The Do-Re-Mi Page 5

  Beyond the river, atop a wooded hill, sunlight flashed off the chrome of motorcycles parked beside an old barn. Last summer, Alvaro and I had camped on that hill and made our beds beneath the black pines. Locals called it Sugar Hill after a prostitute who camped and worked there long ago.

  Again I wandered, watching for Ava, past concessions and posters with the schedule and photos of Lightnin’ Hopkins, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, and the headliner, Phil Ochs. Seeing Ochs’ name made me think of Alvaro and the visions of my brother dead or imprisoned came faster and gorier. All I could do to dispel them for a minute was turn to fears that I would go through life with a useless right hand. Then self-pity nagged at me with thoughts that the murder and my ruined hand had robbed me of my chance to play with people who would be my idols, if idols were allowed in our family. Between all that, I attempted to order the little I knew about Jimmy Marris and Evergreen.

  I needed to consider other suspects besides the Cossacks. According to Simon, the commune leader named Quig thought Jimmy was a snitch. For all I knew, Quig might treat snitches like Charles Manson had treated deserters from his squad. The sweetheart of a ballplayer friend of mine had escaped from Manson’s Death Valley camp after she discovered the graves of two girls who tried to flee.

  Or any of the hippie marijuana farmers might’ve decided Marris was likely to snitch on him. No matter if a guy’s van was papered with “Make Love, Not War” and such, he might also believe he needed to protect his income. Hippies were hardly immune to hypocrisy.

  Unless Ava could persuade me Jimmy was no snitch, I would find someone, maybe Steph, to give me a list of marijuana farmers. And Hal the cheery gun salesman at McNees Emporium might check my list against the names of people who had purchased Browning 30.06s.

  Or, I thought, the murderer could be one of the loggers who terrorized the campground. Or he might be a nerd or gimp Jimmy Marris had picked on since second grade. Or he could be Marris’ best pal, who got whiskey drunk and turned savage because Jimmy met the pal’s babe in some hayloft. Or the shooter could be this Ava, gone loco because Jimmy did her wrong. I remembered a story by Stephen Crane and the line “there are usually somewhere between a dozen and forty women involved in every murder.”

  I needed more details about Evergreen and about Jimmy, reasons he might go to the woods at night. So I followed a trio of high school boys with hair that made me wonder if they were Marines, except one of them had Elvis sideburns. Beyond the main stage, as we neared the concessions, I fell into step beside them and asked, “You guys from Evergreen?”

  “What of it?” the wiry one grumbled. A braided leather headband rested on his ears.

  “So you knew Jimmy Marris.”

  The tallest one scratched his head. “Who’re you?”

  “Clifford Hickey.”

  “Hickey?” The kid dressed like a square dancer sniggered. “Hey, whoa. Ain’t that the murderer’s name?”

  As if on a cue, the three closed in, the side-burned kid raising his fists. The square dancer spit a gob of tobacco that splashed beside my canvas shoe.

  I dug in, fists at my waist, while the boys attacked me with curses then turned and shuffled away. A fellow with a badge and a Security cap had stopped a few yards from us to observe. Compared to most hippies, this one looked like Sampson, taller and heftier than me. Not many hippies spoke in Texas drawls like his. He was talking to another bouncer who soon strolled off, while the Texan kept an eye on me. As I approached, he brushed wavy hair back off his shoulder.

  I asked, “Want to help me figure who killed Jimmy Marris?”

  He shrugged his hands. “Man, I’m from the city, only rolled in coupla hours ago. Somebody got murdered?”

  I nodded, walked on and wondered if looking for suspects other than Cossacks was a waste of precious time. And, I thought, my best source to the lowdown on the bikers might be a deserter. I started watching for a tattooed girl among the hippies, in case a Cossack groupie had defected.

  I was going with the crowd toward the stage, a little comforted that the security guards were outsiders and probably neutral. They might rescue me from the lynch mob that could result from my having the name Hickey or from my trying to befriend local girls. According to Willis, Alvaro’s troubles in Evergreen had begun when he turned his charm on the wrong girl. Maybe on this Ava.

  On the main stage, Big Dan Mills stood fine-tuning his jumbo Gibson. In cowboy boots he stood about six five and looked as strong as any logger. His beard was steel gray. His laugh was deep and kindly, as he kicked off the festival with a Woody Guthrie tune everybody knew, a singalong:

  Thousands of folks back east they say

  Are leaving home most every day

  And beating the hot old dusty way

  To the California line . . .

  The police at the port of entry say ‘

  You’re number fourteen thousand for today and

  If you ain’t got the Do-Re-Mi, boys...

  By now the grounds swarmed with grimy dopers, grad students with John Lennon specs and sketch pads, and families who lived in flower-painted, rusty school buses and made their living hawking tie-dyed shirts and earrings of bent wire. I weaved through the crowd toward the rope that partitioned the festival from Big Dan’s commune. Hippies, I reasoned, would talk more freely than locals. If the hippies didn’t talk, I might consider their reluctance a clue and continue snooping in their direction.

  Two skinny boys who looked scraggly as runaways stooped under the rope from Big Dan’s. Their big sisters followed them. I recognized one of the sisters from last summer. One of the water nymphs. Bluefeather’s partner in standing by the road and blessing passersby with sacks of corn, tomatoes, and peppers from the community garden. I remembered in particular her blissful smile, but at first she didn’t appear to remember me. When I introduced myself, I didn’t give my last name. I asked if we could talk about Jimmy. The frown she assumed made her look old enough to be the skinny boys’ mother. She tapped her foot on the dirt, glanced everywhere but at me, and claimed she hardly knew Jimmy Marris.

  “Any idea who killed him?” I asked.

  “The guy you were with last year.”

  "Guess again."

  “Cossacks.”

  “Why so?”

  “Because that’s what Cossacks do.”

  She wheeled like a propositioned virgin. I would’ve chased after her and asked if she knew anybody who had run with the Cossacks and ditched them or if she could lead me to Ava. But a choir of Harley engines revved. Across the river and up the hill, dust whirled as the choppers rumbled out of their camp. I watched them zigzag the road that switch-backed down Sugar Hill. At the base, they gathered into a pack, fishtailed along the dirt road, crossed the river on a wooden bridge and turned onto the highway. I lost sight of them behind the vans and buses in the parking area.

  On my way back toward the main stage, I considered opening lines, ways to ingratiate myself before questioning people. Pop’s most effective methods were bribery and intimidation. I only had fifty dollars. And Pop could act tougher than I could.

  A line of children snaked out from a booth where the students from the Salvador Dali Montessori School sold organic cherry snow cones. As I dodged to avoid the line, I caught a glimpse of reddish blond hair so long and shiny, I stopped for a better look. The splendid hair topped a lithe figure in brown muslin the color of a monk’s robe. The girl held a stack of yellow pamphlets. She was advising a shirtless boy with a crooked leg and a cane that Bend in the River Community Church held Bible studies daily. Her head was bowed and her voice faltered. Probably from grief, I thought. Still, I heard something else, a sweet humility I had rarely heard except when Mama spoke. As the boy limped off and she turned my way, the woe in her silvery eyes and in the curve of her mouth slowly widened into a hesitant smile.

  Five

  “HERE’S something to read between shows,” Ava said.

  I took the pamphlet. On the front was a bold title, True Freedom
, and a handwritten verse. “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will not perish but will have eternal life.” I imagined her up all night while her pretty hand copied that promise onto hundreds of pamphlets.

  “Can we talk?” I motioned toward the river.

  Her wide eyes narrowed. A girl like Ava, with hair so thick and wavy and a splash of freckles on her cheeks and lips so soft and wide, might have to field such propositions ten times each day. But I guessed as a Jesus freak she would think, What if he wants me to lead him to Christ?

  She nodded and led the way around the candied apple and cider stand and toward a small stage in a corner of the meadow where a banjo clinic was beginning. In the open, I walked alongside her. “Are you interested in Jesus?” she asked.

  “You bet.”

  We sat on a grassy mound. Her muslin dress, belted with a rope, had large pockets. From one of them she pulled a Bible, which she then laid on the grass between us. “I’m not sure what you want. Prayer maybe?”

  “That’d be good.”

  “Okay. About . . .?”

  “My brother. He’s in big trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “He got accused of murder.”

  Her shoulders drew closer together. Her arms crossed over her breasts and she grasped one shoulder with each hand. Her eyes kept blinking while she stared above the forest as though on the lookout for an airplane or a storm. “Is your brother named Alvaro?”

  “Uh huh.”

  Ava stared at me as if trying to fathom why God made such beasts as us Hickeys. Then she closed her eyes and rubbed them. She glanced at me then back at the sky. “Do you know who I am?”

  “I hear you were Jimmy Marris’s girlfriend.”

  She made a face like somebody remembering happy times long ago. “It’s been two weeks since we broke up.” She lifted a wrist and brushed her cheek with it.

  “Did you know my brother?”

  “I met him one time and that’s all.” She flashed a defiant glare, as if I had accused her of something. “What do you want?”

  “Truth.”

  “You’re not just trying . . .?”

  I waited but she only closed her eyes and stared at the dirt. So I said, “Trying to save Alvaro? Maybe, but the fact is, when I showed up yesterday at my brother’s camp, I’m sure he didn’t even know about Jimmy. If he had shot somebody, I’d see a clue. He’s my only brother. We were going to fish and come to the jamboree. I’m even scheduled to play a couple songs. So was Alvaro. But the sheriffs came and next thing, my brother’s on the run and I’m in jail. They think Alvaro killed Jimmy over a girl.

  “Maybe you,” I said, then watched her eyelids quiver as if straining not to blink. “But they’re only guessing. Somebody found Jimmy downriver from Alvaro’s camp and Alvaro owned a thirty aught six like the killer used. That’s all. But I’ve known him since I was six.”

  She caught her breath and reached for her Bible, laid it on her lap and folded her hands atop it. “Who do you think killed Jimmy?”

  I shook my head. “Maybe you’ll help me figure it out?”

  She turned toward a platform where an old fellow in a beret was demonstrating styles of bluegrass banjo. After a minute she turned back and stared at me.

  She had one of those stares that make you feel exposed for a crime you don't recall committing. “Tell me about Jimmy?” I said.

  She rubbed her eyes. “I hope he’s with Jesus. He got saved last year, but he . . . people say he was too smart for his own good. He did math for fun, and hard crossword puzzles, and he read about science and politics and philosophy, on his own. Some kids called him a geek but he wasn’t a loner like a lot of smart people. He wanted everybody to love him. And most people did.”

  She wiped her cheek. “I don’t know if he’s in heaven. When we broke up, he was reading that Communist Manifesto some girl from Eugene gave him when he was up there checking out the university. Girls wouldn’t leave him alone, even my friends sometimes. They — ” She stopped when cheers and whistles erupted at the end of Big Dan’s set. Her gaze rose to the sky.

  “What’d Jimmy look like?” I asked.

  “Something like you,” she said. “Blue eyes and skin darker than yours, kind of olive. His hair was browner than yours and he wasn’t quite as big. He was a hurdler on the track team and he could almost fly. He told everybody he was Sicilian, ‘cause he didn’t want to be the only black kid in Evergreen.”

  “His mom’s Brady Barker’s sister, right? So Jimmy’s dad’s black?”

  When Ava shook her head, her wavy hair rippled. “Jimmy didn’t know for sure. His mom was a nurse in the Korean War. Jimmy said she married his dad a few days before he got killed by rocket fire. She claims his dad was white but Jimmy saw a couple pictures of a guy who looked like him only way darker. Anyway, who cares?”

  If I had carried a note pad, I would have scribbled — Motive? Racial? Political? Sexual? Racial because Evergreen might harbor the northwest chapter of the KKK. Political because in those days, even at a liberal San Diego college, an organizer for the American Communist Party got beaten into a coma. Sexual because sex inspired most everything that money didn’t.

  From down along the path that led past the concessions toward the main stage, a pack of bikers came swaggering. I shifted, sat with my back to them and asked, “Did Jimmy hang out with any bikers?”

  I wondered if the disgust that crooked her soft lips was on account of my question or the sight of Cossacks. “No,” she snapped.

  “Did he tick any of them off or get in their way?”

  The way she shook her head and gripped her Bible, I believed she was considering a lie. I said, “A waitress at Babe’s Cafe told me — ”

  “Steph.”

  “Yeah, and she told me the locals are scared of the bikers so they blame Evergreen’s descent from paradise to a combat zone on the hippies. Because the hippies planted the weed the bikers came to steal.”

  “The Cossacks are parasites, okay,” she said. “Ask me something else.”

  Even now, if I painted a Christmas mural, Ava would become the Virgin. Her face was all curves, the arched eyebrows, the wide mouth and chin. The silver light from her eyes made me stutter. Still, I wondered if she were afraid of the Cossacks, or in cahoots with them, or what. “Besides Quig,” I said, “who else thought he was a snitch?”

  “If Steph told you so much, why do you need me?” She tried to glare, then softened. “Everybody from the communes thought he was a snitch, okay. That’s kind of why we broke up. He didn't want me going to Quig's. I told him God had sent me to Quig’s as a witness to the hippies. He said God was a drug.”

  I waited for more then said, "Go on."

  "That's all. I told him if he didn't believe in God, I couldn't believe in him. So . . . you know."

  I gave her a while to recover from the memory then asked, “How about the race thing? Any big brother or dad who might’ve wanted to get rid of a black guy on account of something he did to a white girl?”

  “You mean to me?”Again she tried to harden her face, but in seconds she let the pose go. “He only told me about his dad because he said I ought to know what he was made of, just in case we slipped up.” Probably without meaning to, she had let go of the Bible and folded her hands on her belly.

  Ava didn’t have to speak to tell stories. From her firm posture and clenching fingers I saw her heart was sore and perplexed but not yet broken. Her eyes flooded and spilled a slurry of silver tears while on the main stage a gospel quartet sang:

  One fine morning when this life is over,

  I’ll fly away...

  Ava stood and pocketed her Bible. “I’m going to watch.”

  I wished I could lead her in the other direction, to someplace the Cossacks wouldn’t be. But she looked determined.

  Though she hadn’t invited me along, I followed her through the aisle of refreshments, tapes, tie-dyed clothes, Mexican tapestries, Navajo jewe
lry, and the rest. She gave no sign that she would prefer I leave her alone.

  The gospel quartet was on the main stage. Their banner read “Faith, Hope, Charity & Mavis.” The crowd had thinned after Big Dan’s appearance, gone off to stroll the meadow, to swim across the river and harvest wild cherries or explore the flowery woods, or to attend one of the workshops where musicians demonstrated guitar tunings and other techniques along with playing their songs. Ava found us a seat on the grass ten yards from the stage on the left side, not far enough from a trio of tattooed girls. One of them tossed me a smirk and strutted off, no doubt to tell her master that Hickey fool was still around.

  The quartet sang:

  May the circle be unbroken

  By and by, Lord, by and by.

  There’s a better home a waiting

  In the sky, Lord, in the sky.

  Little Vic led the pack of five Cossacks who came striding along the edge of the clearing. They cut through the crowd toward us making sure to step on stepping on most every blanket along their route. Then Vic swaggered over to us and stood with his legs spread and tiny fists knocking heavy golden rings together. The sun flashed like a laser off his golden earring. While the gang half-surrounded us, he leered at Ava and licked his tongue between his lips. “Baby, you need a real man.”

  Ava’s eyes had turned to bullets. “Get lost, Vic.”

  “Don’t talk shit to me, baby.” Outdoors, his voice had a trill that only made it more menacing. “I’m just asking, why not come to me instead of this trash? I mean you go ahead and fuck a poodle, it’s no skin off my white ass. But this faggot, him and his wetback brother smoked Jimmy. And if he don’t get down the road or snuffed by some patriot first, I’m gonna have to smoke him.”