Sarah Of The Moon

by Randy Mixter

“Get ready to come down on me!” Janis Joplin yelled out then joined the band, microphone in hand, for the next song.

  By the time they finished the ten-song set with a rollicking rock song introduced as Piece of my Heart, everyone in the place, including Joplin herself, was at a fever pitch. Her backup group seemed an afterthought as she repeatedly thanked the masses, swarming around the stage, for their kindness and support.

  Her voice had a gruff quality to it as she sang. Now, at the concert’s end, it had a sweet innocent tone to it. Sometimes people are too broken to be fixed. Alex remembered his father saying that about a friend of his who was a lieutenant in the Baltimore Fire Department. On the previous day, after years of alcoholism, his father’s friend had committed suicide.

  He remembered that now as he watched Janis Joplin bowing to an adoring crowd. Too broken to be fixed, he thought as she walked to the rear of the stage, and then vanished in the shadows.

  It took a long time for the Fillmore to empty out. The drugs, freely dispensed in the hall, despite Mr. Graham’s dire warnings, had the effect of making the notoriously slow hippies even more sluggish.

  Alex did not see anything even vaguely resembling a bad trip. Quite the contrary, everyone seemed extremely mellow and content. It made him hopeful of Sarah having an easy night in the calming room. Perhaps she and the doctor on call were currently playing cards using Owsley’s S & H green stamps as chips. One could only hope.

  A NIGHT FOR WISHES

  Chick had several requests for rides, on the bus, back to the Haight-Ashbury district. He politely turned them down. His mind, though hazy from a variety of ingested substances, had sufficient memory of the hazards of a standing room only bus with a reckless driver. Alex saw reason for Chick’s concern. On close examination, the bus driver, preparing for the return trip, looked quite stoned.

  As they boarded the bus, both Skip and Benny approached Alex. Their goofy expressions attested to their fragile state of mind.

  “Great show, huh, man,” Skip said to him. Alex was about to reply when Benny did it for him.

  “Yeah man, great show.”

  They both stared at him, with their silly grins, long enough to make him uncomfortable, but the bus saved him when it lurched from the curb with enough force to put both on the laps of two girls seated behind them.

  Alex thought it wise to get off his feet also, and found an empty seat a second before the driver swerved sharply to avoid another vehicle.

  He recognized the girl next to him as Belladonna, a housemate he had seen hanging around with Chick on more than one occasion.

  “She likes you, you know,” Belladonna said without looking in his direction.

  “I’m sorry,” Alex said as he glanced her way. “Who likes me?”

  Belladonna turned her head slowly toward him in a manner of an adult dealing with an inattentive child.

  “Sarah. She likes you.”

  He nodded his head and smiled but before he could question her more, she sighed loudly, in a distinct do not disturb me any more tone, and faced the side window, leaving Alex once again with unanswered questions.

  The ride back to the house was a cautionary tale on the hazards of driving while under the influence. While he gripped the seat in front of him with white knuckles, he could not help but notice that a few of his housemates had dozed off to sleep, while others talked and laughed. Alex swore to himself that, at the next concert, he would ingest enough pot to relax on even the worst possible bus trip.

  He pulled the watch from his pocket as the bus neared the house. Before he could tell the time, the watch flew from his hand as the bus driver, in a parting shot, ran up on the curb.

  The watch landed on Belladonna’s lap. She looked down on it as if it were an alien artifact, then picked it up gingerly and examined it thoroughly.

  “I’ve not seen one of these in a long time,” she said as it moved about her fingers.

  “Am I right in saying it is used by the establishment to tell the time of day?”

  Alex broke out in a fine layer of sweat. Just when it seemed the bus ride could get no worse, it did. He thought fast.

  “I use it to know when to call my parents. They adhere to a strict schedule.”

  “In the future, try your best to keep it off my person,” she said with disdain. “I suppose on our next trip, if I turn my back on you, I might find a sport coat and tie on me.”

  She held out the watch with two fingers as far from her body as possible. He quickly snatched it from her.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “You say that word a lot.” Bella said in response as she stood and moved gingerly around him toward the open bus door.

  Once outside the bus Alex resisted the urge to kiss the ground, instead he moved away from the crowd and checked the time. His watch showed a little past ten. He had decided that if he survived the trip home he would go to the Free Clinic and walk Sarah back to the house. He found Chick and told him his intent.

  “You might want to check the hill first. She goes there every night.” Chick turned to walk away. “Make sure you tell her I sheltered you from harm.”

  Alex was tempted to bring up the bus ride home as an argument to that logic, but held the thought. He saw Belladonna approach Chick and point in his direction. It was time to leave.

  He alternated between running and walking, wondering why he didn’t take an extra minute to change into his Jack Purcell tennis shoes. Even so, he made it to the park in good time with an ample supply of air in his lungs.

  It was another warm night and young men and women littered the hill and surrounding grass. They were not as boisterous as the previous night, undoubtedly due to the later hour.

  A full moon lit the night sky enough for him to see that Sarah was not on the hill. He stood on the grass at the hill’s base undecided on whether to stay or leave. It was entirely possible she had already returned to the house. He never thought to look before he left. Eventually he decided to wait a few minutes at the spot they shared the previous night.

  He was thinking of the past, a time when he and his father went on a weekend camping trip. It was just the two of them, fishing and fending for themselves. On the day they were to leave, they took a hike, following a trail deep into the woods, and soon found themselves hopelessly lost.

  They encountered a hill similar to the one he was on now. As they walked to the top, a strange smell hit them. When they crested the hill, the reason for the smell became apparent. They were at the far end of an expansive landfill. It stretched as far as the eye could see. For the longest time both stared at the trash covered landscape. Nearby, along the perimeter, garbage trucks added their contents to the cluttered terrain.

  “Let’s see if we can hitch a ride back,” his father said, and they did, in the back of a freshly emptied truck.

  Alex had never loved his father as much as he did then, riding in the bed of a garbage truck in the middle of nowhere. It was, as far as Alex could remember, their only shared adventure. He wished there could have been more.

  He never saw Sarah until she sat next to him.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” she said.

  He was shocked at her arrival, seemingly from out of thin air, but he quickly regained his composure.

  “I was going to go to the Free Clinic but Chick told me you might be here.”

  “Ah, Chick, the all knowing seer of San Francisco,” she said with a hint of sarcasm.

  “How was the concert?” Sarah added.

  “Excellent. Janis Joplin and her band really put on a good show. The other group was good too.”

  “I’ve seen Janis perform many times, some good, others not so good.” Sarah took off her sandals as she spoke. “Do you mind watching these for a couple of minutes? I won’t be long.”

  Before he could reply, she was gone and, less than a minute later, her ritual on the hill began.

  Alex, as he always did, turned to watch her. It made him feel like an intruder to do so. It se
emed a profoundly personal act, much like staring at someone as he or she prayed. He would never admit it, but he also found her movements on the hill strangely sensual. The way her hips moved when she swayed. The way her long hair swept across her face and shoulders. The way the moonlight favored her, giving her radiance even in the night-borne shadows.

  “Thank you for looking after my sandals,” Sarah said upon her return. She sat next to him, and he watched her put them back on her feet.

  “Did you ever wish that a day or night would never end?” she asked him.

  “Yes I have,” and he knew this was one of those times.

  “How about an hour, a minute, or a moment? Have you ever wished a moment would never end?”

  She had turned to look at him. Her face had the beauty and wonder of a child.

  “Yes,” he said again.

  “I’ve had many days like that, many minutes. Mostly I’ve had moments like that. Moments I wish would last forever.”

  He almost said that this would be the first of many moments that will last forever. He was close to saying it, so close. Then he became lost in her eyes, and the only thought he had was of Sarah, so beautiful under a halo of stars.

  A PERFECT FLAME

  They talked about their day and evening. Alex was right about the lack of calming room clients. They had not a single one all night. A first for a concert, Sarah declared.

  He told her about the green stamps and how extremely upset his mother would have been by the manner of their use. She smiled when he told her he would not have taken one, even if Chick had not been a mother hen.

  His hopes of romance in the park dampened considerably when Sarah yawned and reminded him of the late hour. Was she sending him mixed signals, or was he just reading them wrong? He did not know. He was uncertain whether she might take any rash move by him the wrong way. This was, for better or worse, Sarah’s game and he would play by her rules. For now, it was enough just having her near.

  “I won’t ask you to chase me tonight Alex,” she said to him as she stood. “Tomorrow morning, however, I would recommend you wear more comfortable footwear.”

  The bus was still there, half on the curb, half off. Sarah barely glanced at it, giving him the impression this was a rather common occurrence.

  For the second time that day, he welcomed a goodnight kiss on his forehead as they parted on the second floor hallway. Though the day had been a busy one, he was not particularly tired. He decided to begin his next week’s article while the recollection of the concert was still fresh in his mind. He retrieved the binder from his backpack, careful not to disturb Jezebel who was sleeping at the foot of his bed, and headed for the front porch.

  He ran into Chick by the front door.

  “Tomorrow is Laundromat day. Leave anything you want cleaned in a bag by the door.”

  Alex did not ask him who washed the clothes or how they sorted them out afterwards. He did not particularly want any man or woman handling his dirty clothes, especially his underwear. He would wash his own clothes when the time came.

  The porch was his alone for the next two hours. He enjoyed the solitude it provided. Several houseguests, and their friends, came and went in the course of the evening. One young couple, laughing in each other’s arms, hurried down the steps of the house next door and into the parked bus. Within the hour, two other couples from the adjacent house joined them. The bus, it seemed, provided just enough privacy for the free love principle of Haight-Ashbury to be exercised.

  He heard the laughter of women from inside the house. Women laughed often here. They seemed more carefree, more willing to find the joy the community offered.

  The men, on the other hand, were often serious, particularly when discussing world affairs. The war in Vietnam weighed heavily on them, as did the stringent tenets of the establishment, always near and threatening.

  Possibly, at some point, he would write an article solely on the laughing girls of the summer of love. Maybe he would include Sarah in the writing, although more often than not her melancholy was equal to her happiness.

  His thoughts had again turned to Sarah. He knew of no better way to end the night.

  Alex put down his pen and closed the binder. Someone had lit a candle in the bus. He could barely make out the profile of a smiling girl. Sarah had hoped for a perfect flame but perhaps this was a start. In a dark bus, half on the curb, half off, a joyful girl had lit a candle and, for a brief moment in time, brushed back the night.

  It seemed enough of a miracle for now, he thought, as he broke into a yawn, and the best possible way to end the evening.

  THE RAID

  The first three weeks in July passed quickly and quietly into oblivion.

  On Monday, the 3rd of July, Alex received a copy of his first article as it ran in the Sunday Sun. He was pleased to see little editing from his submitted papers.

  The houseguests, to a man and woman, asked to see the finished product. This complete turnaround, from disinterest in his vocation and writings to anticipating the published word, surprised and gratified him.

  Chick gladly offered to read the script aloud to all assembled after the evening’s dinner.

  For a few days after the reading, attended by all except for Sarah, Alex was a celebrity of sorts. The consensus was that the article was well written and impartial. Most had never read any publications favorable to their cause. An open-minded critique was cause for jubilation. Even Sarah, who had read the article earlier, said, “Well done,” as she pushed him out the front door toward the park.

  Sarah remained an enigma. He chased her on an almost daily basis and, no matter what the footwear, never obtained a flower. She was also adept at the game of hide and seek. She would always find his hiding place within minutes after starting the game, whereas he would seek her out for hours at a time. On more than one day, her elusiveness was too formidable and she remained unfound until her appearance at the dinner table.

  Her reluctance on the subject of her past was evident each time he brought up the subject. She would always shrug him off by saying “Someday,” and immediately change the subject.

  The 4th of July was a festive day in Haight-Ashbury. The community celebrated by mounting an impromptu parade on Haight Street in the afternoon. The police grudgingly blocked off four blocks, while hundreds of young people, attired in their best colors, marched and danced through the street. A man bedecked in sparklers, and dressed as Uncle Sam led the procession. There were many who carried peace signs, and more than a few displayed Independence from Tyranny, War, and The Establishment type signs.

  That night, after dark, Alex joined Sarah on a blanket atop Hippie Hill. The large crowd of people of all cultures and ages gathered on the hill and watched a spectacular fireworks display. The cries of Far Out, Wow, and the occasional Groovy, gave him reason to believe the majority of those assembled were in an organically induced state of mind.

  The following Monday, Chick again read aloud Alex’s second article to the house. Once more, for a couple of days, he was an in-house celebrity.

  Although Alex abstained from the use of surnames and overt criticism, he wondered how his admirers would feel had he wrote about Crystal’s bad trip, or the group of five runaway girls he had encountered the other day, sleeping on blankets in the park.

  It had taken awhile, but by mid-July, Alex had finally remembered all of the house members by name. He had even hung out with a few of them other than Chick and Sarah.

  Skip and Benny had become adequate guides to local events and activities when Chick’s mind or body was elsewhere. Both had arrived in the neighborhood within a week of each other in early June of 1966. They regularly boasted about their first summer in Haight-Ashbury, when, according to the two of them, the music, the philosophy, and the religion was being born.

  Skip and Benny often became misty eyed as they ran through the many fields of memories associated with those warm days passed.

  “It wasn’t nearly as crowded as it is
now,” Skip said while Benny nodded in agreement. “The cops didn’t hassle us because most of them were grooving with us. Everyone was mellow. Peace and love were in the air.”

  “And the smell of pot,” Skip added.

  It was usually around this time when the misty-eyed part kicked in, but overall, the consensus of the two seemed to agree with Chick. The true summer of love was in 1966. It seemed as though everyone on the outside looking in, or the newcomers to the area, had missed it by a year.

  Alex’s cocoon of isolation in the Haight-Ashbury community was shattered whenever he phoned home. He was right in thinking the three collect calls a week would end after the first phone bill. They did. His mother however, still insisted on hearing from him weekly.

  His father often picked up the phone during the course of those calls and invariably used the opportunity to vent his anger at his newfound companions. There still were no letters from the Selective Service and he sensed the frustration in his father’s voice. While talking to the old man, he made certain to downplay the humor and adventure of the place, He had not told either parent about Sarah, and did not plan to, at least not yet. On an upbeat note, both parents found his articles well written and interesting, although, as his mother delicately put it, the lifestyle was not their cup of tea.

  Alex took his dirty clothes to the Laundromat every Wednesday. Usually Sarah went with him, sometimes with clothes of her own. He enjoyed the trips. It was a good excuse to have some time with Sarah not involving the activity of running. He also enjoyed the company and conversation of the many flower children wandering about the facility. He could readily pick the stoned individuals out of the crowd. They were the ones intently watching the clothes spin dry through the washing machine’s round glass portal.

  His employer sent him a check every other week. It was a meager amount of money, but in Haight-Ashbury, it was a small fortune. Truth be told, there was simply little reason to spend money in the neighborhood. Faced with the alternative of stashing the cash under his mattress, he concluded his best option was to bank his excess earnings.