"PAUL WESTERBERG"-PART TWO "THE BUS" (first section)

"PAUL WESTERBERG"

PART TWO: THE BUS (first section)

TRACEY

     The bus ride from Madison to downtown Chicago in its entirety took the better part of six hours. I staggered into the house a little after midnight completely spent and yes, with a voluminous urge to relive myself. I also…hell…mostly returned home with my head and heart engulfed with the thought and now memories of Heather Harrison.

     About an hour and a half before making it to the city, we stopped at O’Hare where Heather exited to meet her Dad. For the four and a half hours before that, I was in close, transportive quarters with Heather Harrison.

     As expected, the bus was completely filled from front to back with even three patrons taking up floor space in the aisle! Heather, due to her quick thinking and packing, found seats for us just like that. We sat on the left side of the bus in the middle but approaching the rear. Of course, it’s ridiculous to feel secluded in a space as public as a Greyhound bus trudging through a blizzard but somehow, it almost felt as if we were the only people on the bus. I know that sounds like a romantic cliché. The very type that I would scoff at normally. But, I was taken in. By the shape of her lips when she spoke, to the way her nose moved during any moment of facial changes and expressions. I loved the hint of rasp in her voice and the way she moved her hands and arms to illustrate key points in her stories. But, it was those stories!!! That’s what sent me to another world.

    This next part might seem to be more than a little bit of a digression but trust me, it isn’t. For me, these two disparate elements are forever intertwined making it impossible for me to fathom one without the other. Perhaps when I’m finished, the same effect may be marked upon you.

     I have to begin by mentioning the song “American Pie.” You know, if you happen to have a copy of this song somewhere—either vinyl, cassette or CD—you may want to have it at the ready as the song figures heavily.

     Now I must say that I have always hated that song. Not that I thought that it was necessarily a bad song. I will concede that it is a well sung and played song and all but it just grated on me. I hated that I couldn’t follow it or understand it in any conceivable way. I hated hearing about those “good ‘ol boys with their whiskey and rye.” I didn’t care about Chevys, leaves and the absolute last thing I ever want to think about is the day that I’ll die and here was this song, reminding me of this inevitability over and over and over.

   I’m bringing this up because at some point during the bus ride, the driver clicked on a radio station. The volume was loud enough so you knew what was playing but soft enough that it wasn’t disruptive for people’s conversations or for those who were sleeping. At the point where I heard that oh so familiar opening line, “A long, long time ago…,” I snorted the following response, “…this song started.”

     “Oh wow!” began Heather, her face filled with honest surprise. “You don’t like this song?”

     “I answered her as honestly as I was able and with some of the reasons that I have already shared with you. Heather just shook her head back and forth, with a bewildered look on her face. “Oh Tracey…do you know what I think of whenever I hear this song?”

     “The dawn of time?” I retorted.

     “No!” she said while laughing and giving my shoulder a surprisingly tough pounding “When I hear this song…” she began again, obviously tuning in to catch a few of the opening lines. “…I think of my Dad. Most specifically, I think of dancing with my Dad. You see, this song is one of my Dad’s most favorite songs and while I have no actual proof to even begin to contradict him, he told me that when I was a baby, he would lift me up and dance with me for the entire song—and no wisecracks about the length either!” She chuckled attractively and she pointed a finger with a mock sternness that somehow carried a flash of honest intensity. “It was literally the first song I ever knew and therefore, the first one I ever loved,” Heather continued. “Now while I only have my Dad’s word that we danced to this song when I was a baby, I do have crystal clear, blindingly vivid memories of us dancing to this song when I was little. And when we weren’t dancing to this song, I was always asking to listen to it. Paul eventually showed me how to work the record player, so I could listen to it whenever I wanted completely on my own.”

     “That was nice of him,” I said.

     Heather snickered. “It was, yes. But in that case, I’m more than certain that the gesture had a lot less to do with kindness and about everything to do with the very distinct possibility that he was just sick of doing this thing for me.

     “But aside from dancing, I would just lose myself in the song. Tracey, I’m telling you, it was like an event whenever I put the record on. Every section felt like a new world to explore and it was…like…I could just swim in these words and sounds. I became so obsessed Tracey. You just have no idea! I actually even learned what the meaning of the word ‘constantly’ was because of this song.”

     “How so?”

     “By my Mom, clearly annoyed, as she walked through the room with laundry and said, ‘You’re listening to this again?! You just listen to this constantly!’”

     We laughed together.

     “She didn’t appreciate that song, huh?” I asked.

     “Oh Tracey,” she laughed. “If she ever loved that song, I am more than certain that I ruined it for her. I mean—I don’t think that she can even look at the cover let alone listen to the album. In fact, I have never listened to the whole album.”

     “Really? Why not?”

     “I don’t know. I guess I reasoned that the other songs, once I realized that they were even there, would never match up.”

     “OK,” I began, just stunned that she could love this interminable song so much. “Whatever floats the boat, of course. But…really, this song?”

     “Yes! This song!!” she said snickering at me again. “Why not this song?”

     “Aw man…,” I said shaking my head to and fro. “With no disrespect to you, I just don’t get it! This song is so endless!! It’s like he took any, and I mean any though that popped into his head and decided that all of it was song worthy. Yes, I do get that ‘the day the music died’ is about Buddy Holly. But the rest of it! This song is 18 minutes long!!!”

     To her amazing credit, Heather exploded with laughter. “It is not 18 minutes long!” she exclaimed between gasps of laughter and wiping away of laughter produced tears. “The song is clearly not that long!”

    “Yes it is!” I retorted puckishly. “All that time and to not have it make sense doesn’t make sense to me. Really…what is this thing about???”

    Heather immediately regained her composure and focused a soft yet powerful gaze at me. I have to say that I felt my heart leapfrog over a few beats when she looked at me. And she smiled once again, disarming me again in the process. “Oh Tracey, “ she started as her lips began to form a response which felt as if she had been waiting for the best time to finally vice it out loud. “What is it all about? What is it all about?” she asked with an apparent dreaminess. “Does it really matter?”

    “Does it really matter?” I asked, honestly and completely confused.

    “Sure! Look…we can talk about Buddy Holly. We could look up the year his plane went down and see what else happened in the world that day. Or we could look up Don McLean’s biography and try to figure out which parts of his life might be in the song and how they relate to the news of that day. We could analyze, analyze and analyze and trust me, I have! And really, does any of this really matter? And besides, and of course, with no disrespect to Mr. McLean, does it ever really matter what it’s about? Especially when you already know how it makes you feel.”

    She kept her soft gaze fixated on me for a moment and she sighed gently.

    And me? I was a goner.

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