indescribable.
âFrenesi Margaret, Zoyd Herbert, will you, for real, in trouble or in trippiness, promise to remain always on the groovy high known as Love,â and so forth, it may have taken hours or been over in half a minute, there were few if any timepieces among those assembled, and nobody seemed restless, this after all being the Mellow Sixties, a slower-moving time, predigital, not yet so cut into pieces, not even by television. It would be easy to remember the day as a soft-focus shot, the kind to be seen on âsensitivityâ greeting cards in another few years. Everything in nature, every living being on the hillside that day, strange as it sounded later whenever Zoyd tried to tell about it, was gentle, at peaceâthe visible world was a sunlit sheep farm. War in Vietnam, murder as an instrument of American politics, black neighborhoods torched to ashes and death, all must have been off on some other planet.
Music was by the Corvairs, these days calling themselves surfadelic, though the nearest surf at the moment was at Santa Cruz, forty miles away over farm roads and murderous mountain passes, and they had to contend with the traditional beer-rider haughtiness of the areaâstill, in later years, try as Zoyd might to remember everything at its most negative, truth was thereâd been no brawls or barfing or demolition derbies, everybody had got along magically, it was one of the peak parties of his life, folks loved the music, and it went on all night and then the next, right on through the weekend. Pretty soon bikers and biker chicks, playing at villainy, were showing up in full regalia, then a hay wagon jammed full of back-to-nature acidheads from up the valley out on an old-fashioned hayride, and eventually the sheriff, who ended up doing the Stroll, a dance of his own day, with three miniskirted young beauties to a screaming electric arrangement of âPipelineâ and who was kind enough not to go near, let alone investigate, the punch, but did accept a can of Burgie, it being a warm day.
All through it, Frenesi was smiling, serene. Zoyd would be unable to forget her already notorious blue eyes, glowing under a big light straw hat. Little kids ran up, calling her name. She and Zoyd were sitting together on a bench under a fig tree, the band on a break, she was eating a cone of rainbow-patterned fruit ice whose colors miraculously didnât seep together, leaning forward to keep it off her wedding dress, which had also been her motherâs and grandmotherâs. A tortoise cat who kept appearing from nowhere would walk directly under the dripping cone, get hit with ice-cold drops of lime, orange, or grape, meow as if surprised, squirm in the dust, roll her eyes around insanely, run off at top speed, and then after a while amble back to repeat the act.
âDid you notice my cousin Renée? Do you think sheâs having a good time?â Renée had just broken up with her boyfriend, but undeterred by depression had driven up from L.A. figuring maybe a party was what she needed. Zoyd remembered her, among the roster of his in-law aunts, uncles, and cousins, as a tall florid girl in a minidress that bore the image, from neck to hemline, of Frank Zappaâs face, thus linking her in Zoydâs mind somehow with Mount Rushmore.
He smiled, squinting back, like a schoolmarm who still couldnât believe her luck. A breeze had come up and begun to move the leaves of their tree. âFrenesi, do you think that love can save anybody? You do, donât you?â At the time he hadnât learned yet what a stupid question it was. She gazed up at him from just under the brim of the hat. He thought, At least try to remember this, try to keep it someplace secure, just her face now in this light, OK, her eyes quiet like this, her mouth poised to open. . . .
Mean or not, he hadnât cried about it for a long time. The years had kept rolling, like the surf he used to
âFrenesi Margaret, Zoyd Herbert, will you, for real, in trouble or in trippiness, promise to remain always on the groovy high known as Love,â and so forth, it may have taken hours or been over in half a minute, there were few if any timepieces among those assembled, and nobody seemed restless, this after all being the Mellow Sixties, a slower-moving time, predigital, not yet so cut into pieces, not even by television. It would be easy to remember the day as a soft-focus shot, the kind to be seen on âsensitivityâ greeting cards in another few years. Everything in nature, every living being on the hillside that day, strange as it sounded later whenever Zoyd tried to tell about it, was gentle, at peaceâthe visible world was a sunlit sheep farm. War in Vietnam, murder as an instrument of American politics, black neighborhoods torched to ashes and death, all must have been off on some other planet.
Music was by the Corvairs, these days calling themselves surfadelic, though the nearest surf at the moment was at Santa Cruz, forty miles away over farm roads and murderous mountain passes, and they had to contend with the traditional beer-rider haughtiness of the areaâstill, in later years, try as Zoyd might to remember everything at its most negative, truth was thereâd been no brawls or barfing or demolition derbies, everybody had got along magically, it was one of the peak parties of his life, folks loved the music, and it went on all night and then the next, right on through the weekend. Pretty soon bikers and biker chicks, playing at villainy, were showing up in full regalia, then a hay wagon jammed full of back-to-nature acidheads from up the valley out on an old-fashioned hayride, and eventually the sheriff, who ended up doing the Stroll, a dance of his own day, with three miniskirted young beauties to a screaming electric arrangement of âPipelineâ and who was kind enough not to go near, let alone investigate, the punch, but did accept a can of Burgie, it being a warm day.
All through it, Frenesi was smiling, serene. Zoyd would be unable to forget her already notorious blue eyes, glowing under a big light straw hat. Little kids ran up, calling her name. She and Zoyd were sitting together on a bench under a fig tree, the band on a break, she was eating a cone of rainbow-patterned fruit ice whose colors miraculously didnât seep together, leaning forward to keep it off her wedding dress, which had also been her motherâs and grandmotherâs. A tortoise cat who kept appearing from nowhere would walk directly under the dripping cone, get hit with ice-cold drops of lime, orange, or grape, meow as if surprised, squirm in the dust, roll her eyes around insanely, run off at top speed, and then after a while amble back to repeat the act.
âDid you notice my cousin Renée? Do you think sheâs having a good time?â Renée had just broken up with her boyfriend, but undeterred by depression had driven up from L.A. figuring maybe a party was what she needed. Zoyd remembered her, among the roster of his in-law aunts, uncles, and cousins, as a tall florid girl in a minidress that bore the image, from neck to hemline, of Frank Zappaâs face, thus linking her in Zoydâs mind somehow with Mount Rushmore.
He smiled, squinting back, like a schoolmarm who still couldnât believe her luck. A breeze had come up and begun to move the leaves of their tree. âFrenesi, do you think that love can save anybody? You do, donât you?â At the time he hadnât learned yet what a stupid question it was. She gazed up at him from just under the brim of the hat. He thought, At least try to remember this, try to keep it someplace secure, just her face now in this light, OK, her eyes quiet like this, her mouth poised to open. . . .
Mean or not, he hadnât cried about it for a long time. The years had kept rolling, like the surf he used to
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