I visited H. R.’s house, though maybe I was being summoned. His parents were there—though his mom died many years ago. She took me aside and reproached me of something. H. had been accused of killing a Native American in the woods some time ago. She reminded me how she’d contacted my family and me by fax because we were in possession of some information that might exonerate him. We never replied, and she was still furious. At first I said, “Mary, that was a long time ago,” trying to end the discussion. She persisted, and I realized with dread that she was right—my family—I—was always irresponsible about these kinds of things. H. had done his time, apparently, and never recovered, never got his life on track.

I was a college student, hanging around the dorm, reading a coffee table book. Someone took it and brought it over to another room and I had to go find them to get it back. In it I had been reading a story about the music scene in San Francisco in the ‘70s, and how Robert Hunter had done something wrong to a woman back then, and had not been held to account.

S. found a house on sale in Rockland County and we decided to move there. Turns out it was on a vast lake with rocky islands in view. It had been owned by a famous man of letters. In the dream I saw his coterie lazing on the lawn, watching the water. It was a scene from another time, like the 1920s. Then I was in the water, though it was cold. I retrieved a piece of trash, a drink can in a plastic bag, and returned it to shore. The woman of the house accepted it from me graciously. Jackie was in the water with me too.

The band got involved in flying. It started when J. T. began playing a flight simulator video game I guess, and everyone else did too. But then again C. D. did pilot small planes for a long time, didn’t he? Got his license pretty early and flew when he could. But then he got a gig flying commercial jets, first in short trips and then in longer and longer ones. I knew I wasn’t going to be a part of it. And now C. D. would be gone for three to six months flying around the world. He took all this cash he’d saved up out of a book where he kept it and was gone. Could the rest of the band play some gigs during that time, I wondered? I hoped so. There was nothing else to do.

I was roped in to buying a used van for the band. I drove it down our muddy, rutted driveway. There was just one spot available at the end, up a little incline. I stopped there but then saw a giant puddle had formed behind me. I thought I’d better back the van out through it to be safe. It grew deeper as the van rolled in. I fell out of the driver side somehow, into the cold, dirty water. I swam through it, hoping I would make it to the other side.

We were hanging out every day at the same run-down bar, populated by riffraff and ne’er-do-wells. I considered the difference between a dive bar and a regular bar—you got watery ice in your drink at a dive bar, and less booze, for example, and the floors and walls were dusty and grimy—and this was definitely the former. I don’t know why we kept coming back, but it was our default location. I had a sense we were getting dragged down by the place and its people.

I was recalling that night in North Franklin when J. T. and I drank a jug of wine. How it could be that I felt fine the day after, but I really felt fine.