We Shall Come Rejoicing

As I always offer in the start of these pieces I am a liar, inveterate and unrepentant. The people I talk about are composites with the exception of Muffy. (I should mention that Muffy was a bit pissed that I used Muffy instead something else as her fictional name. I got the feeling she felt it implied she was a flake. She most assuredly wasn't. C’est la vie). And so with that caveat I offer the following.

Sheaves bringing in the sheaves, we will come rejoicing, bringing in the Sheaves. Let us labor for the master….

Winter nights in New Jersey are cold and wet but not unbearable. On a particular night in February 1974, I wasn't feeling the chill that was in the damp air. Boone's Farm was warming me deep down inside. Cheap assed Mexican weed was giving my night an extra glow. Explaining my flushed feeling accurately all these years later is hard, it was comfortable, peaceful and giddy. At seventeen mixing the inhibition releasing qualities of alcohol with the mellowing parts of pot was just the right thing to do for a spastic, neurotic over wound and cluelesss teen boy, it was totally pacific.

Three of us were walking in that dark damp February night, I think. There might have been a fourth person but I only remember talking to two other people. Our path had started behind the new high school and we were walking through a field. Could have been coming from a basketball game or a maybe pep rally or something else altogether but we were on a mission. Onward march onward was the inner cry.

In trying to remember this incident I first thought the field might have been corn but upon reflection I don't think so. There were furrows and scrub brush about so I think it must have been an asparagus field in fallow. Getting whipped by the long stemmed plants and breaking through the ice in the bottom of the furrows my feet we getting soaked and my arms were stinging but who cared; we was lit. We wuz as the hipsters would say stone cold immaculate.

Walking on we were working our way through all the songs we knew so as to provide us a cadence. Sugar Magnolia had come and gone as had Smoke on the Water. Reaching back for more material I found myself deep into the old Baptist hymns. What I was singing was stuff that I had heard a hundred times or more. When you sat through four hours of church each Sunday you just learned some righteous gospel songs. Some songs you just heard again and again because that little old lady always requested her favorite hymn at every evening service.

Rock of Ages, Amazing Grace and now Bringing in the Sheaves, we (well mostly me with the other two just mouthing along) were hitting all the old Fanny J. Crosby style stuff. We were giggling now almost uncontrollably thinking that the sheaves in question must have been pot. I mean why else would anyone want to work that hard in heaven, right?

Mike and Mary (short for Marion), and I were pushing on. Lest there be any doubt our journey was focused on the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Mike was 18 and at that time in NJ you could buy booze at 18. I have a couple of bucks, Mary had a couple of bucks and Mike had the ID. More Boone’s Farm awaited us.

Why we opted for this overland route eludes me but the promise of more wine made the slogging through the fields seem worth it. Most likely our path was chosen because in this small town if we were seen walking down the paved and thus dry street that was the route to the bar, one or all of our parents would have know where we were headed and why within the half hour. As they say it's a small town and the news travels faster than wheels.

As we walked and sang, well mostly as I sang in my very flat very off key voice, Mary kept commenting that she could not believe that I knew all the words to those songs. But I did. It came easy to me. When she commented about my steel trap memory for lyrics she laughed a laugh I had never heard before. It is a laugh I will never forget.

As hard as it is to describe I can remember that laugh in all its mellifluous detail. It was more than a giggle, but not a belly laugh. It wasn’t condescending, derisive or forced. Mary's laugh was warm and affectionate.

The sound of that laugh took me by surprise and knocked me off my feet. This laugh meant there was a member of the opposite sex who wasn’t being cruel to me. As long as that laugh lasted it meant Mary wasn't pointing out my failings in dress for you must understand that then as now I was the antithesis of stylish. Again the sound of gentleness in that chuckle meant she wasn't making a joke at my expense over one of my faux pas of some sort or another. The sound was pleasant; clearly she was honest to goodness appreciating my absurd and densely packed memory of song lyrics.

Lyric upon lyric was stuffed in my head. My life to that point had been spent lying awake at night in my bed listening to underground radio on WMMR the radio station. I knew Time Has Come Today by the Chambers Brothers, The Streets of London by Ralph McTell, I'm a Man by Muddy Waters and all of those hymns. Hey the second the needle hit the outer groove of American Beauty I was singing along to Box of Rain start to finish.

Wet and cold, stoned and drunk something inside of me changed that night. Mary's laugh gave me just a smidgen of self confidence. It really gave a spark to a sense that there were some parts of me which if strung together in a public persona might get me laid. Understand I was an male American teen, I wasn’t looking for meaning I was looking for pussy. That laugh, that night opened up the door to me understanding that there were things other than good looks and the ever elusive cool that would allow me to connect in a romantic relationship.

I never slept with Mary but I did fall head over heels in love with her. I know that we had a connection that was mutual at least for a few years. I also know she had a much better head for understanding what sex would have done to our relationship. Mary's warmth nurtured me and taught me to accept who I was. It also sort of motivated me to refine some of the better points of my own nature.

We got more wine that night and we went out riding the back roads over behind HoJos on the Turnpike. And we went out riding again and again over the next several years. While we kissed and fondled (just a little bit) she always kept real sex at a distance. It was a wise choice. Although the years have moved us far apart I will always appreciate that walk on a dark wet night. It started me on the process of becoming who I am today. I will always love her for finding something in me to connect with and value.

Dark hair, blue eyes, freckles, porcelain skin and an understanding of the world far beyond her years she was a beauty. I hope life has been good to her.