by Randy Mixter
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
A DETERMINED WRITER
TRAVELER
TO THE WEST
A STRANGE LAND
CHICK
THE HOUSE ON ASHBURY STREET
HIPPIE HILL
A WORLD OF MAGIC
STORYTELLING TIME
THE KINGDOM OF ALWAYS
HOME
A MORNING WALK
THE CONCERT
A NIGHT FOR WISHES
A PERFECT FLAME
THE RAID
SHERRY
ON A MID-SUMMER’S EVENING
A KIND PLACE TO VISIT
THE HOLLOW
THE STORM
PASSAGES
THREE FRIENDS
THE PANHANDLE
TWO OF A KIND
SUNDAY ON THE WIND
STRANGE ENCOUNTERS
THE HERO OF HAIGHT-ASHBURY
A GATHERING ON A HILL
GENESIS
OF THE PAST
AUGUST
A MOMENT’S SUNLIGHT
PROMISES TO KEEP
A MORNING IN SEPTEMBER
FAREWELLS
SUNSET
STARLIGHT, STARBRIGHT
THE DAY ETERNAL
EPILOGUE
* * *
Sarah of the Moon
By
Randy Mixter
Copyright © 2011 by Randy Mixter
All rights reserved.
Electronic book design: Sarah E. Holroyd (http://sleepingcatbooks.com)
PROLOGUE
He dreamed he was in a box.
He was there by himself. His only comfort was a small table, which held a typewriter and a chair. The space was small, about the size of a prison cell. The cardboard ceiling brushed against his hair.
The box had no doors or windows, nor electricity for lighting, but illuminated brightly nonetheless. Seeing his meager surroundings only served to increase his anxiety.
He sensed that the air was thinning. It was stale and smelled of mildew, and he felt his throat burn as he gulped it down.
In desperation, he pushed against the wall, and then battered his shoulder into it. He felt it give a little, but not enough for escape. An idea came to him. He lifted the chair and, holding it in front of him legs out, rammed the wall.
The wall buckled as a chair leg pierced the cardboard’s side, opening a small hole at eye level.
It was enough. Warm air funneled in. He put the chair down and held his nose to the hole. The air was fresh and smelled of flowers. He stayed there for a short while, breathing it in.
The air had a flavor to it that reminded him of his childhood. He realized that he was no longer in fear of his confinement. The ragged opening was escape enough for now.
He heard voices in the air, the sounds of laughter, coming from outside of his prison.
He bent down and peered out of the small opening. He saw a hill in front of him. It was grassy and bare of trees save for one large oak at its apex. There were several people scattered about the hillside. Some sat on blankets, others milled around. They were dressed in bright colors that soaked up the sun. He attempted to get their attention but found he had no voice, not even a whisper.
He heard music, faint and distant. Although far away, he could sense the beauty of the song. It seemed familiar. Had he heard it before, at some time in his past, or in another dream?
Then the breeze favored him by turning his way. The music rolled down the hill and into the tiny hole in his box.
In the magic of the dream, the sound’s enchantment was mighty enough to vanquish his captivity. The box shook violently then disappeared, taking the typewriter, the table, and the chair with it.
Now he was outside, standing at the hill’s base. The song that had freed him swirled about, teasing him like a playful child. Then, abruptly, it began to slip away, moving up the incline away from him. He attempted to give chase but his legs would not move.
He followed the song with his eyes. It led him to the solitary tree at the hill’s crescent. There, where the music stopped its climb and spun about in circles, a girl stood alone. She wore a white dress that flowed around her bare feet. She appeared to be dancing slowly to the music. Her long blonde hair blew about her shoulders and face as she swayed hypnotically to the rhythm.
He somehow knew that he could only watch her. He was not to be a part of this adventure. He was still a captive, not of the box but of a dream with an unknown agenda.
He felt, more than heard, the song ending, and he did not want that to happen. He sensed he would not find this song again, on any wind, imagined or real.
As he looked up the hill at the girl dancing in the shadow of a tree, he saw her stop.
She stood still for a short time then her neck bent back and her face found the sun. She soaked in its warmth, her arms outstretched as if in prayer, as the world went quiet. She slowly turned and looked down until her eyes were on him. He staggered, almost falling to his knees, as she saw him and smiled. Even from a distance, she was as beautiful a vision as he had ever seen.
Then she spoke, a single word, but so softly he could not hear it over the sound of his heartbeat.
As she did this, she began to fade from his sight. Now he tried desperately to speak because he knew he was losing her. His dreams were often as fragile as the moon’s reflection on a wind-swept lake. A few chose to grace his memory, but most remained with the darkness of the night.
It was in this brief instant, before reality triumphed against the fantastic, that the breeze shifted ever so slightly.
It rolled down the grassy hill toward him, and it carried the word that had escaped her lips before she vanished entirely.
“Soon.”
When he woke up, he realized that he had been wrong. He remembered her smile and he remembered the song, every note of it.
A DETERMINED WRITER
NO TALKING BETWEEN CUBICLES!
It was a sign that greeted Alex Conley as he approached his workstation. The same sign had welcomed him every morning on the fifth floor at the Baltimore Sunpapers office for the last two weeks.
It was also a warning every employee, working on that floor, routinely ignored. Even now, as Alex walked past it, the cubicles were alive with chatter and music from transistor radios.
He headed straight to his designated slot, a depressingly tiny area barely large enough to accommodate a desk and typewriter. He did not honor his workspace with cubicle status. It was simply a hole with four flimsy half-built walls.
There were no greetings as he plowed his way through the neon and plastic maze. He was a part-timer, the lowest of the low. Nobody in the building acknowledged the existence of part-time employees except other part-time employees, of which he was the only one on this floor.
He began his employment on the first day of June and his goal was to save enough money to get him in the door of the cheapest college he could find, hopefully by Labor Day.
Alex’s father had landed him the job because of his friendship with the paper’s editor, Maxwell Bestwick. That was okay by Alex. He enjoyed writing and it was certainly better than working at the moving and storage company close to his home, who had gladly accepted his application.
Things looked promising at first. Bestwick called Alex into his office his first day on the job and promised him several writing assignments covering local events. As it turned out however, the bulk of the tasks concerned writing about neighborhood happenings relegated to the last page of the paper’s style section.
After spending considerable time at community association meeting halls, flea markets, and flower marts, Alex was becoming bored and restless. His latest endeavor, the crowning of Miss Genova Pizza 1967, was the
final straw. The following day he requested a sit down with the editor.
Max Bestwick was a gruff and frequently surly individual who never tolerated laziness or insubordination. In fact, a sign on his office door read, IF YOU ARE THIN-SKINNED, DO NOT ENTER THIS OFFICE!
Alex did not think himself to be thin-skinned, but was still apprehensive when he knocked on the glass office door. Bestwick, who was plowing through what appeared to be a two-foot stack of paperwork, looked up, grunted, and then waved him in.
He entered, shutting the door behind him, and immediately noticed a strong smell of stale cigar smoke. Without looking up from his stack of papers, Bestwick motioned for Alex to sit on the lone chair facing the desk.
For a considerable time, the editor ignored his visitor as he shuffled papers back and forth. After several minutes had passed, he raised his head, seemingly acknowledging his part-time employee for the first time. After thoroughly studying the body in front of him, Bestwick pulled the stub of a previously smoked cigar from a well-used ashtray. He leaned back in his chair and put the flame of a cigarette lighter to the stub. After assuring it lit by exhaling more cigar smoke into the already rancid air, he addressed Alex with the word “well.”
Alex took a deep breath, suppressed a strong urge to cough, then for the next minute pointed out why he should be covering stories not featuring flowers and the crowning of pizza queens.
When Alex finished his say, Bestwick laid his cigar butt in the ashtray and once again occupied himself by staring at his young employee. Then, just as Alex thought that his boss could possibly be trying to hypnotize him, the editor spoke.
“I want you to go out to San Francisco for a couple of months to do a story on the hippies out there. You have some decent writing skills and you’re the right age. Mix it up with them and write down what you see. Nothing fancy, just send back weekly stories about what the hell is happening in the city.”
Bestwick began checking his pockets, looking for another cigar. “Hell, the other papers have people out there. The Times, the Chronicle, they are all covering it. Personally I don’t give a damn about those draft dodging freaks, but I will not be left out of the running.”
His eyes were on Alex while his hands scurried about his shirt and pants in a desperate search for that elusive cigar. “Well?” he asked.
Alex did not give any pause to his reply. “Sure, I’ll be happy to do it.” He kept a straight face, thinking that a grin might cause the anxious editor to change his mind and put him back on the Baltimore streets, but he was overjoyed at securing this plum assignment. To be far away from home, far away from this office with its cramped cubicles and easily annoyed employees, sounded too good to be true.
“I have a nephew that has taken to that lifestyle and currently resides in the Haight-Ashbury part of the city. I don’t think the poor bastard is all there but I will try to track him down and have him meet you when you arrive. Alice will fill you in on all the details. You leave the day after tomorrow.”
Alex quickly rose. He wanted out of there before his boss reconsidered.
“You don’t happen to smoke cigars by any chance do you?” Bestwick asked.
He shook his head no, wishing he had at least one stogie he could throw the editor’s way.
“Well go on then,” the editor said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Get out of here, and Conley, do not screw this one up or I’ll have you back at the flower marts before you knew what hit you.”
TRAVELER
“I’m going to San Francisco.”
He made the announcement at the dinner table that evening. His father, who, until he retired the previous year, was a lifer in the Army, immediately stood up, approached his son’s chair, and proceeded to give him a suffocating bear hug.
“I knew you could do it boy. When did you enlist, this morning?”
His father was like that. He gave the Army the benefit of the doubt in every sentence.
“Dad, I didn’t enlist. The paper is sending me there to do some reporting on the hippie movement there.”
“Hippies! Hippies!” The bear hug now forgotten, his father could not get far enough away from him. “Why are you getting involved with hippies? No good dope smoking lazy communist bastards! They’re the ones that need to enlist, every single one of those long haired bums.”
Alex knew from experience that this rant would go on for a while. His mother, as she always did, ignored him unless he looked her way for agreement. Then usually a “yes dear” would suffice. He was a kind and decent man and a good father and husband. Nevertheless, his ways were set. He needed discipline and order.
Near the end of the Second World War, on the island of Iwo Jima, Corporal Tom Conley distinguished himself by fearlessly sacrificing his body to protect his fellow squad members. This reckless courage resulted in a field commission to captain.
When the war ended, Captain Conley, unlike many of his comrades, stayed on. He retired a colonel in 1965, with a silver star and a purple heart on his chest. Less than a year later, he tried to muster back in. Vietnam was cranking up and the old soldier wanted a piece of it. His wife Pamela, who he married in 1945 and had loved every minute since, discouraged him with a threat that, even whispered, had the power to put him back in his rocking chair.
Still, Alex’s father was a military man, and would be until his dying day. That is why the senior Conley, who was sometimes referred to as colonel by his wife, during moments of heated arguments or extreme passion, was reluctant to allow his son to travel to San Francisco. His hatred of hippies was a given, but he really disliked the free spirit philosophy as a whole. He was prone to make anti-hippie announcements, such as the following, at any time. “During the big war, those long haired peace loving freaks would have all been rounded up and put in interment camps.” News reports concerning the San Francisco scene would really get his goat.
“Now there they go, trying to ruin a perfectly good war.” Then he would turn his wrath on the television set. “Either enlist or go to Canada, but get out of my United States.” Following this outburst would be a litany of choice expletives before he uttered the word “cowards” and changed the channel to one of a more conservative nature.
There was much give and take in the next couple of days concerning Alex’s assignment but, in the end, the old man gave in and, with a reluctant shrug, handed him his traveling papers.
Alex was smart enough to know that he did not wear his father down. On the second day of negotiations, his mother became involved and things began to happen quickly. Mrs. Conley, who rarely raised her voice above normal pitch, tossed sentences at her husband that were as effective as the grenades lobbed at him on Iwo Jima.
Alex was always surprised that a few well-placed softly spoken threats, cleverly disguised as harmless rhetoric, could have such immediate impact. He vowed to one day ask his mother the source for her verbal magic, but for now, he was simply grateful that it worked. Nonetheless, as his father drove him to Friendship International Airport outside of Baltimore, many stern warnings on the evils of strange cultures were bestowed on the young passenger who, at eighteen years of age, was about to embark on the first great adventure of his lifetime.
TO THE WEST
On his right were two soldiers. Two more sat across the aisle. In fact, close to one third of the plane’s occupants wore olive drab. Other young men, though in civilian clothes, gave themselves away as military by their close-cropped hair. The soldiers seemed to pair off and kept to themselves. Their civilian counterparts generally ignored them, although some seemed irritated by their presence.
By listening to their conversation, he was able to ascertain that this group was Vietnam bound. They, like him, would deplane in San Francisco. From there they would be bussed to Oakland, on the other side of the bay bridge, where they would be warehoused, then processed, in preparation for their journey to the Far East.
Alex knew it could just as easily be him making the trip. The army was drafting teenager
s as quickly as they could type up the paperwork. Several of his friends had already received their draft notices. A few fortunate enough to have excellent grades, or accommodating parents, headed off to college and the subsequent deferment. Others had high numbers on the lottery-based draft and decided to cross their fingers and wait it out. Some ran straight to the first reserve branch they could find only to discover the waiting list was to retirement age.
He had not yet received a summons or a notification on his number status, though he assumed it was only a matter of time. He could not help but think that his father had probably contacted the local draft board by phone the minute he returned to his house after the airport run. He imagined the conversation in his head. “Damn it! He’s on his way to San Francisco this very minute. Those damn hippies will have flowers up his butt before he gets off the plane. Get that paperwork out now! And make sure it’s a low number, and I mean between one and ten.” That call would be repeated daily with the same or similar sentiments until that United States Government mailing was in the colonel’s hands.
Alex told his father not to call him when his assigned draft number arrived by mail. Knowing his place in the draft might influence his decision-making in the short term. He would put his trust in fate and wait it out.
Somewhere over the mid-west, he struck up a conversation with the soldier on his right. His name was Jim Parsons and he was on his way to Vietnam after a short five-day leave to say goodbye to his family and girlfriend. If he was nervous about going to war, he did not show it. Parsons tales of boot camp and infantry training carried them through at least two or three states. As they crossed into California, Jim Parsons showed Alex a picture of his girlfriend. He handled the photo gently, touching only the edges with his fingers.
She was an attractive dark haired girl with such a lovely smile that Alex felt the need to comment on her beauty. Jim Parsons, the young soldier soon to be in a war zone, stared at the picture in his hands. “I took the photo the day I got home for leave. The next day, I told her I had orders for Vietnam. After that, she never smiled again.”