Woodstock Day One
Woodstock
Day One
“Y’all wait!” A comet with a long flowing blond tail blasted past me, holding her hat down with one hand and her cigarette in the other. Our canvas bag lay in a heap where she had dropped it.
The two-lane pathway that looped around the perimeter of the amphitheater had a steady stream of people moving in both directions. Livy stepped over the flattened portion of fence and moved into the flow, maneuvering in and out of the folks in front of her. “Leon! Johnny! Wait up!”
I scooped up our bag in a hurry, scrambled over the same stretch of fence, and trailed close behind.
As soon as Livy caught up with the boys, she grabbed ahold of Leon’s arm. When he turned around, Johnny followed. Amid all the noise and clamor, I could still hear the shrill in her voice. “We can page my boyfriend!”
They looked at her with bewildered faces.
“Didn’t you hear that announcement about the diabetes medicine?” she asked.
Johnny shook his head. “Wasn’t paying attention, man.”
“Who has a piece of paper?” Livy asked, jiggling her hands to hurry us all.
I had no paper. Leon didn’t either. But Johnny did. He dug inside the front pocket of his jeans before pulling out a small, slim rectangular pack. “All I got,” he said with a chuckle.
“Groovy.” Livy’s hand disappeared into the bottom of her purse until she found a fountain pen.
She plucked one of the tiny papers from Johnny’s pack, pressed it against her purse for support, and scribbled out a note: Nick McCarthy.
Please meet Livy Now at the front of the stage.
She waved it in the air. “Think it’ll work? ”
“I don’t have any better ideas,” Johnny said, after a glance at Leon. “Unless you want me to shout his name from here.” He cupped his hands on either side of his mouth.
“No. No.” Livy tugged his hands away. “Don’t do that, you silly boy.”
Johnny slumped, poking out his bottom lip. “Just trying to help.”
She patted his cheek. “You are helping. Follow me.” With a scoop of her hand, she beckoned us all, then darted into the two-lane pathway with the moving mass of Woodstockers.
The three of us traced close behind, watching her prance toward the stage.
My insides blazed, knowing Leon was nearby.
I longed to strike up another conversation, like the one we’d had over the last four hours, but after our hug I could hardly look at him.
Why is it that Livy finds it so easy to talk to boys?
And why can’t that be me? All the wishing in the world couldn’t change things, so instead of talking to him, I resorted to what I did best. I took in the sights.
Every few feet something curious caught my eye.
For starters, there were just as many clean-cuts at Woodstock as there were hippies.
Maybe more. I felt the shock on my face growing when a trio of young nuns in habits walked past. I stopped to pet an adorable collie with a tie-dyed bandanna around his neck, but when I looked up and noticed Livy twenty feet ahead, I left without a word, scurrying to catch up.
All four of us stopped moving at a sharp screech, followed by tapping on the mic. “Emily Kay, please meet Harvey at the information booth,” the announcer said. “He has your car keys.”
Livy turned around with hands pressed into her hips. “See! I told y’all this would work. People are looking for each other.” As she spun back around, her long silky hair flew into Leon’s face. He swept it away like he was swatting at gnats.
I pressed a fist to my mouth, trying not to laugh. Because even Livy’s hair made me jealous. She could be a Breck Girl, just like Cybill Shepherd, another Memphis beauty queen.
As we got closer to the stage, I noticed something even more shocking than the nuns: a slew of young people seated down front.
Some looked as young as thirteen. I couldn’t help wondering how in the world they had managed to nab their choice spots.
Had they arrived a week early? If so, what kind of whopper had they told their parents?
Livy barreled to the front row, stepping around blankets and sleeping bags until she reached a small clearing. She turned to Johnny. “Lift me up on your shoulders, will ya?”
As if he’d been offered a chance to score the last hamburger on earth, Johnny squatted down in a flash. Livy hiked a leg over his neck, then held on to his head for balance while he effortlessly hoisted her.
She waved her note in the air, trying to catch someone’s attention. “Hello!” she hollered. “Can someone please help me?”
You’d have thought Marilyn Monroe had asked the question by the slew of roadies who hustled to assist her.
A shirtless dude beat them all to it. He squatted down at the lip of the stage with a smile that looked like the keys on a grand piano. “I gotcha, doll baby,” he shouted. “Is that for Chip Monck?”
“Is he the announcer?” Livy megaphoned back, hands on either side of her mouth.
“One of them.”
“This note is very, very important. Would you mind giving it to him right now?”
“Sure will.” He looked down into a pit full of film cameras, where several people milled about. “Hey, Joe! Hand me that note.”
A random hand appeared over the fence, and Livy passed it off to Joe. “I owe you one,” she yelled back at shirtless dude.
“Glad to help.” He read the note, then pointed to his right. “We’re telling folks to meet up at the information booth. Not the stage.”
Livy nodded in appreciation, then kicked Johnny’s ribs, like he was her horse. Instead of putting her down, he traipsed back through the crowd holding tightly to her calves. It wasn’t until we reached the corner of the stage that he finally let her loose.
She glanced around. “How the heck are we supposed to find the information booth with this mob?”
On the other side of the wooden fence, workers, dressed in blue T-shirts, scurried between trucks and trailers. Roadies pushed cases up a wooden gangway extending from a parking area all the way to the stage. Johnny tried waving one of them down, but no one was paying attention to us.
Out of nowhere a Frisbee appeared, heading straight for Leon. Like a seasoned wide receiver, he jumped three feet in the air, catching it with ease. Drawing his arm back, he scanned the crowd, then, with a skillful flick of his wrist, spun the disc back into the massive audience.
I finally had my in. “Are you a football player? That was quite a catch.”
A twinkle of mischief shone in his eyes. “Learned everything I know from the one and only Coach Chaump at John Harris High School.”
“What position did you play?” I asked.
But Livy cut in. “Bet you were the quarterback.”
“Nope, fullback,” Leon said. “Were you a cheerleader?”
“God no. Not my scene.”
“Bet you were homecoming queen,” said Johnny, exchanging a bemused grin with Leon.
Livy jerked her head back. “How’d you know that?”
Johnny tapped a finger to his forehead. “My superior intellect.”
No one asked me if I was homecoming queen. Or a cheerleader. Not that I cared all that much.
While I looked back at the army of festivalgoers from this vantage point, a forever tableau imprinted my memory.
It was as if I was standing on the shore of an ocean, staring into the horizon, unable to see the water’s end.
Blanket to blanket, kids packed in together like a mammoth jigsaw puzzle, each person fitting snugly into the next.
It was hard to imagine how or where we would carve out our own puzzle piece. I could only hope Nick was somewhere in the gargantuan crowd, preserving a decent viewing spot—with four extra seats.
The air reeked of an unfamiliar odor. At first, I wondered about it; then it hit me.
Marijuana. I wasn’t sure what I’d thought it would smell like, but certainly not a skunk.
I figured it would have more of a grassy scent, like a fresh-mowed lawn.
Boy, was I wrong. I wasn’t too fond of the aroma, but it sure smelled a heck of a lot better than the other scent in the air. Cow poop.
Without thinking it through, I leaned over to Livy. “Can you get high from smelling pot?”
She covered her mouth to muffle a full-on guffaw.
But it was plenty loud enough for the boys to hear, and it piqued Johnny’s curiosity. “What’s so funny?”
“She’s wondering if smelling weed gets you high,” said Livy.
If only the earth could have swallowed me whole. I wanted to kill her.
As my distress over what my ex–best friend had just revealed about me grew, I longed to reach over, grab her, and slam every single word back into her big fat mouth.
But it was too late. The damage was done.
What was worse, I had to act like I was fine about it.
With the guys eyeballing me, I had no choice but to fake laugh, then disguise my fury—not to mention my humiliation—behind a phony smile.
“I wish!” Johnny said, throwing his head back with a chuckle.
Leon didn’t chuckle. “I don’t think so, Suzannah,” he said.
A pretty hippie girl wearing a brown suede hat like Livy’s walked by on her way through the backstage gate. A round white pin, bearing a dove resting atop the neck of a guitar, was attached to her belt loop. Another pin read Joyce.
Livy called out to her. “Excuse me, Joyce.”
Joyce turned around.
“We’re looking for the information booth.”
“That way,” she said, pointing to the right. “Next to the Message Tree. You can’t miss it.”
Livy adjusted her hat; her bracelets jangled. “I just gave an important message to a dude onstage. Do you know when it will be announced? My boyfriend is missing, and I’m desperate to find him.”
“Your boyfriend and many others. Try to chill out,” Joyce said. “You’ll find him.”
“I better.” Livy kicked at the dirt, as if not finding her boyfriend was Joyce’s fault.
Joyce disappeared through the gate in a hurry, leaving us all to sit in the residual muck of Livy’s pot comment.