I was making my way to telephoning my mother from Woodstock at about 6:30 in the evening on Sunday, the third day of the festival. We had just had that tremendous rainstorm. Wesley, a slender, compact and tanned mathematician from Minnesota, had caught up with me on my climb up the muddy road. He was completely naked and was carrying his sodden clothes. Clean and sober, we had been flirting for the past two days. Now he faithfully stood with me as a companion in the line for the telephone booths.
My mother was in Seattle, still in the aftermath of the death of my father, a surgeon taken by a stroke two months ago. My home (graduate school) was in Ithaca, New York, although I had just taken my wife to Kennedy Airport four days before.
"Mother," I said, when she came on, "I tried so hard to reach you last week. At our appointed time."
"I know," she said. "I was out of town. Sounds like you are, too. What is that strange noise?"
"Helicopters," I answered.
"Helicopters," she said. "They couldn't have put you in the Army already."
"No, Mom," I laughed. I looked significantly over at Wesley, who smiled, "I'm not in the Army already."
"Then where are you?"
"Woodstock," I told her. "I came here after driving Susan to the airport."
"Did she really decide to go back to her parents?" my mother asked.
"Yes."
There was a pause.
"I knew there was so much going on for you two," she said at last. "So much. What about your pre-induction physical in Syracuse. What happened? I tried to reach you so many times on Wednesday."
"The letter you got for me from Dr. LeComte got me out. They don't want anyone who has asthma."
"Oh, Max! Wonderful! But then why would Susan leave?"
"There's too much to mention," I answered.
The sky made a grumble again. By this time, Wesley, in spectacles and long, dripping hair and mustache, had drawn his sopping red shirt around his middle. He was a splendid figurine, belonging to a garden.
"They say," she said, "there are half a million people there. All the highways are shut down."
"I'll be all right," I answered. "And I do need to get off—there are hundreds waiting--but quickly tell me, are you all right?"
"I'm going into Head Start," she said. "That's where I was—up in Bellingham, getting training. And you need to know, Max, I may be selling the house, and giving away Sam. I have a friend in the class who's looking for a dog."
It was then I started to cry. "Sam? Mother, please wait on Sam. I'll call you as soon as I get back to Ithaca."
By now, Wesley, watching me, had taken my hand.
"Yes," she said. "But Max, do take care."
I felt like exacting another reassurance from her—any reassurance--but it seemed as though the entire world was past that now.