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“HowImissed it?” Rhys was tired of being a passenger in his own misadventures—first with the boxing priest, then Lucy, then Crazy Ass Chuck, and now with his old friend, Brian. When this was all over, when he’d gotten Bethany back to her kids, Kinnick was going to cash out the rest of his sad, little newspaper pension and make two quick purchases: a cell phone and a reliable car.
They drove slowly down a narrow, tree-lined corridor, passing no houses at all, only solitary roadside mailboxes every mile or so, until—
“There it is!” Kinnick said. A hand-painted sign nailed to a tree read:paititi.An arrow pointed down a narrow dirt road.
“That’s it?” Brian asked.
“I guess so.”
Brian looked briefly at his phone again. “No GPS. How does anyone find this place?”
“I suppose that’s the attraction,” Kinnick said.
“Who’s playing anyway?” Brian asked.
“What?”
“At the Pie-Whatever Music Festival? Anybody I’ve heard of?”
“Let’s see. Steely Dan. Elvis. Mozart.”
“Good plan: be a dick to the one person willing to help you.”
“First of all,” Kinnick said, “how would I knowwhoyou’ve heard of, especially when the newest band I’ve ever heard you play is Styx? Second, this is an electronica festival. Do you listen to a lot of electronica, Brian? And third, I have no idea who is playing other than Sluggish Doug and whatever half-assed band he’s in now.”
“Well. Forgive me for asking a question.”
Kinnick sighed. “Sorry. This whole thing has me feeling stupid. But I’ll stop taking it out on you.”
“I get it,” Brian said. “It’s stressful shit. If my daughter ran off to some greasy hippie festival, I’d be in a mood, too.”
This is what Leah had told Kinnick: her mother had come to her bedside on the morning she left, and whispered a secret: that Leah’s father, Doug, was in a new band, The Boofs, and, according to what Bethany told Leah, The Boofs were playing at an outdoor music festival in Canada this week and—this was the part Bethany was most excited about—The Boofs were performing two songs that she’d written years ago. Bethany was going to “take a little vacation” to go hear her songs played live. Kinnick had forgotten that Bethany once wrote songs with Doug. In fact, it was how they’d met, as he recalled, at an all-night coffee shop in Olympia where Doug was playing guitar and Bethany was writing in a journal. The classic failed poet meets failed musician failed love story.
Bethany had once shown Kinnick a song she’d written, a protest anthem about the Iraq War. To his shame now, Rhys had landed somewhere between confused and dismissive as he read his daughter’s lyrics. But his response wasn’t so much about the song (all he could remember was a single rhyme:armed forcesandremorseless) as it was her writing songs (wasting her talent!) with this perpetually stoned simpleton with blond dreadlocks and sleeved tattoos who smelled like he slept in a drainage ditch. And now, apparently, Sluggish Doug was playing in an acid electronica outfit called... The Boofs.
“You do know what that is, right?” the gas station attendant who gave the directions had asked Kinnick. “Boofing?”
“No,” Kinnick said, warily. “What is it?”
“Yeah, I’m not gonna say.”
“It’s a drug thing, isn’t it?” Kinnick had asked the gas station kid.
“Oh, yeah,” the kid said.
He explained that the Paititi Festival was as much about the drugs as it was the music, that it was held in a clearing abutting provincial forest land, and that if Brian and Rhys just drove twenty-five or thirty miles back up the road they came in on—indicating with the dipped bill of his ball cap—they would pass a little finger lake, then, maybe a milelater, they’d see a sign pointing into the woods, and if they turned up that road “you practically can’t miss it.” He leaned forward to confide. “It’s a cold, muddy, stinky mess up there this time of year, though, yeah? Way too early for this kind of thing... they say it’s something about planting versus harvesting, I don’t know, it’s beyond me.”
Sure enough, past thepaititisign, two dirt tracks curled into the forest, and it wasn’t long before Kinnick and Brian began seeing vehicles parked alongside this makeshift road: vans and microbuses in turnouts and switchbacks, all manner of dented car and old motorcycle, anywhere you could wedge a vehicle, therewasone, until, finally, they came to a clearing with more orderly rows of vehicles and a huge banner hung between two trees that read: PAITITI! And another sign:vibes ahead.
The clearing beyond the parking lot was surrounded by a high fence and filled with tents and makeshift structures, banners and flags. Everywhere, there were young people, some dirty and feral-looking, like survivors of a natural disaster, others in elaborate makeshift costumes—furry onesies, tall hats and feather boas, rainbows, headdresses. Lots of lank, greasy hair.
“God, I hate hippies,” Brian said.
“I know you do.” Kinnick patted his friend’s arm. Growing up on the reservation, Brian had put up with all manner of pale, communal, new age, moccasin-wearing Geronimo-come-lately weirdos moving into the woods, asking for strong medicine and advice on building sweat lodges and digging camas roots, seeking corny tribal brotherhood from people who actually belonged to tribes. But worse than that, Kinnick knew, Brian’s second wife had been a hippie who had left him for her Vinyasa yoga instructor.
“This isn’t going to be easy for you,” Kinnick said. “I can find her by myself, you know. You can just wait in the car.”
“No,” Brian said, “I’ve come this far. I need to face the patchouli.” He parked the Bronco at the edge of the fence surrounding the festival,alongside an old army tent with a hand-painted rainbow sign that read: RUSHROOM RIDESand other awesome guided trips. He and Kinnick climbed out.