Hildegarde Withers Makes the Scene Read Online Free PDF

imagined, was the pervading smell of a neglected armpit. On an improvised stand of scrap lumber, a group which called itself the Dharma Bums created an unholy din with amplified guitars, an uninhibited electric organ, and pounding drums. On the grass, couples danced barefooted, detached, out of contact, each apparently indifferent of the other’s movements, or even to his presence. There was an abundance of free food for the taking, donated or begged or borrowed or collected from the refuse of markets, but Miss Withers did not take any. She wandered through the crowd, remembering, with a nostalgia intensified by the present contrast, the far-off Saturday night open-air concerts she once attended, when the band played marches and simpler selections from the classics, and the trombone player, who was also the vocalist, invariably sang “My Buddy” or “There’s a Long, Long Trail A-winding” or something else left over from the Kaiser’s war. She was saddened and a little angered by being made to feel so dated. So impotent . She stood for a while and listened to a young man with long blond hair and a meager blond beard, dressed in an old army shirt and Levis and a pair of Jesus sandals, who was leaning against the bole of a tree and strumming chords on a guitar and singing softly to himself a song about someone called Mr. Tambourine Man. She moved on and came across a female child in her teens, some distance apart, sitting Indian-fashion on the grass and reading a paperback book of poems by Ferlinghetti. She engaged the child in conversation, but the conversation was not a success.
    The most frustrating thing about her experiences, apart from a general confusion, was the evasiveness she constantly encountered. One thing became apparent. There was a conspiracy of protection among them, the beats or the hippies or the flower children or whatever the sect within the body, and all of them, card-carrier or teeny bopper, displayed incredible slyness in dealing with the outsider, the straight, who seemed to pose the slightest threat to the security or independence of a member of their subculture. This posed for Miss Withers, being an obvious straight, an almost insurmountable problem. In at least one other instance of her incurable snooping, she had pretended to be what she was not, assuming a disguise in the interests of the case, but to assume the character and appearance of a hippie was palpably beyond her powers and her stomach. She wondered glumly if she was doomed after many a brilliant performance to a final flop.
    It was Al Fister who suggested the tactic that finally put her forrader. Having returned late at night from hours of futile searching, they were stoking themselves in Miss Withers’ kitchen with cold milk and cake. Al was in reasonably good spirits, not feeling in the matter the same urgency that gave fuel to Miss Withers, but the latter could not remember feeling so utterly defeated since she had, years ago in New York, nearly come a fatal cropper in the affair of four missing ladies.
    “Al,” she said, “we simply must devise a new approach to our problem.”
    “If it was me,” said Al cheerfully around a cud of cake, “I’d just forget it.”
    “If it were I ,” Miss Withers corrected testily. “The subjunctive mode and the predicate nominative. Didn’t they teach you any grammar at all at that academic factory you attended?”
    “I guess it didn’t take.” Al grinned, reaching for the cake and the knife. “Anyhow, I’d forget it.”
    “Young man, I don’t admit defeat so easily. However, I realize that you have a record as a drop-out. If you want to give up, you are free to do so.”
    “Not me.” Al shook his head, his amiability undisturbed. “To tell the truth, I’m beginning to think this is a gas. Besides, that chick in the picture flips me. If you finally make her scene, wherever it is, I want to be alongside.”
    “Please try to speak English. I’m a little tired of