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Part XI: 1969- Back to the Garden
"This is the way/I always dreamed it would be/The way that it is/When you are holding me…"
Tents sprout out of the ground like mushrooms from the dewy grass. They are not arranged with other order, without rhyme nor reason, and with no uniformity for size and color. Dozens of canvases whistle and heave in the breeze, rustling as though alive.
"I never had a love of my own/Maybe that's why when we're all alone/I can hear music/I can hear music…"
The air is fragrant with heady, floral scents. Patchouli and cinnamon, and the underpinnings of dried flowers and citrus. A woman stumbles, laughing, through the tall grass, and is steadied by a long-haired, bearded man in round glasses, who kisses her deeply and fully on the mouth, letting her hand painted shawl fall to the ground like a blanket, which they collapse on together.
"The sound of the city, baby, seems to disappear/I can hear music/Sweet, sweet music/Whenever you touch me baby/Whenever you're near…"
Tony Higgs finds himself lying on the grass beneath the blazon of the summer sun, taking in huge gulps of perfumed air, feeling as though he'd just run a mile.
It turns out he's gone a lot farther than that.
"Lovin' you/It keeps me satisfied/And I can't explain, oh no/The way I'm feeling inside/You look at me we kiss and then/I close my eyes and here it comes again…"
He sits up, looking around at the broad expanse. The tents, the people, the laughing and the singing, music seeming to pour from every direction.
Slowly, he smiles.
"I can hear music/I can hear music/The sound of the city, baby, seems to disappear/I can hear music/Sweet, sweet music/Whenever you touch me baby/Whenever you're near…"
"Wow," Tony got to his feet, his heels plodding unevenly in the wet earth, "He is magic."
Either that, or he'd gotten food poisoning and Galdamez had subsequently dumped him in a field somewhere. It did smell a lot like his Palais of Peculiarities.
He wandered aimlessly between the tents, feeling like he was in a totally different country. He wasn't, though, or at least he was pretty sure he wasn't. That looked a lot like Wren Lake. He may have have lived around here very long, but he didn't think he'd mistake it. But the big houses that crowded around it were nowhere in evidence.
"Hey, Trixie!"
He whirled around in surprise, "Er...hello?"
"Dig the heels," the girl addressing him was a willowy brunette with hair that went down as far as her knees. She wore a denim minidress and high boots, with a sort of pink camisole that appeared to have been handsome.
"Oh, thanks. They're vintage."
"No kidding? Who'd you get 'em off of? Vlad the Impaler?" lips parted in a smile, "Hey, short stop, you wouldn't happen to have seen my girl Joanie, have you? Curvy, ginger, clueless look in her eyes. I almost thought she was you for a second, but you've got the nicer nails."
"Oh, thanks, I use one of those Israeli soaks..."
"With my luck, she's off dropping acid at 9:30 in the morning. And they say I'm wild," she reached into one of the many pockets of her handmade garment, retrieving a pair of sunglasses, which she put on as she got on tiptoes to survey the crowd, "Forget it. She's probably whoring herself out for a cigarette. Idiot."
"I can help you find her," Tony heard himself say. She looked over her glasses at him, "Oh yeah?"
"Sure. I mean, I'd hate for anybody to whore themselves out," he paused, "Unless, you know, they got their monies worth."
To his surprise, the other woman laughed, "A boy with great nails and a sense of humor. Who knew? Sure. We'll make a tour of it. Something tells me you're new to the festival scene."
"Well, I did go to a Fleet Foxes concert once, but that's only because Panic! At the Disco was sold out."
"Where's Disco?"
Tony blinked, "...far away. Give or take a decade."
She laughed again, "Are you high?"
"Not sure yet, actually."
"Well, whatever you are," she patted him on the shoulder, "Stick with it. Come on, let's move. Oh," she added as an afterthought, "I'm Lettie, by the way."
Tony almost puked an entire sack of White Castle sliders out onto the grass, "You're...who?"
"Lettie," she repeated, "This is when you tell me who you are."
"T-T-T..." he croaked hoarsely, "Tony. I'm Tony."
"Huh," she winced, "Kind of an old man name if you ask me. But I ain't one to talk. Pretty sure the last Letitia on Earth was one of Queen Victoria's courtesans. Come on."
She drifted off into the crowd. Tony remained staring vacantly for a while before jarring himself back into motion, not wanting to lose her.
After all...he'd come all this way, hadn't he?
-Tony and Lettie
"ABANDON HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE!" A short bespectacled girl shouted from atop a turned-over apple box, holding up a sign that read, "The Kitchen is Keen!" on one side and "Hell's not Hip!" on the other. "For this is where family values and basic morals go to die! A graveyard where femininity is warped and masculinity squandered!"
They were outnumbered by the hippies, sure, but Agnes Arden was confident she'd protest louder than them all.
Albeit, she'd need some help. "C'mon, Todd," she urged her nerdy friend by her side. "Talk about squandered masculinity!"
"Wh-wh-wh-wh-what?" stammered Todd, "Oh, er...I dunno, Aggie, you know how my voice gets when I shout."
He'd told her over and over on the way over here that he was coming for moral support, and also to pass out the keen fliers he'd designed ('Rock's hot 'till it's not!' in big block letters). He wasn't a show guy. Anyway, he had a stutter. People didn't always notice, but it was there.
"A-a-a-anyway, you know nobody's gonna buy the whole m-mas-masculine stuff isn't gonna fly comin' from a stringbean sap like me," he pushed his glasses farther up the bridge of his (very greasy) nose, "I'm not very convincing."
-Todd
"You're more convincing than me!" Agnes protested (something she had proven to be very good at). "When I talk about it, people accuse me of having homosexual tendencies, which is something I surely can't..." She trailed off, noticing one other than... "Well, if it isn't Letitia Higgs, scantily clad and stoned as always."
"Not now, Agnes," Tony's grandmother (who was rapidly proving to be the most badass woman he had ever met in his life, and how was this happening to him, and what even was his life now...) rolled her eyes, "I'm looking for my sister. You seen Joan anywhere?"
"H-h-hey!" the bespectacled boy with the greasy hair chirped up, as though frightened, "Don't lose your masculinity, friend!"
"Huh? Oh, sorry, guy, it's a bit late for that. Are you guys Jehovah's Witnesses or something?"
"They're a pair of zits on the Man's ass, and they're loving every minute of it," said Lettie, clearly not aware that in 50-or-so years such a comment from Tony would be enough for her to roll up some Dove in a sock and start training for the shotput.
"Well? You seen Joan or what?"
-Lettie and Todd
"Why should I tell you?" Agnes hissed. "So I can enable you to sell her the pot?"
"I don't need her to get me pot," Lettie rolled her eyes, "Forget it. I don't know why I bother with you."
Tony was admittedly a little slow catching up to all this, but he couldn't keep from exclaiming, "Wait...you have a sister?"
"Huh?" Lettie blinked, "Yeah, she's my sister. That a revelation, or something?"
Actually, it very much was, but Tony couldn't really say that.
"No, just looking for conversation."
"Y-y-y-y-you're wearing woman's shoes!" gasped Todd, as if just realizing this.
"Oh, yeah, they're custom made. Taught myself how to do it for a kick. It's hard being short, you know. Everyone's always looking down at you."
"D-d-don't you know women's clothing is a gateway into deviancy?"
"Don't let him bother you," Lettie told him, "He stills wets the bed."
"T-t-t-t-t-t-t-that was one time, and it was a rumor and it was one time, and..."
Todd's plaintive attempts at a defense were cut short by a heavy bass thrum resounding among the tents. Someone was playing a song somewhere.
"Though I don't hardly know her..." a slow, languid voice. Later, Tony would realize he had difficulty describing it. It was at times heavy and light, syrupy and strong.
"But I think I could love her..." It made you want to sleep and to move, to get to your feet and lie down in the grass.
"Crimson and Clover..." for a few, beautiful moments, it felt there was nothing in the world besides that song, and the music accompanying it.
"Kid?" Tony could hear his grandmother's voice as if from miles away, "Hey? Hey, where are you going?"
He didn't even realize he was going, and yet his feet were moving across the grass, between the tents, toward one particularly distinctive one: red and black canvas, the sort of colors that should've been suffocatingly hot on a day like this one.
Yet, the air around the whole tent was cool, reassuringly so. Tony had no apprehensions about pushing the flap aside to look within.
"Over and ov..." the music stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The singer's beringed fingers stilled on the strings of his guitar. A head of shaggy, shoulder-length brown hair lifted itself slowly. Keen green eyes met Tony's.
"Can I help you, little man?"
His heart nearly stopped in his chest.
"...Micah?"
-Tony, Lettie, Todd, and ?????
The ghost's face split into a lazy smile, "Never heard of him. You lost or something?"
Tony struggled to recover himself, telling himself he was being stupid. It couldn't be Micah, Micah was, like, 50 years in the future. And, anyway, it was hard to imagine him wearing eyeliner, a leather duster, and half his weight in costume jewelry.
"No," Tony answered at last, "Just...thought you were someone else is all."
"Gotta be the first time I ever heard that one," he chuckled, putting his guitar aside, "I'm pretty unique."
He got to his feet, stepping lazily around the luridly colored rugs and tapestries that had been laid down on the ground, "It's Benjy, by the way."
"...Benjy?"
"My name," he enunciated, "Maybe you heard of my act? Benjy and the Blackbirds?" he cocked his head to the show, "You know, usually, when someone stumbles my tent, it's for an autograph or a proposition or something."
"Oh, well..." Tony chuckled awkwardly, "No proportioning here, no sir. Sorry."
Which was of course putting aside that he did look just like Micah, except edgier, and Tony had spent far too many nights recently lying awake at night imagining just what it might be like for Micah to take those long, delicate fingers of his and caress his face, his lips, how badly he wanted to take those beautiful brown curls and see how soft they were, and...
"You have a nice singing voice," he said finally.
"I know," said Benjy smoothly, "That's why I'm a singer," he shrugged, "That was just a cover, though. I'm gonna be putting out some new stuff here at the festival. Figure it's now or never."
There was so much more Tony wanted to say, but he hardly had any idea how to begin. Benjy seemed to already be forgetting he was there, crossing to the other side of the tent and fetching a pack of cigarettes. The swift, practiced gesture he used to punch one of the box was so much like something Micah would do that Tony had to turn away...
"Oh, hello," there was a girl in the mouth of the tent, right behind him, "You one of the roadies?"
"He's a fan," said Benjy, turning to the girl, "I've got a lot besides you, you know."
"Oh, I bet," she giggled, tossing a lock of sandy hair over her shoulder. She was pretty, and freckled, clad in a flowing white sundress that seemed to glow from within. She smelled like marigolds.
"Found what you were looking for, princess?" Benjy asked, lighting his cigarette.
"Oh, you bet!" she held up a Polaroid camera.
"Whoa," Tony blurted, "I've never seen one of those in real life."
"Just off the spaceship, huh?" Benjy drawled.
"Sort of."
"I got some great shots all in a panorama," she went on, rummaging in a forage bag around her waist, "Here, look."
"Wha..." he turned around, a plume of smoke on his lips, just in time to get caught in a spontaneous shot. The girl laughed, "Finally! A picture."
"Real smooth, Joanie," he rolled his eyes as the picture hummed out of the Polaroid, "You're burning that."
"Joanie," Tony breathed. The girl, Joanie, turned to him, "Huh?"
"Your sister's looking for you," he said lamely, attempting to process that this was the great-aunt he'd had no idea existed until 10 minutes ago.
"You know Lettie?" she sighed heavily, "Ugh, talk about a scam."
"This that sister you keep not telling me about?"
"For a reason," Joanie sighed, "What'll it take t pretend you never saw me?"
"Um...you don't want to see your sister?"
"I can't pay you with money, but I can take a real good picture. I'll even write you a song!"
"...what?"
"A song! I'm a folksinger. Well, I want to be. I'm really good."
"Well, I don't know how comfortable I am lying to her. I mean, I have sort of PTSD about that. She can be really scary when she wants to..."
"COPS!" someone yelled from outside, "COPS!"
"Aw, shit," Benjy ground his cigarette out in an ashtray, looking out the tent flap at the stampeding mob of revelers. Sirens could be heard in the distance.
"What's going on?" asked Tony.
"What always goes on," Joanie rolled her eyes, "You put enough kids, drugs, and music together, and it stops mattering what they do. Someone's always gonna call the cops."
***
"Jesus Christ!" Lettie swore as a tide of officers appeared on the horizon, nightsticks aloft, "Who the hell called the cops?"
"It w-w-wasn't us!" stammered Todd, not very convincingly, "I-i-sn't that right, Aggie?"
-Tony, Benjy, Joanie, Lettie, and Todd
"Yes, yes, over there, officer!" Agnes eagerly pointed the authorities to where the hedonistic action was. Then, as if just noticing Todd, she replied, "Sorry, what was that?"
"Aggie!" Todd exclaimed.
"You bitch!" Lettie swore, "Do you know how screwed my sister is if she's caught so much as smelling like pot?"
"I-it's okay, Lettie!" Todd attempted, "E-e-e-e-everyone smells like p-p-pot..."
"For Christ's sake, just skip to 'That's All Folks' and call it a day!" Lettie snapped.
"N-n-now that's not very n-n-n..."
"Disperse now!" an amplified voice boomed across the fairground, "That's an order!"
"Fuck you both," Lettie stepped away, "I have to find her."
***
"Shit, shit, shit..." Benjy swept the entire contents of a folding table (Tony had never known vitamins came in so many colors) into his guitar case, which he then slung over the shoulder, "And just my luck, everybody else is passed out. Joan!"
"What can I do?" she asked frantically, her arms full of oddments she'd picked up from around the tent with no rhyme or reason.
"Nothing," Benjy said bluntly, "Just get clear okay?"
"But what if you get picked up?"
"Then I get picked up," he told her, slinging the case over his shoulder, "You think it's the first time?"
"But..."
"No buts. You're too pretty for a holding cell," he grabbed a silver trinket from a table, tossing it to Joanie, "Hold onto that."
"Ben!"
"No take backsies."
Frowning, Joan clasped the silver chain around her neck. Tony noticed a pretty charm hanging from the end: a bird, wings outstretched in an impossible position of vertical flight.
"Take Dandelion over here with you," said Benjy, "Looks kind of zoned out."
"I have ears you know! And a name, it's..."
"Come on," Joanie grabbed Tony's arm, "I don't want to be mean, but if I won't last in jail, you're be an appetizer."
"Gee, thanks," but he let her lead him out of the tent all the same.
The festival grounds were a scene of chaos. Tents had been trampled and overturned. People were running in all directions, screaming and shouting. The amplified voices of police could be heard, and the figures of black-uniformed men with clubs in their hands and masks on their.
"Wait..." Tony began, "Are those gas mas..."
"Oh no," Joanie lifted the collar of her dress to obscure her face, "Come on!"
There was a loud hissing, followed by a cloud of yellowish fumes. Tony only had enough time to process that this surely had escalated quickly before the gas reached his uncovered eyes.
Tears would be an understatement. The burning, searing agony was blinding in its intensity. He wasn't even sure he was screaming. All he was aware of was the softness of the grass beneath him, cool but not cool enough.
He was pretty sure this stuff wasn't supposed to knock you out, but he'd always had a sensitive constitution.
-Lettie, Tod, Tony, Benjy, and Joanie
* * * * *
Tony woke up to the faint humming of a harmonica.
"Ugh.." he groaned softly, struggling to get his bearings. Any illusions that this had been an elaborate hallucination were dispelled at once. His eyes still stung, for one thing, and whatever else that White Castle had been, it hadn't stunk this strongly of piss and puke.
Tony had been squeezed into a common jail cell with about a dozen others, all of whom, he supposed, had likewise been taken from the rock festival or...whatever it was.
The harmonica music was coming from a man sitting a little way down the same bench Tony was on. He craned his neck, blinking to refocus his vision to see the visage of...
"Dr. Galdamez!"
-Tony
"Tis I, Antonio, tis I!" Galdamez heralded with another high note on the harmonica. Longhaired and adorning many beads and a pair of sandals, the mage-turned-hippie approached the youth. "Tell me, how have you fared on your adventure thus far?"
"Well, I just got tear-gassed..." Tony began, "But I met my Gran! And she has a sister, and I met her too! It was...it's totally crazy. I can't believe it. I don't even..." he paused, "Where did everybody else go? To meet their grandmas?"
-Tony
"If only it were that simple," Galdamez shook his head. "No, they were scattered across time, near and far, to investigate the tragedy in the various links in the chain of la mort. You must do the same in this year, if you are ever to return to your own time."
"Tragedy," Tony muttered, "So...my Grandma was, like, personally involved in one of these things?" saying it aloud though, it seemed pretty obvious. An ugly certainty settled on him, "Wait...wait, she has a sister. I just met her. And...Dr. Galdamez, in all my life with her, she never mentioned her once. I never even saw a picture!"
A disgusting sense of knowing crept up and down his arms.
"Dr. Galdamez..." he began softly, "She's going to die, isn't she?"
Shaggy rolled his head, and licked his lips as he came to. Local jail cell. Not the first time, and probably not the last.
Distinctively not groovy.
"Bengy, man, you whole?"
Galdamez gave a non-committal shrug.
"Well, you can't just tease me like that!" Tony demanded, She's...she's family, and if...if something happens to her that changes the whole course of my Gran's life... Well, there has to be something I can do, or else why the heck am I even here?"
-Tony
"To bear witness to the truth so you can bring it back to the present," Galdamez explained. "You cannot prevent a tragedy that has already happened, Antonio. I am sorry."
"But..." Tony's words were shaking, "But she's my Gran. You heard her during the séance, she..." he shuddered, "Even she said we shouldn't be doing this. If I can't help her..." she sighed, "You know, I'm starting to wish I never went back to you to begin with."
-Tony
"But don't you see, Antonio?" Galdamez took the boy by the shoulders. "This is the only way to reach the grander truth of the very trouble your Gran was in to begin with! The truth here will help you achieve the closure you desired when you first walked into my office." He paused. "Perhaps even the time you spend with your Gran will be enlightening in its own regard. But for that, I cannot speak." Passionately, Galdamez shook Tony. "You must go back, back to the garden where your adventure began. I sense a great evil welling there. It is worth investigating but you must be careful!"
"Enlightening," Tony repeated hollowly, "I guess...I guess you're right. It's still her, my grandmother. This is...something special, whatever it is. I have to take advantage where I can," he turned to Galdamez, "But I'm in jail! How am I supposed to investigate any..."
-Tony
Miraculously--don't ask how--Galdamez had opened and closed the cell door during Tony's reflection and was already on his way out of the jail.
"Wait, wait, Galdamez!" Tony raced to the bars, "How did you do that? Galdamez! Galdamez!"
***
"What?" Benjy asked groggily, sitting up the rest of the way, "Oh fuck."
He had a dim recollection of saying some unkind things to the arresting officer. A few slurs may have been uttered. Not that it mattered.
"Well, this is perfect," he sighed heavily, leaning against the back wall, "Gonna love to hear what this was for."
-Tony and Benjy
"You got the permits, right?" Shaggy sat up.
He could have sworn they'd had the permits with them. He'd learned his lesson the last time...
***
Captain James Teague marched into the station, head held high, back straight, and asked the desk sergeant, "Alright, Bob. Where is he?"
"What fucking permits?" Benjy got to his feet, "Who the fuck do you think I am, the selective-fucking-service? I don't have permits! I have a driver's license, a social security card, and two ticket stubs from Al Hirt's."
***
Bobby blinked, "He's with all 48 other people we hauled in, Cap. I don't know what you expect."
-Benjy and Bobby
"The fucking permits, to keep this kind of thing from happening!"
Shaggy sat, "I applied for the permits, to reserve that spot for us. Where the hell are they?!"
He looked around to all the other people in the cells, "Really? Really?"
***
James took a deep breath.
"You're right. I don't expect anything other than this. How much is his bail?"
"Oh, well, I'm very glad you decided to do all the bureaucracy so that we wouldn't get arrested. Newsflash, ese, we don't know why we were arrested!" he looked at the others in the cell, "Sorry. Family affair."
***
"Cap," Bobby shifted uncomfortably, "Bail hasn't been set yet. This was a major sting. They have to go through everybody one by one. Nobody's getting out 'till then," he shifted, evidently not comfortable being the one to let one of Captain Teague's credentials go disappointed, "Look, if it's any consolation, he's fine. Rattled, maybe, but fine."
-Benjy and Bobby
"Oh I have a pretty good idea of just why we were," Shaggy said, nodding, "You notice anyone not here?"
***
James nodded slowly. Two weeks of leave, before he had to go back, and here he was. Bailing out his hippie brother...
"May I see him?"