We walked onto the stand. Paul hit the customary drum-riff to signal that the band was back and ready to rock. Norm gave me a nod as he adjusted a guitar strap that didn't need adjusting. I stepped to the center mike and bellowed, "This one is for Astrid, by request, and because . . . wild thing, I think I LOVE you!" And although it was ordinarily Norm's job--his prerogative, as leader of the band--I counted the song off: One, two, you-know-what-to-do. On the floor, Astrid's friends were pummeling her and shrieking. Her cheeks were bright red. She blew me a kiss.
Astrid Soderberg blew me a kiss.
*
So the boys in Chrome Roses had girlfriends. Or maybe they were groupies. Or maybe they were both. When you're in a band, it's not always easy to tell where the line is. Norm had Hattie. Paul had Suzanne Fournier. Kenny had Carol Plummer. And I had Astrid.
Hattie, Suzanne, and Carol sometimes crammed into the microbus with us when we went to our gigs. Astrid wasn't allowed to do that, but when Suzanne was able to borrow her parents' car, Astrid was permitted to ride with the girls.
Sometimes they got out on the floor and danced with each other; mostly they just stood in their own tight little clique and watched. Astrid and I spent most of the breaks kissing, and I began to taste cigarettes on her breath. I didn't mind. When she saw that (girls have ways of knowing), she started to smoke around me, and a couple of times she'd blow a little into my mouth while we were kissing. It gave me a hard-on I could have broken concrete with.
A week after her fifteenth birthday, Astrid was allowed to go with us in the microbus to the PAL hop in Lewiston. We kissed all the way home, and when I slipped my hand inside her coat to cup a breast that was now quite a bit more than a nubbin, she didn't push it away as she always had before.
"That feels good," she whispered in my ear. "I know it's wrong, but it feels good."
"Maybe that's why," I said. Sometimes boys aren't dopes.
It was another month before she allowed my hand in her bra, and two before I was allowed to explore all the way up her skirt, but when I eventually got there, she admitted that also felt good. But beyond that she would not go.
"I know I'd get pregnant the first time," she whispered in my ear one night when we were parking and things had gotten especially hot.
"I can get something at the drugstore. I could go to Lewiston, where they don't know me."
"Carol says sometimes those things break. That's what happened one time when she was with Kenny, and she was scared for a month. She said she thought her period would never come. But there are other things we can do. She told me."
The other things were pretty good.
*
I got my license when I was sixteen, the only one of my siblings to succeed the first time I took the road test. I owed that partly to Driver's Ed and mostly to Cicero Irving. Norm lived with his mother, a goodhearted bottle blonde with a house in Gates Falls, but he spent most weekends with his dad, who lived in a scuzzy trailer park across the Harlow line in Motton.
If we had a gig on Saturday night, the band--along with our girlfriends--often got together at Cicero's trailer on Saturday afternoon for pizza. Joints were rolled and smoked, and after saying no for almost a year, I gave in and tried it. I found it hard to hold the smoke in at first, but--as many of my readers will know for themselves--it gets easier. I never smoked much dope in those days; just enough to get loose for the show. I played better when I had a little residual buzz on, and we always laughed a lot in that old trailer.
When I told Cicero I was going for my license the following week, he asked me if my appointment was in Castle Rock or up-the-city, meaning Lewiston-Auburn. When I said it was L-A, he nodded sagely. "That means you'll get Joe Cafferty. He's been doing that job for twenty years. I used to drink with him at the Mellow Tiger in Castle Rock, when I was a constable there. This was before the Rock got big enough to have a regular PD, you know."
It was hard to imagine Cicero Irving--grizzled, red-eyed, rail-thin, rarely dressed in anything but old khakis and strappy tee-shirts--being in the law enforcement biz, but people change; sometimes they go up the ladder and sometimes they go down. Those descending are frequently aided by various substances, such as the one he was so adept at rolling and sharing with his son's teenage compadres.
"Ole Joey hardly ever gives anyone their license first crack out of the basket," Cicero said. "As a rule, he don't believe in it."
This I knew; Claire, Andy, and Con had all fallen afoul of Joe Cafferty. Terry drew someone else (perhaps Officer Cafferty was sick that day), and although he was an excellent driver from the first time he got behind the wheel, Terry was a bundle of nerves that day and managed to back into a fire hydrant when he tried to parallel-park.
"Three things if you want to pass," Cicero said, handing the joint he had just rolled to Paul Bouchard. "Number one, stay off this shit until after your road test."
"Okay." That was actually something of a relief. I enjoyed the bud, but with every toke I remembered the promise I'd made to my mother and was now breaking . . . although I consoled myself with the fact that I still wasn't smoking cigarettes or drinking, which meant I was batting .666.
"Second, call him sir. Thank you sir when you get in the car and thank you sir when you get out. He likes that. Got it?"
"Got it."
"Third and most important, cut your fucking hair. Joe Cafferty hates hippies."
I didn't like that idea one bit. I had shot up three inches since joining the band, but when it came to hair, I was a slowpoke. It had taken me a year to get it almost down to my shoulders. There had also been a lot of hair arguments with my parents, who told me I looked like a bum. Andy's verdict was even blunter: "If you want to look like a girl, Jamie, why don't you put on a dress?" Gosh, there's nothing like reasoned Christian discourse, is there?
"Oh, man, if I cut my hair I'll look like a nerd!"
"You look like a nerd already," Kenny said, and everyone laughed. Even Astrid laughed (then put a hand on my thigh to take the sting out of it).
"Yeah," Cicero Irving said, "you'll look like a nerd with a driver's license. Paulie, are you going to fire up that joint or just sit there and admire it?"
*
I laid off the bud. I called Officer Cafferty sir. I got a Mr. Businessman haircut, which broke my heart and lifted my mother's. When I parallel-parked, I tapped the bumper of the car behind me, but Officer Cafferty gave me my license, anyway.
"I'm trusting you, son," he said.
"Thank you, sir," I said. "I won't let you down."
*
When I turned seventeen, there was a birthday party for me at our house, which now stood on a paved road--the march of progress. Astrid was invited, of course, and she gave me a sweater she had knitted herself. I pulled it on at once, although it was August and the day was hot.
Mom gave me a hardbound set of Kenneth Roberts historical novels (which I actually read). Andy gave me a leatherbound Bible (which I also read, mostly to spite him) with my name stamped in gold on the front. The inscription on the flyleaf was from Revelation 3: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him." The implication--that I had Fallen Away--was not exactly unwarranted.
From Claire--now twenty-five and teaching school in New Hampshire--I got a spiffy sportcoat. Con, always something of a cheapie, gave me six sets of guitar strings. Oh well, at least they were Dollar Slicks.
Mom brought in the birthday cake, and everyone sang the traditional song. If Norm had been there, he probably would have blown the candles out with his rock-and-roll voice, but he wasn't, so I blew them out myself. As Mom was passing the plates around, I realized I hadn't gotten anything from Dad or Terry--not so much as a Flower Power tie.
After the cake and ice cream (van-choc-straw, of course), I saw Terry flash Dad a glance. Dad looked at Mom and she gave him a nervous little smile. It is only in retrospect that I realized how often I saw that nervous smile on my mother's fac
e as her children grew up and went into the world.
"Come on out to the barn, Jamie," my dad said, standing up. "Terence and I have got a little something for you."
The "little something" turned out to be a 1966 Ford Galaxie. It was washed, waxed, and as white as moonlight on snow.
"Oh my God," I said in a faint voice, and everyone laughed.
"The body was good, but the engine needed some work," Terry said. "Me n Dad reground the valves, replaced the plugs, stuck in a new battery . . . the works."
"New tires," Dad said, pointing to them. "Just blackwalls, but those are not recaps. Do you like it, Son?"
I hugged him. I hugged them both.
"Just promise me and your mother that you'll never get behind the wheel if you've taken a drink. Don't make us have to look at each other someday and say we gave you something you used to hurt yourself or someone else."
"I promise," I said.
Astrid--with whom I would share the last inch or so of a joint when I took her home in my new car--squeezed my arm. "And I'll make him keep it."
After driving down to Harry's Pond twice (I had to make two trips so I could give everyone a ride), history repeated itself. I felt a tug on my hand. It was Claire. She led me into the mudroom just as she had on the day Reverend Jacobs used his Electrical Nerve Stimulator to give Connie back his voice.
"Mom wants another promise from you," she said, "but she was too embarrassed to ask. So I said I'd do it for her."
I waited.
"Astrid is a nice girl," Claire said. "She smokes, I can smell it on her breath, but that doesn't make her bad. And she's a girl with good taste. Going with you for three years proves that."
I waited.
"She's a smart girl, too. She's got college ahead of her. So here's the promise, Jamie: don't you get her pregnant in the backseat of that car. Can you promise that?"
I almost smiled. If I had, it would have been fifty percent amused and fifty percent pained. For the last two years, Astrid and I had had a code word: recess. It meant mutual masturbation. I had mentioned condoms to her on several occasions after the first time, had even gone so far as to purchase a three-pack of Trojans (one kept in my wallet, the other two secreted behind the baseboard in my bedroom), but she was positive that the first one we tried would either break or leak. So . . . recess.
"You're mad at me, aren't you?" Claire asked.
"No," I said. "Never mad at you, Claire-Bear." And I never was. That anger was waiting for the monster she married, and it never abated.
I hugged her and promised I would not get Astrid pregnant. It was a promise I kept, although we got close before that day in the cabin near Skytop.
*
In those years I sometimes dreamed of Charles Jacobs--I'd see him poking his fingers into my pretend mountain to make caves, or preaching the Terrible Sermon with blue fire circling his head like an electric diadem--but he pretty much slipped from my conscious mind until one day in June of 1974. I was eighteen. So was Astrid.
School was out. Chrome Roses had gigs lined up all summer (including a couple in bars, where my parents had given me reluctant written permission to perform), and during the days I'd be working at the Marstellars' farmstand, as I had the year before. Morton Fuel Oil was doing well, and my parents could afford tuition at the University of Maine, but I was expected to do my share. I had a week before reporting for farmstead duty, though, so Astrid and I had a lot of time together. Sometimes we went to my house; sometimes we were at hers. On a lot of afternoons we cruised the back roads in my Galaxie. We'd find a place to park and then . . . recess.
That afternoon we were in a disused gravel pit on Route 9, swapping a joint of not-very-good local grass back and forth. It was sultry, and stormclouds were forming in the west. Thunder rumbled, and there must have been lightning. I didn't see it, but static crackled from the dashboard radio speaker, momentarily blotting out "Smokin' in the Boys' Room," a song the Roses played at every show that year.
That was when Reverend Jacobs returned to my mind like a long absent guest, and I started the car. "Snuff that jay," I said. "Let's go for a ride."
"Where?"
"A place someone told me about a long time ago. If it's still there."
Astrid put the remains of the joint in a Sucrets box and tucked it under the seat. I drove a mile or two down Route 9, then turned west on Goat Mountain Road. Here the trees bulked close on either side, and the last of that day's hazy sunshine disappeared as the stormclouds rolled in.
"If you're thinking about the resort, they won't let us in," Astrid said. "My folks gave up their membership. They said they had to economize if I'm going to college in Boston." She wrinkled her nose.
"Not the resort," I said.
We passed Longmeadow, where the MYF used to have its annual wienie-roast. People were throwing nervous glances at the sky as they gathered up their blankets and coolers and hurried to their cars. The thunder was louder now, loaded wagons rolling across the sky, and I saw a bolt of lightning hit somewhere on the other side of Skytop. I started to feel excited. Beautiful, Charles Jacobs had said that last day. Beautiful and terrifying.
We passed a sign reading GOAT MTN GATEHOUSE 1 MILE PLEASE SHOW MEMBERSHIP CARD.
"Jamie--"
"There's supposed to be a spur that goes to Skytop," I said. "Maybe it's gone, but . . ."
It wasn't gone, and it was still gravel. I turned into it a little too fast, and the Galaxie's rear end wagged first one way, then the other.
"I hope you know what you're doing," Astrid said. She didn't sound frightened to be driving straight toward a summer thunderstorm; she sounded interested and a little excited.
"I hope so, too."
The grade steepened. The Galaxie's rear end flirted on the loose gravel from time to time, but mostly it held steady. Two and a half miles beyond the turnoff, the trees pulled back and there was Skytop. Astrid gasped and sat up straight in her seat. I hit the brake and brought my car to a crunching stop.
On our right was an old cabin with a mossy, sagging roof and crashed-out windows. Graffiti, most of it too faded to be legible, danced in tangles across the gray, paintless sides. Ahead and above us was a great bulging forehead of granite. At the summit, just as Jacobs had told me half my life ago, was an iron pole jutting toward the clouds, which were now black and seemingly low enough to touch. To our left, where Astrid was looking, hills and fields and gray-green miles of woods stretched toward the ocean. In that direction the sun was still shining, making the world glow.
"Oh my God, was this here all the time? And you never took me?"
"I never took myself," I said. "My old minister told me--"
That was as far as I got. A brilliant bolt of lightning came down from the sky. Astrid screamed and put her hands over her head. For a moment--strange, terrible, wonderful--it seemed to me that the air had been replaced by electric oil. I felt the hair all over my body, even the fine ones in my nose and ears, go stiff. Then came the click, as if an invisible giant had snapped his fingers. A second bolt flashed down and hit the iron rod, turning it the same bright blue I had seen dancing around Charles Jacobs's head in my dreams. I had to shut my eyes to keep from going blind. When I opened them again, the pole was glowing cherry red. Like a horseshoe in a forge, he'd said, and that was just what it was like. Follow-thunder bellowed.
"Do you want to get out of here?" I was shouting. I had to, in order to hear myself over the ringing in my ears.
"No!" she shouted back. "In there!" And pointed at the slumping remains of the cabin.
I thought of telling her we'd be safer in the car--some vaguely remembered adage about how rubber tires could ground you and protect you from lightning--but there had been thousands of storms on Skytop, and the old cabin was still standing. As we ran toward it, hand in hand, I realized there was a good reason for that. The iron rod drew the lightning. At least it had so far.
It began to hail as we reached the open door, pebble-size chunks of ice th
at struck the granite with a rattling sound. "Ouch, ouch, ouch!" Astrid yelled . . . but she was laughing at the same time. She darted in. I followed just as the lightning flashed again, artillery on some apocalyptic battlefield. This time it was preceded by a snap instead of a click.
Astrid seized my shoulder. "Look!"
I'd missed the storm's second swipe at the iron rod, but I clearly saw what followed. Balls of St. Elmo's fire bounced and rolled down the scree-littered slope. There were half a dozen. One by one they popped out of existence.
Astrid hugged me, but that wasn't enough. She locked her hands around my neck and climbed me, her thighs locked around my hips. "This is fantastic!" she screamed.
The hail turned to rain, and it came in a deluge. Skytop was blotted out, but we never lost sight of the iron rod, because it was struck repeatedly. It would glow blue or purple, then red, then fade, only to be struck again.
Rain like that rarely lasts long. As it lessened, we saw that the granite slope below the iron rod had turned into a river. The thunder continued to rumble, but it was losing its fury and subsiding into sulks. We heard running water everywhere, as if the earth were whispering. The sun was still shining to the east, over Brunswick and Freeport and Jerusalem's Lot, where we saw not one or two rainbows but half a dozen, interlocking like Olympic rings.
Astrid turned me toward her. "I have to tell you something," she said. Her voice was low.
"What?" I was suddenly sure that she would destroy this transcendent moment by telling me we had to break up.
"Last month my mother took me to the doctor. She said she didn't want to know how serious we were about each other, that it wasn't her business, but she needed to know I was taking care of myself. That was how she put it. 'All you have to say is that you want it because your periods are painful and irregular,' she said. 'When he sees that I brought you myself, that will do.'"
I was a little slow, I guess, so she punched me in the chest.
"Birth control pills, dummy. Ovral. It's safe now, because I had a period since I started taking them. I've been waiting for the right time, and if this isn't it, there won't ever be one."
Those luminous eyes on mine. Then she dropped them, and began biting her lip.
"Just don't . . . don't get carried away, all right? Think of me and be gentle. Because I'm scared. Carol said her first time hurt like hell."