Anthem

by Deborah Wiles

  “That’s it,” said Norman. “And this is our dog.” Flam had waited patiently in the shade of the sheet-metal awnings by the front door.

  Molly tore the poster off the telephone pole.

  Hal gave the dog a pat. “Remember what I said,” he told Norman. “A song is a story. Listen to the singer sing it. Listen to how the lyrics are phrased, figure out where the drama is. Then add your beat, your sound, your snap. That’s your chapter in the story.”

  Molly scanned the poster but couldn’t find an address. “Where is the Troubadour?” Drop and go, that’s what she thought they’d do in Los Angeles, just drop the cymbals and go. But they still had time to get to Barry, and to get home. Every day she sat in the navigator’s seat and worked out their timing. They had time.

  “And stay clean,” said Hal, gazing at Multitudes and raising his eyebrows. “We are a bunch of professional musicians who are clean guys doing good work. Producers know we’re sober. They know we’re straight. They know we can play just about anything. Word gets around, and producers get in touch.”

  He stuck out his hand to Norman. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks so much,” said Norman.

  “Thanks for the return of my cymbals.”

  Molly’s toes were tingling. Mary Beal had been right.

  They did have an appointment.

  “All right! All right!” She waved the poster and fairly exploded. “Where’s the Troubadour?”

  ENTER THE YOUNG

  Written by Terry Kirkman

  Performed by The Association

  Recorded at Columbia Studios (voices) and G.S.P. Studios (instruments), Los Angeles, California, 1966

  Drummer: Ted Bluechel, Jr. (concert)/Hal Blaine (studio)

  MOLLY

  The address is on the poster, hidden in the swirls of artwork, along with the telephone number, which I have to call because I don’t have a city street map. Los Angeles is gigantic. It goes on forever, spreading out like butter on toast, and we get lost because of all the one-way streets, or maybe because I’m so anxious to find the place and get in the long line Hal Blaine told us we’d be in.

  “Performers start lining up hours early to get on the list,” he said, “vying for a chance to perform and be heard by the record producers who sit at the bar in the back, hoping to discover the next big hit. You just get in line with them.”

  Finally, we find it, and sure enough, there’s the line, snaking out the door and around the corner. “This is gonna take a while,” says Norman. “I’m bringing Flam.” He doesn’t complain and he doesn’t say we need to get on the road. I appreciate it and should probably say so, but I don’t. I’m just too nervous.

  The late-afternoon sun blazes all over us and everybody sweats. We listen to the talk in line, all about gigs and bands and best places to play around town, who’s playing at the Whisky, the Paladium, or the Ash Grove. Nobody seems to know that the Association is going to be at the hoot tonight. I’m not about to brag that I have inside knowledge. I just want in the door.

  “Why don’t all these rock and rollers have to go to Vietnam?” says a woman with long red hair. “My brother’s got to go.”

  I turn my body so I can hear the conversation.

  “Barry McGuire was a Green Beret,” replies a bearded man with the red-haired woman.

  “He’s not a rock and roller,” says the red-haired woman. “Not really.”

  A man wearing a hat and carrying a guitar case says, “I happen to know one of ’em’s a fortunate son.”

  “What’s that?” says the red-haired woman.

  “His dad’s got money. Or influence. Or both. Listen to the song.”

  “It ain’t me,” says the bearded man, which makes the man in the hat laugh.

  A couple standing in front of us in line is listening, too. The short man says, “Tell your brother to do what Gregg Allman did. He shot himself in the foot.”

  Norman pretends to lean down and pet Flam, but he really just wants to hear this. So do I.

  “What?!” says the red-haired woman, and the short man explains.

  “Yeah, a couple years ago, I think, when he was trying to make it big out here. Gregg got his notice to report for his physical, so he flew home to Florida and shot himself in the foot so he wouldn’t pass his physical exam.”

  Molly took a deep breath.

  “Yeah!” said the girl with the short man. “We read about it. They made a party out of it, drew a target on Gregg’s moccasin, between his foot bones, and everything. He showed up for his physical the next day all bandaged up and bleeding, limping with a cane, and the military goons let him go. He didn’t have to go to Vietnam.”

  It made me shudder. I whispered to Norman that I was adding a foot-shooting party to my list of possibilities for Barry, but Norman just shook his head. “Crazy,” he said. “He shot himself in the foot. On purpose.”

  “That band’s going to be big,” says another man in line. “I’ve heard them play. Mark my words.” I tug on his white oxford shirt and Norman smiles at me.

  Finally, the line moves and I pray silently we’ll get in. When we get to the door, Norman asks if we can tie Flam outside for a little while, says we’re from out of town, we’ve come a long way, no we don’t want to get on the hoot list, we just want to listen, here’s our money, and the bouncer at the door starts to say no until another bouncer in a Troubadour T-shirt says, “Hey! I used to have a red dog just like that. His name was —”

  “Let me guess. Red,” says the first bouncer.

  “Yeah! You can leave him with me, kid,” the second bouncer says.

  I know my heart has made an appearance because it begins to bump in my chest. We might stumble across the Association any second.

  But this is taking forever. I suffer through act after fifteen-minute act on the hoot list. A ventriloquist, two terrible singers, a folk trio, a guy named Steve who makes balloon animals and plays the banjo. Norman loves that guy.

  “You have no taste,” I tell him.

  “I’m going to get something to drink,” he says. “I’ll be back.”

  The place has a balcony, but I’m standing as close to the stage as I can get. There are only a few tables anyway. It’s hard to see because of the smoke and the low lights and the dark paneling everywhere. So I just stay put while a man named Doug, who says he owns the place, recites “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and people jeer and boo and tell him to stop.

  So he stops and says, “Enough for now! I’ll come back to it later. I have some announcements …” and there is more booing.

  Maybe the Association isn’t coming! I want to cry. I came all this way. All this way. We have eight days left to get to San Francisco, find Barry, and get home before he has to report for his physical. Coming to the Troubadour was a mistake.

  “We should go,” I turn to tell Norman, but then remember, he is gone for his drink.

  At that exact same moment, Doug finishes his announcements. “And now!” he says. “A surprise for all you freaks! Here’s some hometown boys we put on the map at the Troub! You knew them as half of the Men, and before that some of ’em were the ever-evolving and revolving band the Inner Tubes. Give it up for our old house band, and notice — all of you out there who hope to make it big! — they are honoring their commitment to come back when they become famous! The Association!”

  Cheering! Applause! Surprise! I have actual goose bumps. I am short of breath. The Association! In this very room! With me!

  The band runs onto the stage, picks up their instruments, and launches into a song without even a hello. The music I know so well comes to life right in front of my eyes and ears and I think, I can’t stand it! I’m going to faint!

  It’s “Windy” and I am Windy, tripping down the streets of the city, smiling at everybody I see, Windy with stormy eyes, hating the sound of lies, with wings to fly above the clouds. Me. Molly. I am she.

  I … feel … everything.

  There is cute Ted on the d
rums. There is Larry playing the guitar. And there is Terry — my Terry, who, I can now see, looks nothing like Barry, even with his crooked smile and the gap between his two front teeth.

  The Association is almost close enough for me to reach out and touch. They sing “Enter the Young,” and the music is no longer about just me, it’s about all of us in this room, and I can feel that each of us knows it, we know they are singing about how we’ve learned to think and care and do daring things — which I have done! which Norman has done! — and how we are going to do these things together, laughing or crying, even if we stumble and make mistakes, and whether we live or die, we are going to do wonders, because we are stardust, we are magic.

  That’s what I hear, that we are young and we are demanding recognition, and we are going to change the world.

  People behind me are dancing and cheering and laughing and I am standing at the stage, watching them play these notes and sing these words, and I am close to crying, because I know it is hard. It is hard to be young and afraid and stumbling and stardust. It is hard to feel. It is hard to be alive in the world when the world hurts.

  And when the band — my beautiful band — starts singing “Cherish,” a song about loving someone who doesn’t love you back the way you love them, that song hits me in the heart like a hammer. I hear its truth.

  Barry is my brother and he said he loves me, but he didn’t trust me enough to write me, to let me know he’s all right, to ask my forgiveness for leaving me so cruelly, and to assure me he’ll see me again.

  He just left.

  He left me alone with Mom and Dad, their broken hearts, my broken heart, to fend for myself. How daring was that?

  I stand very still at edge of the stage, my eyes fixed on the Association, as I allow their music — melody, harmony, energy, lyrics — to spill over me, feel for me, and wrap me in its gospel. I hardly notice I’m crying a silent stream of slow-moving tears that make their way, one drop at a time, down my windburned cheeks, to a point at my chin, and onto Sweet Caroline’s red-and-white-striped shirt.

  I take a breath to steady myself as the Association finishes their beautiful song and bows and each of them — Larry, Ted, Russ, Brian, Jim, Jules, and my favorite, sweet Terry, run past me and leave the stage, waving, to thundering applause. Doug comes back to the microphone with “How about that!” and the cheers continue.

  Norman has threaded his way to my side. “I brought somebody who used to play with your band,” he says.

  The man, whose name is John, smiles at me and says, “Your cousin told me how much you love these guys. Would you like to meet them? I sang with them in the Inner Tubes. I can introduce you …”

  Doug is reciting more “Prufrock.” Something about measuring out life in teaspoons.

  And would it have been worth it, after all,

  Would it have been worth while,

  After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

  After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor —

  And this, and so much more? —

  It is impossible to say just what I mean!

  I wipe at my nose and return John’s smile, which makes the shine of tears brimming at my eyes spill in a tiny cascade down my cheeks. It is impossible to say just what I mean. I swipe at my cheeks.

  “No, thank you,” I finally say. “I want to go home.”

  SPACE COWBOY

  Written by Steve Miller and Ben Sidran

  Performed by the Steve Miller Band

  Recorded at Sound Recorders, Hollywood, California, 1969

  Drummer: Tim Davis

  NORMAN

  The hoot is still going strong when we leave with Flam and climb back on the bus. I turn on the interior lights while Molly unfolds a map.

  “There’s a park near here, or at least it’s a bunch of green on the map; maybe we can park there for the night,” she says. “I know you’re beat. We crossed a desert today.”

  “Wasn’t that last week?” I say. My joke doesn’t work; she says nothing. No joke: I can hardly keep my eyes open.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  Her response is automatic and flat. “I’m okay. You?”

  “No, you’re not,” I say. “Why didn’t you want to meet the band?”

  She fiddles with her pencil. “I’m sad,” she finally says. Then she adds, with some wonder in her voice, “It’s a feeling.”

  I don’t know how to talk to girls about their feelings. I can’t even talk about my own feelings.

  “I don’t know,” Molly continues. “I started thinking about Barry. We’re doing this crazy thing because of him, for him, but he doesn’t even know we’re coming. And even if he did …” She trails off. “I don’t know,” she finishes. “Maybe we’re doing it for my mom. Maybe we’re doing it for me. I don’t know anymore why we’re doing it.”

  I can’t follow this loopy line of thinking. I have my own thoughts about Barry. But I’m too tired to have this conversation. I scratch the sides of my head with both hands, scrubbing my scalp, to wake myself up enough to think. “Let’s eat something,” I say. “That will make you feel better. I want a chocolate milkshake. You?”

  Molly smiles. “Good idea.”

  A half hour later, bellies full, we are on a narrow road that twists like a corkscrew through the trees as it climbs higher and higher into the park. I have to shift gears constantly and watch for cars coming at me down the hilly road in the dark, our headlights blinding each other.

  “Let’s turn around,” says Molly in a worried voice. “This isn’t a good idea.”

  I’m worried, too, but I’m vigilant. “It’s got to end somewhere,” I tell her. “The cars coming from the other direction have to be up here for a reason.”

  Two nail-biting minutes later, we top the last rise and we’re suddenly in a clearing on top of the world. Straight ahead is a huge space-age building with flying-saucer domes bathed in brilliant white lights.

  “Bus parking here for the late-night observation! How many?” shouts a man in a colored vest. He eyeballs Multitudes suspiciously but asks the question anyway.

  I pull into the parking area. “A bus full!” I shout in a commanding voice, in case he makes us leave when he finds out we’re only two.

  The man scribbles something on a clipboard, shakes his head, and waves us into bus parking, right up close. “Bunch of hippies!”

  “Wow,” says Molly. “What is this place?”

  “Can you believe it?” I answer. Suddenly, I am wide awake.

  Molly is off the bus with Flam and into the pools of light reflecting off the building and lighting the grass and the wide sidewalks, the obelisk in the middle of the grass, and the people everywhere. There is a sign above the massive gold doors on the main building:

  GRIFFITH OBSERVATORY

  People pour into and out of the double doors, swarm on the sidewalks, and snake around the observation decks with the huge binoculars on metal stands. Little kids run around on the grass, laughing and chasing one another. Parents call them to look into the giant binoculars. A cool breeze pushes me along, and I don’t even bother to close the bus windows or lock up. There is no need, says the breeze, and then I laugh at myself. I’m listening to breezes.

  Molly and I stand at the observation deck and stare across the valley below, where the lights of Los Angeles twinkle and race away from us for miles before they meet the darkness. A kid gives up his binoculars and I grab them to take a look. The first thing I see is the lighted HOLLYWOOD sign. Another kid yells, “The Pacific Ocean! I can see a Ferris wheel!”

  I offer the binoculars to Molly. She wraps her hands around the turning levers, presses her face to the metal frame, and says, “I wonder, if I wished, if I could see all the way to Charleston, to the Atlantic Ocean, and home?”

  She gives the binoculars to a little girl waiting behind her and says to me, “I want to go home, Norman.”

  “I know,” I tell her. “But we’ve
come too far, now. And we’re so close, Molly. Really close.”

  “Compared to what? Being in Charleston?”

  Frustration scratches at me. “It drives me crazy for you to push me to come on this trip, and then, when we are almost there, tell me you want to go home!” I say. “I wanted to stay in Charleston, you’ll remember. I could have had a gig!”

  “You didn’t have a band!”

  “Thanks to you, I still don’t!” I rub my forehead with my fingers. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m tired. Let’s go, okay? We’ve got to find a place to stop for the night.”

  As we walk back to the bus, Molly says, as if she’s trying to be conciliatory, “How are we going to find Barry? Where do we even start?”

  “Now you’re asking the right questions!” I say. I whistle for Flam. “I told you Barry could take care of himself. I told you it would be hard to find him. I’m not even sure I want to find him.”

  Molly slows down. “Really?”

  “I don’t know, Molly. I … don’t know. What’s going on with you?”

  She sighs. “I’ve been thinking about it,” she says. “Barry wrote you, but he never wrote me. I didn’t know if he was alive or dead for a year, and you did, and, yeah, I know why you didn’t tell me, but that doesn’t make it right. And it’s not right, what Barry did, leaving us, leaving me, not letting me know he was okay.”

  I think about how to answer this. How much to say. “Maybe he was protecting you,” I reason.

  “From what?”

  I see Flam waiting for us at the bus door. “I don’t know, Molly,” I say. But maybe I do. I run my hands over my face. I haven’t shaved in ten days. I hardly shave anyway, but I can feel the scratchiness of my whiskers. I looked in the bathroom mirror at the Troubadour and saw raccoon circles under my eyes. I’m turning into an old man on this trip. I feel ancient.