"Aspen! 1985!"
What? Matty stops cold in his tracks, and when I looked over at him in that moment there was a flash across his face, in his eyes and the way he caught his breath. Recollection? Eh, maybe. Intrepidation? Perhaps. He was dreamy-eyed nostalgic, and only for a second before he about-faced just in time for the bear hug greeting from a man with a small metal-framed pack on his back and a weathered guitar that he had dropped at his side. He took a step back and held Matty at arm's length, with a smile on his face. And when he smiled it was sincere and excitable, and his eyes looked wildly into Matty's eyes. We saw the man was no more a man than we were, probably younger even. But his eyes were sharp, quick and analyzing and eager. Matt looked back at him ghastly, his eyebrows raised, his mouth agape. "I was conceived in Aspen in '87," he breathed out in a way so that he sounded far away when he said it.
The boy with the wild eyes ticked his head to the side and his beaming smile faltered. Monster and I looked at each other with the same awkward grit-toothed, silly face at the same time, then at Matt, then at the boy uneasily slinking backwards a half-step at a time.
And on queue, we all burst into laughter. Me in my rainbow flannel and my puffy trench coat. Monster dressed from head to toe in black and holding a rainbow umbrella. Matty in his multi-colored neon skiing onesie. And the boy in his grease-stained pants and tattered red woven button-down. There was a blue-and-white-striped conductor's hat on his head and feathers in his hair and he asked if he could play us a song. Well, of course he could.
So he opened his guitar case, pulled out a beat-up six-string with a stained-wood face and played Don't Think Twice, It's All Right. His fingers pressed down hard on the neck and they plucked with a twang from the five metal picks on his strummin' hand. It flowed out like honey to the ears, so rich and sweet that when I closed my eyes it could've been Bob Dylan himself playing his guitar there next to me in the woods by Porter Meadow with the rain misting down all around us. But it Bob wasn't singing. It was someone else, someone with a voice that cut loud and sharp through the woods, and a soft southern quiver that rose up and faded away, and entranced you so that your skin tickled with shivers and your breath got caught in your throat as your chest tightened in jubilant awe at the sheer beauty of it. And when the song concluded and he looked around, he noticed that we were all hanging blissfully onto his every word. And it was not just us, Matty, Monster, and me. By now, others had gathered around the young troubadour, dazed, confused, and intrigued. He was the pied piper. He said his name was Roy Pilgrim. And then he played another song.
Then he played another and we were all caught under his spell. Matt offered him a lemon brah. He kindly declined. Some other one offered him a beer. It wasn't for him. And he kept playing. "Say, if any one a y'all wants to grab my guitar case, why, we could take this show on the road!" I happily obliged him, and no sooner had I done so, than Mr. Roy Pilgrim took to trotting on up through the meadow at a meandering little bounce-step, and like dandelion seeds we swayed by behind him. In the haze, I remember running ahead of him and looking back from up on the hill. He looked back up at me, smiling through the singing, and there was the purest, most primal sense of joy on his face. He had a flock behind him.
[to be continued]
