Second Chance (2 page)

Keith, the other roommate, was standing in the wide doorway to the dining room, leaning against the pillar, talking in a low but passionate voice to
Sharla
, whose afro bloomed like a crimson dahlia, and whose coffee-colored skin seemed the same shade as Keith's in the monochromatic glow. And there, sitting and standing about the two rooms, were all his old friends, Alan, Diane, Eddie, Dale, the living and the dead together, immortal in memory.

The walls and the furnishings were just as they had been—thrift shop furniture, posters of the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel,
Jimi
Hendrix on the walls, along with Keith's favorite, Jesus holding a rifle, with the words, "Dig It!" Iron City and Budweiser cans were scattered on tables and floors, their metal tops peppered with cigarette ashes, a needle of smoke still rising from the openings in which butts smoldered. A Garrard record changer and a fat, Magnavox amplifier/tuner dominated the wall opposite the dining room. The amp's broad band selector provided the only light other than the red bulb and the orange of burning cigarette ends.

And in the hazy room, in the glow of real and false fire, music reigned. Shamans sang the tribal chants, and Woody Robinson, holding the girl he loved and would lose, heard them all blended into one voice—The Doors, Hendrix, Janis, the Beatles, the Airplane, the Stones, the Dead—heard them young and alive again, singing of a different time, a different song . . .

. . . and the time had come for something different.

~*~

He opened his true eyes and found himself back in 1993, in the studio, the newer song drawing to its predictable close, fading away with no real conclusion, and it suddenly sounded to Woody like little more than meandering thoughts, purposeless, meaningless, soulless.

His music sounded empty to him, and the thought deadened him, so that he looked at the expectant faces in the control room dully, shaking his head, his black, shoulder-length hair trembling as if it too were frightened of the truth of which Woody had become aware. Then his deep bass voice, a surprising contrast to the alto and soprano
voicings
of his reeds, filled the studio.

"It's time," he said, "for something different."

Drake
Oppenkott
frowned, then spoke through teeth clamped on his pipe stem. Smoke came with each word. "Is it the ambience?"

"No, it's fine. I just don't like the tune."

The six of them sat there for a long time. Finally Ron Dewey spoke. "You don't like the
tune
?" Woody shook his head. "You wrote it."

Woody nodded. "Yeah, I did. But I don't even know what it's about. I don't even have a title for it."

John Columbo massaged his tangle of hair vigorously with both hands, as if trying to force his brain cells into a coalition. "You said you were thinking about calling it 'Country Lane."'

"Jesus," Woody said. "'Country Lane.' That's what it sounds like, doesn't it? Just strolling along, not a thought in your head. Not even anybody
on
the lane . . . just the lane itself. Well, where's it
go
? Why are we on it in the first place?"

John shrugged. "It's just a tune, man."

Woody looked at John and nodded. "You're right, Johnny. And that's the problem. It's just a tune."

"What're you after, Woody?" Ron asked, a hint of irony in his voice. "Social significance? You
wanta
be Pete Seeger?"

"I don't know, Ron," Woody said. "I don't know what the hell I'm after, but I know it's not 'Country Lane.'"

The door opened and Chuck Hansen came in carrying a cut-off cardboard box with bags of sandwiches and
styrofoam
cups full of coffee. Although a producer for
CeeWhy
Records, he thought nothing of doing gofer work, and was not afraid to leave the studio to the musicians and engineers for a few minutes. Woody liked him for that, and for the creative freedom he had given Woody over the years.

But Chuck was also perceptive, and now he stopped in the doorway, feeling the waves of discomfort. "Who died?" he said.

"The album," Ron told him.

Chuck sighed. "Well, in that case, I'm not paying for the sandwiches."

The joke, though feeble, lessened the tension, and they all smiled. "Woody just had a
whaddyacallit
," said John. "The moment of truth thing."

"An epiphany," said Michael Lester, the bassist. They were the first words he had spoken.

"I'm not happy with the song, Chuck," Woody said. "I think I can do better. But I need some time."

When Chuck looked at him, Woody could tell that he realized that there was something serious going on, more than dissatisfaction over a single tune. Chuck's eyes went from the glow of creative humor to the heavy-
liddedness
of corporate concern. "You're talking major overhaul." Woody nodded. "I guess we need to talk."

"I guess we do."

~*~

Woody, unlike many other musicians, liked to record in the morning. His mind was fresher then, his imagination freer. So the sun was shining when he and Chuck stepped out onto Powell Street. The rest of the group stayed inside to eat lunch, but Woody and Chuck carried their sandwiches to Union Square. The noon crowd was gone, and they easily found a bench. But the bags sat between them, unopened.

"So what do you want to do?" Chuck asked.

Woody looked at the pigeons at their feet, pecking at dropped crumbs. "Go in another direction."

"You haven't mentioned a damn thing about this before. I thought you were happy with the new songs. What happened today? What brought this on?"

"I'm not sure," Woody said. "Maybe a little time travel.”

“What?"

"I don't know." He shrugged helplessly. "Look, Chuck, I'm not saying that what we've done on this album is bad. It's not. It's certainly releasable. It's just that I think it's time to take a different direction."

"I can live with that. You've done it before, and it's always been you." He paused. "You want to dump what you've got so far? That's four tracks."

"No. But I want the rest to be different."

"A transitional album."

"Maybe."

"So what do you want to transit to?"

Woody thought, watching the pigeons. Then he whispered, "Get back,
Jojo
."

"Huh?"

"I want to go back. There are songs back there I never played."

"What are you talking about? Songs back where?”

“You're going to think I'm crazy."

"I already do. Back where?"

"The sixties."

"Sixties. Like what in the sixties—Coltrane or Cecil Taylor or
Satchmo
singing 'Hello, Dolly' or what?"

"Not jazz. Pop."

"Pop? Oh Christ, what, you
wanta
do covers? 'A Day in the Life' on oboe? Or maybe 'Purple Haze' on English horn?"

"No, original tunes. I don't know what style or what mix of elements, I don't know anything yet—just that I have to explore this. And I do have the time."

They both knew it was true. A concert album was already in the can for fall release, and the next studio album wasn't contractually due until the following March. Once the music was written, the group could put it together in just a few sessions.

"Yeah, you have the time. But be careful, man. The sixties are gone for good. People really don't give much of a shit. Remember how Woodstock's twentieth anniversary flopped? A cautionary tale, Woody."

"Yeah, but wait until '94.
Silver
anniversary's the
real
thing. But don't worry, I'm not going the nostalgia route. I don't want specifics, just the underlying spirit."

"Well, don't go too far off the deep end. The sixties are over. This is the New Age."

Woody laughed deprecatingly, as he did every time Chuck used the term. "Bite your tongue. I don't play New Age.”

“Maybe not, but you helped create it."

Woody's face sobered. "I play music. That's all."

"Okay then. Play it."

"I will. But I have to find it first." He stood up, stretched his arms and legs to make himself feel all his muscles prepare for what was to come. "Got to go back and find it."

And just maybe, he thought, find something more. And he remembered how Tracy felt in his arms, just days before she died.

Chapter 2

The group was, for the time being, dissolved. Ron and Michael and John would go to other groups, tours, gigs, recordings. A date was made for the following January to finish Woody's album, and Woody, alone in his house in Half Moon Bay, began to think about the party.

His epiphany, as Michael Lester had accurately called it, had been real. The combination of scent and sound had pushed him back into the sixties, made him look at his own past, and the glimpse remained with him, seeming more real than today.

That apartment had more of the truth of living in it than did Woody's home, the simple but spacious three-story beach house he had bought with the royalties from his last three albums and a good chunk of his income from a four-month European tour.

Now he sat in his living room whose windows overlooked the Pacific, glanced at the ceramic ashtrays he kept for his friends who smoked, recalled the beer cans in the apartment, and smiled. No cleaning afterward, true disposables.

The thought of smoking reminded him of the pipe tobacco he had smelled in the studio, so he trotted up the stairs to a third floor room where he kept several boxes that he had dragged on his twenty year odyssey from home to home—New York to Denver to Portland to San Francisco, and finally to Half Moon Bay—without ever opening along the way.

The packing tape that held the flaps closed was so dry and yellow he was able to peel it off, and he quickly found what he was looking for. There were five pipes, each wrapped in a paper towel, and below them a pipe rack and ashtray his father had made for him for his twentieth birthday, in spite of his disapproval of Woody's smoking.

Woody picked up the pipes one by one and sniffed the bowls. The traces of odor smelled more like burned briar than the ghosts of tobacco, but it instilled in him an urge to pack one with moist flake and light it, drawing the smoke down the stem and breathing it into the air, filling the room with its heavy perfume.

He stuffed the largest-bowled one in his pocket and ran downstairs to the telephone, where he looked up tobacconists in the yellow pages. The first one he called stocked
MacBaren's
Virginia Blend No. 1, and Woody drove to the shop, bought a tin, and hurried back to his house, feeling like a junkie scoring. He knew that what he was doing was absurd, but he was caught in the web of a past he had denied for too long, and its ultimate triumph had possessed him totally.

In the living room, he put the Doors' first album on the turntable, sat on the couch, listened to the music, filled the pipe, and awkwardly lit it. At first the smoke tasted foul, and he accidentally inhaled and coughed several times before the plug was burning. But finally the sweet lump of tobacco ignited, the aroma filled his nostrils, the room grew hazy, and the taste turned back the years, letting him remember how it was.

When the album was over, he arose, the pipe clenched in his teeth. Now he was puffing gently, actually enjoying the taste, disregarding the warnings of lip and gum cancer that had made him stop years before. He riffled through his older LPs, and put on a Dylan record. The first song was an old favorite that Peter, Paul, and Mary had covered, but he scarcely remembered the second song, and could not recall the title.

It was about a dream the singer had. He was in a room again with old friends, and it was as if the intervening years had never passed. It ended with a wish that he and his friends could sit in that same room in reality, and how he would gladly give ten thousand dollars if such a thing could be.

Another song began, but Woody Robinson didn't hear it. His pipe had gone out during the last song, so he set the pipe down on the coffee table, stood up, turned off the stereo, and realized that he finally knew how to go back.

Ten thousand dollars. It might take that much or more. But now that the idea had come to him, it would not go away. It was as inescapable as death, and he sat and wondered if it could be done, and then, deciding that it could, he thought about how to do it. When his mind was filled with ideas, he called his college roommate, Frank McDonald, in Atlanta.

He had seen Frank and Judy three months before, when a promotional tour had taken him through the south. He had done a few radio talk shows, and made an appearance on
Atlanta Today
, then had dinner at the McDonalds' house and talked until midnight. After Judy had gone to bed, Woody and Frank had gone barhopping, and closed several.

Frank had changed little since Iselin State University. There were some wrinkles, the temples had lightened to gray, and there was a splash of white in the beard. But the figure was trim, the hairline the same strong widow's peak as in 1969, and the liberal politics were intact.

Judy, on the other hand, had gained a good twenty-five pounds. But she bore the extra weight well. Instead of making her look fat, it made her more intimidating, an asset in her position as co-owner of a folk art gallery. Irritated artistic egos were less likely to explode when confronted with Judy's motherly, no-nonsense bulk.