6:30 p.m.
On the way back to the bowl, we made a pit stop in the woods. It made me wonder how many thousands of others had avoided the nasty Porta Potties and done the same. The ones not wanting to lose their seats had simply wet their pants. I’d seen their pee spots. I’d smelled their urine.
On top of that, the pervasive smell of cow dung, which had gotten worse after the rain, refused to go away. Woodstock wasn’t the best-smelling place I’d ever been, but I wouldn’t have traded my spot for all the tea in China. Even with the Livy showdown, I couldn’t have been happier. Leon had kissed me. For real.
The distinctive sound of Chip Monck’s voice wafted throughout the farm. After a few announcements about more missing people, he made yet another plea to the idiots who refused to come down from the scaffolds. “Those of you still on those towers,” he said, dog tired from the asking, “I don’t really know how to approach you. Please come down. I think it’s a reasonable request. If it’s out of reason, I trust someone will tell me.”
At first, I was surprised Livy hadn’t mentioned paging her boyfriend again. But the more I considered it, I wasn’t surprised at all. She had reverted back to her wild, carefree self. And the most astonishing part about that—I was the one who had suggested she do it. Look where that had gotten me. Mad as hell. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could stand the sight of her. I snickered to myself as I wondered why I’d ever thought she was attractive in the first place. Like Mama often said, “Pretty is as pretty does.”
Since we were all starving, and sure we’d lost our seats with Dave and Slim, we made our way up the hill to the Food for Love concession area. We wanted to make sure—and prove to Queen Livy—that they were still out of food. They were. Quite a few mad patrons milled about. I was in the middle of a fantasy about spending the remainder of Woodstock alone with Leon, when Johnny noticed a helicopter. “Look, you guys.” He pointed to a pink-and-white whirlybird that had landed in a nearby field.
From where we stood, we could see people unloading what looked like massive amounts of food. Livy threw her arms up, looking heavenward. “Thank you, God,” she exclaimed, then took off running, with Johnny two steps behind.
Although I was hoping to somehow distance myself from Livy, Leon seemed eager to help. So we headed over too. Sure enough, thousands of sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs had arrived at Woodstock, as well as canned goods, water, and fresh fruit. The four of us jumped behind several others who were passing the food in an assembly line toward a waiting truck. “Where did this come from?” Johnny asked the dude in charge.
“The townspeople heard about the food shortage,” he shouted over the whir of the helicopter. “Donated all this from their own pantries.”
It took thirty minutes to finish the unloading. For our assistance, the guy in charge offered volunteers first dibs on food. We graciously accepted the handouts and found a place to sit down at the back of thebowl. You’d have thought none of us had eaten in a year by the way we devoured our boiled eggs and slurped peaches from a can.
We hung out there for a while and listened to the acoustic sound of the Incredible String Band.
Just being around all the nice people at Woodstock and thinking about how kind the townspeople had been made me consider what it would be like to live in a Northern town like Bethel. I wondered if a college happened to be close by. Maybe I could get a student loan and transfer. It couldn’t be all that far from Penn State, could it?
After disposing of our trash, Livy insisted we try and get our seats back, even though the odds of that were slim to none. As we passed the bank of pay phones, I thought about calling Mama. But the lines stretched on forever, most likely an hour wait. I didn’t want to leave Leon that long. By now, I craved everything about him. He had protected me from smoking too much marijuana. He was the reason I had gained the courage to sing at the Hog Farm. He understood why I hadn’t wanted to strip off my clothes at the lake. Even better, he had stood up for me in front of Livy. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, I had fallen in love with the boy in less than twenty-four hours, after one short kiss.
And that boy would be leaving tomorrow night.
The sun, which had finally decided to show her glory, dipped closer to her cradle, taking away my warmth. The thought of being that cold again made me dread nightfall. My Southern skin was far too thin to live outside in the North for three days. Thank God it had stopped raining.
Once we made it down front, we attempted a search for Slim and Dave. I thought it was ridiculous, but Livy insisted. With all four of us trekking up and down the Woodstock highway, it proved impossible to tell where we were once seated. Thousands upon thousands of newcomers had arrived. The brothers had become tiny minnows, swallowed up by the sea.
Canned Heat had taken the stage. A lapis blue-hour sky provided a lovely backdrop for the band. The spotlights from the towers illuminatedthe lead singer, who blew his harmonica from another universe. I so wished we had our seats back.
“Any ideas?” I shouted over the music. “I think we should just sit anywhere.”
“Yeah, you guys, let’s figure this out,” Leon yelled.
The words had just left his lips when Livy spotted someone she knew. An hour ago, Chip Monck had announced 450,000 people were at Woodstock. Yet Livy, a girl from way down South, spied a familiar face. Her mouth dropped open. She grabbed the sides of her head, prancing in place. After she screamed, “Oh my God, I cannot believe it,” I glanced at Johnny to gauge his reaction. He was blank-faced dumfounded. We all were.
“Nick?” I asked casually.
“Hell no!” Livy’s smile widened as a gorgeous guy with a full black beard and silky dark hair hanging past his shoulders stepped around blankets and coolers to head her way. The moment he reached her, Livy leaped into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist. He swung her around. Twice. She beamed at him while he flashed her an equally happy grin.
The dude set her down but kept his arm around her waist. Now that he was close, I noticed he wasn’t very tall; he and Livy were the same height. “Everybody, meet Henry,” she yelled over the music. “He’s my political science professor.”
It was loud where we were standing—no point in carrying on a conversation—so Leon, Johnny, and I just waved.
Pushing her hair aside, the professor spoke into her ear. She nodded vigorously, then announced, “Henry’s making room for us, y’all!”
So just like yesterday, we traipsed behind Livy as she and Henry led us to our new piece of territory.
These seats were even better than the ones with Slim and Dave. Oddly enough, a thin rope had been stretched ten feet back from the stage. Even more bizarre, no one crossed it. Henry and his bevy ofintellectual hippies had managed to snag a spot twenty feet behind the rope. But there was no extra room. None that I could see.
Henry’s presence commanded enough authority for everyone around him to move over a couple of inches, creating four microscopic viewing spots. So puny we had to press our arms into our sides. I looked like a pickle in a pickle jar. I could hardly breathe, especially with the heavy cloud of skunk smoke impregnating the air. It made me cough.
As Canned Heat jammed onstage, I longed to dance. Yet there was no room. So I lightly shifted my heels and tapped my hands against my hips, determined to ban Livy and her men from my consciousness.
It didn’t last long. Once Canned Heat finished their set, I overheard her say to Henry, “When did you grow that beard? I almost didn’t recognize you.”
