Summer of '69 Read online

  But it was the Maine fuzz who were most responsible for turning our excursion into a ginormously bad trip, constantly harassing us with obscure regulations designed to keep us disconcerted: laws against cooking with a camping stove in a parking lot, rules against parking at the beach without a permit. At least once a night, we’d been jarred awake by banging on Odysseus’s door, followed by the blinding glare of a flashlight as yet another “peace” officer informed us that we were loitering and ordered us to depart immediately.

  To much of the Maine populace, we are symbols of all that is wrong with this country. Me with my long hair, bell-bottoms, and Frye boots. And Robin, whose much longer brown hair falls to the middle of her back, and who on the trip wore a headband and a peace pendant on a strand of leather around her neck. And then there’s Odysseus. Covered with brightly painted flowers, paisley designs, rainbows, and peace signs, my microbus is a highly visible rolling advertisement for what Down Easters must assume is a deviant/promiscuous, pansy peace-loving threat to society. Robin and I would have preferred a quiet, uneventful vacation, but we’d be damned if that meant hiding our freak flags and pretending to support a government that sees nothing wrong with the wholesale slaughter of Vietnamese civilians.

  Now, in my room, with the effects of the Orange Sunshine worn thin, there are things I should probably do. Wash my clothes. Straighten the mess. Figure out what to do with my life. But all I want to do is write to my ladylove.

  6/26/69

  Dear Robin,

  I hope you’re taking the longest, hottest shower ever as I write this. I’m sorry you didn’t have a chance to take one during the trip. It wasn’t something I thought about. But I want you to know that I do think about you, all the time. You haven’t even left for Canada yet and I’m already missing you. I hope this letter will keep you company on the trip to Ontario. I hope you’ll read it over and over. I hope it makes you miss me so bad that when you get to Lake Juliette you’ll decide to turn around and come straight back home. (Not really. Well . . . yes, maybe really.) I love you. I’ll miss you this summer. I’m already looking forward to seeing you in a month when I drive up there.

  Love, love, love,

  Lucas

  When I go to my desk for an envelope, I notice that lying on the blotter is an article neatly clipped from the newspaper. This is my mother’s way of informing me that a government entity called the Federal Trade Commission wants to force tobacco companies to put warning labels on packs of cigarettes. Mom has underlined in red a sentence stating that smoking might lead to cancer, heart disease, and emphysema.

  But it is the might that foils her argument. Cigarettes might lead to those ailments. Smoking grass might lead to reefer madness. Taking acid might lead to chromosomal damage and attempts at unaided human flight from sixth-floor windows. But according to whom? A government that insists that drugs are bad and war is good.

  Bullshit.

  Into the garbage goes the newspaper article. But lying under it are two additional items. One is a yellow post office change-of-address form. My name and a new address in Bay Shore have been entered in the paterfamilias’s tiny handwriting. This is puzzling. Am I being evicted? Did my parents find a new and improved replacement offspring while Robin and I were in Maine? I don’t have time to wonder long about this, because the other item is a letter from Goddard College.

  I pick up the envelope and feel its thinness between my fingertips. In my chest, my heart deflates as fast as an unknotted balloon. My skeleton dissolves, leaving a puddle of protoplasm on the floor. Crap. Crap. CRAP! Blasting through the residual mind-alteredness fomented by lysergic acid diethylamide comes the stark, undeniable, very real, and very HEAVY FACT that yours truly, Lucas Baker, recent high-school graduate, future human question mark . . .

  Is completely, totally, and royally screwed.

  I’m in the death queue now.

  I’m not behind the plow.

  If I can’t get out,

  I’ll be worm dirt no doubt.

  I’m in the death queue now.

  Cousin Barry stands at his front door bare-chested, wearing a pair of tight hip-hugger bell-bottoms. An unfiltered Camel is squeezed between his nicotine-yellowed fingers. His dark sideburns are long and thick. His full, wavy hair falls to his shoulders.

  “How was it?” he asks when I hand him the camp stove I borrowed for Maine.

  “Bummer. They’re really straight up there.”

  Barry takes a pensive drag. “They hassle you?”

  “Hell, yeah.”

  We share a moment of wordless commiseration over the sucky state of straight over-thirty America, Maine rednecks, and the deadly and immoral conflict against the North Vietnamese that we’ve been told is necessary to avoid communism taking over the world. A conflict that, until yesterday, I had expected to avoid dying in. But that thin envelope from Goddard College has changed everything.

  I’m in the death queue now.

  Dear Mr. Baker,

  The Goddard College Admissions Committee has completed its evaluation of this year’s candidates, and I write with sincere regret to say that we are not able to offer you a place in the Class of 1973.

  I realize that this decision may come as a real disappointment . . .

  When I read those terrible words last night, I briefly considered calling Robin, then changed my mind. She said she’d be busy packing, and I didn’t want to bum her out with such bad news on her last evening at home. Besides, I’d expected to see her this morning for our final pre–Camp Juliette farewell. Then on the phone a few hours ago, she said she didn’t think there’d be time to say goodbye in person. She hadn’t finished packing, and it already looked like she might be late for the camp bus.

  I managed to dash to her house just as she and her father were pulling out of the driveway. Robin looked startled when she saw me. It was an awkward moment, with her father in the seat beside her. She rolled down the window, and I gave her the letter I wrote last night for her to read on the bus. I wanted to kiss her, but we never displayed physical affection in front of our parents. Still, I leaned into the window, pecked her cheek, and whispered that I loved her. She didn’t reply, but maybe I couldn’t expect that in front of her father. Her eyes began to fill with tears, and so did mine. Her father said they were late and really had to go. Then they were headed away down the street, Robin rolling up her window, tears rolling down my cheeks.

  I follow Cousin Barry upstairs. He’s barefoot; the tattered, stringy hems of his bell-bottoms drag on the steps. It’s not like he needed the camp stove right away. I’ve come here because I don’t know what else to do now that Robin’s gone. I’m usually pretty good by myself, but not today. Today I’m a lost, empty glove that needs a hand.

  Barry’s bedroom smells of cigarettes and turpentine. A mattress occupies a corner of the floor. Some colorful plastic kites are piled in another corner. The rest of the room is awash with clothing, art books, record albums, and music magazines. Nearly every flat surface higher than the floor is covered with half-squeezed tubes of paint, brushes, palettes, and cans of turpentine and paint thinner. Nearly every inch of wall space is hidden by canvases, posters of rock bands, or scribbles. Barry jots his thoughts on the walls, where they are less likely to get lost in the clutter.

  Taped to one wall is an ad for the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. It’s billed as “An Aquarian Exposition” in Wallkill, New York: Three Days of Peace and Music, with an art show, a crafts bazaar, workshops, and “hundreds of acres to roam on.” More important, it will feature a gargantuan lineup of top music acts like nothing anyone’s ever seen gathered in one place before.

  “You going?” Barry asks when he sees me studying the ad.

  “Definitely. It’s gonna be incredible. Thousands of people, man.” A month ago, Milton, our mutual friend Arno Exley, and I decided to send away for tickets. What better way to celebrate our last gasp of summer together before Arno starts his freshman year at Bucknell, Milton goes back to MIT, a
nd I — as of yesterday, fill in the blank: ____.

  I’ll be worm dirt no doubt. . . .

  Upon hearing that I’m planning to go to the Aquarian Exposition (whatever that means), Barry purses his lips and furrows his brow. It’s an expression I know well. Cousin rivalry. He’s a year older than me, and for most of our formative years, it was no contest. He was top dog, looking down on me literally and figuratively. Then the Semi-Miraculous Transformation took place, and now he must train his gaze upward. But the competitive streak is alive and well, at least until my corpse is flown back from Nam in a flag-shrouded coffin.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna go, too,” Barry announces.

  “For real?” I blurt out, then instantly feel bad for reacting with surprise instead of encouragement. For three of the past four years, Barry hardly left his parents’ house. Then, starting roughly a year ago, he began to venture out locally, but rarely farther than a long walk or short drive.

  Trying to cover up my gaffe, I wave an arm around the cluttered room. “You’ve been busy, man.” Barry’s canvases are colorful and hard-edged in the style of Frank Stella’s Protractor series. I have no critical basis for judging them, and anyway, it doesn’t matter. After years in a morose housebound purgatory of cigarettes, music, drugs, and black moods punctuated by stays in the loony bin, my cousin has begun to paint at a frenetic pace. Along with this astonishing creative outpouring has come a pronounced lifting of his spirits.

  From the hall comes the sound of the toilet flushing. A moment later, a vision strolls into the room. She is petite and waif-like in a diaphanous peasant blouse and tight hip-hugger bell-bottoms, with long straight blond hair and flawless, soft-looking skin. Through the stink of turpentine and cigarettes comes the heady scent of patchouli oil.

  “Lucas, Tinsley.” With a cheesy grin Cousin Barry performs the introductions. He’s met Robin a few times, so I suspect he’s proud to prove that he can attract a pretty girl, too.

  “Hello, Lucas. Barry’s told me about you.” Tinsley’s hazel eyes stay unwaveringly on mine. Her voice is soft, sultry. I swallow back a twinge of anxiousness. It wasn’t that long ago that someone so attractive and alluring would have prompted me to nervously blurt out something dumb and self-deprecating. But that was before the God of Genes bestowed this new chassis upon me. Now I channel James Bond, though in these antiestablishment times, it’s not his perfectly groomed, suave, debonair-with-a-license-to-kill vibe that I emulate, but rather his quietly bemused air of self-assurance. It’s an act, to be sure. But I’ve learned something about acts: if you stay consistent, they can be pretty convincing.

  I offer my hand, hearing Sean Connery’s Scottish accent in my mind: “Nice to meet you, Tinsley.”

  “And you.” She takes my hand firmly in hers and we shake.

  “Tinsley’s a photographer,” Barry says. “She’s making slides of my paintings.”

  Tinsley picks up a black-and-silver camera and aims it at a canvas propped against the wall. When she kneels, the ends of her straight blond hair nearly touch the floor and her hip-huggers slide low, revealing a possible absence of intimate apparel.

  Barry gives me a nudge. “Got any weed?”

  “Are bears Catholic?”

  “Wanna smoke?” he asks Tinsley.

  “I’m cool, thanks.” She presses her eye against the eyepiece, and the camera’s shutter snaps.

  As I follow Barry out of the room, I can’t resist looking back. Tinsley must feel my gaze. Or maybe she expects it. Either way, still kneeling, she glances up from beneath lowered eyelids and smiles coyly.

  On the back patio with Barry, I tap a joint out of my pack of Marlboros. Robin’s departure this morning (by now the camp bus should be passing Albany) and the suddenly distinct possibility that in the very near future they’ll shave my head, shove a rifle in my hands, and ship my sorry ass to a jungle halfway around the world are foremost in my mind. But the look Tinsley just gave me has muscled its way in. Was that not a come-on? But we don’t know each other, and it appears that she’s with Barry. It doesn’t make sense. I must be reading too much into it. Maybe it has something to do with the lonely ache I’m feeling for Robin. Or perhaps it’s a result of certain personal chemical proclivities. Do enough drugs, and reality becomes a moving target.

  I light the J with my Zippo, toke, and pass it to Barry. The patio is just large enough for two rusty metal chairs and a small filmy-glass table. In a yellow plastic ashtray, a dozen unfiltered cigarette butts float in a brownish broth.

  Barry takes a hit. “We met at the library. They had a show for local artists. You were allowed to enter two pieces.”

  “She’s an artist, too?”

  “No, man, photography.” He hands the joint back.

  “There’s something about her.” I’m being disingenuous. After the look she gave me upstairs, I’m curious about their relationship.

  “Dig it — she’s got that vibe, right? Black-magic strange-brew voodoo chile.” Barry sings the next sentence: “She put a spell on you.”

  I take another hit. Tinsley’s not the only one practicing sorcery. So’s this weed, thanks to my best friend and dealer, Arno. “You guys been together long?”

  Barry shakes his head. “Not her thing, man. She does what she pleases with whomever pleases her.”

  Ah, the sweet melody of free love. Earmark of the hippies, conceived and nurtured in the crash pads of Haight-Ashbury. But that’s out in California, where, it’s been said, all the nuts rolled when they tilted up the northeast corner of the map. In my experience, there’s been scant evidence of sexual revolution washing up along the beaches of the South Shore.

  “You okay with that?” I ask my cousin.

  Barry shrugs, but with a devilish glint in his eye. “Cuts both ways, right?” (If this new jauntiness is Tinsley’s influence, more power to her.)

  Joint smoked, we head for the kitchen, where Barry jabs a V-shaped hole with a can opener into a quart of Hi-C fruit punch. He offers me a glass of sweet red liquid, pours one for himself, and lights a Camel. Barry does a French inhale, releasing a mouthful of smoke and drawing it up through his nose. Then he blows one smoke ring through another.

  Wicked cool.

  Then again, he’s had four years of self-imposed solitary confinement to practice.

  Lucas the Spellbound follows Cousin Barry back upstairs, where Tinsley is sitting lotus-style on the floor, thumbing through a shoe box of black-and-white photographs. She holds up one from a day camp Barry and Lucas attended when they were single-digits. Observe Barry sporting a spit curl and cocky smile, beginning to look muscular. But who’s that awkward-looking humanoid next to him, crew-cut, chimpanzee-eared, baby-fat-faced, clearly still being groomed by Momma?

  Tinsley points at the photograph. “That’s you?”

  While it’s easy to recognize the younger version of Barry, the boy beside him looks nothing like what Lucas has become. At six feet two inches, he is the tallest in their nuclear family. More than once, Lucas has been told that he looks like a long-haired Montgomery Clift. (Thank you, daft croupier who oversees the capricious roll of the chromosomal dice.)

  Cousin Barry reaches up and noogies the top of Lucas Clift’s head a little harder than necessary. “Yeah, look at the little twerp now.”

  Barry can’t resist reminding Lucas of the nerdy kid he used to be. Always, Lucas senses, with a dose of resentment: Why did it have to be him? Why couldn’t it have happened to someone who deserved it?

  When Barry turns away to stub out his cigarette in an ashtray, Tinsley raises an eyebrow and tilts her face provocatively. Goose bumps run down Lucas the Perplexed’s arms. Unless he’s completely off his rocker, he’s almost certain he’s been offered an invitation.

  The question is, to what?

  Back home later, in the den of the house of dashed dreams, my fourteen-year-old brother, Alan, sits cross-legged on the white shag carpet in front of the TV, watching Bozo the Clown. As usual, he’s sitting to
o close. I give him the sign, and he scooches back without taking his eyes from the screen. Alan is chomping on strands of uncooked spaghetti. The pink bite plate with his false front teeth lies half-hidden in the fibers of shag beside him.

  The high from Barry’s may have diminished, but I’ve still got the munchies. “Lemme try?”

  Alan extends the blue box of Ronzoni. I pull out a few strands and crunch down. Yuck. Tasteless and nearly impossible to chew. Alan must be starving if he’s willing to eat this. “Mom around?” I ask.

  He shakes his head.

  “How about I make us something?”

  Alan nods. His eyes stay on the boob tube.

  In the kitchen, I ponder what to prepare, my culinary skills being limited to scrambled eggs and tuna fish sandwiches. In the refrigerator, “normal” fare takes a back seat to the paterfamilias’s “health” food: A jar of “natural” peanut butter containing a layer of yellowish oil over a foundation of brown paste with the consistency of nearly set concrete. Wheat germ, “beef juice,” carrot juice, bottles of vitamins, and Protein from the Sea (the label proclaims that it “Builds strength and muscle fast!”). Musclini — Arno gave the paterfamilias that nickname, after Benito Mussolini, the fascist leader of Italy who sided with Hitler during World War II — consumes this mishmash in conjunction with his tennis games and three-times-a-week weight-lifting routines in his attic gym.

  In the freezer is a box of mini-pizzas. Each one is the size of a dessert plate. Left to his own devices, Alan would eat them frozen. I turn on the oven and slide four of them in on a cookie sheet.

  By the time Alan was four, my parents knew something was wrong. He wouldn’t listen. He went outside without any clothes on. He ran across the street without looking. You couldn’t let him out of your sight for a second. Other kids teased him. This killed me. Not only because I was still young enough to think it implied that our whole family was somehow defective, but also because I could see that the teasing left my brother hurt and bewildered. Alan was aware of what they were doing, but he couldn’t understand why. None of the specialists and doctors who’ve tested him have come up with a precise diagnosis. He’s “slow”— to learn, to think, to comprehend — and stubborn. Can’t catch a ball. Not even one tossed gently from close by. Has a speech defect that makes his th’s sound like f’s. Kids used to tease him mercilessly for that; now he hardly speaks.