Three Day Summer(4)
Drugs. He’s spent my money on drugs. Normally, I wouldn’t care because he always shares and it seems to work out in the end. But this time, we won’t be able to get into the concert. And we’re stuck in the middle of Podunk, USA. Not to mention Amanda is going to cut my balls off, draw a flower on them, and save them as a souvenir.
But just as she screws up her face and opens her mouth to yell, Rob cuts in. “My cat’s right, man. I’ve heard there’s a million people coming. No way they’re going to be able to keep all those people outside. Those fences are coming down. Trust me.”
Evan nods emphatically. “In the meantime,” he says, “let’s check out the luxurious accommodations that Bethel has to offer. Miss A and the Mandettes are sure to dig it.” Evan’s nickname for Amanda and her two friends. They love it, of course. Nobody seems to notice that when I call Amanda Miss A, it’s with a sneer.
We continue to walk to Evan’s “luxurious accommodations,” which turn out to be a field outside the fences. Now that we’re closer to them, I can see that the gates aren’t even fully erected yet. A couple of people appear to be slowly fiddling with some tools down one end. Down the other, a lone guy in a red shirt seems to be the only sort of official-looking person even manning them. Meanwhile, the field is already dotted with reposing kids. I start to relax.
“If we don’t get in, because of your friend, Michael,” Amanda hisses at me underneath a perfect smile. “I will kill you.”
Great. Death by Woodstock. Well, I hope it happens after Hendrix plays.
chapter 5
Cora
DON’T BUY YASGUR’S MILK! HE LOVES HIPPIES! The sign is huge, the letters almost taller than me and I stand about five foot four. If a sign could scream, this one would be out of lung capacity.
But that’s not what makes me stop in my tracks as I’m walking across the little field to my shift in the medical tent. No, I screech to a halt because of the five-foot-six sweaty farmer who’s emphatically hammering the sign’s left post into the ground with his good arm.
“Dad?” I say in disbelief.
My father looks up at me, his eyes squinting into the sun. I’m wearing my candy striper apron again and a plain blue dress underneath it. None of that “hippie nonsense,” as my dad is fond of calling some of my friends’ more fashionable duds. Not that it seems to matter anyway because the glint of disappointment is suddenly diamond bright in his eyes.
“And where do you think you’re going, young lady?” he asks.
It takes everything I have not to roll my eyes. I sigh. “Dad, I’m working the medical tents. You know that.”
“Damn hippies. If they’re going to get themselves liquored up and drugged up and God knows what else, they don’t need my daughter’s help to get them back on the straight and narrow. They can sleep it off like everybody else.”
I point at the sign. “Mr. Yasgur, Dad? Really?” Max Yasgur owns more land than anyone in all of Sullivan County. He’s the purveyor of most of our milk and a sweet, soft-spoken guy. As of about three weeks ago, he also happens to own the farm that’s about to host an enormous music festival. No surprise that my dad and some of Bethel’s other disgruntled citizens have done everything in their power to try to stop him from leasing it. The idea of rock stars, and hippies, and fifty thousand young people descending upon our sleepy little farm town is not exactly a palatable idea to people like Dad.
Obviously, their protests haven’t been working. But asking people to boycott Mr. Yasgur’s milk? This is just too much.
“This is what he gets,” my dad says stubbornly. “We told him it’d be like this and we’re as good as our word.”
“It’s just a music festival, Dad. Jeez, what do you think is going to happen?”
Oh, crud. Now I’ve done it. Dad’s face has just become six shades of red, his cheeks and the tip of his nose flaming as brightly as a siren.
“Cora Fletcher. I wonder if that’s exactly what some seventeen-year-old girl said to her dad right before the Democratic convention. Right before she got her head bashed in at the riot. Or how about before Martin Luther King was assassinated? Or what about President Kennedy?! Just a parade on Main Street?! Is that what that was?”
“Dad, there are no presidents or dignitaries here. It’s just a rock show,” I mutter.
“This music gets all you kids riled up and then you’re all tumbling and who knows what your brain is telling the rest of you to do.”
He means “tripping,” not “tumbling,” but this doesn’t seem like the right time to get into semantics.
“Okay, Dad. Okay. Just calm down, all right?” He had a mild heart attack just a year ago and I don’t need him to have another one. “I’m just going to be working the medical tent with Anna. That’s all. Everything will be fine.”
Anna is the nurse I usually volunteer under. She recruited me two weeks ago for this—basically as soon as we all found out that the festival was kicked out of Wallkill, New York, and about to suddenly descend on Bethel instead. (Funnily enough, I don’t think it was ever slated to take place in the actual town of Woodstock.) Anna is also a friend of the family. I can see Dad’s red cheeks fade into a slightly less alarming dark pink.