Dan Wakefield - Home Free

They had the celebration at Barnes’s place.

Gene made stew.

He remembered how his first college shrink had asked him what he believed in and got pissed off when Gene said “Stew.” Well, he would answer the same thing now but add to it “living with Lou.” No matter how it looked on some kind of psychiatric rundown Gene knew those were two real actual things he believed in and that wasn’t bad. It was probably more than most people had.

The night of the party was the first big serious snow of the winter but that didn’t matter. Gene and Lou put the stuff for the stew in knapsacks and set out into the storm, letting it kiss their cheeks red, laughing as legs sunk deep in drifts, passing the slick cars, stalling and sliding and stealthily slipping through streets, headlights laying pale slats on the night-fallen snow. The Gene-Lou party pressed on, nipping sometimes from a canteen of brandy. Getting the serum through! The others got there, too.

Thomas brought some extra-good grass and a guy who was crashing with him in Cambridge who was AWOL from the Green Berets on his way to Toronto. He called himself Moon. On the way they’d stopped and cut down a tree to chop for firewood.

Gene and Lou both hugged Thomas and thanked him for supplying the serum that set Gene free, though privately they prayed he was not in charge of getting the ex-Green Beret across the border.

Barnes had set in a case of gallon jugs of Cribari and Nell had enough Bazooka bubble gum to seal the whole building. Flash called to say he would be a little late due to weather conditions at Logan, but to keep the faith. Gene began building the stew while Lou put music on.

Flash blew in with a Braniff stewardess who looked like Sophia Loren but talked with an Alabama accent. Her name was Belinda June Lee and at first she was nervous about getting into what looked to her like some kind of beatnik hippie maybe even Commie sort of scene but Flash had brought the makings for rusty nails, his new favorite drink, and after one the way Flash made it she kicked off her shoes and said she thought this party was real down home.

“Belinda June’s something else, man,” Gene said to Flash when he came to mix more drinks in the kitchen.

“That’s the kind I was talkin about when I mentioned that round-robinish sort of thing,” Flash said from the corner of his mouth. “Could you dig it?”

“Just not my scene, man.”

Flash sighed.

“You and your goddam middle-class hang-ups.”

Lou announced the stew was ready for anyone anytime they wanted it.

Moon asked what kind of stew it was and Lou stood up on the couch and announced, “This can only be called a magic stew. It will cure an ungodly collection of ailments of mind and body—warts, dandruff, schizophrenia, just to name a few. It is a stew of inspiration, healing, rejuvenation. Love. Oh, yeh. It tastes good, too.”

There were cheers when Lou stepped down but Belinda June cried, “Good God, what’s in it?”

Belinda June feared the “magic” of the stew might come from having what she called “L, S and D” in it, but Flash reassured her with another rusty nail and a quick consumption of his own first bowl without any adverse effects.

Everyone ate, delighting in it, delighted, not just by the taste and warmth and seasoning, not just by the stew that filled their stomachs, but fed as well by the feeling of it, partaking of it, a family for a while, together, out of the cold, warm inside, feasting, with friends, with food and fire and music.

“Listen!”

Gene jumped up like a sinner at a tent meeting, raising his arm like he wanted to repent.

He just wanted all his friends to hear the song they just had heard, only not just listen to it, hear it, the way he had heard it just then.

“Here Comes the Sun,” on the Beatles’ Abbey Road .

He played it again and they listened, trying to hear the way that he had, and mostly they did.

The song said how it had been a long and lonely winter—not the real one, the one that was blowing with fury outside. It meant the winter inside you, the daily freeze you lived with usually. That was the ice that was slowly melting. There, inside, was where it had been so long since it was clear. But now, little darlins, look and see the smiles upon your faces. That long freeze is over and it’s all right , cause—hear it now, listen, look, see it and feel it—

Here comes the sun

They got up and danced to it, everyone, partners and not, in couples and circles, over and on the furniture, alone in a corner or strutting in the center, a trio linking, parting, everyone part of it, getting inside the music, getting the music inside of them.

Later, long shadows fallen from the walls, dancers turned travelers, bundled and wrapped against the outside cold, Gene and Lou found themselves loosely curled on the couch and when they started to rise and unravel Barnes said no, stay, he was going to Nell’s, and he spread a bright blanket over them.

Snapping of cinders the only sound left now they held, huddled, snuggled.

“Sometimes it feels safe,” Lou said.

“Right,” Gene whispered. “ All right .”

Slowly, gently, nothing to hurry, they helped one another out of clothes, stretching and pulling in concert, comfort, comfortable, close, cold then cuddling warm with each other, finding themselves, fitting, fondling, fond, found, they came together.

Later, no clocktime counted just later, after, warm and tangled, sounds of snowplow opened eyes a moment into windows washed pale blue, dawn lit.

Here comes the sun

That season of bitter wintercold was one they would always remember as a time of special warmth. Walking through icy snowcrunch to the high-beamed apartment on Beacon Hill where Barnes held perpetual open house and everyone helped keep the fire going; sometimes they toasted marshmallows on it or hot dogs, sometimes they just stared into it, watching the pictures it made, the dances and the tongues, the burning villages and bright sacrificial offerings to gods, the flare of celebration, smoke of dreams. You could get high just by watching it intently, but to help there was Barnes’s booze and Lou and Gene’s jugs of Cribari and Thomas’s grass and sometimes hash and coke and pills and Flash’s sweet mixtures for him and whatever stewardess he had at the time. The one with him New Year’s Eve said they ought to have a special toast for the new decade, but Lou said no, that was too long. They drank to who and what was there, then, that was plenty: the friends, loves, fires.

Even in spring they went to Barnes’s and built fires, best on rainy days when they threw up the windows, scenting and accenting their highs with the heady blend of wood-heat and showersmell. Sometimes they fell asleep by the fire, waking at dawn to the last snap of cinders, winking out of final flames, ashes blown gently over brows in dusty blessing.

It seemed like the mood of that time would be on them always and in it Lou didn’t even mind making plans with Gene about the future. No promises, of course; they both were still free as always but there wasn’t any reason not to make a few practical plans.

Lou would go stay with her parents for the summer and finish her thesis for the Ph.D. That’s how she’d done her M.A. thesis, going back to live where she couldn’t drink or smoke but knew her parents would feed and take care of her needs so all she had to do was hunker down and do the work without distraction. With some juggling of dates and addresses that made him a state resident Gene got accepted at U Mass Boston to finish up the final dozen credits he needed, half in the summer session, half in the fall, a light enough load so he could hold down the job at The Crossroads as well.