Lori Stasiak, a brunette with big brown eyes, whose dance card at the Saturday Night Sock Hop was always full, sat barefoot in the grass playing guitar. With her sandals placed next to her, her feet were hidden under the fabric of her bell-bottom jeans. Behind her, Willow Lake reflected the bright sunlight on thousands of ripples, creating a strobing effect that resembled a bright, flickering mirage. To her left sat Jenny Fremont, while Kerri Jacobs sat next to her.
The summer day was clear. The sky was blue. Katydids chattered all around them while the sweet scent of water lilies and sugary aroma of honeysuckle clung to the light breeze. The season’s usual heat took a break, and a cool seventy-three degrees provided perfect gettin’ outside weather.
While Lori fingerpicked her way through the chord progression C-F-G, Jenny and Kerri listened, moving slowly, side to side to the rhythm, their arms around each other’s shoulders.
Lori sang in a nearly flawless voice, “He walked down the street. Scared of the people he may meet. For him, he was newly a stranger. The places he saw, the words written on the wall, turned the soldier away from his anger. Could he ever return to a mind free of concern? For him, it was a losing provocation. For in the fields far from home, his lonely heart still did roam; and the wind carried cries of the danger. The albatross warned of a future forlorn. Is it impossible to make the right wager? He came home to find the world had left him behind, and still he remains an angry stranger.”
She finished the song with an outro she made up on the spot.
Silencing the strings with the palm of her hand, a slightly red-faced Lori looked up at the two girls and smiled as they clapped in approval. If they’d only heard her voice, they might’ve thought it had been Joan Baez crooning the melody.
“I just made it up the other night. It’s about someone coming home from the war.”
“Oh man, I dig it. That was out of sight,” Jenny exclaimed.
“Totally far out,” Kerri agreed.
“You know, I knew it was fate—us finding you on the side of the road,” Jenny said.
“Yeah,” Kerri agreed, in a flighty, wispy tone of voice, “It’s like, when I saw you walking down the road with your guitar over your shoulder, I was like, Jenny pull over, she’s like, our answer to everything we ever wanted to know.”
“At first, I thought you were that model, Jean Shrimpton. You look so much like her.”
Lori thought this silly. Not because she didn’t think she bore a resemblance to the model, but because Jean Shrimpton wouldn’t be walking down a dirt country road in upstate New Jersey.
“Yeah,” Kerri said. “That woman is, like, totally beautiful, you know. I see her in, like, all the magazines, you know.”
Kerri was a blonde with braided hair. She wore bell-bottom jeans with holes in the knees, a button-up blue shirt, and a fringe poncho over her shoulders.
While listening to the girls, apprehension masked Lori’s face. She could tell by how they dressed that they were flower kids—a term her father coined. Not that Lori minded people like Jenny and Kerri. It’s just that she found it hard to relate to the vacuous way they sometimes spoke. The spacey tone of their voices, in particular Kerri’s, drove her a little crazy. Also, she considered herself more on the conservative side of arguments. Regardless, she was against the war in Vietnam. That’s probably why she didn’t mind people like these two girls as much as her other friends might have.
Jenny was a brunette with long straight hair. She wore circle-rimmed, rose-colored glasses, a flower print tunic, a vest with beaded fringe pockets, and red bellbottom slacks. “You play guitar like Judy Collins,” Jenny said.
“Thanks.” Though she appreciated their praise, it still embarrassed Lori. She thought it was a good song, yet had difficulty accepting compliments. She shifted in place, hoping her cheeks weren’t too flushed.
Overhead, a hawk flew through the sky, calling its high-pitched scream as it went. Lori lifted her head and watched the bird, wondering why she ever accepted their offer of a ride. She wasn’t even hitching; she was just walking a mile to her friend’s house.
“You have to meet my boyfriend,” Jenny said, “He’s a great guitar player, too. We’re starting a band. We’re going to call ourselves The Mind of Jesus. Isn’t that wild?”
“Yeah,” Lori focused her attention back on the two girls, suddenly wishing she was anywhere but sitting with them, “Wild.”
“You should join our band. It’ll be far out. Me and my boyfriend—we’re running away to California to get married. You gotta come with us. You can play your song on the Ed Sullivan Show! We’ll be like the Mamas and the Papas.”
“Or The 5th Dimension,” Kerri chimed in.
“We can’t be like them,” Jenny protested, “They’re negros.”
“No they’re not.”
“Yeah they are. I saw ‘em on a Chevrolet commercial the other night.”
“I don’t know about going to California,” Lori said, interrupting the girl’s ridiculous argument.
“Why not?” Kerri asked.
“For one, it sounds expensive. I don’t have much money.”
“What’s money?” Jenny asked rhetorically, “If we run out of money, all we gotta do is knock up a grocery store or rob some dude on the street.”
Lori began bobbing her knee.
“Yeah,” Kerri broke in. “It’s easy to get bread off any old guy on the street. Especially if you show ‘em a little leg or your tits or something.”
“Yeah! Guys get stupid when they see ta-ta’s,” Jenny grabbed her boobs and jostled them.
“You can mug ‘em just like that,” Kerri finished, snapping her fingers and laughing out loud—a high-pitched squealing laugh.
Trying hard to think up more excuses, Lori said, “Plus, I’m going to college next fall. Also, I have a boyfriend. He's not about to go out to California.”
“College? You don’t need college,” Kerri said, plucking a daisy from its stem and scooting closer to Lori. “All you need is to, like… live life, man. All of this,” she motioned with her hand at the woods and lake, “is like a natural kinda college. You learn so much more that way, you know. You wrote that massively far-out song without going to college.” Kerri then stared off into the distance, contemplatively. To Lori, it seemed as though she was about to say something earth-shattering, life-changing, universe-exploding. Instead, she said, “Life… is like a road, you know… and… traveling down that road… will… like… teach you the most amazing, far-out shit, you know?”
Lori fought an impulse to roll her eyes.
Satisfied with her statement, Kerri placed the daisy stem in Lori’s hair, just above her ear. “There,” she sat back, admiring the flower, “You're so much more beautiful than Jean Shrimpton now.”
“Thank you.” A hint of nervousness touched Lori’s voice. In high school, she knew girls like this. They thought they were so deep, but in Lori’s opinion, they were about as deep as a mud puddle on a sunny day.
“As far as your boyfriend,” Jenny said, lighting up a joint. “I have a boyfriend, too, but that doesn't stop me from doing what I want. If you don’t believe me, watch this.”
Jenny leaned over to Kerri, and Kerri, who must’ve known what was coming, leaned into Jenny. The two girls kissed. Not just a sweet friendship peck on the lips, either. They kissed like passionate lovers, slobbering all over one another. Lori thought of this kissing as tongue kissing. It’s something she had never even done with her boyfriend. She couldn’t imagine what her conservative father would think of this. To top it off, Kerri grabbed Jenny’s right boob and squeezed. This caused Jenny to kiss her friend even more fiercely. The kiss was so severe and feral, it looked like it should’ve hurt.
The way they were going at it, Lori thought they would rip each other’s clothes off at any moment and start having sex. A sick feeling rose in her stomach. She shifted uneasily once again. Watching this, she wasn’t fighting an urge to roll her eyes, she was fighting an urge to get up and run.
“See,” Jenny said after the make-out session—which only lasted about ten seconds, yet to Lori seemed like ten minutes—“We do what we want. It’s about free love, man. If your boyfriend doesn’t understand that, then…”
“Then he doesn’t understand life,” Kerri finished, laughing, “Fuck him!”
“Right on,” Jenny agreed. She offered the joint to Lori, “Here, have some grass.”