” version of “Blackberry Blossom” was pretentious, or just stupid?

There’s a bluegrass band in New York called Country Cooking that has put out a couple albums of modern bluegrass instrumentals. Mr. Emerson played some cuts from one of their records for us one day, and I borrowed the album so I could listen to the whole thing. The band is cool—inventive, intense, and exciting—and all the players are excellent, especially the guitar player. But the consensus among Walt, Sally, and even Eric, who is anything but a trad diehard, is that they are trying too hard to be weird, that being weird is not what bluegrass is all about. Maybe they had the same reaction to what Lulu, Sofía, and I did, although what we did couldn’t be called bluegrass. If Lulu hadn’t introduced the “Blackberry Blossom” thing by name, there would have been no indication our performance had anything to do with bluegrass or fiddle music.

“Have you and Dawn been on good terms?”

“Pretty much. I thought so. It’s been off-and-on. Sometimes we don’t see each other for a few days or more. She’s kind of a night owl and parties a lot, she rarely spends the night in my room. I don’t think she’s cheating on me, but I’m pretty sure she’s more into drugs than she lets on. She hangs out at one of the party pads in ASH, sometimes all night. I think that’s one reason she goes to Seattle so much: to see an old high school friend who I’m pretty sure is a dealer. She’s definitely a pothead, and I don’t have a problem with that, but she might also be into harder stuff, maybe bennies, maybe coke. I’m really afraid that she’s a go-between for the party pads in ASH and her friend in Seattle. She always has a little more cash on her than I would expect, considering her parents aren’t particularly well off. Her mom’s an elementary school teacher and her dad’s some kind of office manager. Dawn says they’re always on her case about money.”

“Did you tell the police about the dealer friend?”

“No.”

“Why not? Couldn’t that have something to do with her disappearing?”

“It’s not like it’s some kind of Mafia thing, and I’m not going to rat out her friend with no evidence. It’s just a guess. I have no idea if he’s really a dealer. If I get her friend busted and she shows up tomorrow, I might as well forget about ever seeing her again. Plus, I don’t even know if the name she gave me for him is real. Once she called him ‘Tony’ and once it was ‘Tommy.’”

“Why would she make that up?”

“I don’t know. She was probably high, or confused. Anyway, I told the police where she hangs out in ASH. If they talk to those jokers, they’ll figure out pretty quick they’re druggies.”

“I’m so sorry, Angelica. But she’ll turn up, probably wondering what everyone’s all freaked out about.”

“Oh, god, I don’t know if I can . . .”

She stares into her coffee cup, which is still almost full. I reach to touch her shoulder, but she leans away to avoid my grasp, not looking up, not acknowledging my feeble, silent attempt to console her.

“Are you sure you want to go to book group?” I say. “You can skip it, you know. I’ll tell Mr. Coleman what’s going on.”

This seems to rouse her, the realization that she has something to do, somewhere to be. She raises her head and looks around and past me, as if longing for someone else, hoping to see another approaching behind me. But seeing no one, she snaps to.

“It’s the last meeting of the quarter, right? I should be there. Maybe it’ll take my mind off this. If I just stew at home, I’ll drive myself crazy imagining all the horrible things that could have happened to her.”

“What about rehearsal? Are we still on for this afternoon?”

“Yeah. The concert is Wednesday. We need another rehearsal and today’s our only chance.”

“Lucas?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Did you hear my question?”

“Sorry, no. I was thinking about something else, sorry.”

I glance at Angelica, although Dawn’s disappearance isn’t the only thing drawing my mind away from the discussion. After the group’s disenchantment with USA, which I’m guessing nobody finished (I gave up after the first thirty or forty pages of the second volume, 1919), Mr. Coleman suggested we find other twentieth-century American novels or short stories to read that had something to do with music, or that shed some light on music and American culture. He gave us a long list of suggestions, some of which were in the college bookstore and some of which were in the Library, and today we’ve been talking about what we’ve read.

Gabe talked at length about Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. He had issues with some of it, especially the weird political organization that dominates the second half, but his report made me want to check it out. Shelley read Joan Didion’s Slouching Toward Bethlehem, though it isn’t fiction—she seemed to be unclear on the assignment—and while she said she loved Didion’s writing, she was annoyed at the book’s anti-counterculture slant, which also intrigued me. I made a note to ask Shelley if I could borrow it.

I’m conflicted about the assignment and haven’t said anything yet. I read a few things that might be applicable: the Don DeLillo book that Marty lent me, Great Jones Street; an Ishmael Reed book I borrowed from Gabe, Mumbo Jumbo; and Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, which I found in the bookstore, a required text for another program. But I don’t feel inspired or qualified to talk about any of them. Great Jones Street, ostensibly about a musician, is really more about drugs and fame, two subjects I have little interest in. I get annoyed that drugs and music always get conflated, and I tire of hearing about drugs and addiction, although maybe it’s just a nagging feeling that my sobriety may eventually bar me from any creative music scene. I liked Mumbo Jumbo—a cryptic, discursive novel about various weird organizations trying to suppress the rise of Afro-American culture in the 1920s—but I had no idea what was going on most of the time. I enjoyed it in the way I enjoy music that I don’t understand, taking in the sounds and the way everything interacts, or, in the case of books, the words and the images they convey, without worrying about what it all means, what the message is supposed to be.

All three books are imbued with a kind of libertarian paranoia, a fear of unseen forces controlling society, which I have some sympathy for. It makes for good fiction, but I think it’s ultimately a copout. Granted, it’s easier, and more fun, to imagine some secret, quasi-religious organization or underground, obscenely wealthy grand vizier controlling the workings of society than accept that our creeping dystopia is self-inflicted.

“I asked whether you wanted to share anything with us about what you’ve been reading?” Mr. Coleman says to me.

“Right. Yeah, I read a few things, but I don’t feel ready to talk about any of them, if that’s OK?”

“Well, as this is our last meeting for the quarter, if you don’t want to talk about what you read, I’d like you to write something for me.”

“OK, I can do that.”

“Angelica?”

“Yeah?” she responds, raising her gaze from the spot on the floor she’s been studying for the last few minutes.

“Do you have anything you want to talk about?” His question is vaguely phrased, and I wonder if he knows about Dawn.

“No, I don’t think I can . . . Oh, a book, you mean?”

“What else would I mean?”

“I thought maybe . . . Um, I’m sorry, yeah, I . . .”

“Angelica’s been going through some heavy shit,” Gabe says. Angelica must have told him about Dawn. “Maybe we can cut her some slack.”

“It’s OK, Gabe,” Angelica says. “Maybe we should talk about it, in case anyone knows anything.”

“Knows anything about what?” Mr. Coleman says.

“My girlfriend, Dawn, disappeared, about a week ago, after the jazz concert, or before . . . We don’t really know.”

“I’m sorry, Angelica. I did hear about that,” Mr. Coleman says. “I didn’t know she was your friend, though. I’m really sorry.”

“It’s OK,” Angelica says.

The room remains darkly quiet for a few minutes until Gabe breaks the silence.

“So, if anyone knows anything about Dawn, or has seen her in the last week, you should contact campus security. Right, Angelica?”

“Yeah, or the Thurston County Sheriff’s office, I think. But uh, yeah, Evergreen security is . . .” Angelica stops abruptly, and her gaze returns to the ground.

“Angelica, if you want to talk to me about it, I have some time after our meeting today,” Mr. Coleman says. “Or, I can put you in touch with a counselor.” Angelica nods, but doesn’t respond.

“Since we still have some time this morning, maybe we should talk about what we’re going to be doing Spring quarter,” Mr. Coleman says.

“I think I do want to talk about something I read,” Angelica says, suddenly, raising her head. “The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison. My mom gave it to me. It might be too hard to talk about right now, I don’t know. But . . .”

“That’s OK. Just say whatever you want. Take your time,” Mr. Coleman says.

“There’s one thing I’ve been trying to hold in my mind. There’s this character, an awful man, actually. He doesn’t know his father and his mother abandoned him, and he’s endured some awful, crazy-ass shit. And he does some terrible things to his daughter, who is the main character, or one of them. It’s kind of relentless, and pretty hard to take at times. Especially, if you’ve . . . Anyway, the author says something I’ve been thinking about, something about music. She says that maybe the only way you can express the kind of horrible things this guy’s gone through—the depth of suffering, all the random, inexplicable horrors in his life—is through music. That only a musician could make sense of it. I don’t have the quote here, but it’s about connecting and expressing the pieces of your life through music, what she calls the ‘black and white rectangles’ and the ‘taut skins and strings echoing from wooden corridors.’ I love that. She says that only a musician would realize that having to endure the horrors of a life like that would give you, ironically, a sense of freedom. It took me a while to understand that, because the freedom this man had—this feeling that it didn’t matter what he did anymore, right or wrong, good or bad—left him free to molest and abuse his daughter, which is the main source of the tragedy in the book. But that idea of using music to make sense of all the crazy shit and weird pockets of your life that maybe you don’t want to try to make sense of, because they’re too difficult to think about, let alone do anything about, and that you really just want to forget about, that all you want to do is to run off and get wasted or stoned or fuck someone . . . or fuck someone up or . . .”

Angelica’s voice breaks. The room is silent. She seems to want to continue, the resonance of her words still lingering in the air, unfinished. Maybe she’s run out of words, or maybe she’s embarrassed by her naked display of emotion, though I’ve never known her to shy from stark emotional honesty. But this is different. This is personal, knowable, recent pain. Everyone in the room is too stunned to say anything. Maybe they’re in awe of her eloquence in the face of such deep sadness and confusion, and are waiting, politely, for her to continue, if she can, if she wants to. Maybe they’re too uncomfortable with the raw, almost physical, emotion hanging in the room.

Finally, Angelica looks around the room, her eyes unfocused yet fiery, defiant.

“Anyway, it’s a great book. I recommend it.”

I smile, glad to see in her something other than self-pity and sadness. Her emotional strength will have to assert itself if she’s going to come through this. Whatever “this” turns out to be.

“Why is this so hard? It worked last time.”

Angelica glances at me and then turns away. We’ve just finished a run-through of “Cold Blue Steel” with the new groove Charlie and Gabe adapted from Little Feat, but it’s not working. The rhythm doesn’t gel, and Angelica is having trouble fitting the song’s irregularly phrased lyrics into our ragged groove. She has abandoned the guitar, since the part we had worked out for her doesn’t fit the new groove, but she’s still struggling. I missed the band’s last rehearsal—Lulu talked someone in the Evergreen recording studio into recording our version of “Blackberry Blossom,” and the time slot they gave us conflicted with Angelica’s regular Wednesday afternoon band rehearsal.

“Can you play your thing?” Charlie asks me. I play the part I worked out with Gabe’s help a couple of rehearsals ago.

“That should work,” Charlie says, and Gabe nods in agreement.

“But it’s two different feels, it’s like two different songs,” Angelica says.

“What do you mean?” Charlie says.

“I can sing it with you three”—she nods at Charlie, Gabe, and Alma, who is playing electric piano—“and I can sing it with Lucas,”—we tried it at our last guitar lesson, Angelica singing while I played my new rhythm part on acoustic guitar—“but when we put it all together, it doesn’t work.”

Nobody says anything. It feels like they all know that I’m the problem, but nobody is willing to say it.

“Maybe we should come back to it later,” Alma says.

“It’s not going to get any better,” Gabe mumbles. I hope I’m the only one who heard him.

“Let’s try ‘Pecola’s Eyes.’” Angelica says. This is one of her new songs. It started out as a Bessie Smith–style classic blues, but has since been transformed, like “Cold Blue Steel,” into a funky groove tune. The groove Charlie and Gabe came up with is based on Edwin Starr’s “War,” but “Pecola’s Eyes” has a more complex chord progression and melody. I’m supposed to play a James Brown–style rhythm part and then solo on a simple minor-key vamp. I’m not comfortable with the spiky, syncopated part I’m supposed to play, in part because I haven’t been practicing Angelica’s songs much outside of band practice. I’m using Ezra’s Starfire guitar on everything now, but it spends most of the time between rehearsals in the closet in my dorm room. I don’t have an amp, and the Starfire sounds stupid and lifeless without one, so I practice with my acoustic. That means that once I get to band rehearsal, I have to adjust to the feel of the electric guitar all over again, especially when the volume gets cranked up, which is most of the time now that the grooves have gotten funkier: more R&B, less folk-rock.

I’m frustrated with my inability to lock in with Gabe and Charlie, and as my confidence dwindles away to nothing, I play a horrible, disjointed guitar solo, which should be the easiest thing I have to do in this band. My lame playing doesn’t affect Angelica’s singing this time, but everyone knows the song is not working, and a heavy stillness follows our last notes.

“Well, you know what they say,” Alma says, breaking the silence, “A lousy rehearsal means it’ll be a great gig!”

“Let’s hope so,” Gabe says, frowning.

I feel bad for Angelica. After the last rehearsal, she told me she was pleased with how the band was sounding. I noted, however, that I hadn’t been a member of the band she praised. But I hoped I would be able to fit in unobtrusively at the next rehearsal: this one.

I was wrong.

It’s about time for Gabe to leave for his weekly bass lesson on campus, and I need to get a ride back with him. If Jenny was here, I would stay and hitch a ride with Angelica later, but I feel sheepish about hanging out at Willowberry without Jenny, especially since staying would effectively mean inviting myself to dinner.

The dismal rehearsal isn’t entirely my fault. Angelica forgot a few lyrics and missed a couple of cues, but this is forgivable, almost expected, considering her emotional state. A better showing from the rest of us might have picked up her spirits, though. After another, only marginally improved, run-through of “Pecola’s Eyes,” she wanders off toward the house without saying goodbye, leaving Gabe and me to pack up in silence.

As I slide into the passenger side of Gabe’s car, a Volkswagen van he’s borrowed from his roommate, he reaches into the back seat, grabs a cassette, and tosses it into my lap: James Brown’s Live at the Apollo, Vol II.

“Here, listen to that . . . a lot,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“So what’s wrong?” I ask.

“With me?”

“No, with me, with my guitar playing.”

“I don’t know exactly. It sounds like you’re pushing too hard. You need to lean back on the beat, not punch into the next one. Maybe it’s all that bluegrass you’re into, maybe it’s just cause you’re white.”

“Well, that’s . . .”

“I’m kidding . . . kind of. I don’t know. Charlie and I lock in to those feels pretty easily, and you just . . . don’t. I don’t know why. It’s not that you have bad time, you have . . . a different sense of time. You feel the groove in a different way, maybe because of the music you grew up with, I don’t know.”

“That could be, I guess.” I’m trying not to get offended and just listen to what he’s saying, find something in his words that could be useful, but it’s not easy. It’s not much fun to be told I’m just an unfunky white boy with bad time, or rather, “different” time. But maybe it’s inevitable. He’s right. The background music of my early life was anything but funky. I’ve listened to way too much radio pop and clunky white rock, and while bluegrass may be influenced by black music, it’s not black music. It makes we wonder what I’m doing in this band. This will be the first James Brown album I’ve ever listened to. Maybe it will help, as long as I can keep my roommate Eddie from complaining. He hates On the Corner.

As if reading my mind, Gabe says, “So, yeah, listen to that, not On the Corner.”

“Wait, why not?”

“On the Corner is pretty happening, I dig it, but there’s something manufactured about it. There’s too much going on—the groove just disappears sometimes. Listen to JB. JB is the shit, and he always has great guitar players. Not great like ‘flashy solos great,’ but just perfect feel and groove. You know, the stank you feel in your bones. But also, it’s like . . . you have to know how to fry an egg before you try to make a soufflé.”

NEXT: Chapter 20: April 14: Fiddling

“Hmm? I don’t know about everyone, but I’m going to the jazz concert in the Library.”

“Oh, great, perfect. Yes, uh, me too. But I got a bit turned around. I haven’t been here before. I’m, uh, a reporter for the Seattle Times and I’m doing a piece on the, er, jazz program here at Evergreen.”

“OK, well, just follow me.”

“Well, yes, but I wonder if you would be so kind as to give me a hand with something? I left my tape recorder in the car down there, and, as you can see, it’s not easy for me to get up and down that hill. I was wondering if you could help me get back down to my car, so I could get my recorder.”

“You’re going to tape the concert? How big is the tape recorder?”

“No, uh, not the concert. I, uh, I’m going to interview the leader of the, the director of the jazz program. After the concert.”

“OK, sure, I guess.”

“Thank you, I’ll be eternally grateful. It’s just down those stairs, you see by that door over there, the tan Volkswagen. Do you see it? It’s not far.”

“Why didn’t you just go in that door next to your car?”

“Oh, yes, well, that’s what I was planning to do, but it was locked, and . . . I’m sorry, I’m being a nuisance. You probably want to go meet your boyfriend or something.”

“Nope, don’t have a boyfriend.”

“What? A beautiful girl like you?”

“I have a girlfriend. And she’s singing tonight at the concert.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to bother you, then. You go along. I’ll just head down and get it myself. Oh, ouch! That stair is slippery, and my ankle. Ow! I should have brought two crutches. One is just so hard to operate on these slick, wet stairs.”

“OK, here, let me help you.”

“Oh, you’re a dear. Thank you so much.”

“Just put your arm over my shoulder. There. Yeah, there, you’re doing better now. It’s like you don’t even need that crutch.”

“Oh, yes, well, the pain comes and goes. Sometimes I completely forget I’ve broken my leg, and other times I can hardly put any weight on it.”

“I thought it was your ankle? Anyway, we’re almost there.”

“Oh, yes, my ankle, what did I say? Here we are. I’ll just get the recorder out of the passenger seat. . . . just be a minute. Ow, ow, ow! Oh no, there I’ve done it again. Damn it. Oh, pardon my French. Although, I suppose you’re used to it.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

“Could I ask you another big favor? Could you get the recorder out of the car for me? It’s on the passenger side. It should be down on the floor.”

“OK., sure, whatever. What? You don’t even have a passenger seat in here. What gives, man?”

“Yes, well, I ski a lot, you know. Or, I did, before the accident. I took the seat out so I could put my skis in the car instead of strapping them to the top. Do you see the recorder? Maybe it slid to the back. You may have to bend down a little and lean inside to find it.”

“Hmm. I don’t know. I don’t see . . .”

“It’s right there, just there, right . . . right . . . there!”

NEXT: Chapter 19: March 18: Book Group 3

Dean: “I think that there’s no doubt about the seriousness of the problem we’ve got. We have a cancer, within, close to the Presidency, that’s growing. It’s growing daily, it’s compounding. It grows geometrically now because it compounds itself. That’ll be clear as I explain, you know, some of the details of why it is. And it basically is because, one, we’re being blackmailed; two, people are going to start perjuring themselves very quickly that have not had to perjure themselves, to protect other people and the like. . .

“So let me give you the sort of basic facts. . . . First of all, how did it all start, where did it all start? . . . It started with an instruction to me from Bob Haldeman to see if we couldn’t set up a perfectly legitimate campaign intelligence operation over at the Re-Election Committee.”

Nixon: “Hmm.”

Dean: “Not being in this business I turned to someone who had been in this business, Jack Caulfield. . . . I don’t know if you remember Jack or not. He was your original bodyguard.”

Nixon: “Yeah.”

Dean: “An old New York City policeman.”

Nixon: “Right, I know him.”

Dean: “I said, ‘Jack, come up with a plan.’ . . . You know, buying information from secretaries and all that sort of thing. He did . . . and uh, I went to Ehrlichman with it. I went to Mitchell and the consensus was that Caulfield wasn’t the man to do this. In retrospect that might have been a bad call, because he is an incredibly cautious person, and wouldn’t have put the situation to where it is today. . . . After rejecting that they said ‘we still need something’ so I was told to look around for somebody . . . and that’s when I came up with Gordon Liddy.”

Dean: “All right, now we’ve gone through the trial. I don’t know if Mitchell has perjured himself in the grand jury or not. . . . I don’t know how much knowledge he actually had. I know that Magruder has perjured himself in the grand jury. I know that Porter has perjured himself in the grand jury.”

Nixon: “Porter?”

Dean: “He’s one of Magruder’s deputies.”

Dean: “So, Liddy said ‘we’ll ride this thing out.’ . . . Then they started making demands: ‘We’ve got to have attorney’s fees, we don’t have any money ourselves, and if you want us to take this through the election.’ . . . So arrangements were made through Mitchell. . . . These guys had to be taken care of. Their attorney’s fees had to be done. . . . Kalmbach raised some cash.”

Nixon: “They put that under the cover of a Cuban Committee . . .”

Dean: “Yeah, they had a Cuban Committee and some of it was given to Hunt’s lawyer, who in turn passed it out. You know, when Hunt’s wife was flying to Chicago with ten thousand, she was actually, I understand after the fact, now, she was going to pass that to one of the Cubans.”

Nixon: “Why didn’t she? . . . Well, it’s maybe too late to do anything about it, but I would certainly keep that under cover, for what it’s worth.”

Dean: “That’s the most troublesome thing. Because Bob is involved in that, John is involved in that, I’m involved in that, Mitchell is involved. That’s an obstruction of justice.”

Nixon: “The fact that you’re taking care of the witnesses.”

Dean: “That’s right.”

Nixon: “How was Bob involved?”

Dean: “They ran out of money over there. Bob had three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in a safe over here that was really set aside for polling purposes. . . . I had to go to Bob and say ‘Bob, . . . they need some money over there.’ And I had to tell him what it was for, because he wasn’t about to send money over there willy nilly. . . . We decided, you know, that there was no price too high to pay to let this thing blow up in front of the election.”

Nixon: “I think you should handle that one pretty fast.”

. . .

Dean: “Hunt called one of the lawyers from the Re-Election Committee to meet with him over the weekend. The guy came to see me, to get a message directly from Hunt to me.”

Nixon: “Is Hunt out on bail?”

Dean: “Hunt is on bail, correct. Hunt now is demanding another seventy thousand dollars for his own personal expenses, another fifty thousand to pay his attorney’s fees, a hundred and twenty some thousand dollars. He wanted it by the close of business yesterday. Because, he says ‘I’m going to be sentenced on Friday, and I need to get my financial affairs in order.’”

. . .

Dean: “So that’s it. That’s the extent of the knowledge. Now, where are the soft spots on this? Well, first of all there’s the problem of the continued blackmail.”

Nixon: “Right.”

Dean: “Which will not only go on, it will go on when these people are still in prison, and it will compound the obstruction of justice situation. It’ll cost money. It’s dangerous. Nobody . . . people around here are not pros at this sort of thing. This is the sort of thing Mafia people can do: washing money, getting clean money, and things like that. . . .We are not criminals and not used to dealing in that business.”

Nixon: “That’s right.”

Dean: “It’s a tough thing to know how to do. . . . It’s a real problem as to whether we could even do it. Plus there’s a real problem in raising money. . . .”

Nixon: “How much money do you need?”

Dean: “I would say these people are going to cost a million dollars over the next two years.”

Nixon: “We could get that. . . . If you need the money, I mean, you could get the money. What I mean is, you could get a million dollars, and you could get it in cash. I know where it could be gotten.”

March 1, 1974

Indictment Handed up to Judge Sirica by Watergate Grand Jury, Count One

From on or about June 17, 1972, up to and including the date of the filing of this indictment, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, John N. Mitchell, Harry R. Haldeman, John D. Ehrlichman, Charles W. Colson, Robert C. Mardian, Kenneth W. Parkinson and Gordon Strachan, the defendants, and other persons to the grand jury known and unknown, unlawfully, willfully and knowingly did combine, conspire, confederate and agree together and with each other, to commit offenses against the United States, to wit, to obstruct justice in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1503, to make false statements to a Government agency in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001, to make false declarations in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1623, and to defraud the United States and agencies and departments thereof, to wit, the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) and the Department of Justice, of the Government’s right to have the officials of these departments and agencies transact their official business honestly and impartially, free from corruption, fraud, improper and undue influence, dishonesty, unlawful impairment and obstruction, all in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 371.

NEXT: Ted: March 12: Donna Manson

“Sounding good? I’m missing half of the chords, or more,” I say.

“You really think I’m nailing all the accidentals?” Lulu says of her singing.

Sofía sits patiently, silently, with her clarinet, studying the music: Webern’s “Drei Leider fur Gesang, Es-Klarinette, und Gitarre,” or “Three Songs for Voice, Eb Clarinet, and Guitar.”

Lulu is one of three students who have been invited to open the Evergreen Jazz Band concert next Tuesday night, and we’re trying to see if we can pull together this Webern piece. I’ve been working on it diligently for the last two weeks, but I don’t see how I’ll be able to perfect it in time for the concert, if ever. At first, the guitar part was just impossible to read. In the original manuscript there are jumps between clefs in almost every measure, so I had to rewrite it and then create tablature so I could remember the chord shapes. The chords themselves are not that weird—three- and four-note voicings in fourths that sound nice and jazzy by themselves. But they jump around so much—there’s no key center, and the timing is nearly random—that the part is impossible to memorize.

I look at Sofía. “What do you think? How are you doing?”

“Better than you, probably,” she says with a smile. “I mean, I’m transposing on the fly, since this is written for Eb clarinet, but I probably got more than two thirds of the notes right. You may have noticed that I added a few squawks that weren’t in the music. I hope that’s OK?”

“Your squawks might cover up some of my clams,” I say. “Do you really think this is worth doing, Lulu?”

“I don’t know. Maybe not. But do you seriously think anyone is going to be able to tell the difference between what we just played and what’s written in the score?”

“Mr. Harmon, maybe?” I say.

“Only if he has the music in front of him, which he won’t. Let’s try it again, and don’t worry if you miss some notes, just keep going as best you can.”

We try it again, our fourth attempt today, and when we finish, Sofía and I have a hard time keeping a straight face. I look away from her widening grin, but after a tiny snort escapes from my clenched jaw, we all erupt in fits of laughter.

“If we decide to play it on Tuesday, we’ll have to keep from laughing,” Lulu says. “You could simplify your part, Lucas. We’re getting together again on Monday, right? Can you work on it this weekend?”

“I’m not sure it’ll help, but yeah, I’ll try.”

“OK, let’s try this other thing we talked about it, and maybe come back to the Webern before we split.”

“You didn’t say anything about another piece,” Sofía says. “Is this something you two are doing by yourselves?”

“What do you think?” Lulu asks me. “Can we find something for Sofía to play?”

“Maybe,” I say, “So, what this is . . . I had this idea of playing a couple of fiddle tunes with my guitar retuned according to rules of chance—just rolls of the dice, really.”

“That’s er, intriguing,” Sofía says, raising an eyebrow. “So, what does Lulu do? And what would I do?”

“You could roll the dice?”

“Boring,” Lulu says. “What if we figure out your tuning now, Lucas, or on Monday. If we spend a bunch of time onstage rolling dice and retuning your guitar, people will get annoyed . . . and bored.”

“We could do that now. Figure out the tuning. We could still use dice in the moment to, I don’t know, decide the tempo?”

“But what is Lulu playing?” Sofía asks again.

“We were going to figure that out today.”

“I was thinking I could play chords on the accordion, but . . .”

“Like randomly generated chance chords?” I say, interrupting her.

“Let me finish,” she says, frowning.

“Sorry.”

“What if you write out the chords to whatever tune you’re playing on a large piece of sheet music, and then we have an audience member drip paint on the music, blotting out some of the changes so I won’t know what I’m supposed to play and will either have to improvise or stop playing or something.”

“Brilliant,” I say.

“I could be the one dripping the paint,” Sofía says.

“Would the paint dripping happen while we’re playing or before?” I ask.

“If Sofía does it while you’re retuning your guitar, we could give her some musical thing to do, too. Maybe we should try the retuning scheme now, and see what it sounds like. Then we can think about what we might add.”

“So, how are you going to generate a tuning from a roll of the dice?” Sofía asks me.

“I came up with a system that should work. We do six rolls of two dice, one for each guitar string. The first roll selects the string number, and the second determines how the strings are retuned. For odd numbers, if the second roll is a one, I tune down one half step; if it’s a three, I tune down two half steps; and if it’s a five, I tune down three half steps. For all the even numbers, I’ll tune the string up a half step, since the string tension makes it difficult to tune up much farther than that.”

“What happens if there are duplicate numbers,” Sofía asks, “Like, what if the first die is always a four? Do you keep retuning the same string?”

“I think I take whatever the first roll is.”

“So, not all the strings would get retuned, necessarily.”

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s try it,” Lulu says.

I dig the dice out of my backpack. The first roll is one and six, so I tune my first string up a half step to F. The second roll is six and five, so I tune the sixth string down three half steps to Db. The next roll is five and three, so the fifth string gets tuned down two half steps to G. The fourth roll is five and two, so I do nothing, since I’ve already retuned my fifth string, and the fifth roll is six and six, so, once again, no retuning. The final roll is three and two, so I tune my third string up a half step to Ab. The complete tuning is Db G D Ab B F. A strum through all the strings produces a dissonant mess.

“That’s kind of brilliant, actually,” Lulu says. “You’ve got two major triads a tritone apart: G and Db.”

“And the two bottom strings are each a minor ninth below the third and fourth strings,” Sofía says. “Weird.”

I start playing the fiddle tune “Blackberry Blossom,” fingering the strings the way I would if I were in standard tuning. It produces a jagged string of eighth notes that almost makes sense, in a sort of polytonal modern jazz way.

“That’s wacky,” Sofía says.

“I like it,” Lulu says.

“Let me try the B part.”

The second part is simpler, starting with an arpeggio through open strings followed by two quarter notes. This one-measure phrase is repeated three times, answered by a different phrase each time, with a typical fiddle tune ending. The original arpeggio is E minor, but it’s now an E7b9, making the part more conventional, but with all tension, no resolution.

“The first part is cooler,” Lulu says. “Less predictable. Do you like that tuning? Should we try another? Or is there another tune you want to try?”

“I was going to try ‘Soldier’s Joy’.”

I play through the fiddle tune in the new tuning; it’s another long, jagged string of eighth notes, which I play with key-of-C fingering.

“I like the first tune better,” Lulu says. “This one just sounds like a bunch of goofy guitar licks. You should try another tuning, though, just for kicks.”

We run through another round of dice throwing, but the tuning that results isn’t nearly as interesting: the top three strings are each tuned up a half step and the bottom three left untouched.

“Maybe it’s better not to rely on the roll of the dice in the moment,” Lulu says. “We could end up with a boring tuning. Why don’t we just use the first one.”

“That’s fine,” I say. “I’ll write out a chord chart for you.”

“Got any paint?” Sofía asks with a smile.

“No, but um . . . what can we use instead?”

“Do you have any change in your pockets?” Lulu asks me.

“Some. Why?”

“Drop whatever change you have on the page and it’ll cover up some things. That might work.”

After writing the chords out on a sheet of notebook paper, I fish a handful of coins out of my pocket and drop them onto the chart, which I’ve placed in the middle of the small table we’re perched around. Some of the coins skitter away and roll off the table onto the ground, but most remain on the table. Unfortunately, they haven’t covered up any of the chord names.

“Uh, yeah, that’s not going to work,” Lulu says. “Maybe I should just play the normal chords, since your part is so weird now.”

After tuning my guitar back to the first chance tuning, Lulu and I play through “Blackberry Blossom” a couple of times. It sounds cool, but it gets more monotonous the more the phrases repeat, and after a second time through the tune, the jagged melody has become predictable and annoying. The first time you hear it, it sounds cool and goofy, discordant and surprising, but after a while, with no variation, it becomes tiresome. The problem is the lack of rhythmic variety: a long string of unaccented eighth notes accompanied by Lulu’s oompah accordion.

“It needs something,” Lulu says.

“Sustained notes?” Sofía suggests. “It’s all tick-a-tick-a-tick-a.”

“Can we come up with a clarinet part? Lulu asks. “What if . . . ?” She starts to say something but freezes, her eyes moving around the room, as if searching for an idea written on the walls. “Give me a minute.”

I start to noodle on the guitar in the weird tuning while Lulu is thinking, but she turns her head to me, perturbed.

“OK, what if, after one time through the tune, Sofía, you play some sort of pop song melody on the clarinet, like maybe whatever you heard on the radio just before you left for the concert?”

“That would bring the chance thing back,” I say, “which was the whole idea in the first place. We wouldn’t know what tune she was going to play.”

“Or we could know beforehand, but it would still be determined by chance. Do you have a radio, Sofía?”

“Yeah, my roommates listen to KAOS all the time. Drives me crazy.”

“Perfect. So, you turn on KAOS before you leave for the concert, and whatever is on, you play that.”

“KAOS is probably the last place you would go to listen to pop songs,” I say.

“True, but I can find an AM station or something, if KAOS is doing its usual freeform thing,” Sofía says.

“Could we try something now?” Lulu asks. “Anything you’ve heard on the radio lately?”

“Oh, jeez, I’m not exactly a pop music person,” Sofía says. “Maybe this isn’t such a great idea.”

“What if . . . I have a Gershwin songbook with me,” I say. “You could open that to a random page and play whatever is there.”

“That would be easier,” she says. I fish the songbook out of my backpack and hand it to her. She lets it fall open on the table. The song “But Not for Me” stares up at us.

“I don’t know this one,” Sofía says.

“It’s perfect,” I say. “I mean, if we’re looking for a pop song. It’s got a beautiful simple melody.”

“Should I play it in the key it’s written in? Or transpose?” she asks. “It’s in Eb, so it’ll sound in Db on my clarinet.”

“We’re in G. Well, I am. Lucas’s guitar part isn’t really in any key,” Lulu says. “But G and Db, those are the two triads in the tuning. Let’s try it.”

“There’s a pickup of three quarter notes, and the fiddle tune starts on the downbeat, right?” Sofía says. “Should I come in right at the top?”

“Maybe play it rubato,” Lulu says. “Come in wherever it feels right.”

We play “Blackberry Blossom” once through with Sofía’s clarinet floating sedately above the jagged guitar lines and wheezing chords on the accordion, which Lulu has somehow made sound out of tune. It’s not predictable anymore, sounding like what you might hear standing in a hallway with practice rooms on each side.

“That’s better,” Lulu says, “But, uh, let me think.”

I don’t really know what she’s going for. My idea was to use John Cage’s chance music techniques to create music based on fiddle tunes, or rather on the physical act of playing a fiddle tune on the guitar. If we’re using chance techniques, then whatever happens, whether it’s boring or chaotic, disturbing or placid, shouldn’t matter. But Lulu is using the dice and chance techniques to inspire arrangement ideas, and is judging the success of each one by how they sound. I have no idea what criteria she’s using, but I defer to her, since it’s her spot on the show.

“What if the clarinet comes in the second time through the tune?” she says to Sofía, “and the third time, I’ll try singing the lyrics, or some of the lyrics.”

“Should we phrase the melody together?” Sofía asks. “I’ve been ignoring the beat. I’m not sure how we would sync up.”

“I’ll follow you . . . or not. I don’t know.”

“Can we try it from where Sofía comes in?” I ask.

“Let’s do it from the beginning to see how it flows,” Lulu says.

When Lulu comes in with the first line, “They’re writing songs of love, but not for me,” she pitches her voice at the top of her range, an octave higher than Sofía’s clarinet. The sound is startling, but it strikes me as funny, and I flub a few notes as I try to keep from laughing. When Lulu sings the next line, she drops her voice to the bottom of her range, delivering “a lucky star’s above, but not for me” with a croaking, froggy rasp. Sofía laughs and has to stop, but Lulu continues undaunted. Singing has taken her attention away from the accordion, and her chording is erratic, which makes the whole thing even more disjointed, and kind of charming. It also takes the focus off my guitar part, which is good.

“Well, that’s a sound,” I say when we finish.

“I think we’re onto something,” Lulu says. I envy her confidence. She’s able to guide the piece based on something she’s hearing in her head, but also happy to leave some things to chance.

“So, the intention was for me to play a song chosen randomly,” Sofía says. “Should I stick with ‘But Not for Me’ or pick a song at random on Tuesday night?”

“I don’t know. I guess just do whatever you want,” Lulu says. “If you start playing a different song, I’ll figure something out.”

“So, what do you think about the Webern?” I ask as Lulu pulls out of the campus parking lot. “Can we pull it off?” The three of us are headed to Willowberry, Lulu and I for a potluck dinner, Sofía for a rehearsal with Alma, who also has a slot at the Tuesday-night concert. We’re stuffed onto the bench seat of Lulu’s beat-up pickup truck, Sofía in the middle, my guitar wedged between my legs.

“What do you mean by ‘pull it off’?” Lulu asks.

“Well, I know I won’t be able to play the guitar part, and you both said you weren’t exactly nailing your parts. Is there any point in doing it if we don’t have at least some chance of playing it right?”

“But what does ‘playing it right’ mean?” Lulu asks. I don’t know how to respond to this, though the question might have been rhetorical.

“From the normal point of view, it’s important to play the music as written, if you can,” Lulu continues. “Especially if anyone who knows the piece is listening. But who’s familiar with Webern’s Opus 18? Anyone you know?”

“Of course not.”

“I’m sure Webern intended his pieces to be approached like any other serious composition, but I don’t see why you have to. There’s a violin part in one of Charles Ives’s orchestral pieces that’s supposed to be so difficult that nobody can play it. But Ives apparently said that what he was after was the sound of a string section trying to play the part.”

“So, you’re saying that’s what we should do with the Webern? That trying to play it is the same as playing it right?”

“Not the same, but yes, the aural effect could be the same.”

“I’m not sure I agree,” Sofía says.

“What I’m saying is that we could get the same general sound Webern wanted even if we’re not playing it as written. We have a recording, right? We know what it’s supposed to sound like. If we try to grok the overall vibe, and tape ourselves playing it, we’ll be able to hear if it’s similar.”

“I guess we could give it a try,” Sofía says.

“I’ll bring my tape recorder on Monday,” Lulu says. “If we don’t like it, then we won’t play it on Tuesday. Maybe I’ll sing something by myself with the accordion. I’ve been working on a version of ‘D’Oreste d’Ajace.”

“Huh?” I say.

“You know, Mozart? Idomeneo?”

“Sorry, I don’t meneo,” I say, to which Sofía responds by nudging me a little too hard in the ribs.

“Is everyone vegetarian?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Charlie says. “Though not always voluntarily.”

“We don’t cook meat at Willowberry,” says Alma. “So, if you want to eat meat, you have to go out.”

“Brown Derby, here we come,” Charlie says, laughing.

After filling my plate from the large platters on the kitchen table I find a seat on the davenport in the living room and drain a tall glass of fresh apple juice. Sid’s short woodchopping lesson before dinner has left me hot and sweaty.

We arrived in time for Sofía to run through the songs she’s playing with Alma on Tuesday: “Was That the Human Thing to Do?” and “Shout, Sister, Shout,” a couple of swing-era vocal trios with Alma singing the melody and Jenny and Angelica harmonizing. Andrew and Gabe are playing guitar and bass in the makeshift band and they stay for dinner, along with Sid and Charlie and a few people I don’t know. Jenny joins me on the couch, and Alma, Angelica, and Gabe find places to sit nearby.

“Do you eat dinner like this every Friday night?” I ask Jenny, between forkfuls of garlicky green beans. I’ve been here a couple of times since the Dylan show, but mostly for rehearsals with Angelica’s band. The intervening month has been busy. In addition to schoolwork and rehearsals with Lulu and Angelica, I’ve been getting together regularly with Sally and Walt, sometimes playing fiddle and sometimes guitar. I also have three weekly guitar students who keep me busy between lessons learning whatever they want me to teach them.

Jenny and I often have lunch on campus during the week and she’s been a regular at the Sunday night square dances, but we’ve yet to spend another night together. The weather has been awful, and my lack of transportation and busy schedule makes it difficult to get back and forth from Willowberry to school when I need to. Jenny has been eager to hang out whenever we can, but she’s offered no direct invitation for an overnight stay until now.

“No, but it seemed like a good idea, since everyone was going to be here,” Jenny says. “We invited a few more people, too. They should be here later.”

“You brought your guitar, right?” Alma asks me.

“I did.” I assume I’ll be spending the night with Jenny, so I tucked a change of underwear and socks in my guitar case, along with a book I’m reading for book group. Jenny hadn’t specifically said anything about sleeping together when she invited me to dinner, but she did ask if there was anywhere I needed to be Saturday morning. I have nothing planned other than reading and practicing, which I can do anywhere, so if the weather keeps me here, I’ll be fine—better than fine.

“Great,” Alma says. “Glinda and Dieter are coming. You know, from Quantum Repair?”

“Cool. I don’t know them,” I say. “But I certainly know who they are.”

“That’s where we met,” Jenny says, shifting her body closer to mine. “At the concert on the first day of school.” She smiles, as if Glinda and Dieter are somehow significant to us.

The jam takes place in the living room. Dieter and Glinda, along with a couple of other people, showed up soon after we finished eating. There’s an upright piano against one wall, and Gabe has brought his bass in from the barn. With a glut of guitars—me, Andrew, Glinda, and another guy I don’t know, Ethan, who plays decent rhythm but not much else—we run through a handful of old country and bluegrass songs. Dieter is playing mandolin, and after a lull, Glinda suggests he play an instrumental. He looks around at the group and says, “Does anyone know any fiddle tunes?” I suggest “Salt Creek,” and he responds by launching right into the melody, without waiting to see if anyone else knows it. Glinda jumps in on rhythm, and Gabe and I follow. I struggle with the tempo when it’s my turn to play the melody, but manage to make it through the tune without embarrassing myself. Andrew also takes a solo, though he doesn’t know the melody; he just improvises on the pentatonic scale, with a few blues licks thrown in. We take the tune around the circle a couple of times, Dieter improvising fluidly on the melody his second time through, and after Andrew’s second solo, Dieter tells me to play the melody, to which he adds a harmony, bringing the tune to an end. Afterward, amid the post-song prattle, he turns to me and says, “nice job.”

A little later, during a lull between songs, Dieter asks if I play any other fiddle tunes. I suggest “Soldier’s Joy,” and he kicks the tune off at a more comfortable tempo. Afterward, he says to me, “That’s Clarence’s version, right?”

“Clarence White? Yeah, I think so. A friend showed it to me.”

“Nice. Do you have that Kentucky Colonels tape that’s going around? Bradley probably made you a copy.”

“Uh, no. Kentucky Colonels?”

“Yeah. Clarence’s bluegrass band. Their records are hard to find, but there are some live tapes floating around. You should ask Bradley about it.” (Bradley is Mr. Emerson.)

“I will. The only tape I have of Clarence is from the Muleskinner show.”

“That’s a good one. You’ve seen the video?”

“Just when it was on TV last year.”

“We’ve got a copy up at school. You should come by and watch it some time.” Dieter, it turns out, is employed by Evergreen, part-time in the recording studio and part-time in the computer lab.

“There he goes again, indoctrinating these poor kids into the Gospel of Clarence,” Glinda says, smiling.

“Better than some other gospels I know,” Dieter says.

The repertoire soon moves away from bluegrass. After Ethan sings “Teach Your Children,” Glinda, Alma, and Jenny suggest various Neil Young and Joni Mitchell songs. I know few of them, and begin to lose interest. I have trouble following the chord changes to “Old Man” (Ethan has moved to the piano and doesn’t seem to know the chords either, but that doesn’t stop him from pounding away insistently), so I shake my head “no” when Glinda nods at me to take a solo.

Jenny asks Glinda if she’ll sing one of her original songs, “Over the Mountain,” and I take the opportunity to use the bathroom. When I return, I settle into an empty spot on the sofa, leaving my guitar in its case. When Glinda finishes her song, Jenny comes over and perches on the arm of the couch next to me, looping her arm around my shoulders, pulling me close, and resting her head atop mine.

“Are you tired?” she asks.

“A little.”

She stands up and, without saying anything, walks toward the door that leads upstairs. As she opens it, she turns and smiles at me. I understand that I am to follow her, and after taking some dirty dishes into the kitchen, I do. There are five rooms on the second floor, two at each end of a long hallway and three along the side, one of which is a bathroom. The only other open door is behind me, so I turn and walk back to the room at the end of the hallway, where I find Jenny perched on the edge of the bed. The room is cozy, though a little chilly, and homey, as if Jenny has lived here for years, although I know she just moved in a couple of months ago. An Indian bedspread hangs from the middle of the room, pinned at each corner to the ceiling, muting the light from the center light fixture. The top of a large chest of drawers is covered with painted wooden boxes, unlit candles, jewelry, small jars, and half-used incense sticks. Clothes are strewn over the half-open closet door and a chair that sits in front of a small desk covered with books, framed photos, notebooks, and a couple of old coffee mugs filled with pencils and pens. The sweet smell of vanilla and cinnamon emanates from the desktop.

“I was afraid you weren’t going to come up.”

“I took some dishes into the kitchen.”

“Cleaning up after yourself. You’re sweet.”

I sit next to her on the double bed. She turns toward me and kisses me tenderly on the lips, moving a hand onto my leg. Her lips are warm and soft, and the kiss is long, wet, and debilitating. She strokes my leg and I move my hand to her stomach, slipping it under her worn denim shirt. My hand rises slowly up her tummy, and I discover that she’s not wearing a bra. As my hand surrounds one of her full, round breasts, her nipple stiffens. She pulls away, gets up from the bed, and walks to the door, closing it quietly.

“Are you cold?” she asks.

“A bit.” The house is damp and drafty; the heat from the living-room wood stove doesn’t reach Jenny’s bedroom. She unzips her jeans, dropping them to the floor where she stands, and walks back to the bed, pulling back the covers—a thick wool blanket and an old, frayed quilt. I stand up and remove my jeans. She gets into bed still wearing her shirt, panties, and socks, and I follow her example, climbing into the opposite side of the bed wearing underwear, wool socks, a t-shirt, and a long-sleeve flannel shirt. She reaches for my shirt buttons as I get into bed, and unbuttons the top one. I help her, and soon she’s lifting my flannel shirt over my head, and with it, my t-shirt. She slides down under the covers and as I do the same, she lowers her mouth to my chest, gently biting a nipple and sliding her hand beneath my shorts. She starts stroking me vigorously. At first, my senses are overwhelmed, but both actions soon become painful. The rapid movement of her dry hand makes me sore; I’m in no danger of a precoital accident.

“Not yet,” I whisper, pulling her hand away from my groin. I unbutton her shirt and kiss her again. She returns the kiss with more force than I expect, and when I free her breast, I lower my mouth to it. She arches her back and moans, and I move to the other breast, sliding my hand down her stomach and beneath her underwear. When my hand moves over her thick, curly hair, she pulls me on top of her, opening her legs and pushing her hips up to meet me. She rocks up and down slowly, the thin cotton of her underwear moving against mine. I reach underneath her and, as she lifts herself off the bed, I slide her underwear down her legs. She does the same to me, sliding her hands over my butt. There’s nothing separating us now, and after she wriggles her underwear down and off her legs, we move together with more insistence. She moves her hand down between our hips and, although I’m not wearing a condom, she pushes me inside her, emitting a quick, sharp cry and then a sob and a guttural moan that sounds more like an expression of pain than pleasure. I kiss her face and taste salty tears on her cheeks. I roll off, saying, “I’m sorry, I should get a condom.” I start to get up from the bed, but she continues crying quietly.

“No, no, it’s OK.” She says.

Clearly it’s not OK, so I stay on the bed and move back toward her, leaning on my elbow next to her, waiting. She cries to herself for a minute, her head tucked against her shoulder, one hand over her eyes. Then she turns her back to me and curls her legs up to her chest. She stops crying and the room is still, nearly silent. The wind rattling through a damaged window—like faint echoes of foolish words—is the only sound I hear.

A muffled laugh from downstairs breaks the stillness. I touch her shoulder and say, “Jenny? Darlin’, are you OK? We don’t have to . . .” She chokes on a sob and then rolls over to face me, her hands crossed over her bare breasts.

“I’m sorry, it’s my fault. It’s not you. I want to, I just . . . I’m sorry.” She looks up at me as if she’s about to tell me something unbearably sad, but says nothing. There are tears in her eyes, and her cheeks are red and inflamed, as if from a rash.

“I want you to . . .” she starts.

“What?”

She moves her hand down my stomach, grabbing me roughly, but gentler than before. She lowers her mouth and takes me in, moving slowly until I’m close to coming. As I start, she moves her mouth away and takes me in her hand until I twist and shudder against her. When I’m done, she slips out of bed, awkwardly pulling on a robe hanging from the closet door, and leaves the room.

I lie stunned. I don’t know what just happened. Was I too rough? Did I accelerate things too quickly? I should have had a condom ready. But I was surprised that we got so far, so fast. And she was the one who had . . . The last part was nice, but . . . Why do I feel so bad?

She comes back into the room, closing the door behind her. She walks to the bed, but something has changed. It’s like I’m not here. She takes a clean pair of underwear and t-shirt from the chest of drawers, drops her robe to the floor, dons the clean clothes, and slips back into bed before finally looking at me.

“Are you OK?” she asks. A well of sadness sits heavily behind her eyes. I wish she would tell me what it is, but she’s distant now. If there was a moment when she might have explained what just happened, it has passed.

“I’m fine. I’m sorry I made you cry. I . . . are you OK?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry, sweetie. I just . . . Sometimes I just get overwhelmed . . . I don’t know.”

“Have I done something wrong?”

“No, no. But . . . you know, Ezra left, and before that, there was the thing with Tracy, and I . . . I just don’t know what I’m doing sometimes. It just gets so hard to care so much . . . and I get all . . . ”

She doesn’t finish the thought.

“What happened with you and Tracy?”

“Oh, not now. I’ll tell you, but not now. Let’s just . . .”

“Do you want me to go?”

“No, no, of course not. I want you to stay. I want you to spend the night, hold me, keep me warm.”

“I can do that.” She smiles for the first time since . . .

I lift my arm and she moves beneath it, resting her head on my chest. Her breathing slows and we lie in silence for a few minutes. Then she says, “Are your parents still together?”

“No. I mean, my parents split up when I was six, but my dad and stepmom are together. Why?”

“Do you like her? Your stepmom?”

“Yeah, more or less. More now that I don’t live at home. I was so ready to get out of there all last year that I was probably a jerk most of the time, to everybody. I just didn’t want to be there anymore. My mom can be kind of strict, especially when she gets busy with work, but she has to put up with my dad. That ain’t easy.”

“Why?”

“He’s got a temper and he yells a lot, sometimes completely out of the blue. You never know what will set him off. She gives as good as she gets, but . . . well, they can really go at it.”

“That must be tough for you.”

“I guess. I don’t know. Aren’t all parents like that?”

“Mmm.”

“What about you?”

“My parents split up when I was ten. You know I grew up in Moscow, Idaho, right?”

“I do now.”

“My mom’s still there, in Moscow, but my dad moved to Seattle after they split. I’d visit him in the summer, go live with him for a month or two. That’s why Alma and I are so close. I spent more time at her house than his on those trips.”

“Did your mom ever remarry?”

“Yeah.” I can feel her heart beating faster and stronger against my chest. She doesn’t say anything for a while.

“My stepdad is a jerk, a heavy drinker and a ladies’ man, or so he fancies himself. He’s a dean at the university in Moscow. He doesn’t live with my mom anymore, though technically they’re still married. I think he and my mom were having an affair and my real dad found out about it. My stepdad started coming around soon after my dad left.”

We hear the downstairs door open, the music momentarily louder, and footsteps ascend the stairs. Then a quiet knock on the door.

“Lucas?” It’s Angelica. Jenny laughs quietly.

“Yeah?”

“Sorry to bother you, but Lulu is driving back to campus. Do you want a ride?”

I look at Jenny and she shakes her head.

“No, I’m going to stay here. Thanks for checking.”

“Of course. See ya.”

“Bye, Angelica,” Jenny says.

“Bye, sweetie,” Angelica says, laughing. “You treat my friend right, now, you hear?”

“I will.”

“Oh, I know you will. I’ll see you Sunday.” We hear Angelica giggle to herself as she goes back down the stairs.

Jenny snuggles into my shoulder and says, with a smile, “You called me ‘darlin’.”

NEXT: Dick: March

“Obviously you knew you shouldn’t be here, or you wouldn’t have run off into the woods like that.”

“That was stupid. I’m sorry.”

“Kinda funny, actually. Cracked us right up, didn’t it, Stan?”

“That it did.”

“We’ll let you go this time, but you have to get off the highway. You can’t hitchhike here. Just walk down a bit, and you’ll see the onramp for I-5. You can stick your thumb out there. Good luck, and be careful. A lot of real losers out here.”

When my ride from Olympia, a scruffy, athletic man probably in his thirties, driving a new, yellow Dodge Challenger, picked me up, he told me he was going to Federal Way, about halfway to Seattle, but he neglected to say that his exit led directly to another four-lane highway. As I had no idea where I was once we left I-5, or how far it would be to the next exit, I asked him to let me out immediately, figuring my best bet was to get back to the interstate as soon as possible. He dropped me on the side of the highway, lined on both sides by dense forest, with no sign of civilization anywhere. I ran across to the other side and stuck out my thumb, hoping to quickly get back to the freeway, but within minutes a highway patrol car appeared around a bend. Stupidly, I ran for the trees. If I had just turned and walked up the highway, the police might not have stopped. It’s a good thing they were amused by my lame escape attempt.

“Oh, my God, did you see that? It’s like the sky is erupting.”

“What? What’re you talking about, man. Where? I don’t see . . .”

“Right there, can’t you . . . And there’s another one. Cosmic!”

“Are you tripping, man? You maybe think I should drive? Don’t go buggin’ out on me, now.”

“No, no, it’s copacetic, dude. Take a chill pill. You’re probably as slammed as me, anyway.”

“That’s a fact.”

I got a ride within minutes of reaching the I-5 onramp, but the brothers who picked me up are really stoned. The driver was OK at first, but now he acts as if he’s hallucinating. I feel like I’ve stepped into a Cheech and Chong routine. The driver has stayed in his lane so far, and he’s driving under the speed limit by about ten miles an hour, but I’m worried about how he’s going to negotiate the freeway exit, which is coming up soon. I also hope their destination hasn’t changed; they were a little vague about it when they picked me up. I realize that “Seattle Center” could either mean the specific urban parkland that contains the Seattle Coliseum, where Bob Dylan and the Band are playing tonight, or downtown Seattle in general. I try not to worry, consoling myself with the thought that if I end up in some unknown part of town, it should be easy to get directions to the Seattle Center, and if I’m close enough, I can just walk toward the Space Needle.

I bought Alma’s extra ticket to the Dylan concert, but she and Jenny drove up yesterday afternoon, along with Charlie and his girlfriend. They didn’t offer me a ride, much less a place to stay overnight. The weather has been clement, overcast but not too cold, and Walt assured me it would be easy to hitchhike to Seattle. I left Evergreen anxious but confident I could make it to the show on time. It’s a little past six now, so I’ll have plenty of time to find something to eat and get to my seat before the concert starts at eight.

“His clothes are dirty, but his hands are clean / And you’re the best thing that he’s ever seen.”

“I love this song,” Jenny says, grabbing my arm and leaning into my shoulder. I assumed that the Band would open the show for Dylan, but they all came out together, kicking things off with “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)” and now “Lay Lady Lay.” With the Band backing him up, Dylan’s delivery of his hit love song is much more aggressive—almost commanding (“stay, lady, stay”)—than the syrupy version on Nashville Skyline. Robbie Robertson’s stinging guitar fills replace the sleepy Nashville pedal steel, and Garth Hudson’s swirling, fractured organ lines supplant the eerie sustained organ pads on the record. Dylan pitches the verses higher, too, but I can’t tell if he’s changed the key or is in a higher octave. His singing is the very opposite of romantic, almost angry, like a holdover from “Most Likely You Go Your Way.” The last word of “whatever colors you have in your mind” seems to have three syllables: “my—ee—und” and Dylan sings it as if he has just bitten his tongue.

Jenny listens with a dreamy, blissful smile, her head half-cocked toward me. She’s wearing tight, threadbare blue jeans and a sort of Sgt. Pepper’s marching band jacket with a plunging neckline and possibly nothing underneath. We all met up a half hour before the show in front of the snack bar. Jenny bounded up to me, planted a kiss on my cheek, and took my arm to lead me into the arena, where she insisted on sitting next to me, with the other three in front, though my ticket had me sharing a triad with Charlie and Bonnie, his girlfriend. I never did find out who the extra ticket had originally been for.

After three or four more songs, Dylan leaves the stage to the Band, who launch into a few of their best-known songs: “Stage Fright,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” and “King Harvest.” When Robbie Robertson’s guitar kicks off “When You Awake,” I turn to Jenny and repeat back to her, “I love this song.” But Rick Danko’s herky-jerky, half-spoken vocal is disappointing. It’s like he’s been advised by Dylan to remove all trace of sentiment from his singing. The Band’s backup is restrained, too, with just a couple of short Robbie Robertson solos and simple accordion and organ chords. The high harmony vocals on the record are missing, and Danko’s world-weary lullaby has become a jaunty recitation. He seems to be trying to avoid all the original melody notes. But the funky version of “Up on Cripple Creek” that follows restores the smile to my face. Richard Manuel’s wah-wah clavinet dominates, channeling Stevie Wonder’s playing on “Superstition,” and Garth’s wild keyboard conjuring justifies the price of my ticket. Dylan comes out for a few more, including a searing “All Along the Watchtower,” and the first set ends with an uninspired, plodding “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” the weakest song of the set.

I lose Jenny in the crowd filing out for the break, but after a visit to the restroom, we all meet by the snack bar. Jenny and Alma walk up as I’m telling Charlie about my hitchhiking experience.

“The driver was pretty buzzed, but he seemed to sober up after a car veered into our lane as we passed the Seattle city limits sign. At least I got here in one piece.”

Charlie laughs, and Alma asks, “When are you going back?”

“I was thinking I’d hitch back tonight, but maybe I’ll see if there’s a Greyhound.”

“The Trailways station is closer, I think,” Charlie says. “You might try that first.”

“It’ll be pretty late by the time you get to Olympia,” Jenny says. “If there’s even a bus after the show. You could stay at Alma’s house. We’re taking the bus back tomorrow afternoon. Her sister Greta is coming for brunch in the morning and then her mom will drive us to the Greyhound station.”

“I thought you all drove up together?”

“We did, but Charlie and Bonnie are staying at his parents’ house in Duvall, and they aren’t going back till Monday.”

“You’re sure your parents won’t mind if I crash with you?” I ask Alma.

“It’s only my mom, and no, she won’t mind,” she says, taking a sip from the large plastic cup in her hand.

“OK, yeah, that’d be great,” I say, smiling at Jenny. But, as I’ve come to expect, her exuberance suddenly dims, and as we head up into the tunnel leading back to the darkened arena, she turns to Charlie to ask about his family.

Alma’s house is at the top of a small rise on a residential ridge with a view of Puget Sound. A midnight moon is out, and the water sparkles even from this distance, a half mile or so from the shoreline. The quiet, dark house seems small at first, but Jenny leads me through the living room and kitchen to a door that leads down to the basement. The lower level is almost a separate apartment, with a large family room, full bathroom, and spare bedroom. Jenny shows me where everything is, pointing out the light switches at the bottom of the stairs and outside the bathroom, and tells me brunch will probably be around eleven. “But get up whenever you want. Alma’s an early riser.” She leads me to the door of the small bedroom, but doesn’t enter, sleepily bidding me goodnight with a gentle squeeze of my arm.

Jenny had been quiet and subdued ever since I took Alma up on the offer of a place to stay, though she was the first to leap from her seat as Dylan and the Band left the stage at the end of the show, clapping and cheering wildly until they returned for an encore. She was also first on the bus to Alma’s house, striding all the way to the back and taking a seat next to an elderly woman, leaving Alma and me to share a two-seater opposite them. Had I misread her ebullience and affection during the first set as something more? Or was she just telling me not to expect a late-night visit to my bed?

I have trouble getting to sleep, though the bed is comfy and warm, with two fluffy, padded quilts and a thick foam pillow. All I can think of is that somewhere above me is the sexiest, most alluring woman I’ve ever met. Jenny’s soft, wavy brown hair is thick and sensual, chaotic ropy strands entwining like jungle vines; her dark brown, almost black, eyes are tinged with an alluring melancholy, even when she’s laughing or excited; and her full, crimson lips often seem as if they’re searching the trembling sky for a home. My impression of her body has primarily come from a few hugs, promising a soft, voluptuous form hiding beneath her usual baggy, shapeless shirts and army pants. Tonight’s Sgt. Pepper’s jacket was a charming surprise. But her vacillating moods make me wonder if, as with Emily, I’ve mistaken platonic warmth for something more romantic, and that this is the way she treats every male friend. Of course, I saw how she flirted with Tracy at the DeLuxe, which I know led to at least one trip to the bedroom, and that flirtation was not unlike the way she treats me at times. But . . .

I’m just drifting off, the screen of my mind shifting between the concrete and the fantastic—an image of Jenny singing with Angelica at rehearsal becomes Rick Danko and Robbie Robertson sharing a microphone—when I hear the cellar door creak open and gentle footsteps descending the stairs. Another door opens, presumably the bathroom, and a thin strand of light appears beneath my doorway. When the toilet flushes, I turn to the wall and pull the quilts over my head, assuming that whoever has decided to use the downstairs bathroom will be returning upstairs. With the quilts covering my ears, I miss the sound of the bedroom door opening, and I’m startled when the bed moves, the outer edge tipping toward the floor as Jenny crawls in next to me. She slides across the sheets, one arm moving up my hip and over my side, coming to rest on my t-shirt–covered chest.

I turn to face her and her dry, urgent lips meet mine, her tongue slipping into my mouth. She pushes me onto my back and rolls on top of me, sitting up to pull her shirt over her head. There’s enough light in the room to reveal the dazzling beauty of her naked upper body, though she doesn’t let my gaze linger on it, lowering herself to my chest after tossing her shirt to the floor. Her mouth moves to the back of my neck, and then to my earlobe, her hips moving slowly against mine. I move my hands down, slipping them beneath her underwear and over her smooth bottom. As my arousal becomes obvious, her body stiffens, and she slides slowly off my chest until she’s lying face down on the mattress next to me, her face buried in my shoulder with one arm over my chest. Puzzled, I pull the quilts over us, and she curls her body into mine, her legs together and her bottom away from me, her bare breasts sheltered by her arms.

“I’m sorry. I guess I’m tired,” she whispers. “Can we just . . . ?”

“Of course.”

She slides her arm slowly across my chest and down toward my navel, but then suddenly pulls it back, placing a kiss on my t-shirted shoulder as her body settles.

I have trouble getting to sleep, especially after Jenny’s arm and leg instinctively move onto me. But at least my insomnia is due to the confusion of erotic memory and spurned desire and not my usual anxiety and worry.

February 10

When I wake around ten, I’m alone; I have a vague memory of Jenny climbing out of bed in the light of dawn, pulling her shirt over her head before opening the bedroom door, which is still ajar. Overlapping voices and the sounds of kitchen activity can be heard somewhere above as I go into the bathroom and see that a towel has been left for me on the toilet seat. I take a shower and wash my hair, leaving my cheeks rough for lack of a razor.

I’m apprehensive, wondering which version of Jenny I’ll find upstairs, the soft, affectionate one, or the distracted, distant one. But after I pull on my clothes, which still reek of pot, cigarettes, and sweat, and quickly straighten the bedroom, Jenny appears in the doorway with a large mug of black coffee.

“For some reason I assumed you drink coffee?” she says, with a shy smile. “Do you like it black or with milk, sugar?”

“Usually a little milk,” I say, “Although black is fine.”

I take a sip from the mug and am surprised at the strong, bitter taste.

“Whoa!”

“Is it bad? Alma always makes it too strong. She gets beans from this place in the Pike Place Market she loves—Starbucks. Her mom sends her bags of coffee beans regularly, because she can’t get them in Olympia. I prefer tea, myself. I’ll get you some milk.”

“No, no, it’s good,” I say. “I was just surprised. I’m so used to the swill at Evergreen or my parents’ instant. But yes, I will take some milk.”

She leads me to the stairs, and after taking the first step, she turns to face me, her eyes level with mine, and plants a tentative kiss on my lips. “There, that’s better,” she says, laughing, before turning to ascend the remaining stairs.

“Hey Alma, Lucas is up.”

“Oh, good, we can eat.”

The rest of the day passes pleasantly, and Jenny remains in a warm, playful mood, mostly ignoring the half-contentious joking that characterizes Alma’s relationship with her mother and older sister. Jenny is not physically affectionate with me in the presence of the others, but she stays close, sitting beside me at brunch and in the back seat of the car on the way to the Greyhound station.

We find a seat together on the bus, and as it pulls out, we crumble into one another and I close my eyes, drifting happily into half-sleep, my hand resting gently on her knee. We say goodbye to each other at the Olympia Greyhound station, where Alma has arranged to be picked up by a friend who is taking them to dinner, after which I cross the street to wait for the Evergreen Shuttle.

On the shuttle, as the dirty, damp bungalows of the Westside give way to dense greenery, my chest tightens, and I fight back tears; a bitter sadness has risen unbidden from some place deep in suppressed memory. I’ve spent a wonderful day with an adorable, gorgeous woman, but a bleak, puzzling melancholy settles over me as I stare at the dreary landscape, the dark, secretive forest now ominous and threatening. I realize that, despite the romantic connection I’ve made with Jenny, I don’t know what any of it means. We never spoke of what was happening between us or the future in any way—what it might mean for the next time we see each other. In the moment, it was perfect and thrilling to simply be together, without any thought of where or when our next encounter might be. We are able to talk easily about insignificant subjects, like her inability to read past the first couple of chapters of The 42nd Parallel (I told her I thought that was a common problem) or the small, fussy man in the bow tie and fedora who sat opposite us on the bus from Seattle to Tacoma. Shared silence also comes easily to us. But, for example, we never discussed whatever happened between her and Tracy, or her relationship with Ezra, whose room she’s now living in at Willowberry, or my heartbreaking winter vacation.

I remember that I’m expected at Walt’s for tunes and dinner before the square dance tonight. I usually show up around four or five, and it’s four now, so I should be able to make it to Walt’s in time for dinner. I wonder if the elation of the first half of the day, or my current gloom, will be obvious to Sally or Walt. I should have invited Jenny to the square dance, or at least asked if she was planning to go. She hasn’t been to any of the dances since December. Perhaps she’s afraid of running into Tracy. I could have told her that he hasn’t been showing up much lately, but I was afraid that bringing him up might put her off, signaling that I knew they had had some sort of relationship. My chest contracts again at the thought of seeing Tracy at the dance.

I know it’s ridiculous to feel proprietary about Jenny so soon after our first . . . what? Not a date. Dalliance? Affair? That I do confirms how extraordinary this day has made me feel, despite the jolts of depression. Like Angelica said, I have a tendency to think too much about relationships instead of enjoying the moment. Because that’s where my exhilaration has come from: the momentary feel of Jenny’s tongue between my lips, or her teeth biting my earlobe; the momentary unveiling of her bare breasts, or her panty-clad bottom leaving the room in the morning light; the moment my anxiety evaporated as she appeared at the bedroom door with a mug of coffee and a smile, or leaned into my body as if she was trying to cast a mold of it on the all-too-short bus ride.

I need to accept my good fortune, my melancholy pleasure, wherever it has come from, and not try to analyze it or comprehend how it happened. If I do, I’ll lose it . . . or become lost.

Idylwild, 1969

Behind the playground, there are two paths that lead to the river. I know where one of them comes out, but not the other, and I’m hoping that Alice doesn’t know either and will assume that I’ve taken the familiar one. I can’t face her, not this afternoon, not after what happened at recess.

“Hey Lucas!”

Ignore them.

“Is that a sissy bike? Only sissies ride bikes like that.”

“Do you give Alice rides on your sissy bike, Lucas?”

The path veers to the left, and I let the bike slide into the narrow trail. It’s steeper than I thought. I’m going faster than I want to; I feel like I’m losing control of the bike. I jam on the brakes, but my foot slips off the pedal, and I hit a tree root. The bike bounces into the air, but I hang on. There’s a curve coming up and I slam on the pedals again. I skid around the corner, still traveling faster than I’d like, and see before me a tree that has fallen across the path. I don’t think I can stop in time, so I steer to the right, off the trail, into some low bushes and thick sand. I hear a loud “pop,” and my rear wheel fishtails. When I finally come to a stop, I look back and see that my rear tire is flat. I walk the bike around the end of the fallen tree and back to the trail. It shouldn’t take that long to get to the river, and I’m out of range of Chris and his gang. If Alice has followed me, however, she’ll catch up easily.

Around another bend, I see the river through the trees and smell cigarette smoke. I stop, wondering if I should continue or retreat back up the trail. But the river is not far, and it would take a long time to push the bike back up the steep hill. OK, keep going. It’ll be OK. I hear a cough, and a quiet laugh. I can see the sand along the riverbank. I’m almost there. The trail is moving parallel to the river now, instead of straight down to it. The smell of smoke has gotten fainter, and there are no more voices.

A bend up ahead looks like it’ll take me down to the river. As I approach the turn, I hear another cough from behind. I look back, but seeing nothing I keep walking. Around the bend is a small campsite. The trail doesn’t go to the river at all, but dead-ends here. On the other side of a fire pit three tall trees form a barrier that will make it impossible for me to proceed much farther. I hear a cough and turn to see a man sitting on a log, until now hidden from my sight, just outside the clearing. Behind him is a small, green tent.

“Hey kid, you lost?”

“Uh, yeah. I thought this went to the river.”

“Nope.”

“What’s wrong with your bike?”

“Flat.”

“Can’t help you there.”

“I think I took a wrong turn somewhere.”

“Were you coming down the trail? You probably got confused at that tree.”

“Yeah, I went around it.”

“Ah, right. If you’d gone over the top, you’d’ve seen that the main trail veers off to the left. You must’ve gone to the right.”

“Yeah, guess so.”

“ . . .”

“I guess I’ll head back.”

When I get back to the fork, I look up the trail and see Alice struggling to push her bike over the downed tree. She’s not having much luck. Her front fork keeps getting stuck in the branches. It looks like her front wheel is damaged. Maybe she ran into the tree. She hasn’t seen me yet, but I lay my bike on the ground and turn back up the trail toward her.

“Do you need any help?”

NEXT: Chapter 18: March 8: Lulu Rehearsal

“It was not until I joined the White House staff in June 1970 that I fully realized the strong feelings that the President and his staff had towards antiwar demonstrators. The White House was continually seeking intelligence information about demonstration leaders and their supporters that would either discredit them personally or indicate that the demonstration was in fact supported by some foreign enemy. . . .

“I was made aware of the President’s strong feelings about even the smallest of demonstrations during the late winter of 1971 when the President happened to look out the windows of the residence of the White House and saw a lone man with a large ten-foot sign stretched out in front of Lafayette Park. I ran into Mr. Dwight Chapin who said that he was going to get some ‘thugs’ to remove the man from Lafayette Park. . . . I told him I didn’t believe that was necessary. . . .

“We never found a scintilla of viable evidence indicating that these demonstrators were part of a master plan, nor that they were funded by any Democratic political funds, nor that they had any direct connection with the McGovern campaign. This was explained to Mr. Haldeman, but the President believed that the opposite was, in fact, true.”

. . .

“It was late June or early July that Jack Caulfield came to see me to tell me that Colson had called him in, at Ehrlichman’s direction, and instructed him to burglarize the Brookings Institution in an effort to determine if they had certain leaked documents. . . . Colson had instructed him to plant a fire bomb in the building and retrieve the documents during the commotion that would ensue.”

. . .

“It was not until I joined the White House staff that Caulfield was assigned to develop political intelligence on Senator Edward Kennedy. Mr. Caulfield told me that within some six hours of the accident at Chappaquiddick on July 18, 1969, he had a friend on the scene conducting a private investigation. . . .

“In the fall of 1971 I received a call from Larry Higby, who told me that Haldeman wanted 24-hour surveillance of Senator Kennedy.”

. . .

“The next time I recall meeting with Mr. Liddy was at a meeting in Mitchell’s office on January 29, 1972. Liddy was going to present his intelligence plan. . . .

“I did not fully understand everything that Mr. Liddy was recommending at the time because some of the concepts were mind boggling. Plans called for mugging squads, kidnapping teams, prostitutes to compromise the opposition, and electronic surveillance. He explained that the mugging squads could, for example, rough up demonstrators that were causing problems. The kidnapping teams could remove demonstration leaders and take them below the Mexican border. The prostitutes could be used at the Democratic convention to get information as well as compromise the person involved. . . . the girls would be high class and the best in the business.”

H.R. Haldeman, July 30, 1973

“The repertoire of the political prankster includes such activities as printing up embarrassing signs for the opponent, posing in train-man’s clothes and waving the campaign train out of the station, placing an agent on the opponent’s campaign train to produce witty newsletters mocking the candidate, distributing opposition signs at rallies for use by members of the crowd, encouraging band leaders to play rival songs at rallies, and so forth. . . .

“The pranksterism that was envisaged would have specifically excluded such acts as the following: violent demonstrations and disruption, heckling and shouting down speakers, burning or bombing campaign headquarters, physical damage or thrashing of headquarters and other buildings, harassment of candidate’s wives and families by obscenities, disruption of the national convention by splattering dinner guests with eggs and tomatoes, indecent exposure, rock throwing, assaults on delegates, slashing bus tires, smashing windows, setting trash fires under the gas tank of a bus . . .”

NEXT: Chapter 17: February 9: Bob Dylan and the Band

“This is Lynda with the morning’s Cascade Ski Report. Snoqualmie Pass is 27 degrees with snow and ice patches on the road. They’ll be running Pacific Crest, Little Thunder, Julie’s, Upper Magic Carpet, and Wildside today. Stevens Pass is 15 degrees and overcast with packed snow on the roadway. Skyline, Hogsback, and Daisy are open from four P.M. to ten P.M., conditions permitting.”

There stand three infernal Furies flecked and spattered with blood.

I see they have the limbs of women, and their devious ways,

but what is it they wear as girdles?

Snakes of deepest radiant green?

“Yeah, we’re at Dante’s. Hmm? Me, Joanne, and Ginger. Oh, and Pete, too. He was here when we got here. With some friends, I don’t know. No, we won’t be long, just enough for a beer or two. I have to get up at 5:30 as usual. On my bike, again, of course. It’s not that far, the streets are empty then. So, are you coming tomorrow night? You are? Oh, good. We’ll have fun. Yeah, just Mom and Dad, and whoever from the house wants to. I don’t know. OK, great, I’ll see you tomorrow. Can’t wait. Bye.”

“Joanne? Can you grab that table in the corner for us? I’ll get a pitcher and tell Pete we’re back here. Oh, excuse me, I didn’t see you there.”

Where’d he come from? I could have sworn he wasn’t standing there a minute ago. Creepy eyes, like he’s searching inside his skull for something. And that smell, eew . . . but he is kind of handsome. If he just got himself cleaned up, he’d be cute.

“Pete. There you are. What’s going on? Dice? Really? OK. We have a table in the back. See where Ginger is? Bring a couple more glasses, would ya?”

“So, your parents? Tomorrow night?”

“Yes, and Bob and Laura. I thought I’d make beef stroganoff.”

“That sounds yummy. But isn’t that a little rich for your stomach?”

“Oh, it’s fine now. The cramps are gone. I don’t know why, they just went away.”

Now that I can see her clearly, she’s quite beautiful. Tall, slender, with chestnut hair to the waist, clear blue eyes, dark lashes. It’s hard to tell in the dark, leaving by the backdoor early in the morning with her bicycle, covered up by that rain slicker and . . . what do you call it? A sou’wester?

What a surprise to see these girls up here. But maybe not. Their house is just a couple blocks down. I should have known. A few beers on a Friday night. What a cliché. Isn’t that what all the slutty little students do?

Accurséd spirit, though you’re disguised by filth, can I guess your name?

Tiny serpents and horned vipers crawling in your hair.

Furiously you tear at your breast with twisted, taloned nails.

And with knobby palms, beat your face and gnarled hide.

“No, I’ve given up on a musical career.”

“But I love your voice. You could be an actress. You were such a star in Brigadoon. I thought they should have featured you more in that folk mass at church.”

“Oh, you’re such a little sycophant. I suppose you want me to set you up with Barry, don’t you?”

“What? No? How could you even? He’s not . . .”

“You know what I’m talking about. Don’t play dumb. I know you know he’s back in town. Bonnie said she told you.”

“Maybe I do, what of it?”

“Hey girls, I’m going to take off. I’ll have to catch the 9:40 bus if I’m going to make it home tonight.”

“OK, well, we should go, too. Bottoms up, girls. Let’s walk Pete to the bus stop.”

“Did you remember your key?”

“No, but the spare should be in the mailbox.”

I thought I saw some movement, a hunched shadow, behind us as we turned onto 12th. Was that him? From Dante’s? It’s almost like I can smell him. But I don’t see anything. Just my imagination maybe. Two beers, I really am a lightweight.

“Do you really think we should keep the spare key out here? Anyone could see us. There was that girl that was attacked last month. Just a few blocks away, I think.”

“You’re right. We should find another place for it. Around back, maybe, but those bushes on the side of the house are so overgrown. Remind me to ask the landlord about it.”

Across the turbid, frothy waves there passes a reboantic fracas, a horrid sound,

enough to make the bloody shoreline quake. It strikes the forest,

ear shattering, beating down trees, shearing off pale branches,

pushing and whirling clouds of dust before its tireless fury.

February 3

“The University of Washington psychology major disappeared two nights ago from her house in the University District, which she shared with four roommates, all students. She was first reported missing when she failed to show up for her job as morning announcer for the Cascade Ski Report. We’ve probably all heard her voice. Imagine that, Cindy.”

“That’s so sad, Bob.”

“The police first treated it as a standard missing-persons report, thinking perhaps that she had a new boyfriend she had neglected to tell her roommates about. But when detectives searched her room, they found blood on her pillow and sheets, as well as on the neckline of her nightgown, which was hanging in the back of her closet. The roommates hadn’t noticed the blood earlier, because her bed had been made up. The only things missing were the clothes she had worn the previous day and a small, red backpack. And the basement door was unlocked, which was unusual, according to her roommates. So it appears that someone entered the house, most likely by the front door, assaulted her in her bed in the middle of the night, dressed her in her clothes, and then, after taking the time to make her bed and hang up her nightgown, abducted her, leaving through the basement door.”

Who are you, who have become so ugly?

You know me. I’m the one who weeps.

NEXT; Dick: Summer 1973: Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities