Free Rolling Thunder by John Varley

head for several minutes. Seemed like a nice send-off song. Of course, many people here wouldn’t know a Bendel bonnet from a glass of Ovaltine or a sheet of cellophane or an Arrow collar. Well, I googled them, so I know.
    So I put on my best Pepsodent smile (google it yourself ) and started for the bandstand, but Gran beckoned me to lean down close to her. She whispered in my ear.
    I was startled. Sure, it’s a great song, a terrific song, but was it right for this time and place? She must have seen the doubt in my eyes because she smiled up at me and said, “Go ahead, hon. It’s one of my favorites, and I think it’s perfect for here.”
    Okay. As I walked toward the bandstand I was finding the music and the chords, and as I stepped up I told the musicians which channel I was transmitting on. They got that faraway stare when you’re concentrating on the images coming up on your contact lens display, or on the nanodots attached to your cornea if you were using the latest accessing equipment. The lead guitarist nodded his head assuredly at me; he was familiar with the song, and I knew the others could fake it.
    Then I jumped back down and hurried over to my father, grabbed his hand, and pulled him up beside me. This one would be a lot better with vocal harmony, and he was the best singer in the house, other than me. I told him the song we were going to sing, and he smiled.
    Without further ado, we swung into “Long Time Gone,” by David Crosby.
    Gran was much too young for Cole Porter, though I knew she liked his music, as well as swingers like Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller. She had been a little girl during what we now call the Great Age of Rock, but during her musically formative years—and did you know that, for the huge majority of people, the music they hear when they’re in their teens and twenties is what they’ll listen to for the rest of their lives?— those hits of the 1960s and ‘70s were still getting a lot of play as “classic rock.” (They still get a fair number of downloads, even today.) So she knew them all.
    I sang the lead, but when it came to the harmonies I handled the Graham Nash part, which was a bit beyond Dad’s range.
    We were never going to rival the original recording, but I’m proud to say we didn’t murder it.
    It’s been a long time comin’
    It’s goin’ to be a long time gone
    And it appears to be a long
    Appears to be a long
    Appears to be a long time
    Such a long, long, long, long time before the dawn
    While I was singing it I immediately knew it was right, and everyone else seemed to agree, too. She might be a long time gone, but there was hope for another dawn.
    There was big-time applause when we were done, and I’m never one to be shy about an encore, so I looked to Gran and raised an eyebrow, and she gestured for me to go on. I sent the next song to the band, and we sang Lennon and McCartney’s “A Little Help From My Friends.” It went over well. Gran was laughing; her friends gave more than a little help by clapping and singing along with the chorus.
    The technical crew had entered the room discreetly as I was singing, approached Gran, and one of them bent down to ask her something. She nodded, looking tired but happy, and they got her back in her chair and up on the short riser. I watched, still singing, one of the few in the room who was aware of what was going on over there. Kelly saw, and Elizabeth, and went to Gran’s side.
    They were about ready when I finished, and I knew I had to sing one more.
    “Anybody got a keyboard?” I asked. The bass player tossed me one, and I unrolled it on a table and stood behind it. I waited for the applause to die down and the room to grow silent, then played the opening notes of Paul Simon’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”
    If I say so myself, it’s one of my best numbers. It’s the only spiritual I know that doesn’t mention any sort of God, which I knew Gran liked, because after the Big Wave she told me she