LITMIR.BIZ

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but it’s my first night back. I’ve been looking forward to sleeping in my own place again.”

      Jay took the joint from Edward. He and Pump seemed preoccupied, churning over in their minds the test Edward had proposed. “It can’t be war, yet has to show the Woodstock Nation’s serious about being a country,” Jay muttered, then inhaled deeply.

      “You have any ideas?” Pump asked me.

      I shook my head.

      “We don’t have to prove nothing, man,” declared Pump after a silence. “We are a nation. Who cares if that isn’t good enough for Edward? He’s not God.”

      “Wait a minute,” Jay said, smoke streaming out of his nose. He handed the number to Pump and turned toward me. “You said the Chinese orbited a satellite?”

      “Edward brought it up,” I reminded him. “But, yeah, this summer. It broadcast —”

      Jay had swivelled toward Pump. “Didn’t you say the satellite was for national pride?”

      Pump nodded, looking quizzical.

      “That’s it!” Jay cried. “Let’s put up a satellite in the name of the Woodstock Nation.”

      Edward laughed. “You’ve flipped. Wigged out completely. I suggest a lengthy stay in a certain facility I know where you can weave these nice baskets and —”

      “No,” Jay insisted. “We can do it.”

      Pump was staring at him, mouth ajar.

      “Why stop with a satellite?” Edward mocked. “Why not land a hippie on the moon? ‘It’s a small step for a head, but a giant leap for the Woodstock Nation.’”

      “We can do it,” Jay repeated.

      Pump abandoned an attempt to relight the doobie and put it and his matchbook on the deck. I noticed his hand shaking. “You’re not thinking of the Revere?”

      “Affirmative.”

      “Jesus,” Pump breathed. “The Sitton site?”

      “Affirmative.”

      “It could be done. It fucking could be done.”

      “What’s the Revere?” Edward asked.

      “Jay’s right, man,” Pump said solemnly. “We can do it.”

      “We even used to joke about launching one of those birds,” Jay added.

      “Let’s do the thing, man — a Woodstock Satellite,” Pump said, chuckling.

      “How about it, Eddie?” Jay asked. “If we orbit a satellite in the name of the Woodstock Nation, would that make a believer out of you?”

      “‘Then I saw it in space,’” Pump sang, parodying the Monkees’ “I’m a Believer,” “‘now I’m a believer. Without a trace of doubt in my mind —’”

      “You idiots are out of your minds,” Edward said. “Far too much Smoky El Ropo. Between you, you couldn’t put a basketball through a hoop, let alone put up a satellite.”

      “Want to bet?” jeered his brother.

      “You know what we were doing in the army?” Pump asked.

      “Something in electronics. Jay always told me it was classified.”

      “Missile tech. Mainly instrumentation. When Jay and I were posted to California, we were part of a team that was —”

      As Pump spoke, I heard Guantanamero Bay’s front door open, and voices inside the house. A moment later Willow and Phil were at the living-room doorway.

      Willow smiled. “Look at these degenerates. Still awake and toking at this hour. Hi, Wayman. Welcome back.”

      If possible, she looked more stunning than ever. Her dress, a micro-mini, was covered with large pastel flowers and fitted her exquisite body tighter than a glove on a hand. Curves aside, I didn’t know why a short dress was so sexy. I had seen Willow in a bikini many times; the upper regions of her shapely legs weren’t unobserved territory. Yet her garment’s hemline revealed a tantalizing expanse between its edge and her knees that was mind-warping. When she tossed her sun-kissed long blond hair back off her face, as she did intermittently, I heard in my brain the rising falsetto of several Beach Boys’ tunes. She was so gorgeous and lovely and desirable that she almost transcended sexiness.

      I rose to receive my hug from her, an experience akin to embracing an aura of pure light. Then I shook hands with Phil, who appeared more tanned and muscular than ever.

      Since there wasn’t enough space on the porch for all six of us to sit, we moved inside at Edward’s suggestion and settled into the living room’s funky chairs and sofa. During the relocation process, I learned a bit about Willow’s and Phil’s summer. He was planning to stay on with the Costa Mesa roofing crew until Christmas. I asked about his draft status, and he shrugged. He and Willow had taken over the downstairs bedroom at the Bay. Willow recounted their visit that evening to Phil’s mother’s place. She and Phil had stopped off at the Saucy Swan — an English-style pub in Costa Mesa we frequented — for a drink en route home.

      Now that Willow had appeared, I remembered my earlier resolve to nudge a conversation with her toward picking up information about Janey. Ranged against the likelihood of this was the lateness of the hour and the distraction of the boys’ absurd notion of launching a hippie satellite. Willow herself was a distraction. As I watched her across the room, the stereo seemed to be serenading her with the piercingly sweet flute riffs of Canned Heat’s “Going Up the Country.”

      Jay brought the new arrivals up-to-date on the evening’s dispute over the Woodstock Nation.

      “Wasn’t Woodstock bitchin’?” Willow enthused, breaking into Jay’s account. Then, turning to me, she asked, “Did you hear about Woodstock in Canada?”

      I was amazed that Willow, whose bag was surfing, would respond so positively to the rock festival. Even Phil ventured that the gathering was far-out. I reminded myself that surfers, like freaks, represented a spectrum of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours, even if they got lumped together under one label. In her other life, Willow was studying art at UCI, just as Phil at the moment was nominally also a roofer.

      “You can’t put up a satellite,” Phil said once Jay finished explaining his concept. “Those things cost millions to launch. The phone companies pay NASA big money to have satellites lifted into orbit — Telstar and all that. How could you ever —”

      Willow sighed. “Wouldn’t it be groovy if they could, though?”

      “Where would you get the bread?” Phil asked. “Organize a benefit concert? I read somewhere even Woodstock’s promoters didn’t make enough profit to —”

      “No, no,” Jay said. “We’re not going to pay anybody. What we’ll do is borrow the launch vehicle. From Uncle Sam.”

      “What?” sounded simultaneously from Edward, Willow, Phil, and myself.

      Jay was unfazed by the blast of disbelief aimed at him. “I was trying to tell you before. This is probably still classified ‘secret,’ so don’t mention it outside this room. When Pump and I got our orders for California, we were assigned to a team decommissioning Revere missile silos. One of them isn’t that far from here. Off 74 toward Lake Elsinore, east of San Juan Capistrano. You go a couple of miles past the Riverside County line and —”

      “Decommissioning missile silos?” repeated Phil. “What’s that got to do —”

      “I thought you guys were in electronics,” Edward said. “How is it —”

      “Isn’t the government building missile silos?” Phil asked. “I saw something about it in Time. The Minuteman system?”

      Willow

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