Page 35 of So Far Gone

second day, when Doug was off meeting with the festival organizers and Mama Killa heard her weeping and gasping for air, came

inside her tent, and opened her hand to reveal a round pink pill with a heart in the center.

“What is it?”

“It’s comfort, darlin’.” Mama Killa was all comfort herself, in a soft, fuzzy sweater over a patterned corduroy dress, purple

leggings and red boots, feather earrings dangling from her big lobes.

“Yeah, but... what is it?”

“It’s peace, my love. And sleep.”

Oh, that little heart. It looked like the Valentine’s candy she used to give Asher and Leah, before Shane informed her, via a pastor he’d met in Baker City, that Saint Valentine’s Day had evolved from a pagan Roman fertility ritual, and that nowhere in the Bible was the celebration of such saints condoned—just one of the reasons Catholics were hell-bound.

“What is it?” Bethany asked the big, comforting Mama Killa again.

“Just a little ketamine. It’ll calm you down, child.”

Child . She pictured her own then, Asher and Leah ( The kids are okay, the kids are okay ), and she thought, As long as I don’t take this pill, as long as I don’t sleep with Doug, as long as I don’t fall into this life again, I can

still go back, if I choose to.

“I can’t take that,” she said to Mama, who smiled, threw the pill into her own mouth, and pulled Bethany into her big, comforting

chest. She held her tightly, rocking back and forth. “It’s okay, darlin’. It’s okay, love.” (Bethany, relaxing into the woman’s

flesh, pictured her own frail mother, and thought, That is the drug I want .)

The line of people slowed as they approached the Tonatiuh Stage, where apologetic security guards did a cursory check of badges,

tickets, fanny packs, and backpacks and the crowd passed through a gate beneath a massive black Chakana , an Incan cross. Bethany showed her backstage pass and was directed down a different path, between crowd-control panels ribbed

with steel posts, like lines of bike racks, all the way to a small, fenced-off grassy area at the side of the stage, where

other musicians, girlfriends, roadies, and hangers-on sat on blankets and in folding chairs.

Onstage, a bearded man, bare-chested, in leather leggings, with a red Batman mask painted on his face, hands in his back pockets,

was imploring the crowd to adhere to posted quiet times, to follow recycling rules, and to report overdoses to the medical

tent. “And with that,” he said, “my friends, lovers, soon-to-be lovers, fellow worshippers at the altar of joy and togetherness...

please help me welcome... The Boofs.”

Doug had explained to her that while the band was spelled The Buffs—three of the four members had met at the University of Colorado, home of the Buffaloes—they had gained fans by jokingly pronouncing it “boofs” at one of these outdoor electronica festivals, a winking nod to the stoned-off-their-asses fans who had begun downloading their songs.

“Or, stoned in their asses,” Doug said. And since then, it had stuck. “The name, that is.”

At forty, Doug was almost fifteen years older than his bandmates. He’d given bass lessons to one of the Colorado kids soon

after The Buffs moved to Portland, and he was invited to join the band after he introduced them to a hobby of his, tweaking

an old Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer, queering its accent to make a bassline that was both pleasingly poppy and edgy at the

same time, a sound that he said was a throwback to 1980s techno, as well as old acid house, German Trance, and Belgian rave

music. Then, in a real stroke of brilliance, he slowed that beat down, achieving what he called “a funky-folky, minimal, Flemish

EDM-on-Prozac vibe.”

“Ooo-kay,” Bethany said, not understanding a word beyond 1980s.

But here was the thing. She liked The Buffs! Their music was the only thing that had calmed her these last few days. The other bands all sounded the same to

her—one song bleeding into the next, and she grew edgy listening to their monotonous, robotic beats. But The Buffs’ rhythms

were slower, chiller, funkier, folkier, more hypnotic, and when the singer chimed in, he brought an ethereal quality that

slowed her pulse. Maybe, in that hesitant, faux-futuristic bassline that Doug was setting, she could hear the shadow of his

old music, too, the sweet, hopeful, acoustic songs he’d played her during their five years together. The rest of the band

was equally tight, and the airy, wispy singer brought it all together, though Bethany feared he might just get blown off the

stage by a gust of wind, like a tumbleweed.

Still, she was proud of Doug, who had somehow gone from eternal child to band grown-up , donating his van to schlep their instruments, managing their “finances,” and continuously warning the youngsters away from harder drugs.

(Doug had suffered a respiratory illness that a doctor flagged as a precursor to more serious health problems, and was mostly just a weed guy now, with an occasional cup of ayahuasca tea.)

The band sauntered out, picked up their instruments, made eye contact, nodded heads, and started playing, the three young

kids front and center, Doug off by himself on his little rhythm island, with his bass and his synth equipment. The music immediately

washed over Bethany, and she started to feel better. One thing she liked about The Buffs was that they broke between songs;

so many of the other bands turned their whole set into a kind of time-dilated techno-medley. Bethany sat on a folding chair

in this side-stage area, closing her eyes, bouncing her head, tapping her foot. Just over the fence line that separated her

from the crowd, people danced in every imaginable way, so long as one’s imagination tended toward the Grateful Dead: whirling

dervishes and people reaching for invisible ropes, women spinning sundresses over leggings and men bopping their bearded heads

like chickens eating scratch. A row of people spun Hula-Hoops around bare waists. Few of them seemed to have found the actual

beat, but their awkwardness was charming. As strange as it was to find herself here, Bethany appreciated how the festival

felt mostly judgment-free. You come as the rhythm-challenged reincarnation of a Mesoamerican shaman; I will dress as a dancing

racoon. You paint your body head to toe; I will leave my children for a few days to go hide out in a tent and cry myself to

sleep.

And still, Bethany felt separated from it all. Older, soberer, she felt like exactly what she was: a runaway housewife who’d

left her kids with her severely religious husband, or—if Shane tried to find her, as she doubted he would do—had sent her

kids to stay with her cranky, old, reclusive father in the woods. She smiled imagining that unlikely scenario, her distracted

dad, who hadn’t even known the ages of his grandkids the last time he saw them, stuck with the nonstop-interrogating Asher

and the ever-moody Leah.

But this thought stopped her cold. Wait, what day is it?

If Anna did bring the kids to her dad’s place, would Leah have remembered to bring pads with her?

If there was one thing her dad would not have on his crappy little ranch, it would be menstrual products.

So far, Leah’s early periods had been as irregular as Bethany’s had been when she was thirteen.

Suddenly, Bethany was filled with guilt again ( The kids are okay, the kids are —) just as another Buffs’ song rose into misty crescendo, and the refrain playing inside her head became: What in the world have I done?

The last half year had been so trying, for so many reasons—the move to Spokane, Celia’s illness and death, Bethany’s inability

to find a job in Spokane beyond substitute teaching, Shane’s attempts to immerse the whole family into the Church of the Blessed

Fire (only Leah seeming even mildly interested, mainly because of her crush on the pastor’s son, David Jr.). No, this year

had completely undone her. Had she lost her mind, coming up here? Was this some final break from reality?

Bethany closed her eyes and tried to let the music calm her again. She gave in to the vanilla smell of the ponderosa pines

and the sounds of the crowd and The Buffs’ angelic singer intoning those long vowels—she swayed a little, time passing along

with their smooth set list, until she heard the singer say, “Thank you. We’re The Buffs. Or The Boofs. You do you.” He nodded

toward her side of the stage. “This one’s by our friend, Bethany Kinnick.

” Her maiden name— oh, the freedom of that .

Applause, cheers, and a familiar rhythm rose up as they began playing her song, the sneakily creepy “Don’t Be Misled.

” She’d written it about the power of obsessive love after following Doug on a

much earlier concert tour, in 2008, with his most successful band to that point— successful meaning they could sometimes afford to sleep in hotels while on tour.

Don’t be misled , she’d written in the chorus, I am not your friend / I’m here to own you / to clone you / put your heart / in my pocket / pull your arms / out of socket

/ so I can keep them / around me forever.

The Buffs’ singer—working in his high, feathery register—made her lyrics sound even more haunted, like the young man was predicting his own demise.

She glanced over at the dancers, who had mostly stopped spinning and reaching for ropes and were just watching the band, as if at the theater.

The pride she felt! That’s my song! And Doug’s smart arrangement—a precisely picked guitar, harmonized chorus, a cymbal wash that sounded like gently breaking

glass—made her proud of them both.

The music faded into applause and cheers, and the singer gave a soft “Thanks y’all.” The singer pointed with an open hand

to the small side-stage pen where the girlfriends sat on blankets and in folding chairs; Bethany smiled shyly, then waved