Like People in History (19 page)

"This is the Bronx?"

"I told you," Michelle gloated.

Despite the heat, the short walk to the highway wasn't unpleasant. We bypassed the entry to Van Cortlandt Park to walk along a short block of square-roofed buildings two stories high, with shops on their lower levels: a shoemaker, a grocery store, a stationers, and a garden supply. I was reminded of the neighborhood I'd grown up in.

"What street is this?" I asked.

The closest signs read "Van Brunt Blvd." and "212th Street."

"I grew up in a place just like this, only in eastern Queens," I told Michelle, pointing southeast. "Only that one was called Vanderveer Street and Two Hundred and Twentieth Street."

The side of the highway: cars slipping by, those in the closest lane slowing to get off onto a ramp. We'd dropped our bags when one stopped.

"That's quick," I said, wondering if in fact it wasn't too quick.

"Looks like a cool guy driving," Michelle said. "Let's go."

An older guy definitely. At least twenty-six. With a fall auburn beard and a spatter-dyed T-shirt and—we saw once he opened the front door of the pickup—tight-fitting denims like those we wore, and great-looking old cowboy boots.

"You headed upstate?" he asked, looking us over coolly.

I was about to say yes, when Michelle said, "We're going to the concert up there near Woodstock. You know about it?"

"It's closer to Bethel," he said, ignoring me totally now. "Up at Yasgur's farm. And you are in luck, pretty lady. I'm headed right up there."

"It far?" I asked, unwilling to be left out. Truth is, I didn't like either the way he was looking at Michelle or the way she was looking back at him.

"Not far once we cross the Hudson at the Tappan Zee Bridge; it's only an hour or so. You traveling together?" He had to ask the obvious. "Well, then throw your bags in the backbed." He smiled, and I had to admit it was a killer smile. "That's what it's called," he said to Michelle. "Honest injun."

I was busily trying to think of something to keep us from getting in the truck. But I knew I'd fail because he was taking us right there. And there was room, so what in the hell could I say?

"By the way, I'm Edgar," he introduced himself, at the same time he reached down a well-muscled forearm to pull Michelle up next to him inside the truck's cabin. I was left to throw our bags in back, next to a hundred-pound bag of cement. The truck was already rolling back onto the highway before I'd managed to get myself in or the door closed.

Michelle was already lighting up a pipeful of grass. I thought she was sitting awfully close to Edgar, given the hand gear was right against her leg and he kept his hand on it whether he was shifting or not.

"You two planning to be together for the weekend?" he asked. Uncool question, I thought. So obvious.

Evidently Michelle didn't think so. "We've planned to go to this concert gig," she said, which sounded awfully ambiguous to me.

I watched with undulled pain as during the rest of the drive Michelle slowly, but I thought surely, turned all of her attention from me to Edgar. It was subtle, doubtless, made up of some of the tiniest of attentions, of motions. But it was clear, and it was inexorable. She let us both know she preferred him, though she'd come with me; this despite the fact that, as Edgar told us, he was already "hooked up with my old lady"— Sarah, who was at this moment in their house near the Ashokan Reservoir, toward which we were headed.

Michelle got that information out of him, even got his astro-data out of him (I wasn't sure whether or not he fit her paternal sign format), using a series of questions and turnaround revelations.

My future was beginning to look so bleak I became increasingly silent, stared out at the scenery along the Governor Dewey Thruway, sulked over Michelle's faithlessness, then wondered if that's really what it was or if I were merely being stupidly overpossessive about her. After all, we'd only screwed once. It made no sense at all. Michelle was simply being herself and thus independent, and I was being ridiculously jealous and thus not at all myself. What had happened between us last night had been a fluke, a mistake: it meant nothing. I couldn't rely on it as an answer to my future.

But if that was true, what would this weekend turn out to be like?

Since I couldn't pull anything even close to an answer out of my head, I sulked more. Once when Michelle turned to hand me the pipe— finally remembering I was there, I thought—she had to tap my shoulder twice before I bothered to take it.

Past Kingston the thruway traffic thinned out. At the next turnoff, it thickened again as cars from various other directions joined us, and then we were off the main road, driving on a two-lane highway through the Catskills—this was real country to a city- and suburbs-raised boy.

The town of Woodstock itself seemed small and sort of makeshift, but it was evident even to strangers like me and Michelle that it wasn't usually so filled with cars and people. Edgar got stuck in what he told us was an unprecedented Main Street traffic jam and had to find a shortcut through several alleys, all the while asking, "Jesus! Where'd they all come from?"

Once we hit the road out of town, a sign suddenly announced the concert. By then traffic was thick coming and going from all the roads we could see, and people were simply abandoning their cars on the side of the road and walking to the place. "I don't believe this," Edgar said. We did: we'd been listening to the DJ's updated reports on the concert grounds.

The four-wheel drive on Edgar's pickup came in handy now. He drove alongside the parked and stopped cars as long as he could, then when it was clear we couldn't go any farther, he tore away on bare ground up through bushes and over a hill, onto a dirt road he alone could see, headed away rather than toward the concert ground, I thought. He slowed down once we reached an apple orchard. As we drove through, apples shaken from their branches by the truck's vibrations rattled onto the hood and roof. Finally, he stopped. We walked through the trees, polishing and chomping apples, headed toward a bluff that faced what Edgar remembered from earlier drives here on a dirt bike as "the only more or less bowl-shaped place in the whole area."

He was right about it being bowl-shaped. But even Edgar was astounded by how it had been transformed. Although it was still only about four in the afternoon, a hundred thousand people must have already congregated. From where we stood, the land dropped suddenly then rose all around like a multicolored Pointillist tablecloth being shaken of its crumbs. At the very far end, it dipped smartly then rose again. Sound and light structures had been set up at a distant rise; even from this far away, their metal glittered brightly in the afternoon sun. The little depression seemed to have been the original space laid out for the concert, but the crowd had already grown far beyond the established limitations. From where we stood, Michelle pointed out what must have been the original fence laid out around the concert area. I located what must have been the original parking lot, now partly wedged into a side of the crowd. Edgar spotted where the ticket takers had been. By the time we arrived at that spot some fifteen minutes later, even these vestiges of the original organization had vanished, absorbed into the ever growing mass of young people arriving by the hundreds every minute.

"I don't believe it," Edgar kept saying.

"I do," Michelle said. We were within the crowd now, and it was far out—simply amazing.

"Who
are
all these people?" Edgar asked.

"Us," Michelle replied.

"Us," I confirmed, repeating Jerry Garcia's line, "We're the people your mother warned you about."

My annoyance with Michelle was gone. I no longer cared how she acted, what she said, what she thought, whom she preferred, or even what happened next. It was more than being high from all the marijuana smoke in the air around us. I simply knew that I was going to have a good time this weekend. I could sense the assurance of it in the kids, in their easy, fun behavior, in the solidity of the very vibrations around us.

We passed about a score of Portosan toilets, which seemed to be all that had been brought in. An enterprising hot dog vendor and an icecream truck just managed to pull up to one edge of the crowd, and proceeded to sell out their entire stock in minutes. We kept walking, passing beautiful, young, stoned, dancing-to-the-portable-radio men and women, boys and girls. They were long-haired, or wore Afros. They had granny glasses on, or pale blue-, pink-, or yellow-lensed sunglasses. They wore shorts and halters, T-shirts and jeans. They were blond and brunette and red-haired, wearing it long and straight or kinky and fuzzy. Pale-skinned, tanned, olive-skinned, Creole yellow, and Nigerian brown, they were dancing and kissing and smoking grass and just standing around grooving on the sheer growing mass of themselves.

Up ahead, speakers were being tested at the sound structures, and it looked as though we'd easily find ourselves a good spot anywhere around here, since nobody was crowding anybody, and everyone was leaving more than enough breathing space.

Edgar kept saying, "I don't believe this."

He had wondered out loud about going back to his place and getting his old lady and the other couple visiting them, when he bumped into some friends who told him they were there already—house guests and all!—up ahead, closer to the musicians.

Close enough, it turned out once we got there, for us to see the stage clearly and anyone who'd be standing on it. Trucks and vans and other vehicles belonging to entertainers and technicians had begun to gather in numbers off to one side of the structure, and the speaker system— originally only at the stage area—was now being widely extended to enclose a much greater space. Allegedly the concert promoters had flown this new equipment onto the farm in helicopters. No music yet—the first acts were due to start by sundown.

Michelle, Edgar, and I settled in with his old lady and their house guests on their blanket, as they explained why and how they'd come here—driving over to check it out and remaining when they heard who'd be playing and singing. They had a jug of wine with them and grass, and we were all pretty comfortable by the time we could hear—clearly, if off-mike—the sounds of an electrified guitar, as someone warmed up.

Someone onstage—an engineer or promoter, it wasn't clear—asked for lights. They were provided, though it was still daytime. He then tested microphones and speakers. Once those were working, he left the stage. Seconds later, we heard a voice over the microphones.

"Welcome to the Woodstock Music Festival. Our first performer of many in the following two days will be Richie Havens."

Applause rumbled and cascaded so far around and in back of us that it was clear that many more people had arrived since we had. Havens started with his own characteristic guitar lick and distinctive lisping bass voice—the concert was on.

It lasted until about two o'clock that night, with Janis Joplin wailing out "Ball and Chain" until we thought she'd drop dead right there onstage. Depressing as that might sound, it wasn't—it was completely exhilarating; it left the crowd in the highest possible mood, demanding more.

We left our spot, marking it with some blankets, and headed along the bulk of the people toward where Edgar had parked the truck. The crowd seemed to have expanded to the edge of that orchard bluff. They'd brought portable radios and reel-to-reel tape players, and dozens were dancing around each piece of electronics, unwilling for the concert to end. Others were settling in for the night. No one knew how long the overhead lights would be on, but they only threw illumination so far anyway.

I was glad for my big Bolivian sweater, once we got to the pickup. It was chilly on the bluff. I was even more appreciative that we'd been invited to stay at Edgar and Sarah's. We all piled into the cab and back of the pickup. After fifteen minutes of rough riding, we finally hit a macadam road not completely parked over with cars for the concert. A half hour later, we arrived at Edgar and Sarah's house.

I don't know what I'd expected: a log cabin, I suppose. Instead, it was a single-story ranch house with a guest room, and an attic space over the bedrooms open to the living and dining space. That's where we could sleep, Sarah told Michelle; a spare mattress was already up there, and she handed me some blankets.

I washed up and climbed the ladder to the attic. Edgar and Tom also went to bed. It was chilly in the house, and I didn't undress until I'd laid out the blanket and mattress to my satisfaction; then I tore off my clothes and dove in. I lay there awhile, shivering to get warm, listening to the voices of Sarah, Francine, and Michelle as they quietly talked in the kitchen.

Throughout the day, I'd looked at Michelle for some sign as to what my behavior toward her should be. So far, what I'd gotten had been completely contradictory. For example, and most recently, she'd not protested these sleeping arrangements—which clearly signified that she and I were together, as together as say Sarah and Edgar or Francine and Tom. Yet she sure seemed to be avoiding as long as possible coming up to be with me. During the concert itself, she'd been great, openly physical, hugging me, dancing alongside me with one arm over my shoulder. When Joni Mitchell sang, we sat together quietly, and Michelle held my hand in her lap. But how much of that, I wondered, was mood, being in with what the moment and the music seemed to dictate? I still couldn't forget how she'd been with Edgar during the trip up this afternoon: more than anything else, that seemed to say that Michelle was with me only insofar as she had a use for me.

Didn't that pretty much sum up my relationships with women?

From within the warmth of my makeshift bed, I tried to make words out of the female voices downstairs, thinking they might be speaking about Michelle and me and would thus provide some hint as to what I should do next, but suddenly, without any warning at all, I fell asleep.

For all I knew, Michelle might never have come to bed at all that night. She was awake before me the following morning, down in the kitchen along with Francine and Sarah, all three of them busily cooking breakfast.