Anthem

by Deborah Wiles

  I slap shut the atlas. I have a headache. I’m having strangulation fantasies. We need to get going! “You are impossible!” I say.

  “Yep.”

  “Stop saying that!”

  “Nope.”

  And now I lose my temper. Barry would have listened to me. Barry would have understood how anxious I am, would have said something comforting. But Norman is a lunkhead.

  “You just want to be with that girl! You never had a girlfriend and now somebody likes you and it’s gone to your head! That girl likes everybody, Norman. You’re not special! Have you forgotten why we’re here in the first place?”

  Norman ignores me. He thumps into the driver’s seat and turns on the radio. Static plays. He tweaks the right-hand dial until he finds a crackly station. “It’ll come in clearer when I install the antenna,” he says. “I’ll do that after breakfast.”

  “Norman!” I am on my feet. “I want to talk to you!”

  In one furious move, Norman jumps from his seat and wheels to face me. I take a step backward in shock. “I don’t want to talk to you!” he shouts. “And I am not going to argue with you, so just shut up and try listening for a change.”

  I feel as if I’ve been slapped. I grip the top bar of the seat in front of me and slowly sit down. Norman never shouts. Norman is milquetoast in wing tip shoes. But I don’t know this Norman. He sounds vicious. And he is not finished.

  “You, in your self-righteous ponytail, acting holier-than-thou and like you’re the only one who cares about anything — just stop it! We had a deal. I said I’d do this if I could listen to music. I’m going to this park, and then, if you want, I’ll drive all night to the next stop — wherever it is, I’m sure you have it all mapped out —”

  I am quivering, trying not to show it, trying to look like I don’t care, but I know it’s not working,

  Norman sucks in a jagged breath and barrels ahead. He seems thrilled at his anger — look who’s self-righteous now! — and points his finger at me —

  “Look. I’m just as anxious to find Barry as you are, but it’s not going to take us three weeks to drive to San Francisco. And back! I’m going to listen to this band! I only know about them because of Barry, and when we get to San Francisco — and if we even can find Barry — I’m not about to tell him I had a chance to listen to these guys and I didn’t take it. How will you feel when I tell Barry I didn’t go see his hero, the greatest guitar player of all time, because you wouldn’t let me!”

  I’m not going to answer that. I can’t even hear it. I blink back tears and try not to look at Norman, try not to move.

  “And don’t call me Norman,” he finishes. “My name is Florsheim.” He jumps over the bus stepwell and onto the grass by the sidewalk. Then he takes giant strides to the front door — in his Florsheim wing tip shoes — and disappears into the house.

  Birdsong comes through the open windows. A horn honks in the distance. I rest my forehead between my hands, on the bar of the seat in front of me. The inside of my nose begins to sting, and I know what’s coming. One tear falls onto the floor of the bus, then another.

  I am not holier-than-thou. I am the responsible one. I am the one who planned the route and navigated us this far and tried to keep us on track. I’m the one who wanted to call the police. I’m the one who told Mom what was happening. I’m the one who said no to the Strip. I’m not falling all over Marvin the way Norman is falling all over Lucy — he is out of control. I’m the one Mom depends on, and even Barry depends on me now. I’m the one who can save him! I’m the one.

  The sting in my nose becomes an upheaval in my chest, like water straining at a dam and surging over it, into my throat, into my eyes, until I can’t see the floor at my feet, the floor I’ve been staring at so I can hold myself together.

  And there it is then, my old friend, my heart. My poor, poor broken heart begins to sob. Sobs of grief and loss and overwhelming sadness.

  I want to scream, Mom! This is too hard! Who’s the grown-up here, anyway? This is a crazy idea, just like I told you in Charleston! I should walk into this house right now and tell The Aunts who we are — insist on it, no matter how confused they’ll be — they’re already so confused, what does a little more confusion matter? And we’ll all sit on the couch and wait for you and Aunt Pam to show up, and then we’ll put you on a bus to San Francisco! And we’ll go home!

  My nose runs and my tears fall and I wipe at them with my hands, which means I have tears and snot all over my hands and face. “Who does something like this?” I say in a whisper. “Who puts this kind of responsibility on their children? Mom, you and Aunt Pam are crazy!”

  I have proof of this. Last summer, after Dad made Barry leave and after Uncle Lewis left Aunt Pam and Norman for the floozie, that’s when Janice and Pam decided on the Appalachian Trail trip — Without men! Come on, you’ll love it!

  They were so mad at the men. At all the men. So the four of us went, and we got so lost more than once and I, Molly, figured out the route with my trail maps every time. Math, Norman.

  And Norman — almost an Eagle Scout, never an Eagle Scout — knew how to make our fires and how to extinguish them safely. Norman hiked out for food and supplies and discovered showers and came back and brought everyone with him and we got clean and ate chicken pot pie and cherry cobbler at a trail kitchen in a tiny town surrounded by mountains and laughed like we had just discovered civilization and were so relieved to be alive.

  I, Molly, figured out how to hang our food high in a tree so critters couldn’t get it. “We’re survivalists!” chorused Aunt Pam and Mom, while they played canasta by the fire. We were all so unprepared.

  The trip had been boot camp for the heartbroken.

  “We could have just gone to the beach!” Norman had said as we started out. “This is too hard!” But we did it, and we did well. When we were eaten by mosquitoes or hungry from a day without food, or soaked to the bone from two days of rain, or when there were seventeen problems to solve, Norman and I took to saying to each other, You okay? I’m okay. You? Then, One thing at a time. What’s next?

  Mom and Aunt Pam wouldn’t have survived without us. I sigh at the memory. And then it hits me: This trip, right now? This is the same trip. Norman isn’t angry at me, he is furious with them. And so am I.

  We are in this crazy scheme together, all four of us — that’s what Aunt Pam said when we left yesterday, too. Only this time, Mom and Aunt Pam are in Charleston playing canasta, sure in their children’s abilities to drive a few miles — oh, just across the country and back!

  But Norman and I, we’re right in the thick of it.

  “Ugh!” I can’t believe it. But I get it now and I know what to do. I open the ice chest and stick my entire face into the cold water it offers up. Water drips from my face, down my neck, arms, and elbows, and onto my chest, under my white Brooks Brothers blouse. It feels good on a day that is already hot. I fan my hands across my face and flick away the water along with snot and tears.

  Then I take a deep breath and laugh. My name is Florsheim. Ha! This is all so crazy it might just work.

  If the music is all Norman wants, I can give it to him. I’ve done all the math necessary to figure out the mileage between Atlanta and San Francisco, and I know how long it will take us. We have time to get there, plenty of it. What we don’t know is how long it will take to find Barry and what will happen after that.

  I sigh out the burden of being fourteen and doing this impossible thing. I still don’t know what’s possessing me. Love? A broken heart? A crazy scheme? All of these things. And maybe, if I’m honest, there is something else. Maybe I want to know what’s out there. How many kids get a chance to go see it for themselves like this?

  We do.

  I hop off the bus. “Norman!” I shout. We’re in it together, I see it now. And I know what to say to my cousin.

  Okay. One thing at a time. What’s next?

  STATESBORO BLUES

  Written by Blind Willie M
cTell

  Performed by the Allman Brothers Band

  Live at Piedmont Park, Atlanta, Georgia, 1969

  Recorded at Fillmore East, New York, New York, 1971

  Drummers: Butch Trucks and Jai Johany Johanson (Jaimoe)

  Marvin Gardens helped Norman tinker under the hood of the bus. He knew more about engines than Norman did, it turned out, and Norman was glad for the help. By the time the sun was directly overhead at noon, they closed the hood, killed the engine, and heard music.

  “It’s a local band,” Marvin said. “No sweat. Some of them are pretty good, and they’ll play until the Allman Brothers show up.”

  The Allman Brothers Band, thought Norman, as he and Marvin Gardens closed the bus windows. “Leave a couple of them down,” instructed Norman, “or the heat’ll cook everything in here.” He wore a white T-shirt, khaki slacks, and his too-short sandals.

  A stream of young people flowed past them and into Piedmont Park. Molly sat on the curb and watched them. She was certain some were younger than she was. And none of them seemed to care that they looked homeless. Maybe they were.

  She retied her Keds and tightened her ponytail. These kids didn’t seem like the same ones she’d seen the night before on the Strip, but of course they were. Now she saw their matted hair and dirty feet and wrinkled clothes, and watched how they slumped, shuffled, or stumbled along like they were half in a dream.

  Their beads were tacky and their bracelets were cheap. Their pants were too long and worn-out at the cuffs and knees, and the boys were often shirtless, like Marvin Gardens was once again. They smoked and shared their cigarettes, but they hardly spoke.

  They’re zombies. Molly could not imagine that Barry had been in this place, with these people, writing to Norman, telling him to come hear this band.

  The screen door banged behind her and Lucy twinkled to the bus. She wore yesterday’s colorful skirt as a short dress today. She had wrapped it around herself twice and tied it under her arms. The sheer fabric made it obvious she was wearing nothing underneath. She sported the sandals with the tinkling bells and rings on every finger, as usual, but no bracelets or earrings. Her long brown hair swept across her bare shoulders.

  “Ready!” she said. “Where’s your pretty skirt, Molly?”

  “I left it on a hook in the bathroom,” Molly replied. “You bought it, it’s yours.”

  Lucy pouted. “It’s a gift. Take it. I want you to have it.”

  Molly stood up and dusted off the seat of her shorts. “Nah,” she said. “It’s not my style. Thanks anyway.”

  Norman reached for his white oxford shirt that hung on the door of the bus. Marvin stopped him. “T-shirt’s enough, man,” he said with a half smile. “Gonna be hot out there.”

  Norman stopped himself from saying, But I’ll feel undressed. Instead, he nodded, tossed the shirt onto the driver’s seat, and they were off.

  * * *

  Piedmont Park was many times larger than Charleston’s prim Marion Square and more majestic than the Battery, the elegant promenade that meandered along the Ashley and Cooper Rivers at Charleston Harbor. It swallowed them into its belly as they walked through the Fourteenth Street gates and onto winding pathways, under a green canopy of trees and around benches and bends and curving stone balustrades, remnants of old buildings that had once stood in the park.

  BE-IN BY THE LAKE AT PIEDMONT PARK SUNDAYS! the sign outside the Twelfth Gate had proclaimed last night. Molly wondered where the lake was. She wondered what a Be-In was. As far as she could see, there were people picnicking or playing ball or walking dogs or sleeping on blankets in the shade.

  The music carried Molly, Norman, Lucy, and Marvin Gardens into the same stream as the young freaky people of all shapes and colors flowing toward the same source. It got louder as they went up the hill to a stone stage. Young people stood on the flat tops of the low pillars and sat along the stone walls and on the first set of stairs, sprawled all over the grass in front of and behind the natural stage where a band was tearing down or setting up, plugging equipment into the electrical outlets built into the balustrades. Girls sold beads in the crowd, couples kissed or sunbathed, and a little dog ran through the crowd yapping. A young man stood at one of the microphones and announced, “This is by a cat styles himself E. E. Cummings. Y’all know it — it’s called ‘I Sing of Olaf.’ Let’s go!”

  He unfolded a piece of paper and began to shout about a man named Olaf, “whose warmest heart recoiled at war / a conscientious object-or.”

  Cheers rose from the crowd — “Yeah!” — as the reader continued. “Right on!” Some, including Lucy and Marvin Gardens, chanted favorite lines along with the reader.

  Norman had never heard anything so radical spoken aloud in a public place. He had never heard anything so radical, period. “Did you hear that?” he said to no one in particular.

  Molly had been about to ask the same thing. She stood on tiptoe to see through the crowd and get a glimpse of who was speaking.

  As Norman handed over fifteen cents for a new copy of The Great Speckled Bird, a guitar screamed its first sliding notes across the crowd.

  “It’s them!” Marvin Gardens cried out just as a second guitar’s riffs spun out to meet the first wild cheers rising from the crowd.

  Norman slapped The Bird at Molly and she caught it in her arms just as Norman and Marvin Gardens disappeared in the throng.

  Lucy sighed. “Oh, well,” she said. “It’s the rock and roll that always takes them. It’s as powerful as first love, you know. Now, let me see …” She looked toward a group of young men standing around a metal coffee can fire. A poster read DRAFT CARD BURNING HERE! Two policemen stood nearby, ready to arrest the first taker. Icy shivers flew across Molly’s shoulders.

  “Wanna come with?” asked Lucy.

  Molly shuddered. “No, thanks.” She wondered if Barry still had his draft card.

  “Hello, Hotlanta!” came a mumbly, slurry voice at the mic. “We’re the Allman Brothers Band, glad to be here.”

  “We love you!” shouted a group of girls in front of the steps.

  “We love you, too,” returned the man at the microphone. He wore a T-shirt with a motorcycle on it and had long, golden-red hair. Molly walked closer. The way he held himself seemed shy. Closer, she told herself.

  “We’ve been working up this one,” the man said, “a number by Blind Willie McTell called ‘Statesboro Blues.’ Anybody here from Statesboro, Georgia?”

  “Yeah!”

  The guitar player smiled as someone counted in the band, and suddenly the red-haired man was all intensity, all business. Da-da-da-da-DUN snapped the organ-drums-bass together as one, and they were off, the guitar squealing on and on like a little girl with her pigtail relentlessly pulled. Then the organ player began to sing in a gravelly growl, “Wake up, Mama!”

  It was loud. It was straight-ahead. It’s noisy, thought Molly. Why can’t they just sing a song with a melody and a harmony and nice words with lots of feeling? Molly covered her ears, uncovered them, and remembered how Barry used to play Jimi Hendrix at a shattering volume on his record player over and over again after school, “Purple Haze” and “All Along the Watchtower,” Barry with his guitar in his hands, trying to replicate what he heard.

  When she’d complained, Barry had said, “Listen to how he bends those notes, Polka Dot! It’s amazing! Here, like this.”

  “It’s not even music, Barry!” Molly had protested.

  “It’s more than music,” Barry had replied.

  “You should listen to the Association,” Molly had implored. “You could learn a lot about real songs, and they have three guitar players.”

  Barry had mussed her hair and said, “You’re sweet.” The conversation over, Molly had left the room, shutting Barry’s door behind her.

  But wait. This, on stage right now, suddenly had a melody. Sort of. Where was Norman? Molly began to thread through the crowd in earnest, coming closer to the stage until she could see the six
musicians at the top of the stairs, their fingers flying over their guitars, over the organ keys, and two drummers, their arms and legs, hands and feet, working hard, rocking out behind and over their drum kits. They were already drenched with sweat in the afternoon sun, each drummer with his own vocabulary but both keeping the beat in tandem with the bass player, all of them concentrating together on an intricate blues-jazz-rock ballet.

  Molly weaved to the left of the stage and up the rise for a better view. That drummer on the left looked suddenly familiar. His bass drum was painted black and in big white letters was printed JAI JOHANY JOHANSON.

  Jai. Jai. Jay.

  “Norman!” she called out, her head snapping around as she wheeled to find her cousin. “Norman!”

  The music was deafening and the crowd was in the groove.

  No one heard her.

  MOUNTAIN JAM

  Performed by the Allman Brothers Band

  Live at Piedmont Park, Atlanta, Georgia, 1969

  Recorded at Fillmore East, New York, New York, 1971

  Drummers: Butch Trucks and Jai Johany Johanson (Jaimoe)

  NORMAN

  I see him first. He’s sitting up there behind his drum kit with no shirt and a necklace made out of shark’s teeth, those granny sunglasses, and a slouchy hat. And I know it’s him. Jay. Jai. There he is. Maybe I’ll catch you there, Florsheim.

  It’s more than Barry could have described, and he had tried. He was right about Duane Allman, the guitar player — he’s unbelievable. He wears a glass bottle, like a pill bottle, on the ring finger of his left hand, and he uses it to make those notes bend, wail, cry, and beg for mercy.

  There are two guitar players, a bass player, an organ player who sings — Duane’s brother — and two drummers, just as Barry said there were. The pictures in The Great Speckled Bird were distant and grainy and I never would have recognized Jai Johany Johanson, but I know the band calls him Jaimoe. I know all their names.

  They play for hours, for days, for an eternity — I don’t know how long they play, but I am in it, I am part of it, I am. The beginning and the end, every color, every pulse, every body on this planet and every other, stardust. Every hair on every head, counted. Every note ever played, every song ever sung. I swim in it until there is no “I” anymore, there is just us. And when I think it will get no better than this, they kill me with a last jam.