Anthem

by Deborah Wiles

  Norman stands at the front of the bus and looks up to the darkening sky. The first fireflies blink on and off.

  “We don’t even know where to find Barry, Molly. He doesn’t give me a return address. All we have is a postmark.”

  “We just need to get there, Norman,” I explain for the hundredth time. “More will be revealed.”

  “How do you figure that? San Francisco is a big city! Are we just going to hang around the post office and hope he shows up?”

  “We’ll figure it out. You don’t want him to end up in jail, do you? While you happily drive his bus all over Charleston?”

  “Stop trying to make me feel guilty,” Norman says. “And you know what, Molly? Barry can take care of himself. He always has.” But he sounds resigned, finally.

  We load the bus and fight over territory. Norman is cramming his entire life inside, including his record player and records, a case of engine oil, a huge jug of water for when the engine overheats, a toolbox, jumper cables, and Barry’s guitar, along with an amp full of dials that has Gibson sprayed across the top corner, and extension cords. Other cords. Wires. So many cords and wires.

  “There are six thousand four hundred thirty-five extension cords in here!” I yell.

  “Six thousand four hundred thirty-four!” he hollers back.

  There are more Aunt Pam boxes — a tablecloth and a can opener, loaves of bread, paper plates and plastic utensils, and even a Mason jar full of last summer’s peaches. I stumble over the grate that usually lives on the charcoal grill on the patio and fall into a jumble of camping supplies, crushing the box they’re in and bruising my hip.

  “Can you bring me Barry’s guitar?” Norman asks.

  “Can’t you take out any more of these seats?”

  “That’s plenty,” Norman says. “We just need to take out enough for sleeping bags and the drum set.”

  “Why do we need your drums? Are you planning to set up in campgrounds and entertain the masses?”

  Norman ignores me. “The rest of your stuff can go on or under the seats, like mine. There are still nine rows of seats — that’s eighteen seats, for the math challenged — and I don’t have anywhere to put any more of them.”

  “Fine,” I huff as I strap the first aid kit to the bus console and throw my pillows onto the front seat behind the driver. “I’m good at math,” I inform him. “And I’m navigating.”

  “You can navigate,” he agrees. “But I am picking the route.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if I’m going to give up my summer to drive you on a wild-goose chase against my will, I’m going to get something out of it, too.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like music.”

  “The bus has no radio,” I say in my most smug voice.

  Norman points to a box on one of the seats. “It has a radio. I just need to install it.” He throws his suitcase down the middle of the aisle, where it pops open and out spills his freshly pressed white shirts and khaki pants.

  “Norman! Your mom will have a cow.”

  “No, she won’t. She’s positive.” He heaps the clothes back into the suitcase. “Geez, she packed my Boy Scout shirt! And sash! What does she think we’re gonna do, go to a jamboree?”

  From his back pocket he pulls a pair of drumsticks and a rolled-up copy of a magazine. “Live music. That’s what I want.” He hands me the magazine and I unroll it. The Great Speckled Bird.

  “What’s this?” I pick my way over the spilled tools and follow him out of the bus and around to its open hood.

  “It’s an underground newspaper. Printed in Atlanta. Barry hooked me up with it.”

  “What’s it for?”

  “What it’s against is more like it. It’s anti-establishment.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” he says. He begins jimmying the hood. “Live music. That’s what it’s for.”

  “Where?” This could be bad.

  Norman lets the hood fall and then slams it shut with a bang. He looks me straight in the eye.

  “Everywhere, cuz. Everywhere.”

  GOOD MORNING, STARSHINE

  From the musical Hair

  Written by James Rado, Gerome Ragni, and Galt MacDermot

  Performed by Oliver

  Recorded at unattributed studio, May 1969

  Studio percussion

  Uncle Bruce was there to see them off the next morning. He always smelled of leather, glue, and shoe polish. He pressed an envelope full of ten-dollar bills into his nephew’s hands. “Lots of luck,” he said. “Take your good shoes.”

  Norman laughed. “I’ve got ’em!” He hugged his uncle. “Thank you so much!”

  Uncle Bruce, who wasn’t much taller than Molly, reached up and patted Norman affectionately on the cheek three times with a strong and callused hand. Then he hugged Molly. “Take care of each other out there,” he said.

  “We will!” Molly replied with more enthusiasm than she felt. She climbed on board the bus.

  “Showtime!” Aunt Pam sashayed out the kitchen door with a box in one hand and a thermos of hot coffee — already sugared and creamed! — in the other. She smiled herself past Uncle Bruce and Norman, followed Molly onto the bus, and gave her the box. It was labeled AAA Maps and Useful Things.

  “Keep this in a safe place,” she said. “I called Triple A and ran down to get these. Road maps for each state, recommendations for lodgings and restaurants, lists of campgrounds and motor vehicle laws in each state, and a copy of Sportsmanlike Driving. Plus, I made sure the bus is on our Triple A policy. Whatever you do, don’t lose the membership card!”

  “I won’t.” Molly put the box on her seat behind the driver, while Aunt Pam put her hands on her hips and surveyed the work they’d taken two of their precious twenty-one days to do. “You’re going to be just fine,” she said. She hugged Molly and said, “One more thing,” then gave her a copy of An Adventurer’s Guide to Travel across America that she had stashed on the driver’s seat the night before, so as not to forget it. “Lots of tips!”

  “Thanks, Aunt Pam.”

  Norman stood on the driveway about to board the bus and saluted his mother from the doorway. She returned his salute and stepped into the aisle for him. Norman climbed on board and flopped into the driver’s seat. “Where’s your mom?” he asked Molly.

  “I told her not to come. She’s overwrought about everything. And she doesn’t want Dad to come with her. Obviously.”

  “Don’t worry about Janice,” said Aunt Pam as she left the bus. “Don’t worry about anything. We are strong women here, and we’ll hold down the fort. We’re a team — a four-person team. Now you two better get going — the day’s wasting!”

  And that was how they got under way. The bus roared to life. Molly took up her position on the seat behind the driver. Norman reached over and pulled the long-handled metal lever toward him, locked it into place, and the folding bus door was closed.

  He waved, like royalty, out the driver’s-side window to no one, because no one was on that side of the bus. Aunt Pam blew kisses. Molly waved back. The gears and the pedals began their grumbling and grinding. Norman danced in the seat as he tried to keep up with a clutch, gearshift, and steering wheel, trying to remember all that Barry had taught him when they’d practiced in the high school lot.

  “Can you even drive this thing?” were Molly’s first encouraging words.

  “We’re gonna find out,” Norman replied. Then he cursed under his breath.

  Molly crossed herself, even though she wasn’t Catholic.

  “Hail Mary full of grace!”

  “Shut up!” Norman shouted. He reached for the gearshift with one hand and turned the giant steering wheel with the other. His body bounced on the seat and his legs pumped as he released the clutch and the brake and pressed on the gas. He was a marionette suddenly free of his strings. The bus jumped forward three times and then smoothed into a roll that took them out the driveway and into the wide world.
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br />   The bright summer sun washed the world white. The usual morning mist hung over the salt marshes and under the river bridges. It was low tide. The air was damp and laden with the pungent smell of pluff mud — the natural decay of the marsh grasses and marine life in the slippery Lowcountry muck. It reached their noses as it sifted through twenty-four open bus windows. Charleston, South Carolina, disappeared behind them.

  “Barry,” whispered Molly, although Norman wouldn’t have heard her unless she’d shouted it. “Here we come, brother. Please be there. Here we come.”

  GOOD GOLLY, MISS MOLLY

  Written by John Marascalco and Robert “Bumps” Blackwell

  Performed by Little Richard

  Recorded at J&M Studio, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1956

  Drummer: Earl Palmer

  The arguing started early.

  “We are not going to Macon! It’s miles and miles out of our way!”

  Norman kept driving, kept silent. Molly tried listening to Saturday’s Top Forty on her transistor with her earphone, but the bus engine was too loud, so she gave it up. Five hours later, after they’d driven to Macon, Georgia, and found no Allman Brothers in City Park or anywhere else, they stopped at the H&H Restaurant for an early lunch.

  Norman maneuvered the bus into five perpendicular spaces at the edge of the too-small parking lot, killed the engine, and opened the folding door for his cousin. “I’ll buy.”

  Molly wanted to protest, but Aunt Pam’s coffee had gone right through her and she needed the bathroom more than she needed to complain about the route once again, so she fled down the bus steps without speaking and ran into the restaurant.

  “Hold on there, baby girl!” a voice called after her as she weaved past red-checked tablecloths to the back of the restaurant. “You gon’ eat sumthin?”

  Molly’s sense of politeness was extinguished by her need to relieve her bladder. She kept moving, found the bathroom, and shut herself inside with a slam.

  Norman appeared in the doorway next. The voice, which belonged to a black woman wearing a full-length bib apron, offered up a question next. “You with that white girl just road-runnered herself through here?”

  Norman nodded. “Yes’m, I’m sorry.” He looked around at the faces ignoring him in the restaurant. They were black and white, sometimes at the same table, talking and eating together. And this black woman was definitely in charge. He swallowed.

  The woman gave Norman a measured look. “Bathrooms are for paying customers, baby.”

  “We’re gonna eat,” said Norman. “Do you have hamburgers?”

  The woman nodded. “Here’s you a menu, baby. Sit yourself down right here and I’ll bring you a drink. You like Co-Cola?”

  “Yes’m.”

  “Two Co-Colas, comin’ up. And two burgers. French fries.”

  The woman took the menu from Norman and disappeared.

  Molly returned from the bathroom to apologize for her temporary bad behavior. You treat everyone with respect, her mother had taught her. That’s the right way to be.

  If nothing else, I have impeccable manners, Molly told herself. But the woman who’d called after her was deep in the kitchen.

  Molly sat down, snatched the two sets of napkin-encased silverware from Norman’s drumming hands, and resumed her sniping, now that she didn’t have to shout over the engine and the traffic. “We’ve got sandwiches on the bus. This is wasteful!”

  “We can eat them for dinner,” Norman pointed out. “I got us hamburgers. I need a hot meal.”

  “We need to get to Atlanta before dark. The Aunts are waiting for us, and my mom is calling after the news, to make sure we got there, so I’ll have to talk to my dad.”

  A black man in an apron brought them two Cokes with straws. “Mama Louise be out directly,” he said. “Lurleen burned the biscuits. How y’all doing?”

  “We’re fine!” Molly answered with a wide, false smile and a please-go-away! voice, as she pulled a Georgia state map from her tote bag and began to unfold it on the table as the man turned his attentions to the table next to them.

  “We have no time for this,” she stated flatly. With her Hi-Lighter she began to mark the route they’d taken instead of the one she’d so carefully constructed. Norman thrummed on the table with his hands, playing the drums to “Grazing in the Grass,” which was spinning on the jukebox.

  “The Friends of Distinction!” he said. “Listen to those congas!”

  The in-charge woman appeared at their table, her arms laden with their dinner plates. “Folks call me Mama Louise,” she said, setting the food on the table. “I brought you a side of collards, like I do my musician boys. They love ’em. I cooked ’em myself today.”

  “I’m so sorry for running through earlier,” said Molly in her most polite voice.

  “That’s okay, baby,” said Mama Louise with a confident smile. “A body’s gotta do what a body’s gotta do.”

  “What musicians?” asked Norman, his hamburger halfway to his mouth.

  “My boys!” said Mama Louise, hands on her hips now. “You a musician, too?”

  “Yes’m,” said Norman as his face reddened. Was he? He wanted to think of himself that way. But a musician had a real job, playing music.

  “Do you have names?”

  Molly and Norman exchanged a look and introduced themselves to Mama Louise.

  “Well, good” was all she replied. “I’ll leave you to your dinner.”

  The hamburger was the best Norman had ever eaten. A hundred times better than anything at Biff Burger. Molly nibbled on the French fries that Norman drowned in ketchup. She drank her Co-Cola and noticed the people around the room, deep into their fried chicken and butter beans and conversations.

  Restaurants in Charleston were not integrated, and at school this year, when black students enrolled because the Supreme Court said Senator Thurmond could no longer keep South Carolina schools segregated, Mayor Gaillard had to send in the police to keep the peace. They’d been on campus for weeks, while white kids threw over black students’ tables in the lunchroom and fistfights broke out.

  At the H&H, folks were eating together like they did it every day. Molly began to wonder about Mama Louise — she acted like she owned this place — just when she came back to their table with the check and to see if they needed anything else.

  “Where you children headed?”

  Molly opened her mouth to speak, but Norman shoehorned ahead of her.

  “We’re on the way to Atlanta,” he said in a rush, preventing Molly from giving a longer explanation. She made a face at him.

  “Atlanta!” said Mama Louise. “That’s where my boys are headed! They’re in a beat-up old E-con-o-line van that looks like to break down any minute. If you pass ’em on the road, stop and pick ’em up.”

  “Yes’m,” said Norman for the fourth time. “We sure will.”

  “They’s a passel of ’em,” said Mama Louise.

  “We’ve got a —” started Molly.

  “Big car,” finished Norman.

  “They’ll be thankful for the ride,” said Mama Louise. “Maybe let you play with ’em, if you want. What you play?”

  “I’m a drummer,” said Norman. He could say that much.

  “Oh,” said Mama Louise with a hint of disappointment. “They’ve already got ’em a drummer. They got two, matter of fact.”

  Norman’s pulse quickened. “What?” He sat up straight. “Is it a rock and roll band?”

  “It sure is,” said Mama Louise. “And I feed those boys same as I just fed you. You play that rockin’ roll?”

  Norman stood up, lightheaded. “Is it … ?” He couldn’t form the words; they’d left his head.

  “Is it what?” asked Mama Louise. “You okay, baby?”

  Molly blinked at her cousin and stood up because he had. “Are we ready to go?”

  Norman’s mind came back to him. “Are they the Allmans?” he squeaked.

  Mama Louise smiled. “Some of ’em is,” sh
e said. “Duane and his baby brother, Gregg. But there’s more. You know ’em?”

  “We-have-got-to-go,” Norman said in a commanding tone Molly had never heard. “Now.” He reached into his pocket for money to pay the bill. “Thank you, Mama Louise!”

  Mama Louise, a perplexed look on her face — or as perplexed as look as Mama Louise allowed herself — walked the few feet to the cash register. “You young’uns travel safe out there,” she said. “They’s good people in Atlanta. Got me a grown-up boy there, too. He’s tall and strong, a mighty fine young man.”

  “Yes’m,” said Norman as he shoved bills across the cash register counter. “We’ll be on the lookout.”

  “What’s going on with you?” asked Molly when they got to the bus.

  “Nothing,” Norman lied. “Nothing. You’re right. We need to get to Atlanta, pronto.”

  “I’m always right,” said Molly with a sniff as they climbed onto the bus. “You’ll see. Let’s go.”

  LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS

  Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney

  Performed by the Beatles

  Recorded at EMI/Abbey Road Studios, London, England, 1967

  Drummer: Ringo Starr

  At least they were now headed in the right direction.

  Molly took the rubber band out of her hair, brushed it so she could capture the loose strands around her face, and snared her hair once again in a ponytail.

  “Doesn’t that hurt, when you pull your hair so tight?” asked Norman.

  “It’s my signature look,” said Molly. She opened the road atlas across her lap. “It will take us two hours to get to the house with all this highway construction. I’m doing math, Norman.”

  It took three. The bus bumped and rocked as they headed straight up the new section of interstate highway, past construction crews, to where the road closed and Molly directed Norman onto alternate routes.

  Norman had to listen intently to Molly’s directions while keeping the bus in his lane — something he’d practiced to perfection on the desolate road all the way to Macon. There had been little traffic or construction on that route … so little he’d gotten sleepy and was glad he’d stopped for the Coca-Cola at lunch instead of making the Kool-Aid Pam had packed. Now, as rain started, Molly walked through the bus snapping the windows closed while Norman switched on the giant windshield wiper and stole looks onto the shoulder of the road, looking for a stalled vehicle or hitchhikers with long hair and guitars.