A Groovy Kind of Love-2
333 Words
Nearly fifty years later, that’s where I find myself, at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, the original site of the 1969 Woodstock festival. The countryside only looks vaguely familiar, but the copse of trees still remain, as does the carving, our tree looking no worse the wear, though perhaps more majestic, thicker around the trunk. I suppose the same can be said about me, too.
I touch the carving with the tips of my fingers. It’s now scabbed over, considerably darkened with time. I sigh, the memories flooding back, and then I notice it, carved an inch below. It’s a phone number. My heart skips a beat.
“Nah, can’t be,” I tell myself.
Still, I whip out my cellphone, and with trembling hands punch in the number. A man answers on the third ring, the voice recognizable if not a bit age-worn.
“Hello?” he says.
“Hello, Glenn?” I reply, my voice hoarse, shaky. “Is that you?”
He pauses, coughs, pauses again. “No f*****g way, man.” He laughs that spectacular laugh of his, my balls rising at the sound. “Steven?”
And now I laugh. “How could you possibly have known that?”
“Don’t know, old friend. I just sort of, well, felt it,” he explains. “Wait, are you at the tree right now?”
I sigh. “Yup. Looks different around here without all those people. The oak is the same, though, if not a bit older.”
“It and me both,” he says, quickly adding, “Did you come down there alone?”
I chuckle into the phone. “Oh, no, Glenn; I never come alone. More fun with someone else.”
His chuckle echoes mine. “Now that sounds familiar. I’ll see you in twenty minutes.” He hesitates. “Um, if that’s okay with you.”
Thankfully, it’s what I was hoping he’d say. “That would be, um, groovy.”
The laughter grows before he hangs up. I wait, my back against the wide trunk, staring up at the green hill. Soon enough, a lone figure comes up and over, gray hair now replacing blond, still long, still trailing down his back. His hand rises in the air, his fingers up in a V.
“Peace!” he hollers down at me.
“Peace!” I yell back.
And, at long, long last, that’s exactly what I am—at peace.
- Writer
