Are You Experienced? (3 page)

So, yeah. I knew the song, and had played through it a couple of times. There were two reasons why it seemed like an odd choice for me to play, though. First of all, it had a huge harmonica part, and I didn't have a harmonica. I thought really fast, and decided I could probably fake my way through by whistling it. Second of all, though, the song wasn't about protesting at all. It was about getting high. But I looked at Courtney, who was looking at me the way a girl looks at a boy when she thinks he's about to do something really nice for an old lady in an oxygen mask. Then I looked at the old lady, who looked at me like she was an old lady in an oxygen mask. I sighed.
Well,
I thought,
it's not like anybody's really listening anyway
.

Turns out I was wrong about that part.

I cleared my throat and said, “The next thing I'm going to play for you isn't what you would call a traditional protest song. It's a special request for a lovely lady over here named Emmy. Can we please give her a big hand?”

I gestured in Emmy's direction, but I didn't have to. She was a popular figure in that tent. If there had been any seats, I was pretty sure the very mention of Emmy's name would have gotten a standing ovation. As it was, she got some serious rocking applause. Then everybody turned to me. Now I actually had the undivided attention of the entire audience. In fact, the sudden burst of approval had been so loud that the police outside had even edged their way under the flaps all around. So had dozens of little boys in—oh, God—Cub Scout uniforms. What was that about?

I gulped. I hoped the cops were Bob Dylan fans. I strummed the first chord of the song, and started whistling the harmonica part, just as one more person pushed his way through the Scouts in the back of the tent: my father.

 

THE ROAD TO TRAVEL

FRIDAY, AUGUST 15, 1969

 

I stared at the girl. “Nineteen sixty-nine? Woodstock?”

She nodded. I felt faint. This wasn't possible. It really, really wasn't. Although it did explain the new-old cars. The clothes. The lack of cell phones. “Did you hit your head when you fell?” she asked.

I rubbed all around my skull, very gingerly. Nothing hurt. In fact, aside from my throbbing hip, I felt pretty good for a kid who'd just flown back through forty-five years of time and then gotten T-boned by a Cadillac. “No,” I said. “Uh, why did you say I was all white like an angel?”

“Because you are!” she said. She reached for my hair again, and pulled a lock down in front of my right eye. It was white. Shiny, satiny white. “Michael, David,” she called, “come here! And can you bring some clothes for the angel here to put on? It's all right, Michael, I don't think you killed him!” As her friends detached themselves from the side of their car, she said, “I'm Willow. Do you have a name? If you're on the run from the heat or something, you can just tell me a name to call you. Nobody's going to hassle you, man.”

I thought about it. I had seen way too many movies about people from the future messing up the past, so even in my state of blinding panic I knew I shouldn't use my real first name. “You can just call me … Gabriel.”

Willow grinned. “That's groovy, man,” she said. “Like the angel Gabriel, right?”

Actually, Gabriel is my real middle name, but when a beautiful girl thinks you've done something groovy, you go with it. I just smiled in what I hoped was a mysterious manner. Just then, the two guys crouched down beside the ditch. The younger one put a paper bag on the ground next to me and mumbled, “Clothes.” He didn't look me in the eye. I guessed he felt guilty about his friend running me over.

The older one locked his gaze right onto mine and said, “Hi. I'm Michael, and this is my little brother, David. You've already met my old lady, Willow. Are you all right, man? I'm really sorry about this whole scene. I don't know what happened.… One minute, the road was clear. The next, WHAM! Anyway, you okay?”

I told him I was.

His smile was as warm as Willow's. “That's great news! I didn't know what we were going to do if we had to call the fuzz, man. I mean, what if they wanted to, like, look in the trunk or something?”

I didn't understand, so I just looked at him blankly.

Willow leaned down and whispered in my ear: “We're holding, man.”

Holding what?
I wondered. Then it dawned on me. I had read a ton of books and articles about Woodstock, plus I had seen the famous documentary movie, and they must have been holding the same stuff in their car that hundreds of thousands of other people had brought to the concert: drugs.

I was still completely naked, and although the crowd had dissipated once it became apparent I wasn't dying or anything exciting like that, I actually felt more embarrassed in front of three people whose names I now knew than I had in front of a couple dozen strangers. “Um, could you all maybe turn around for a minute or something so I can put on whatever's in this bag?”

Michael and David retreated to the car, and Willow just stood at the edge of the ditch with her back to me. I looked into the bag, which contained a tie-dyed T-shirt, underwear, blue jeans, and a beat-up pair of Keds sneakers. I put the shirt on first, because there was no way to stop hugging my knees without exposing myself to two lanes of slow-moving hippie traffic until I had that on. It fit perfectly. Then I got the underwear on with as little uncurling of my legs as possible, and finally, I lay back in the ditch and wriggled into the jeans, which also fit me. I gasped when they touched my injured hip, though. I twisted around to look at the damage for the first time, and saw that I had been branded by the Cadillac's hood ornament, so that my skin was bruised in the shape of a broad V with a fancy shield in its center.

I buttoned up the pants and did my best to stand. My right leg buckled under me and I almost fell, but Willow whirled around and caught me. “Michael, David, help me!” she said. “Gabriel can't walk by himself.”

Michael sprinted the few steps over and put his shoulder under mine. His brother just stood next to the car, paralyzed. Willow's eyes flashed as she barked at him, “Get over here!”

As David finally stepped toward us, I got my first really good look at his face. Even though Willow and Michael were both pretty strong, I almost fell over again. Willow said, “David James Barber, sometimes I just don't know where your mind goes.”

My knees went. David James Barber was my father.

The three of them got me into the backseat of the car, where I proceeded to give in to a massive case of the shakes. David—Dad—got in right next to me, while Michael ran around to the driver's side and fired up the engine, and Willow threw herself into the passenger seat. “Come on, Michael,” she said. “We have to get to the festival. Maybe there'll be a doctor there or something. I think Gabriel might be in shock.”

In shock,
I thought.
Why would I be in shock? It's thirty years before I was born, and I'm sitting next to my fifteen-year-old dad, in a car full of illegal drugs. Oh, and the driver is my dead uncle. Who just ran me over. Stop me when we get to the shocking part
.

 

FROM THE PRISON

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2014

 

“What were you thinking?” my dad thundered at me, as he held an ice pack to his swelling left eye. Like he really had to raise his voice to be heard from half a foot away in our five-foot-wide cement holding cell.

“I don't know,” I mumbled, my head in my hands.

“Lying to your parents? Sneaking to your girlfriend's house? Leading a sing-along of ‘Everybody Must Get Stoned' at a medical marijuana legalization rally? In front of dozens of police officers … AND five busloads of Cub Scouts?”

“Um, technically, the song is called ‘Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.' Plus, I didn't exactly know what the rally was for. Courtney just told me it was a protest. And I had no idea everybody was going to sing along like that. Oh, and the Cub Scout thing—that was just freaky. How was I supposed to know they were having their annual field trip to the mayor's office? You know, if you look at this the right way, it's actually kind of amusing. I mean, don't you think the whole adventure made their field trip a lot more memorable than—”

“This is NOT funny, Richard Gabriel Barber. You just incited a riot. You just got yourself arrested. You just got ME arrested. Dammit, you just got me smacked in the face with a flying IV pole.”

As it turned out, that old Emmy lady might have needed an oxygen mask and a wheelchair, but she still had plenty of fight left in her. When the Cub Scouts had started to join in with the sing-along, which admittedly was a horrifying moment, the mayor had appeared and ordered the police to turn off my microphone. But when the first officer got within five feet of the stage, Emmy went berserk, wheeled her way over to me faster than I would have thought possible, grabbed the mic pole, bent it down into her face, shouted, “MARIJUANA FOREVER,” and started swinging it in all directions. I just sat on my stool, not knowing what to do, as my father came barreling toward me through the suddenly milling mass of charging police, angry protesters, and screaming Scouts. By the time he reached the stage, there were five officers doing battle with Emmy and the huge bear-man who had introduced me. Emmy had lost her mic stand and had switched weapons. When her IV pole caught Dad's forehead, I tried to jump off the stage to drag him away from the center of the storm. Unfortunately, one of the officers saw me stage-diving, grabbed my arm, and cuffed me to Dad.

So, an hour or so later, here we were.

Courtney walked past the bars of our cell, escorted by a female officer. She looked delighted. “My mom's here to get me. They're letting me off with a warning. Call me, okay? ‘Everybody Must Get Stoned'—that was badass! You're a legend! Sorry 'bout your eye, Mr. B.!”

Dad subjected me to what might have been the most disapproving look I had ever received from him. “I hope you got a nice last look at her, Rich,” he said. “Because you won't be seeing her again outside of school for a lo-o-ong time.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What am I talking about? I'm saying you're not going to be allowed to see your girlfriend again until I say so.”

“Why? This wasn't her fault. It was mine.”

“Did she ask you to play at that protest?”

“Yes, but—”

“Did she ask you to break your parents' rules and come over?”

“Yes, but—”

“Did she—”

“DAD! Stop! I decided to play at the protest, all right? Courtney asked me to, but I decided. And Courtney didn't tell me to lie to you. She didn't even know I lied. She just asked me over, and I lied so that I could make it happen.”

My father smiled evilly. I hadn't even known he knew how to smile evilly. What a little learning adventure we were having. “Well, this is perfect, then. Because I'm not grounding Courtney. I'm grounding you. And to think, kids say parents don't know how to be fair.”

I sat and fumed for a while. There's nothing worse than evil dad humor. “Um, Dad?” I said. “You know, you played at protests when you were a teenager.”

“Yes, Richard, but I always knew what they were for.”

“You never let me do anything. I had to sneak out. Your parents let you travel hundreds of miles to go to concerts.”

Dad leaned toward me and said, “My parents didn't care where I was.” Too late, I realized he was actually furious; now every time he said something, I could feel a slight spray of spit.

“I've never been anywhere. You went to freaking Woodstock!”

Dad did something then that he had never done before. He dropped his ice pack and grabbed my jaw, hard. Then he hissed in my face, “My brother
died
because of Woodstock.”

Dad always did have a knack for the conversation-killing one-liner. After that, we sat and stared at the rusting bars, listening to our own breathing and the random noises of the people in all the other cells for what felt like days, until finally a guard came and got us. My mother was waiting with my guitar case just beyond the thick, dead-bolted door that led out of the holding area, but she wasn't allowed to take us home until Dad signed a whole bunch of papers at a desk and listened to a long lecture. This didn't help his mood.

It was almost midnight by the time Mom got to hug and kiss Dad. I tried to hug her, too, but at first, it was like hugging a tree trunk. Then she wrapped her arms around me so hard I thought my ribs would give in, and started crying in my hair. Then she choked and stuttered into my ear, “H-how … cou-could you … be … s-so st-stupid?”

I think it's safe to say we all had a long ride home.

The instant we entered the house, I got sent straight to my room. There was no “Thank goodness you're all right” or “We love you even though you made a mistake.” In fact, the only thing that came out of either parent's mouth was a hearty “We'll discuss your punishment for this fiasco tomorrow” from Mom.

I got ready for bed, and tried to go to sleep, but my mind was racing about a million miles an hour. I kept picturing Courtney grabbing my head and kissing me … the cop grabbing my arm and cuffing me … my father grabbing my jaw and hissing in my face. It had been quite the grabby evening. Plus, there was the crowd singing along with my words as the police moved in on the stage. Obviously, it hadn't worked out terrifically well, but the moment had been kind of awesome.

And then there were the last words my dad had said to me all evening: “My brother died because of Woodstock.” I didn't know what that was about. I knew my uncle hadn't actually died
at
Woodstock, or Dad never would have mentioned the concert weekend at all, just like he never mentioned anything about where or when, exactly, his brother's death occurred, and never said a word about the funeral.