Woodstock Day Three
Woodstock
Day Three
A long forty-five minutes later, they restored power to the stage. And Chip told the audience there would be another long rain delay before the music started again.
That started the mass exodus. It looked like a city of people the size of Jackson, Tennessee, was moving toward the exit.
Okay, Suzannah, this is a sign. You should leave too. I got in line with the evacuating Woodstockers and moved slowly to the back of the bowl. Water pooled everywhere. People stepped right through the puddles; some even hopscotched.
Walking in my sandals became impossible.
Every time I picked up a foot, a sandal would get sucked in by the mud.
I did it one too many times. The strap between my toes broke.
So I took it off and left it. Along with the other one.
Right there, sunken in the mud. Now I had no shoes.
Folks in front of me slipped and fell. It made me even angrier.
Getting the hell out of Woodstock was all I cared about.
At the top of the hill, I noticed a bank of telephones in the distance, each covered in a black trash bag. Even with the rain falling, the lines were fifteen people deep. I hurried to the shortest line. More than anything, I needed a familiar voice. Not just any voice. Mama’s.
Someone had put boards down for folks to stand on. Although by now, they, too, were sunken in the mud. I searched through my coin purse. It yielded seven quarters, three dimes, four nickels, and fifteen pennies. Surely that was enough for a long-distance telephone call.
Once it was my turn, I pushed back the trash bag, picked up the phone, and dialed zero. I’d just hang up if he answered.
“Operator,” a lady said, in Shelly’s tart accent.
“I’d like to make a long-distance call to Memphis, Tennessee, please.”
“Phone number?” the tart operator asked, like she couldn’t be bothered. Maybe she thought I was a hippie freak and couldn’t stand hippies? But still, why be rude?
“Fairfax3-6180.”
“That’s three dollars and fifty cents for the first three minutes. Seventy-five cents for each additional. Deposit now,” the rude operator said. Tersely.
I panicked. “I don’t have that much change, ma’am. I—”
Click. She never bothered to say goodbye, or thank you, or kiss my butt.
She just dial-toned it in my face. Calling back collect crossed my mind, but I dismissed that bright idea.
I’d have rather strutted around the place naked myself than tell my parents where I was.
I could see Dad now, using his state department connections to fly in on one of the military choppers, land on the heliport, step onto the state, and page me himself.
Frustrated, I slammed the phone back on the hook. Then spent the next ten minutes asking random people if they had change for a dollar. Instead of taking my dollar, each person gladly gave me all the change they had.
Thirty minutes later, after another wait in line, I asked a second surly operator to please give me Memphis, Tennessee.
As soon as she gave me the cue, I dropped fourteen quarters into the slots.
With each ring I could feel my angst growing.
Please, Mama, please be the one to answer.
Six rings later, a starving sense of loneliness engulfed my body as soon as I heard my mother’s soft “Hello.”
“Mama.” My voice cracked when I said her name. I missed her desperately.
The pops and whizzes from the connection made it hard to hear, but there was desperation in her voice too. “Suzannah! Honey. Are you okay?” She asked the question as if she was afraid to learn the answer.
Instead of responding, I wasted the first minute of our phone call weeping. Mama asked what was wrong, but that only made things worse.
“I’m sad,” I finally muttered. Although my words were practically inaudible, Mama understood me. She always understood me.
“We are too, honey. Your father is truly sorry. For everything.”
“Stop, Mama! I’m not sad about him.”
A long moan sounded on her end. She so wanted our family to be normal. “Is it Ron?”
“No! I mean yes, I’m always sad about Ron, but right now I’m sad because . . .” I couldn’t finish my sentence. I just sat on my end of the phone, wailing.
It made Mama cry too. “Sad because why?”
“Because . . . I’m in love.”
There was a long, long pause, then finally, “If you’re in love, why on earth are you crying?”
“Because I’ll never be able to measure up to his old girlfriend.” My nose jammed with mucous. I heaved for air. “She’s so beautiful.”
“So are you.”
“Not compared to her.”
“Come home, honey. We can talk about it here.”
Going home sounded pretty good. At least I’d be warm. And dry. And have a soft bed to sleep in, with food on the table. I had enough money for the bus ticket. Plus a candy bar or two and a Coke along the way. I knew the pain I’d be up against at home. That pain seemed better than this pain.
“Maybe,” I said, my chin trembling.
“Your father and I miss you terribly. He has so much to tell you. We both do.”
I panicked. “Please don’t put him on the phone. I don’t want to talk to—”
“He’s not here, honey. He’s at church.”
My veins burst with relief. But it was only four o’clock at home. Sunday-evening services started at five thirty. “Already?” I asked.
“There was a deacon meeting. I’m to meet him there.”
“A deacon meeting.” The stench of bitterness traveled through my nostrils and lodged inside my throat.
“Dad is such a hypocrite, such a pharisee. Why can’t you see that, Mama?
The rules he makes us follow are messed up.
Do you honestly believe God minds if I listen to rock music?
Or if I dance? If loving either of those things means I’m going to hell, then I guess I’ll be on fire for eternity. ”
“Suzannah! Don’t you ever speak that way again!” she exclaimed, adding a loud groan. “Your father feels terrible about what happened. He—”
“He called me trash, Mama.”
I could hear her pain in the long silence that followed. “You are not trash. And he knows it. He . . . has realized all kinds of things. He wants to apologize.”
I sneered. “With what? A present? Forget it.”
The operator broke through with a demand for seventy-five more cents. I dropped all the change I had into the slots.
“Your brother’s deployment has changed everything,” Mama continued, after our conversation had been restored.
“I’ll say it has. Our family is screwed up. You can’t even see it.”
Mama paused. “I do see it. I just don’t know what to do about it.” Her voice trailed off, as if all her energy had been depleted.
“I do. You can leave him. We can move somewhere else. It’s nice up here.” As soon as I said up here, I knew I had goofed.
Instead of challenging me, she just wasted our phone time with a long stretch of silence. Thank God she didn’t ask me to define up here.
“Please, Mama. You don’t have to stay with him. When Ron gets home, we can all live free from Dad. In peace! Ron and I can start a band, and we’ll make money to support you. I’ve realized how important music is to me. I’ll never go without it again. Never.”
She took another pause before asking, “Are you still at that jamboree?”
Pressing a hand to my forehead, I took a step backward. “How did you know? Never mind.” I rolled my eyes, devastated to learn the truth. “Livy’s parents called you.”
“They didn’t want me to worry.”
“Please don’t tell Dad!”
“I wouldn’t dare. Ron will—”
The operator cut Mama off mid-sentence. “Deposit seventy-five more cents.”
Frantically, I dug around in the bottom of my sopping-wet purse. “I don’t have seventy-five cents, ma’am. Please give me more—”
The line went dead.
“Time.” Depressing the hook with my forehead, I banged the handset against the pay phone, reeling from the unfortunate fact that Livy’s mom had ratted me out. Another person I had thought I could trust.
Instead of placing the handset back on the hook, I handed it to the girl behind me. The only thing clean on her body were the whites of her eyes. She looked like a fudgesicle.
Staring at my tearstained face, the girl pouted her bottom lip. “I guess you heard about the kid who died yesterday morning.”
My heart lurched. “No. Was it from the brown acid?”
The girl shook her head. “He was wrapped up in a sleeping bag, fast asleep. A sewage truck ran over him. The driver must have thought he was garbage.”
The driver thought he was garbage. What a horrific way to die. The boy wasn’t even fighting in Vietnam. He was at a peaceful, love-filled music festival, trying to get some sleep.
And now he’s dead.
I stepped away from the phone bank with an ache in the pit of my stomach and no clearer answer about my future than I’d had before calling home. Where would I go? Memphis? Union? Or should I move to Kentucky or Arkansas so I could live on my own as a legal adult?
There was so much to think about. So many choices to be made.
When I had arrived on Friday, I hadn’t considered two days later I’d be making life-changing decisions.
I’d rushed pell-mell out of Memphis, turning a blind eye to my future until I had to.
And now I had to. More than anything, I longed to discover who in the heck I really was. The real Suzannah.
What would Ron tell me to do? Thinking about what he would say reminded me of his letters. I pulled one out the stack and saw that the ink had run on the envelopes, bleeding onto the lining of my purse. No!
After noticing a line of trees in the distance, I sloshed over and sat down underneath the canopy of a large maple, then opened the first envelope I touched.
My heart throbbed as soon as the letter was in my hands.
The ink had run all over the paper. Ron’s words were barely legible.
I opened another. Same thing: unreadable.
Not my letters! I lifted my chin skyward, screaming at God. “They are all I have left of him!”
Frantic, I tried another. The ink had run, but I could still make out his words. It was the most disturbing letter he’d ever sent. But I still wanted to read it. Just to be close to him. Just to hear him talking to me.
November 6, 1968
Long Binh, South Vietnam
Dear SuSu,
On purpose I have not written to you about the worst horrors of war. I wanted to protect you and keep you from worry. But now I need your prayers. I’m having a really hard time.
Yesterday, we saw Vietnamese soldiers standing near the road in a straight line.
We had a feeling they were SVA (South Vietnamese Army—our allies) but when they opened fire on us, we got our answer.
They were the Viet Cong. We lost two of my platoon brothers, Philip and Mason.
Their bodies will be sent home tomorrow.
Billy G lost an eye, and Damon had both legs blown off.
After they recover, they’ll be sent home to live with their families, minus an eye and two legs.
We are all in grief. My gun jammed in the middle of our firefight.
I have never been so scared in my life. Freddy C is the one who fixed it.
I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t. Guns jam all the time, my CO says.
I have intense fatigue. I can’t make a decision, even about dumb things like which boot to put on first. The worst part is I can’t get the flashbacks out of my head.
And the nightmares are so real, SuSu. CSR, they call it in the military, Combat Stress Reaction.
Shell shocked is a better term if you ask me but they don’t call it that anymore.
I asked my CO yesterday if I get a discharge because of my CSR. No way, he said. Everyone has it.
The longer I’m here I realize war kills all soldiers, whether they live or die.
Some just handle it better. Like Dad. Part of me wishes I’d lost my leg.
At least I’d be free to get the hell out of here.
I sometimes wonder why I’ve been spared.
I also wonder if I’ll have to die to get home.
I know that scares you. But I’ve got to get it out.
I don’t believe in this war. And I’m not alone. Most of us feel the same way. America Should Not Be Here. It’s not our problem!
I know I sound angry. I am angry! There is not one safe place over here. Johnson knows very well we can’t win this war. He refuses to stop the bombing, even though his advisors tell him he should.
I will see you again, I swear.
I love you,
Ron
I slipped the letter back in the envelope, then stuffed it inside my purse. I was starting to wonder if Livy could be right. Maybe Ron was wounded with his friends, and he didn’t tell me.
Maybe Ron is missing in action.
Maybe Ron is dead.
Refusing to give that thought any more oxygen, I stood up and looked around for the last time. Still unsure what to do with my life, I got behind thousands of others walking toward the exit. No point in staying at the festival. Woodstock was about community. I had lost mine.
Hoping the answer about my future would come, I kept moving forward, knowing this much: I was sick and tired of the rain, the mud, the cold, the growls in my stomach, and, most of all, the loneliness.
A cold dark mist hung over my heart, coating it in grief.
Pain spread through its chambers like a hornet’s sting.
My nerve endings felt as though they had been pricked by needles.
I was a hundred yards down Hurd Road when someone shouted, “Look at the sky, you guys!”
With dropped jaws, an army of folks turned to watch thousands of flowers floating down from the clouds. An army helicopter flew overhead, spilling fresh white daisies over the filthy city of Woodstock. Our beauty among the ashes.
I stood in the middle of Hurd Road as the answer came into focus.
The Hog Farm. Hugh Romney had said they were my family.
Kind, loving people who treated each other the way a family should were just on the other side of the forest. I could pitch in, help prepare the food.
Maybe I could babysit. Best of all, I could sing when I got back to the Hog Farm!
I turned an about-face. I would not miss Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young or Jimi Hendrix. I’d already missed the Beatles. There was no way I’d miss another concert of a lifetime. No one would deprive me of that.