Lightspeed: Year One

“The funniest thing was the fog,” he said. Very slowly. “When we’d finished making love, and we lay back together, the fog was gone. And the stars were out, as bright as tonight. The stars came out for us. The silly goddamn voyeuristic stars came out to watch us make it. And I told her that, and we laughed, and I held her warm against me. And she went to sleep in my arms, while I lay there and looked at stars and tried to write a song for her.”

“Keith . . . . . .tarted.

“Gary,” he said. “I’m going back there tonight. To the fog and the stars and my Sandi.”

“Damnit, Keith,” I said. “Stop it. You’re getting yourself hooked.”

Keith sat up again and began unbuttoning his sleeve. “Did you ever think,” he said, “that maybe it’s not the drug that I’m addicted to?” And he smiled very broadly, like a cocky, eager kid.

Then he reached for his box, and his timetrip. “Leave me alone,” he said.

That must have been a good trip. Keith was all smiles and affability the next day, and his glow infected the rest of us. The mood lasted all week. Work seemed to go faster and easier than usual, and the nightly song sessions were as boisterous as I can remember them. There was a lot of laughter, and maybe more honest hope than we’d had for quite a while.

I shouldn’t give Keith all the credit, though. Winters was already well into his suggestion-making period, and things were happening around the commune. To begin with, he and Pete were already hard at work building another house—a cabin off to the side of the common house. Pete had hooked up with one of the girls, and I guess he wanted a little more privacy. But Winters saw it as the first step toward the village he envisioned.

That wasn’t his only project, either. He had a whole sheaf of maps in his jeep, and every night he’d drag someone off to the side and pore over them by candlelight, asking all sorts of questions. He wanted to know which areas we’d searched for survivors, and which towns might be worth looting for supplies, and where the rat packs liked to run, and that sort of thing. Why? Well, he had some “search expeditions” in mind, he said.

There was a handful of kids on the commune, and Winters thought we ought to organize a school for them, to replace the informal tutoring they’d been getting. Then he thought we ought to build a generator and get the electricity going again. Our medical resources were limited to a good supply of drugs and medicines; Winters thought that one of us should quit the fields permanently and train himself as a village doctor. Yeah, Winters had a lot of ideas, all right. And a good portion of ’em were pretty good, although it was clear that the details were going to require some working out.

Meanwhile, Winters had also become a regular at the evening singing. With Keith in a good mood, that didn’t pose any real problems. In fact, it livened things up a little.

The second night that Winters came, Keith looked at him very pointedly and swung into “Vietnam Rag,” with the rest of us joining in. Then he followed it up with “Universal Solider.” In between lyrics, he kept flashing Winters this taunting grin.

Winters took it pretty well, however. He squirmed and looked uncomfortable at first, but finally entered into the spirit of the thing and began to smile. Then, when Keith finished, he stood up. “If you’re so determined to cast me as the commune’s very own friendly reactionary, well I guess I’ll have to oblige,” he said. He reached out a hand. “Give me that guitar.”

Keith looked curious but willing. He obliged. Winters grabbed the instrument, strummed it a few times uncertainly, and launched into a robust version of “Okie from Muskogee.” He played like his fingers were made of stone, and sang worse. But that wasn’t the point.

Keith began laughing before Winters was three bars into the song. The rest of us followed suit. Winters, looking very grim and determined, plowed on through to the bitter end, even though he didn’t know all the words and had to fake it in spots. Then he did the Marine hymn for an encore, ignoring all the hissing and moaning.

When he was finished, Pete clapped loudly. Winters bowed, smiled, and handed the guitar back to Keith with an exaggerated flourish.

Keith, of course, was not one to be topped easily.

He nodded at Winters, took the guitar, and promptly did “Eve of Destruction.”

Winters retaliated with “Welfare Cadillac.” Or tried to. Turned out he knew hardly any of the words, so he finally gave that up and settled for “Anchors Aweigh.”

That sort of thing went on all night, as they jousted back and forth, and everybody else sat around laughing. Well, actually we did more than laugh. Generally we had to help Winters with his songs, since he didn’t really know any of them all the way through. Keith held his own without us, of course.

It was one of the more memorable sessions. The only thing it really had in common with Keith’s usual concerts was that it began with “They Call the Wind Maria,” and ended with “Me and Bobby McGee.”