PART FIVE: GIVING“Give to those that asketh thee, . . .”Matthew 6:42
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Y |
“Stand up,” my father insists.
The sun is about to rise. I look at him and wonder why
he has not begun his song.
“Get up!” He drags me to my feet, then shoves me to the
lip of the ledge where I tremble and nearly fall.
“Not yet!” he screams and pulls me back.
The sun climbs quickly out of the night, and as its glowing rim
clears the earth, he whispers, “Now.”
I don’t know want he wants. He does not sing. He
simply stares at me expectantly.
“What, father?”
“Fly!” his voice is a hoarse command. “Fly like Coyote’s
pup!”
“But I can’t!”
“Fly from the ledge! Do it now!”
He’s about to lunge at me, to push me from the ledge, when I
hear my mother’s echoing scream, “Noooo!”
Just below us she stoops for a stone and hurls it at my father
as he lunges towards me. The stone strikes him from behind, hitting
him hard in the head, making him stumble towards the abyss.
As he flies over the edge he reaches out for me, a look of surprise
on his face.
I grab for him but miss his outstretched hand.
He floats silently towards the rocks far below.
When his body hits the parched earth, the rising sun strikes
the very spot, turning it blood red.
I am blinded by it.
Brilliant flashes of red and orange and harsh white light.
When I can see again, the world looks green like a perfect garden,
and there is a tribe of tents on the rich land below.
I think I must be dreaming.
I awake and hear him shouting above me.
“You must hurry!” my father insists. His voice quakes and
echoes along the ridge, which carries his words to me too many times, making
them weird and terrifying.
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14. Interstates
W |
By 2 AM I’d had enough. When I suggested we stop at a motel, my
groggy companions grunted their approval.
We spent what was left of the night in a Best Western in Ohio.
Or was it a Day’s Inn in Pennsylvania? The problem with interstate
travel is that my sense of place gets obliterated by corporate logos that
blend and blur until I have no idea where I am. I thought we were
in Ohio, but we could have been Anywhere, USA.
After sixteen hours on the conveyor belt I felt as grimy and
gritty as last winter’s road salt. I couldn’t wait to hit the shower.
I registered while they waited in the car, paying with cash I’d gotten
that morning from an ATM. I had emptied my meager savings, but it
was enough to get us to Texas, which was as far ahead as I could see.
Though the elderly man at the desk didn’t ask, I told him we
were a family of three. “My wife and my adult son,” I offered.
He just nodded his head and complained about the drunk in Room 211.
When his phone rang he rolled his eyes and said, “Guess who?”
before answering. “Front desk.” He listened for a while, then
hung up without replying. “One more call like that and he’ll be taking
a little ride in a big car with a bubble on top.” The idea seemed
to reassure him. He actually smiled at me, which brought out his
handsome features. He was dressed in casual but expensive clothing.
I wondered how he had ended up as a motel clerk on the night shift.
“We need a quiet room,” I said, “if that’s at all possible.”
His smile faded immediately and he looked at me suspiciously. “We’re
from Vermont,” I explained, but he didn’t get it. “You know, it’s
quiet there.”
He put us in 212.
Fortunately our neighbor across the hall in 211 never made a
sound, or if he did it was drowned out by the roar of the semis on the
interstate. It didn’t seem to disturb Odysea or Lucky, but I could
feel the vibration of every truck as it roared by our exit.
The next morning when I awoke it took a few moments before I realized
where I was and why. I was lying on my side on the hard floor, wrapped
in a bedspread, and my shoulders ached. Sometime in the night I had
rolled off the bed to escape Lucky’s kicks under the covers. Now
I could see early morning sunlight behind the heavy curtains over the windows.
I sat up, rubbed my shoulders, and tried to focus my eyes.
Right away I noticed the two beds were empty. Odysea and Lucky must
have gone for a walk, or maybe they were having breakfast in one of the
nearby fast food places.
I stood up and stretched and scratched in all the usual places.
I stumbled into the bathroom, relieved myself, then turned on the shower
to its hottest setting. As I waited for the steam to build, I noticed
a courtesy coffee maker on the counter. It took me several tries
to tear open the foil-wrapped package of coffee, but eventually I started
the machine brewing. It hissed and popped and gurgled until a thin
stream of black goo dripped into the small glass pot.
By then the bathroom mirror had fogged over completely, so I
climbed over the tub and stretched my stiff body. I luxuriated under
the pelting spray of the shower for ten minutes or more. When I’d
had enough, I climbed out and wrapped my long hair in a towel. I
wiped the mirror with another towel and brushed my teeth until my gums
bristled. Then I stood beneath the glowing red heat lamp in the ceiling
and studied myself in the mirror. It’s not something I’ve done very
often. In fact in my cabin there’s only one small mirror I rarely
use. But I was curious to see what Diane saw when she looked at me
naked. Was there anything about my aging body that might be attractive?
If there were, I couldn’t find it. To me I looked old and
gray and ape-like.
Then I noticed the way the white and black hair on my chest swirled
around my nipples before falling in a narrow line down my belly until it
reached my crotch. I suppose if you like Neanderthal, you might think
it looked sexy.
I noticed my penis, too, something I’d never seen from any angle
other than a straight shot looking down. Retracted into the nest
of my crotch, it looked small and shriveled from the hot shower, though
I had no idea what to compare it to. I know American males are supposed
to be keenly aware of the relative size of their maleness, but I wasn’t.
As I thought these things, I noticed it started to move.
I wasn’t getting hard, just bigger. What a strange thing to have
between one’s legs, this member with its own will.
I studied it from different angles and liked what I saw.
I’d always had this idea that my penis was ugly, but now as I studied my
whole body, I got a sense of myself as a man. I don’t mean that I
thought I was handsome or sexy in a Hollywood sense, just that I looked
manly. The way my penis protruded from between my legs, the rise
and fall of my chest as I breathed, the slope of my shoulders, the curve
of my buttocks — all of it taken together helped me to see myself as vibrant
and maybe even attractive.
I laughed out loud. “One night of wild sex and you’re already
getting vain,” I said to my reflection in the mirror. My reflection
grinned back at me, a bit embarrassed.
I poured a cup of black coffee and sipped it tentatively.
I’d made it strong, using only half the recommended amount of water.
It was perfect.
I put on some clean clothes and opened the curtains to the window.
I could see the interstate a quarter mile away and the access road lined
with gas stations and fast food places. I noticed that the motel’s
pool was covered with a blue vinyl top. Autumn leaves carpeted the
concrete deck around the pool. The parking lot below was packed with
cars. I scanned the room and spotted a digital clock that read 6:43,
early enough to eat up a lot of miles before dark. I grabbed my gear
to leave. I put the room key on the night stand and threw the bedspread
back onto the bed.
I glanced out the window and noticed Odysea and Lucky’s heads
rising above the roof of the Audi. They had been crouching on the
side opposite me. They stepped back a few paces and studied the car,
animatedly discussing something. I had no idea what they were looking
at.
“What are you two gawking at?” I called across the lot as I exited
the building. They were arm-in-arm, a satisfied look on their faces.
“Come see for yourself,” Odysea called back. Lucky nodded
his head eagerly.
As I rounded their side of the car, Odysea trumpeted “Ta-dah!”
On the driver’s side of the Audi they had painted a colorful
scene of a dancing dog, a drumming witch, and a bearded man with cracks
of light shining through his body. At one end of the trio there were
green mountains, at the other a lone star, both joined by a silver ribbon
of highway. The painting was cartoon-like, very flat and two-dimensional,
exuding comic flair and hilarity. The colors were bright and glaring
in the sunlight, creating an overall effect that shouted to the world,
“Look at us and laugh! This is a freak-mobile!”
I was speechless. My mouth must have been hanging open,
for Odysea said, “Close your mouth, Jimmy, it’ll be okay.”
“Don’t you like it?” Lucky asked, the proud look on his face
crumbling into doubt.
I looked down at the pavement and noticed the paint brushes and
small jars of acrylics next to Odysea’s backpack. I looked back at
the painting, at Odysea and Lucky, at the blue sky. I heard the semis
humming on the highway, a bird chirping in the warm October morning.
I thought about Diane and how she’d react to this custom paint job on her
$60,000 Audi.
A woman with two young kids walked out of the motel into the
lot. As they passed by us, the girl exclaimed, “Look Mommy, they
colored their car!” She was delighted and started giggling.
“Can we color ours?”
“It looks pretty silly, doesn’t it,” I said to her.
“I like it!” she insisted.
Then her younger brother yelled, “Me, too!” and started to laugh
and hiccup at the same time.
Before I knew it everyone was laughing, even me.
“You realize this is an invitation to get busted,” I muttered
under my breath to Odysea.
“No it’s not, Mr. Worry Too Much.” She put an arm over
my shoulder and gave a squeeze. “It’s an invitation to joy.”
We spent the day driving west and south, too often sandwiched between
screaming semis, but making good time nonetheless. We stopped for
meals and gas or whenever one of us needed to pee, which was often because
of the river of coffee I consumed. We stayed on I-90 until we reached
Cleveland, then took I-71 cutting southwest through Ohio to Columbus where
we got on I-70 heading due west.
We were cruising past downtown Columbus when I saw the blue lights
flashing in the rearview mirror. “Shit!” I said, and slammed a hand
across the steering wheel. “I knew it. I knew that goddamn
painting was going to do this.”
“Lucky, put the blanket over your head and pretend to be asleep,”
Odysea told him. She was annoyingly calm.
I pulled over to the shoulder and came to a stop. The trooper
parked behind me, got out, and approached us on Odysea’s side of the car.
She hit the automatic window button. As the glass lowered he peered
inside, scanning the cabin for any blatant misdoing. From beneath
the visor of his hat, his eyes bore into mine.
“You’re a long ways from home. I assume that means you’re
in a hurry to get somewhere.”
“We are traveling a good distance, but I thought I had the cruise
control set at 64.”
“The maximum speed inside the city limits is 55 miles per hour.”
“Sorry. I guess I missed the signs.”
“Um-hmm.” He studied Odysea, then looked at the crumpled
form in the back seat. “Can I see your paperwork, please.”
I fumbled in the glove compartment, hoping the registration and
insurance card would be there. They were. I fished out my license
from my wallet and handed it to Odysea who passed it all to the trooper.
He was a middle-aged man, old for highway duty, and so far he’d been cold
and suspicious but not hostile. He studied the names and noticed
the discrepancy.
“Are you the owner of this car, Ma’am?” he asked Odysea.
“Actually it belongs to a friend. She loaned it to us because
we’re on our way to Texas where another close friend is dying.”
I couldn’t believe she told him our destination. I sank
a little lower in the seat.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said in a sincere voice. I
sat back up a little straighter.
He considered us for moment longer, then said, “I’m going to
run a standard check on your license and registration. Do any of
you have a controlled substance in your possession?”
It’s at this point that I always wonder if they actually expect
druggies to hand over their stash. Sure, officer, here’s my pipe
and six vials of crack. Thanks for asking. If you give me a
half hour or so I might even be able to procure a few illegal handguns.
“No,” we said in unison, even Lucky from the back seat, though
I wished he’d kept quiet. He was supposed to be asleep, damn it.
“When I return from the cruiser I’ll be bringing a dog with me.
He has been trained to sniff out drugs and not to attack except on command,
but it would be safer for everyone if you kept your windows and doors closed.”
Again we all nodded our heads as if this were the most natural
thing in the world.
I saw him get back into the cruiser and pick up the handset to
call in the record check. I had no idea what he was going to discover.
There was nothing we could do but sit and wait.
“Do you think she reported the car stolen?”
“I don’t know.”
Lucky began whimpering in the back seat. I started to reassure
him, but what was the point? We were on the edge of big trouble,
and I felt like whimpering myself. Odysea reached a hand over the
seat and petted him.
Suddenly the trooper appeared at the window. Odysea lowered
it and he handed the paperwork to her. There was no dog with him.
“I’ve got to respond to another call and want to wish you folks
well on your travels through Ohio. I hope your friend in Texas recovers,
Ma’am. Please observe the speed limits.”
“Thank you,” Odysea said, beaming good will.
He nodded at her, then added, “I like the painting on the side
of your car. Very unusual and cheerful.”
Then he was gone.
Odysea turned to me with a silly grin on her face. She
didn’t say “I told you so.”
Instead she crowed, “Thank you universe!”
Amen.
At Indianapolis I-70 veers southwest through the rest of Indiana and
Illinois, but I missed it entirely as I snoozed away the afternoon.
Odysea woke me up to see the sun set over the arch at St. Louis, and by
nightfall we were sailing straight south on Route 67 to Poplar Bluff in
southern Missouri. It was a relief to get off the interstates.
“When we get to Poplar Bluff do you want to stop for some dinner
and a normal night’s rest?” I asked Odysea and Lucky.
“Yes,” Odysea said, “I’m absolutely road weary.”
“What about you, Lucky?”
“It doesn’t matter to me.”
I realized that it was true, that this journey meant something
different to him than to either of us. He wasn’t going to a destination
but away from trouble that could catch up to him at any time and any place.
I was about to comment when the cell phone started chirping.
“Guess who?” Odysea said smiling.
I didn’t hesitate to answer this time. I’d been thinking
about her all day, seeing her naked body as I napped across two states.
I had been floating on the sexual energy my mind had produced, and I was
eager to make any kind of contact I could. Besides, I missed her.
She had been a major part of every day of my life for a year.
“Hi Diane.”
“Why didn’t you call me last night?” It was an accusation.
“I didn’t know I was supposed to call.” In the silence
that followed I felt her considering an argument, so I added in a conciliatory
tone, “The end of our conversation was garbled by static. I couldn’t
make out what you were saying.”
“All the more reason for you to call me at home when you stopped
for the night.”
“Sorry,” I said and meant it.
“I wanted to tell you more about Bob and me.”
“I’m eager to hear.”
“It all started in San Francisco where I worked as a dancer.”
“I didn’t know you danced.”
“I did it for seven years, from the time I left home at 18 until
we got married when I was 25.”
“Did you work in a company?”
“Not exactly, Jimmy.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was more private than that.”
She hesitated, and I could hear the miles between us echoing
from tower to satellite and back to earth. “Remember that song Tina
Turner did several years ago called ‘Private Dancer’?” She started
to sing the lyrics to me. “I’m your private dancer, . . . .”
“Diane, are you telling me you worked as a stripper for seven
years?”
“I was a lap dancer, Jimmy. I made a lot of money that
enabled me to go to college and see the world.”
For the second time that day I felt my mind shut down in total
consternation. I simply did not know how to respond to this news.
Obviously I had kept my past life secret from her, but I never imagined
that she had been doing the same with me.
“My stage name was Little Lori,” she said, then told me her story
as we entered Mark Twain National Forest.
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15. Little Lori
I |
Every man I’ve ever known, and even a few women, want to seduce a young
girl. For some of them it’s the innocence of young sex that’s the
draw. They want to step back in time and start over, maybe do it
right this time, or maybe just do it at all. For others they want
to corrupt what is pure. Or they want to be corrupted. They
look at me and see a latent slut who’s begging them to ravish her.
It sounds sick, but I never judged the joes.
I considered myself a professional dancer, and dancing erotically
is as ancient an art form as there is. It’s right up there with painting
on cave walls.
My dancing has always been suggestive, even before I turned professional,
but I never saw it as sex. I never had sex for money. I mean
absolutely never. Not once. What I gave the joe was a lap dance,
which cost $20 up front. I’m a professional dancer. A performance
artist.
I’d bring the customer to a booth in the back where I’d sit him
down in a chair facing me. I’d smile a lot and chatter like a girl,
then turn on the music and start to dance seductively.
I used my clothing to stir up interest, fanning my dress to show
my slip, raising my slip to reveal a thigh. When the joe got hot,
I took off my cape, flung it from me as if he was turning me on and I couldn’t
hold back. The cape was free. From then on it cost.
As the dance progressed I’d offer to remove another layer, demanding
more money, usually in small increments. When I got down to my panties
and bra, I’d soak him for whatever I could get. They always wanted
to touch my hips and breasts, which is where the big bucks came from.
I have small breasts, so it matched my little girl look. They’d touch
me and whisper somebody’s name from their past, or maybe their present.
I didn’t care. “My name’s Little Lori,” I’d whisper back, “but you
go ahead and call me Susie ‘cause I love the way you touch me. Makes
me want you, daddy.”
It’s against club rules to ejaculate in the club, but I couldn’t
stop them. What goes on in the booth is private, no one is peeking
around the curtain or looking through two-way mirrors. I wouldn’t
ever touch a joe’s penis intentionally, but the room is small and dark,
and sometimes when I was dancing I couldn’t help but make contact.
It drove them wild.
They paid for it.
There’s always a cover charge at the door of a sex club, as high as
$50, which goes straight to management. Conventional strippers are
dancing on stage, while we lap dancers mingle in the audience looking to
catch someone who wants more. It’s like fishing. Only the fisher
and the bait and the hook are all the same thing. Me.
I’d catch someone’s eye, and he would make an offer. “How
much for a private dance?” he’d ask if it was his first time.
“How much you got?” I’d answer, which always made them
laugh.
Of course a lot of the men were repeat customers. It’s
like I was part of their weekly budget. So much for food, housing,
transportation, and Little Lori.
What kind of men came to the clubs? People make this assumption
that only dirty old men in trench coats frequent sex clubs, but it’s not
true. Sure, the trench-coated types are there, but so is every other
kind of man, from top floor business executives in their Armani suits to
groups of young fraternity boys in GAP sweats. There’s even the occasional
woman, maybe five per cent of the total clientele.
But the point is that the joes are the same, no matter how they’re
dressed. They’re looking for the same experience. Eroticism.
It’s a part of being male in America, I don’t care how many times the New
Age Man denies it. I was in the industry too long to be fooled by
their delusions. All men want sex with young girls, the younger the
better.
In the sixties Gary Pucket and the Union Gap had a hit called
“Young Girl,” which is a total turn on for men weaned on it. Then
there’s Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire,” which is some kind of male national
anthem. As soon as they hear the Boss’s voice, they start mouthing
the words as if it’s them singing to Little Lori. Only I turn it
all around and I sing it to them:
Hey little girl is your daddy home
Did he go away and leave you all alone
I got a bad desire
I’m on fire
Tell me now baby is he good to you
Can he do to you the things that I do
I can take you higher
I’m on fire
Nobody sings to me. Nobody. You see what I did as
a lap dancer was all about me. I was in control, not them.
I led them in a dance that I started and I stopped. My music, my
persona. Every move, each word and nuance, every look was directed
towards one end — arousal — and I decided when it began and when it peaked.
I told you, I’m an artist.
Sure there were exceptions. Sometimes all the joe wanted
was to talk. I didn’t have to dance or even turn on the music.
I’ve had men so lonely for a woman’s sweetness that they started crying
when I gave it. I’m serious. Tears running down their cheeks
because I said, “You’re a good man. You’re the kind of man I want
to grow up and marry. You’re handsome, really you are.”
Or maybe all they needed was a hug. That’s how lonely some
men are, they come to a sex club and put out a $100 for a hug!
People always want to know why I was a lap dancer. Were you sexually
abused as a child? No. Did you have a drug problem? No.
Were you destitute? No. No. No.
I used to look at the women I worked with, and most of them could
answer yes to those questions, but not me. So why did I do it?
I think it has to do with intimacy. It’s a very intimate thing, erotic
dancing. I can feel the joe inside me and me inside him. I
see how what I’m doing affects him, makes him hard, drives him wild, and
there’s this bond that happens between us, even if it’s only for a fraction
of an hour. It’s deep, it really is.
I know what you’re thinking. That I have a serious problem
with real intimacy. You’re right. I do. Who doesn’t?
I’m working on it. That’s why I’m in therapy now. That’s why
I’m telling you all this. My therapist told me to. She said
if I cared about you, if I loved you, I had to let you know about this
part of me.
Just don’t judge me. Okay?
I grew up in a small town in southern Ohio. My father was an insurance
agent. State Farm Insurance. Like A Good Neighbor. He
was a good neighbor. And a good father and husband. My mother
taught school. Fifth grade. I have a brother who’s three years
younger who was an Eagle Scout. We had a cat named Fluffy and a bull
dog named Butch. I took ballet and piano. In the summer I went
to day camp at the Methodist Church.
When I was fifteen I was in the church youth group, and one week
we were supposed to act out our favorite Bible story. I didn’t have
any favorites, so at home I opened the Bible at random. The pages
parted at the story of Salome. Do you know it? It’s about John
the Baptist and King Herod.
They were great friends even though Herod had imprisoned John
for discrediting his marriage with Herodias. Actually Herodias was
Herod’s brother’s wife, and John said they were living in sin. Herodias
hated John for stirring up the people against her, so she made Herod arrest
John. But it worked against her because every day Herod would visit
John and converse. John was brilliant, captivating, and though Herod
denied it, Herodias knew he was starting to believe John’s message of repentance.
One night there was a banquet for Herod’s closest friends.
Herodias told her daughter to dance for the men. “You know how,”
she said. “Dance the way I taught you.”
The young Salome drove the men wild. It was the kind of
erotic dancing that men kill for. As she finished they shouted their
praise. Herod was so pleased that he offered Salome whatever she
wanted. “Just ask and it is yours,” he pronounced grandly before
his friends. They nodded their heads in approval.
Salome was overjoyed. Anything she wanted! Her young
mind raced with visions of horses and jewels and servants. So much
to choose from! She ran to her mother and said, “What do you think
I should ask for?”
This was the moment her mother had planned.
“Ask for John the Baptist’s head on a platter.”
Salome was shocked.
“Do it!” her mother commanded.
Herod balked, turned pale and nearly vomited. “Ask for
anything but that,” he stammered.
Then he glanced around the room and saw the look on the faces
of the men: Is this the way Herod keeps his promises?
John’s bloody head was delivered on a silver platter.
That’s the gist of the story, and when my turn came that week
to act it out, I told it just like that. When it was time for Salome’s
dance, I put on a record that had a middle eastern beat. Then I danced
before the class.
I could feel their eyes on me. Could hear the boys’ breathing.
Even the girls couldn’t stop watching my hips thrusting, my breasts shaking
beneath my blouse. When I was done I looked at the minister, a young
married man new to the church. In the chilly basement room, his forehead
was beaded with sweat. He tried to say something, but only babbled.
What would he have given me if I had asked?
I met Bob during the law suit. It was just before his final year
at Stanford Law School, and he was clerking during the summer at a firm
in San Francisco. They were our lawyers in the class action suit
we wanted to bring against the O’Farrell Theater. That year I had
joined the Exotic Dancer’s Alliance, a collective fighting for adequate
working conditions and civil rights within the sex industry.
People laugh when I tell them about the Alliance. Especially
feminists. They scoff at us. Like somehow because we dance for a
living we’re not entitled to their respect. I consider myself a feminist.
I fought for the right to work as a woman without being abused and humiliated.
I walked on pickets, I signed petitions, I filed law suits. And I
put my livelihood on the line. You think the managers didn’t blacklist
us? Wake up!
The sex industry isn’t going to disappear because feminists say
it’s degrading to women. It’s always been there and it always will
be there. Eroticism is part of the human experience.
Anyway, I was dancing with a woman named Jennifer Bryce.
She’s from Vermont, which is why I came here, because of how she described
the people, the land, the simpler lifestyle. Jennifer is this very
bright, committed woman, an activist who was raised by sixties’ radicals.
She inspired me to join her and a few others in fighting back. Personally
I didn’t need to, I was making good money, but I couldn’t watch the abuse
any more.
Last week I found this piece by Jennifer on the Net. Let
me read it to you: “After years of seeing dancers have to pay for
the right to not only make a living, but also put up with many acts of
intimidation and coercion, I simply could not keep silent anymore.
We paid to work and were called ‘bitches’ and ‘whores’ at company meetings.
We paid to work and were fired for not allowing friends of the management
to fondle us. We paid to work and were told to get down on our hands
and knees in a daisy chain or we’d lose our jobs.”
The whole thing comes down to one simple point: Only exotic
dancers must pay to work. We charged in our law suit that the dancers
had been mis-classified as independent contractors rather than employees.
It’s fundamentally unfair, a violation of equal protection under the law.
But what it’s really about is breaking the silence, standing
up to the stigma in the community and the fear of losing your job.
Over four hundred dancers have taken the chance, come forward and joined
the suit.
Of course in the beginning no one wanted to risk it. There were
just a few of us. And Bob. He was assigned to do all the preliminary
work. He was handsome and attentive and respectful. We all
liked him. One Friday afternoon he asked me to join him for a drink.
I agreed.
When we got to the bar, there was another young lawyer waiting
for us. He and Bob embraced, and I could see at once they were lovers.
It didn’t surprise me. San Francisco is a free zone. Has been
for a long time. You get to be who you are.
So Bob introduces me to his boyfriend. It turns out they
live together in an apartment in the Castro district. They’re very
happy except for one thing: Bob’s parents are coming to visit next
week and they don’t know about his lover. “Mom and Dad wouldn’t understand,”
Bob says. “They’re from Salt Lake City.”
“So what?” I say.
“They’re Mormons.”
“So they don’t speak English? Talk to them. Let them
see how much you’re in love. It’s the fucking nineties,” I insist.
“The new permissiveness doesn’t matter to them. It only
confirms their Sodom and Gomorrah mind set.”
We go around a few more times, and Bob’s lover, whose name is
Samuel, tries to help me see things from Bob’s point of view. “There’s
different levels of coming out,” he explains as he runs a finger over the
rim of his wine glass. “Bob can’t risk being out with his family,
just like I can’t risk being out with my employer.”
“Where do you work?”
“I work for an investment firm here in the city. Trés
conservative. They just hired their first black employee last month.”
“That’s absurd.”
Both men nod their heads in agreement.
“But why are you telling me all this?” I ask.
“I need a girlfriend for a few days,” Bob says sheepishly.
Samuel pats his arm.
“And you want me to be her?”
“If you’re willing. I’d pay you very well.”
“Okay.”
“You agree?” Bob can’t believe his good fortune.
“Of course. You don’t even have to pay me.”
“Oh, I insist.”
So that’s how it started. His parents fell in love with me.
When they asked what I did, I told them the truth. “I’m an education
major at San Francisco State.”
A month later it was his uncle who was visiting. And then
there was a formal dinner at the law firm. That one surprised me
until I got there and discovered there wasn’t a gay couple in sight.
Then he brought me home with him to Salt Lake City. In
the spring there was graduation week. And not long after he and Samuel
broke up, Bob asked me to make our arrangement permanent.
“You mean marry you?”
“Yes. I want to go into politics, and even here in San
Francisco they kill gay politicians. Of course it would be a marriage
of convenience, though you’d be financially secure for life. I’m
very wealthy, you know, and the pre-nuptial agreement would guarantee your
well being no matter what. We’d both keep our sex lives separate,
but we’d have each other’s company and friendship. You do like me,
don’t you? I know you do. We have so much fun together!”
“Where would we live?”
“You keep talking about Vermont. I like the idea of a small
state. Easier to make in-roads in the political system. Plus
it’s quite liberal, radical even. They’ve got a socialist in Congress,
the only one in the country. Maybe someday I could even come out
all the way. Of course I mean after my parents have passed away.”
“What would I do while you were working?”
“You could teach. Or go to law school.”
Law school. That clinched it for me.
“You’re on,” I said.
Contents | Top | Home |
16. Lone Star
D |
It was the wrong thing to do, not only to someone who had reached out
in a trusting way, but also because of what happened as a result, though
it would be awhile before I’d know about that.
We spent the night in a Best Western in Farmington, Missouri.
This time I know it was a Best Western because Odysea commented on it.
“You like these Best Westerns, don’t you.”
“I never thought about it,” I answered dully.
“You know I haven’t thanked you for doing this, Jimmy.”
“It’s not necessary. I already had decided to leave Vermont
when you asked me to take you to Texas.”
“I still want to thank you. I don’t know how I would have
managed the trip if you hadn’t taken charge of things. I didn’t have
money or a working vehicle, and Lucky didn’t even have a change of clothes
until you retrieved his stuff by the river.”
“Don’t mention it,” I said automatically. I felt miserable,
like I was falling apart again. I hadn’t felt so distraught and confused
since my days in the psychiatric gulag. I just wanted to hide, to
disappear from the harsh realities of my life.
“I want to thank you, too,” Lucky said. He and I were sprawled
across the two double beds in the room.
“Don’t mention it,” I repeated. There was an edge to my
voice that he’d done nothing to deserve, but I was exhausted and wanted
to be left alone.
“But you saved my life,” Lucky persisted.
“Maybe I’ve just gotten you into more trouble.” Even to
me my voice sounded caustic.
“Jimmy, please let us thank you,” Odysea said. “It’s important
to both of us. We don’t have much else to offer. You’ve taken
on our karma, you’ve done it selflessly, like a compassionate bodhisattva.”
I lay there on my back staring up at the textured ceiling.
I certainly didn’t feel like someone who postpones their own enlightenment
to alleviate the suffering of others. I felt more like a fool, a
sad clown who trips and bungles his way through the morass.
In the silence that followed I heard Odysea unzipping her backpack.
Lucky sat up on the bed and watched her do something he found
intriguing.
I spotted a fly crawling across the textured ceiling, blindly
climbing in and out of its endless sandy ridges and getting nowhere.
I felt like that fly.
A few moments later I heard the scratch of a match against a
striker, then smelled the sweet acrid aroma of marijuana. I bolted
upright. “Odysea! Did you have that pot when the cop stopped
us in Ohio?!”
“Of course.” She smiled mischievously, taking a long hit.
I shook my head in disapproval. “What about the Buddhist
precept against drugs?”
“There are exceptions for traveling. In the Tantric tradition,
traveling monks were permitted to smoke hashish as a way of mediating the
effects of the road.”
“So tell me, Ms. Monk, when the drug dog sniffed out your stash
were you planning to invoke the First Amendment?”
“No,” she said, “I intended to invoke Mercy!” She giggled,
then passed the joint to me.
So we got stoned. All three of us. I’m talking flat out,
rollicking, giggling, munchies-craving stoned. I hadn’t been stoned
since starting Woodbury College when smoking pot had made me anxious and
fearful. I’d forgotten how much fun it could be, how relaxing and
mind-expanding and community-making.
I nearly rolled off the bed laughing when Lucky began describing
what life is like for him in The Side Show. That’s what he called
it. He mimed adults sneaking stares at him from behind menus in restaurants,
little kids brazenly trying to pull off his harlequin’s mask, or drivers
doing double-takes as they passed in cars.
He told us that one time an older woman, when she turned to find
him standing behind her in the check out line at Butson’s Super Market,
actually had screamed in terror. She scared him so badly he screamed,
too. They stood face to face, screaming at each other until the check-out
woman intervened. The older woman was so embarrassed she offered
to pay for his soda and chips.
“Just one of the many perks of being a freak,” he said, “like
never having to dress up for Halloween.”
He winked at us in a way that was endearing. I found myself
admiring his ability to poke fun, to forgive those whose unwanted attention
would otherwise have been a torment. I doubted I would have the same
grace.
We ordered pizza and Chinese from two local places that delivered,
and while we waited I hit the junk food dispensers in the hallway.
We took a long hot shower together, splashing and giggling like
kids after gym class, then dried off each other’s backs. At first
I worried how Lucky would react, but he took it in stride. Either
his sexuality was dormant, or he intuitively understood that our nakedness
was innocent.
When we had dressed in clean clothes, Odysea got out her djembe
and led us in chants. Some were African, some Native American, some
original. Lucky chanted and danced until I thought he was ten whirling
dervishes. He filled the room with a spirit-force that revitalized
me.
Then he started telling us stories. Odysea was sitting
on the floor tapping on the djembe and I was on the bed, propped up on
pillows against the headboard. Lucky stood in a corner of the large
room underneath a hanging lamp that acted as a spotlight, regaling us with
one tale after another. He was captivating, a natural-born performer
who knew how to modulate his voice, to gesture compellingly, to manipulate
silence and mood so that I found myself laughing one moment and nearly
weeping the next.
He told us what sounded like his own versions of myths from various
cultures, mixing and matching them indiscriminately. He started with
a story he called “Coyote’s Pup,” then went on to a long tale about the
Garden of Eden. As I listened I realized that his dream was the logical
next chapter in the sequence. I looked at Odysea. She inclined
her head in a way that let me know she’d had the same thought.
When he was done we both applauded and hooted and whistled our
appreciation. He bowed grandly from the waist and smiled in a self-satisfied
way that gave me great pleasure. It was hard to imagine that only
two days before he had been a snarling dog in a cage.
“Where did you learn those stories?” I asked.
“Lucky taught me.”
“I don’t understand,” Odysea said.
“Lucky the Dog taught me. He was Coyote’s Pup.”
“Do you mean you had a real dog named Lucky?”
“Yes. I lay my head against his and heard the stories.
He had a white-tipped tail and could fly between worlds.”
“But your name is Lucky.”
“I know. I took his name when he disappeared with Jim one
day. I always wanted to be Lucky anyway. Now I am.
“Why did you want to be a dog?
“Because he got the best food. And Jim liked him better.
He never hit Lucky, never, not even when he was drunk. Jim played
with him, too, took Lucky everywhere in his truck with him.”
“Who was Jim?”
Lucky suddenly got a stricken look on his face, then whispered,
“He was my father.”
Lucky wouldn’t talk after that, no matter what we did to divert him.
He crawled under the covers on one of the beds and turned away from us.
His pain was so palpable it filled the room and settled over us like a
shroud.
He still wouldn’t talk the next morning, but at least he ate
his oatmeal when we found a sit-down restaurant along the local Miracle
Mile.
That day we drove south on 67, which turned into a winding forest
road through mountains until we crossed into Arkansas.
We drove by a town called Success and wondered what life was
like there.
We stopped for gas at a crowded mini-mart and when I went inside
to pay for it, the woman at the register said, “You on pump 3? That’s
six six six.”
Every head in the place popped up, and she said, “We won’t go
there.” I laughed. She grinned on the sly. Everyone else
looked grim, as if they were expecting the Anti-Christ at any moment.
Arkansas bragged shamelessly on official state road signs about
it being Bill Clinton’s birthplace. As we hit Little Rock, there
was a huge sign that read THE FIRST CAPITAL BILL CLINTON CALLED HOME.
At that moment Clinton was being dragged over the coals during House impeachment
hearings on charges that included perjury and obstruction of justice.
We entered Texas at Texarkana where we picked up Route 59 until we hit
Marshall and jumped on 43 for a short hop to Route 79, which took us almost
all the way to Austin. I’d never been in East Texas before, and it
was beautiful.
We saw a sign for Elysian Fields, then one for Palestine.
The soil was bright orange. Through a pecan grove I could see the
sunlit horizon beneath a thick dome of branches and leaves. This
was near the Little Brazos River, which ran brown and muddy.
There were oil derricks and natural gas pipelines, grain elevators
six stories high.
Lucky spoke for the first time that day. He said, “Words
have ruined me, I am a slave to the mind,” then resumed his silence.
“Do you think it was wrong to let him get stoned?” I asked Odysea.
“I don’t know, but I’ve worried about it all morning.”
She looked at Lucky in the back seat. He wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“I’m hoping it helped him open up about his past in ways he needed.
Like you, Jimmy.”
“Uh oh,” I said, “you’re not going to pick that up again, are
you?”
“Well I do have a few questions about why you were arrested in
Miami. And you’ve never explained what drove you into hiding in the
first place.”
“What about you?”
“Are you curious about my past, Jimmy?”
“Of course. Doesn’t being back in Texas spark any memories
for you?”
She laughed, then sighed. “Yes. All of them.”
Then she, too, fell silent. I didn’t intrude.
There were cattle ranches on either side of the highway, lush
green fields dotted with Live Oak. Corrugated metal sheds stood next
to houses with metal roofs. Giant round hay bales. Windmills.
Large ponds with supine cattle.
At Gause the railroad tracks ran next to the highway. There
was a freight train that must have been a half-mile long.
Then we were in corn and maize country. Miles and miles
of flat fields.
The sun blazed, and when we passed a bank I saw an electronic
sign that said it was 80 degrees.
“It’s hot,” I said to Odysea.
“Welcome to Texas,” she replied.
Just before reaching Austin on I-35, I dialed Big Rod’s number on the
cell phone. He picked up on the first ring, “Jimmy, this better be
you or I’m gonna be some mad at the telemarketer who’s dared disturb my
beauty rest.”
“It’s me, Big Man.”
“Good. Now give me a second to wake up. Well this
ain’t too bad, my alarm just went off anyway. Time to get to work.”
“I hope you can spare a few minutes to talk.”
“Are you kidding? I’ve been waiting on tenterhooks for
your call.”
“What’s up?”
“You want the good news first or the bad?”
“Any way you think best, Rod.”
“Henh, henh, henh,” he chuckled. “That’s what I like about
you, Jimmy, you know how to give a man room to talk.”
“So what did you find out?”
“You know anything about the Masons?”
“You mean the fraternal organization?”
“The one and only.”
“I don’t know much. My father was a Mason. He wore
their ring, though I never knew him to go to meetings. I asked him
about it once, but he said he was sworn to secrecy. I have noticed
that the lodges seem to be in better shape these days. The old ones
are being spruced up, and there are brand new buildings, too.”
“That’s the problem. The Masons are a growing concern again.”
“What difference does it make?”
“Jimmy, I come from a long line of Anti-Masons. Vermonters
have never liked secret organizations, especially ones that protect their
membership from the obligations for which the rest of us are held liable.”
“Rod, you’ve lost me here.”
“Don’t you know your history, Jimmy? In the 1820s a man
named William Morgan threatened to publish an exposé of Masonic
secrets. He was kidnapped in New York and may have escaped, but more
likely was killed by Masons. When the Masons tried to cover it up,
the Anti-Masonic movement was born. Vermont was one of the staunchest
Anti-Mason states.”
“What does this have to do with our mutual friend?”
“That’s what I’m wondering, Jimmy. Like I promised, I’ve
kept my ears open, and whenever your client’s name comes up, I hear these
phrases like ‘taught to be cautious’ or ‘on the level’. It’s all
different ways of finding out whether the other person is ‘on the square.’”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means you’re inside the Brotherhood of Freemasons and can
be trusted. And if you aren’t, I notice the conversation gets real
short. But if you are, the two parties go out of hearing and have
a real long chat.”
“What about Trooper Smalley? Is he a Mason?”
“He’s wearing the ring, Jimmy, just like your father.”
“How about those two deputies that got killed?”
“They were on the square, too, read about it in their obituaries.
You know what else? They’re from Connecticut, just like Trooper Smalley.”
“You think the two things are connected?”
“I don’t know, but it seems like more than a coincidence.
You probably know that correctional officers are on the low end of the
law enforcement totem pole. We ain’t got much status among the so-called
real cops. People like Smalley and his buddies think we’re wanna-be’s.
They got an attitude, that holier-than-thou thing. Usually it don’t
bother me, but when you combine it with being a flatlander, it gets old
real quick.”
Rod was using the term for visitors from other states and non-native
Vermonters. “Rod, I’m a flatlander.”
“True, but you have acquitted yourself by living in the hills.
The hills change a person. Either that or they give up and head back
from whence they sprung.”
I knew what he meant. Living in the hills had changed me.
I was more aware of the natural world, more grateful for the simple gifts
life offers for free.
“Vermont’s in trouble, Jimmy,” Rod continued. “We got a
governor who was raised in Manhattan with a silver spoon in his mouth,
a Congressman who’s a socialist from Brooklyn. Half of our legislators
were born elsewhere. The Green Mountains have become the new haven
for political opportunists, a regular carpet-bagger’s wet dream.”
“I don’t disagree. What about my client? How’s he
fit into all this?”
“I don’t know yet. I only know he does. I’ve been
talking with Sue Lecroix. When she found out our boy came up missing
after the wreck, she was worried something awful. She told me some
interesting stuff about him. Apparently he’s got smarts I never would
have guessed the day I met him. Sue says he used to go over to the
Clearing a lot. You familiar with it?”
“You mean the place the Belenkys ran in Marshfield?”
“That’s it. Bob and Mary always included him on weekends
when they ran retreats for kids. Sue said it’s where he saw his first
storyteller perform. After that he couldn’t get enough of myths,
read every book on the subject he could lay hands on. Apparently
he’s a regular scholar on the subject.”
“I think you’re right, Big Man. Thanks for the info.
Keep you ears open.”
“Will do. Something ain’t right here, Jimmy, and somehow
this young man is caught right in the middle of it.”
When I told Odysea about Rod’s news, she wanted to know more about the
Clearing and the Belenkys. “Bob’s a psychologist who started the
graduate program at Goddard College, then worked with teens for many years.
Before the original Clearing burned down, he used to bring up kids from
New York City whose parents could afford therapeutic weekends in Vermont.
And he did a lot of work with Vermont kids who had few or no resources.
For a while he tried to get along with social services, but they were too
rigid. Now he’s spending his retirement visiting orphans in state
homes in Russia and Haiti. He travels to the same institutions once
or twice a year to hang out with the kids, sort of like the grandfather
they never knew.”
“That’s beautiful,” Odysea said. “How do you know the Belenkys?”
“I met them years ago when we hired them to help us convince
a judge that a young burglar needed drug rehab, not jail. Mary absolutely
charmed Judge Springer. She has this soft, almost dreamy way of speaking,
yet she makes lucid the most profound connections.”
“I know about Mary. She’s famous in feminist circles as
the lead author of Women’s Ways of Knowing. That book has changed
how the world looks at womyn and their empathic ways of connecting and
learning.” She grew thoughtful, then said, “It’s so interesting the
way some people can affect the world for good. Mary did it on a grand
scale with a book, Bob on a personal level with kids. The Clearing
sounds a lot like what my uncle’s ranch was for me — a safe place at a
time when home wasn’t.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
We were heading west out of Austin on Route 290. We had
passed Lady Bird Johnson’s Wildflower Center and were finally moving beyond
the Austin sprawl. Odysea said that soon we’d be in the Hill Country
of Texas.
“I wasn’t raised in this area. I’m from West Texas where
the land is flat and dry and the people are tough. More like the
Texans of old.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Odysea looked at me, took a deep breath, and began.
Contents | Top | Home |
17. West Texas
I |
You see these fancy gates and signs we’re driving past right now?
Everybody in central Texas with a few acres puts up a gate, runs some fence,
and calls it a ranch. They don’t know what the word means.
Here they talk about acres, but in West Texas we measure land in sections.
A section is 640 acres, and my uncle’s ranch was forty sections.
And that was only a small piece of the original ranch his father had inherited
from my great-grandfather.
My mother’s people were part-Scot, part-Comanche. You could
see it in my uncle’s face, especially when he looked out over the land.
It was as if he was seeing another time and place. There’s a story
my family tells about our Comanche roots. Maybe it’s true and maybe
it’s just a myth, but I believe it. If you ever saw my uncle, you’d
believe it too. It’s more than the way he looks, it’s the way he
sees.
The story has it that after a Comanche raid on a ranch, a posse
was formed to retaliate. They intended to wipe out the Comanche village,
to kill not just the men in the raiding party, but the old people, the
womyn, the children. Everyone. In the midst of the attack a
young Comanche girl was running through the smoke and confusion, dodging
the horses of the ranchers who were firing indiscriminately. One
of the horses knocked her to the ground, and that’s how its rider noticed
her. As he took aim he looked into her wide eyes and saw something
that made him hesitate. In that moment of doubt he reached down and
grabbed her, then rode just beyond the Comanche camp where he set her behind
a clump of bushes.
The next day he returned alone. “If she’s still alive,
I’ll raise her,” he promised as he approached the desolate scene.
He found her wandering through the burned out camp, wide-eyed with terror,
but alive.
When she grew up she mothered the family that has come down to
me. Sometimes late at night when I can’t sleep, I can feel her inside
me. If I lay completely still, I can hear her song of mourning for
her lost people. It’s the saddest, most beautiful song I’ve ever
experienced.
Uncle Roy looked just like the actor Glen Ford, only he was shorter
and stockier. He was an old-time cowboy. He and my aunt had
come up the hard way. They’d started their married life living in
a bunkhouse while my grandfather lived in the main house. My Aunt
Penny, who was taller than my uncle, spent every day working side-by-side
with him. She could do anything he could, from riding and roping
to branding the cattle and castrating the bulls. There are no gender
roles as such on a ranch. What you do is limited only by your physical
strength and endurance.
When I first came to the ranch we didn’t have a whole lot.
We had enough to eat and there was always something fun for me to do —
like driving the old pick-up across the ranch when I went hunting jackrabbits
with my cousins — but we were careful not to waste anything. “Waste
not, want not” was so much a part of how we lived that no one ever had
to say it out loud.
Things could have been different, but my grandfather never let
the oil companies anywhere near his ranch. There was a lot of bad
feelings back then towards the oil companies. They had no respect
for the ranchers. They’d bust through anywhere their seismographs
led them, breaking fence and scaring cattle. It didn’t matter to
them. They had the oil lust on them, and they cared for one thing
only — making the find.
My grandfather hated them with a vengeance. More than once
he shot at the seismograph teams. West Texas is a lot like people’s
idea of the Old West. The land is deemed sacred and trespassers are
looked upon in the same way a heathen horde would be elsewhere. You
shoot first and ask questions later. Of course Hollywood has made
that phrase hackneyed, but it’s true in West Texas. It was then and
to some extent it still is today.
Sometimes my grandfather got away with it — it was just between
him and the sheriff — other times he got dragged into civil court by the
oil companies. Most often he won because he had a jury of his peers
who understood and respected him, but sometimes he lost. It didn’t
matter. Either way he wouldn’t give in to the oil companies.
My uncle was a lot like my grandfather, but when he saw the other
ranchers getting rich off their mineral rights, he began to wonder.
Finally he agreed to one single well if the oil companies found something
worth drilling for. This was in the early 1960s after my grandfather
had died. As it turned out, they didn’t find any oil at all.
Instead, they found the largest natural gas deposit in the continental
United States.
It made my uncle a very rich man.
You might think all that money would have changed things on the
ranch, but it didn’t. They’d always lived rough and for the most
part they kept living that way. Just because you have plenty doesn’t
mean you have to gloat. Vanity of that sort was considered low mannered
and unbecoming.
Now my uncle had to figure out how to hide his money so the government
didn’t get it. The only thing worse than the oil companies to the
people in West Texas is the government. They love the land and hate
the government. It’s axiomatic.
So my uncle found every way he could to keep from paying “those
fools in Washington.” He bought jewels directly from salesmen in
fancy cars who showed up on the ranch. I don’t know what he did with
them. Maybe he buried them because Aunt Penny surely didn’t wear
them.
Instead she bought the finest antiques the world offered, including
Louis XIV furniture. Or was it Louis the XVI? I never could
keep them straight. Whichever it was, the ranch house — a board and
batten box with a tin roof — was filled with them. Even in
the kitchen, where she cooked on an old wood cookstove, there were dainty
chairs and cabinets. Every single one of them was scuffed and bruised
from the heavy boots we wore.
If my aunt loved her antiques, Uncle Roy felt the same about
his “hobbies.” At the time I couldn’t understand why he switched
hobbies so often, but now I know it wasn’t an accident that these expense-deductible
ventures changed every five years. That’s about how long the IRS
lets you get away with money-losing operations.
Uncle Roy’s first hobby was a museum and zoo. He called it the
Indian Trails Museum and Zoo. There were hand-painted signs he nailed
to posts out by the highway. He charged a small admission fee, and
people actually came.
He put the museum in one of the old bunkhouses. It was
a three-room structure with a tin roof. He displayed Native American
artifacts. Headdresses, beads, moccasins, knives, tomahawk.
There were photos of famous chiefs on the walls. There even was an
old wooden cigar store Indian that he dressed in native garb.
He also had an Old West gun collection, including what was claimed
to be the original Colt .45 that Buffalo Bill Cody used. There were
rifles and pistols and even a Gatling gun.
Since one of the rooms of the museum still had bunks in it, my
cousins and I would sleep there sometimes. We were fascinated by
the museum. Inspired by the mystery and mystique of the place, we’d
spend long hours before falling asleep telling each other scary stories.
One night when the moon was nearly full, my cousin Roy Jr. was
going on and on about how the cigar store Indian was really alive, just
waiting for us to fall asleep before he’d come after us. He called
it “The Revenge of the Comanche.”
“But we’re Comanche,” I reminded him.
“He’s only going to kill half of you, Nancy, the Scot half!”
I shivered. The moon was casting weird shadows through
the windows, and just then we heard someone rustling around in the main
room. I figured it was my uncle coming to tell us to quiet down,
but the intruder never spoke.
“Who’s out there?” Roy Jr. called.
No reply.
“You better answer or I’m going to use this here .38 I got under
my pillow.” Roy really did have a pistol with him. He always
brought it in case one of us had to use the outhouse. There were
tons of rattlesnakes and you couldn’t be too careful.
Still the intruder said nothing.
Then we heard the sound of the floorboards creaking. The
creaks came closer and closer to the bunk room.
A shadow loomed in the doorway in a familiar way that terrified
me. I screamed and Roy fired. I’ll never forget that brilliant
flash and the sound of boots running across the creaking floorboards.
We all started screaming. That and the gunshot brought the adults
from the main house.
Uncle Roy got us quieted down. He said, “Probably some
damn drifter thought there might be a cash box he could grab. Don’t
worry about it, kids. Just come on inside for tonight.”
My cousins packed up and headed for the house, but I lingered
with Uncle Roy as he checked things over. I saw him bend down and
pick something up off the floor.
“What did you find, Uncle Roy?”
“Never mind, Nancy. You’re okay now. Go on back to
the house with the others.”
But I saw what he had picked up. It was a pair of handcuffs.
I started shaking and couldn’t stop. Uncle Roy grabbed
me by the shoulders.
“You stop that, Nancy. He isn’t coming anywhere near you
ever again. I’m going to make sure of that. You hear me?”
I nodded my head, but I didn’t believe him.
Uncle Roy loved chimps and tigers. When he stocked his zoo he
made sure to buy some of each. The chimp was named Colonel, though
I don’t know why. Colonel was twelve or thirteen years old when he
came to live on the ranch. At first he had free run of the place.
He used to sit down at the dinner table with us for the main meal of the
day, which was served at noon. That chimp kept us kids laughing all
through dinner, making funny faces and burping and farting till Aunt Penny
would order him back outside. Then Colonel would put on a sad face
like he was filled with remorse and good intentions, but my aunt refused
to be fooled by him and out he’d go.
Colonel loved to hug and be hugged. He’d come right up
to my uncle and wrap his long arms around him. Only one time he got
carried away when he was hugging my youngest cousin. Nearly squeezed
Annie to death. She actually turned blue before my uncle knocked
Colonel out cold with a two-by-four to the head.
After that Colonel had to live in a cage. He wasn’t too
happy about it, either. My uncle used to go inside the cage and visit
Colonel. He’d take Colonel his two favorite things: a Lucky
Strike and a beer. There was a rocking chair in the cage, and Colonel
would rock on that chair smoking his Lucky and sipping his beer with a
satisfied grin on his face.
Uncle Roy bought three tigers, too. He always told visitors
that one was “the biggest Bengal tiger in captivity.” It left paw
prints bigger than a large pie plate.
Every so often Uncle Roy would have to go into the tiger cage.
Maybe one of them would be sick or need a shot, and he’d have to go in
there and shoo off the other two while he worked on the third. He
put a .44 magnum in his belt, and he’d have us keep guard with high-powered
rifles. He’d say, “Now if something happens in there, I want you
to do one of two things: shoot the tigers or, if you can’t kill them,
shoot me, and make sure you finish the job.” I was only fifteen years
old, and you can imagine what it was like for me to be given that kind
of order.
Uncle Roy had made the cages himself from pipe and sucker rod
left over from oil wells. Oil companies trash more stuff than you’d
ever imagine. He had designed the cages with food slots just the
right size for the cartons of meat scraps we fed them. We kids took
turns feeding the animals. Of course all the meat was raised and
butchered right there on the ranch. There was even a walk-in freezer
to store it.
One day when it was my turn to feed and water the animals, I
loaded the pickup. I drove up to the tiger cage and got out of the
truck. The Bengal was off in the corner of the cage, maybe sixty
feet away from me as I approached the tailgate piled with cartons of scraps.
Just as I leaned over the side of the truck to pick up a carton,
I felt this hot wind on the back of my neck. The hair on my neck
stood straight up like hackles, then I heard a roar that nearly deafened
me.
I ducked just as a paw swiped through the bars, then scrambled
under the pickup and crawled out the other side. When I turned back
towards the cage to look, there was the Bengal tiger up on its hind legs,
swiping between the bars with one giant paw. I guess it thought I’d
been moving too slow.
How it had managed to cross that sixty feet of cage without me
hearing it sent chills up and down my spine. What must it be like,
I wondered, to be out in the bush being hunted by such stealth?
One year my uncle decided to grow hay commercially. That meant
he had to get rid of all the mesquite whose roots grow deep. It was
hard and tedious work, so he hired what at the time we called wetbacks.
Today they’re called illegal aliens. He gave them room and board
and five dollars a day, and a day lasted until the job at hand was done.
Of course the Mexican workers were glad for the money, and my uncle was
glad for the cheap labor. He couldn’t find any locals who’d work
that cheap or that hard.
The Mexicans were cowboys in the old way. They could ride
and rope the way Texans hadn’t been able to in fifty years. The pickup
killed cowboyin’. We used horses for roundups, but mostly we used
trucks to get around the ranch.
There was one Mexican who looked just like Ricardo Montalban.
He had a thin black mustache and coal black hair he kept slicked back.
He taught me how to make rawhide riatas, which are used for roping cattle.
He could ride a horse with grace or fury, whichever was needed or suited
his pleasure.
One day I spotted a tall young man approaching the ranch on foot.
He was black as ebony and built like Charles Atlas in the back of comic
books. With his massive shoulders and no neck to speak of, he looked
like a giant black bull. My uncle hired him at once. I’d never
seen a black Mexican before, and I wondered about him.
I asked him, “Where’d you learn how to be a cowboy, Jesús?”
His name was spelled J-E-S-U-S, but in Spanish it didn’t sound like Jesus.
It sounded almost like HeyZeus, which I thought was perfect, given his
Greek God physique. We were haying together. I could speak
a little Spanish and would practice on him as I drove the pickup.
Jesús would carry a bale in each hand, then toss them up to me on
the top of the stack.
“On ranches outside Juarez.”
“Where were you born?”
“That’s where I was born. My mother is a whore in Juarez.”
He said it matter of factly, but it stunned me into total silence.
Somehow it happened that Jesús and I worked together a
lot. He was tough as any ranch hand I’d ever met, but gentle, too.
It was his gentleness that intrigued me. I couldn’t understand how
a man could be both.
I was nearly eighteen, getting ready to leave the ranch that
fall for the University of Texas in Austin. Except for my cousins,
I hadn’t had much experience with boys. I’d shied away from them.
But I felt comfortable with Jesús, who was maybe a year or
two older than me.
One night in August it was our turn to change water. Changing
water involved going out into the hay fields and moving the rainbird sprinklers.
It had rained briefly that evening, a hard downpour that meant the rattlers
would be out, having been flushed from their holes. I wanted to bring
a flashlight, but Jesús never worried about snakes.
“They are my friends,” he always said, striding fearlessly into
the dark.
I followed him warily. When we had finished changing water,
Jesús crouched down and took out what I thought was a cigarette.
He lit it, took a long drag, then passed it to me.
“I don’t smoke.”
“It’s not tobacco.”
Then I understood he was offering me marijuana.
This was in 1966 and I’d seen photos in Life magazine about hippies.
They intrigued me, and I wondered what it would be like to be one.
So I shared the joint with him.
I didn’t think it had affected me until we stood up to leave.
That’s when I nearly fell over, I was so stoned. Jesús caught
me and held me upright. For a moment our faces were very close, and
I could see his dark eyes looking into mine. It felt good to be held
by him, and I wondered what it would be like to kiss him. He had
a thick curly mustache that looked very sensuous as I stared at his mouth.
I reached up and stroked his face with my hand.
Then our lips touched very lightly. It was the sweetest
kiss I’ve ever had. It ruined me for the groping boys that followed.
I would have done more with him, much more, and was about to
lie down on the wet earth when we heard a rattler. They don’t always
rattle a warning, so we were very lucky.
Jesús sighed and said in Spanish, “Maybe it’s better this
way.”
Afterwards we were even closer as friends. I spent as much
time as I could with Jesús, though we never kissed again.
My uncle had some prized peach trees down by the pond. If no one
could find Jesús, we knew to look for him there. He loved
those peaches. His favorite pastime was to sit beneath the peach
trees feasting on the luscious fruit.
Not long after our night together, my uncle discovered Jesús
squatting under a peach tree. He fired him on the spot, and I’ve
always wondered if Uncle Roy did it out of fear that Jesús would
hurt me somehow.
I watched Jesús walk away from the ranch until he disappeared
down the highway. It must have been 120 degrees that day. I
felt sadder than I had since mama ran off and left me. Sadder even
than after my daddy came into my bedroom that first time.
After Jesús left the ranch, everything changed for me.
Two weeks later I was living in a dormitory at the University, dating fraternity
boys and trying to figure out why I hated it so much.
The change I experienced was both a beginning and an ending.
I began my life as an adult womon in the world and ended my childhood on
the ranch that had kept me safe from harm.
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18. Final Secrets
Y |
We were driving through a small town called Dripping Springs when Odysea
said, “The next town is Henly, which is where we head south on 165 towards
Blanco. Salina’s ranch is in the hills near Lone Woman Mountain.
We could be there in twenty minutes, but I was wondering if you two would
agree to a brief stop first. It’s a bit out of our way, but I think
it might be worth the trouble.”
“What do you have in mind?” I asked.
“Nothing short of a ritual cleansing in the Pedernales River.”
Lucky and I didn’t hesitate. Given that only three days
ago we’d been trudging through snow, the prospect of swimming was irresistible.
We drove a few miles beyond Henly and then headed north towards Pedernales
State Park in Johnson City, which had been Lyndon B. Johnson’s boyhood
home.
I admit I’d had my doubts when Odysea had insisted in Vermont
that we bring clothes for summer. Now, as she paid our visitors’
fee inside a gatehouse to the park, I leaned against the Audi and basked
in the 80° sunshine. It instantly revitalized me, helping to
dispatch my road weariness.
We drove through the park on a winding road until we reached
the short trail to the falls. As soon as we came out on the overlook,
I wanted to rush down the rocky expanse to the river and jump in.
The numerous falls create luscious pools that would be ideal for swimming,
but the state prohibits it because of flash floods. Photos are posted
at the trail head that show the river changing within minutes from a calm
ribbon of blue to a churning torrent of gray and yellow. There’s
even a claxon — an electronic horn to alert people to danger. I’m
not a strong swimmer, and the photographs are very convincing, so for one
time in my life I obeyed the warning signs.
We drove back through the park and came to a lot two miles down
river where we parked, then followed a steep sandy trail down to The Beach.
That’s what the sign called it, though I couldn’t imagine a beach in the
middle of Texas.
If it wasn’t exactly a beach by my east coast standards, there
was sand amidst the boulders and rocks that line the Pedernales.
The sand had subtle rosy hues and was very abrasive, sharp enough to cut
if you kneeled on it.
When we reached the Pedernales itself, we headed upriver for
several minutes until we found a rocky nook that was private. Being
mid-week in the off season, there were few visitors to the park and even
fewer swimmers, but Odysea insisted on as much privacy as we could get.
The Pedernales was maybe fifty feet wide where we settled.
Along the banks were trees that looked like cedars to me, but they were
losing their brown needles so perhaps they were junipers. There also
were fields of green grass, cacti, and oak. The Pedernales, unlike
the muddy brown rivers in East Texas, was clear and very colorful.
The colors ranged from pale blue to aquamarine to dark green, and there
were dark brown or black strands woven throughout. I soon would learn
that all of the rivers in central Texas had this same Caribbean look to
them. I suspected that the local gods, having delivered a lackluster
landscape, decided to make up for it by blessing the land with colorful
rivers. They contrasted perfectly with the hills that Lucky had complained
were too “brown and barren.”
Odysea and I disrobed in the shelter of the boulders, then she
sat cross-legged on a flat rock and began meditating in the sun.
During the trip she often had meditated in the back seat while Lucky rode
shotgun. She told me that the practice of sitting meditation was
central to her being able to maintain equanimity. “Without it, I’m
a torrent of conflicting emotions and thoughts. With it, I tap into
a spiritual wellspring that feels ever deeper.”
Lucky took off his t-shirt and shoes, rolled up his jeans and
gingerly tested the water.
“How is it?” I asked.
“Feels warm.”
He was right. The warm water moved surprisingly fast, and
there were strong rapids that I had to brace myself against when I waded
in. The bottom was sandy, but there also were large boulders and
slippery rocks. I knelt down in a pool, then totally immersed myself
in the cool rushing river, letting my exhaustion and worries wash away.
I stayed beneath the water for as long as I could, came up for air, then
went under again. I felt as if I were being baptized, the sins of
the world washing away downstream.
Lying on a flat rock that heated up in the sun, I felt myself drifting
into sleep. It was delicious. The song of the river lulled
me into a state of mind where I floated between this world and some parallel
universe of liquid calm.
Some time later I heard Odysea calling my name, then awoke to
find her and Lucky looking at me. Each of us was perched on adjacent
boulders, and they were smiling in this very friendly way. Once more
I felt connected to them, deeply so, as if our journey of 2100 miles had
cemented something between us that would last a lifetime.
“Hi,” Odysea said. “Welcome back.”
I yawned and said, “I’m not sure I want to be back.”
“I know what you mean, but we’ve got things we have to discuss.”
I stretched and yawned again. I felt like a cat and nearly
purred I was so content. “Hmm, I guess I’m ready to talk if you are.”
She turned very businesslike, even sat up straighter. “First,
I want to thank you one more time, Jimmy, for getting me to Texas.”
I started to object, but she shushed me. “Just say, ‘You’re welcome,’
and we’ll leave it at that.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I also want to thank you, Lucky, for coming with us on this
road trip.”
“I didn’t have any choice,” he desisted.
“Just say, ‘You’re welcome.’”
“You’re welcome,” he repeated with a grin.
“Second, I want you both to know that when we arrive at Salina’s
ranch I am committed to one thing and one thing only: Being with
her. That doesn’t mean that I will forget about you, but her needs
come first.”
“We don’t have to stay at the ranch with you,” I offered, though
I hadn’t considered what else we might do. My money was nearly gone.
“I’m sure you are welcome to stay there as long as you need or
want. There are several small cabins in the hills that will afford
you privacy. Of course I’ll have to confirm this with Salina, but
I have no doubt that she’ll insist on your using them. That’s the
kind of womon she is.”
Odysea shifted on the boulder, and I noticed once more the clay
figure of a pregnant goddess dangling between her breasts. She clutched
it with one hand as she continued. “The night I told you about her
dying . . . ,” she faltered, as if unsure how to say what came next, “well,
it was unusual for me to react like that. Death is something I take
very much for granted. My sobbing was more over how powerless I felt
in reaching Texas than in facing the fact of her death.”
I was someone for whom death was terrifying. I didn’t even
like to talk about it. It brought up too many painful parts of my
life. Even now I started to bristle and wish that she would end this
part of the conversation. Instead, she dove in deeper.
“There are many pieces to this. I know that I don't know
what death brings, if it brings anything. I see it as one of life’s
mysteries that we have no way of knowing about for sure. Unlike most
Buddhists, I’m not convinced of reincarnation, though being able to play
with possible afterlife scenarios intrigues me. I am always amazed
and fascinated that some folks think they really know what will happen
after their last breath. As far as I am concerned, it is the Great
Adventure available to us. It will happen to each of us and there
really isn't anything we can do about it. I for one look forward
to it!”
At this point I half-recalled a story of hers about a friend
who had chosen to die. Suddenly I was curious. No, I was more
than curious. It was as if there was something I desperately needed
to know for myself. “Can you tell me again about your friend who
committed suicide?
Odysea no longer hesitated. “Her name was Kondor and she
was one of the most talented people I've known. She wrote hundreds
of songs, played guitar and piano (mostly self-taught), and sang with an
unusual, gentle voice. She was a woodworker who made beautiful small
things entirely by hand. She drew. And created herbal remedies.
She did numerology and astrology and tarot with an uncanny instinct.
“Kondor was tiny, 4' 11", and built like a Shetland pony.
She had been bulimic since the age of 13 and had been self-mutilating for
at least that long. She loved cocaine, but lived on very little money,
so rarely had any. She said for that reason alone it was a good thing
she was poor. She smoked several joints of marijuana every day, and
at the end of her life had been thinking that she needed to confront this
addiction.
“She didn't believe that she would live to be 30, and her death
by hanging happened about two weeks before her 30th birthday. Her
older sister had died in an auto crash the previous year, and Kondor was
having a hard time thinking that she was about to become older than that
sister.
“Kondor and I had talked about suicide many times during the
years we knew each other. Both of us believed that the right to end
our lives is a given. When she told me she was going to kill herself,
I had many reactions, some of which were very surprising and embarrassing
for me: I asked her to wait a week and see if she didn't feel differently
about it. I worried what our friends would think of me if they knew
that I had known she was going to do it and hadn't done anything to stop
her. I cried, both for myself and for her. I knew I was going
to miss her terribly. I also knew that she was in such deep psychic
pain that there was nothing I could do to alleviate it.
“We talked about her decision for hours, and when it was time
she took me to a friend’s house and drove off to asphyxiate herself in
her truck. Of course the friend went to look for her and finally
found her, still alive and very angry that it hadn't worked.
“In the end she waited the week that I had asked, then hung herself
with her dog's leash from the loft of her house.”
Odysea stopped speaking, and we could hear the song of the river
fill the silence. She grasped the clay goddess with her right hand
and said, “I’m so grateful for Kondor and her gifts, especially the final
gift she bequeathed — no longer having to fear death or dying.”
“What’s wrong, Jimmy?”
I was sitting upright, very rigid and anxious. I felt physically
ill. It was as if I needed to vomit but my throat was constricted
or blocked. I must have started gagging, for Odysea and Lucky approached
me with worried faces. I waved them off, then deliberately forced
the muscles in my throat to relax until I could take shallow breaths again.
As I started breathing more regularly, the wave of nausea passed.
I realized that the last thing on earth I wanted to do was head
to some ranch in the hills where a woman lay dying.
“I can’t do it,” I finally said out loud.
“Do what?”
“I can’t go with you to Salina’s ranch.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t.”
“Jimmy, you’ve got to open up about this. It’s literally
choking you.”
I lay back on the warm rock, listening to the Pedernales rush
by. The river’s song sounded sad to me now, very forlorn. Odysea
stood next to me and lay her hands on my forehead. The clay goddess
dangled over my eyes. It was crudely made but all the more beautiful
because of it. It swayed back and forth hypnotically. Lucky
started to play Odysea’s djembe. The rhythm was rough at first, but
slowly, very softly, he found the right beat to match the song of the river.
Then I knew it was time.
I sat upright and settled myself cross-legged on the rock.
Odysea looked at me with encouragement.
Lucky smiled sweetly.
And naked beneath a clear blue Texas sky, I set free my final
secret.
Contents | Top | Home |
19. Revolution!
W |
Mostly I worked with my Uncle Rocco blowing up buildings in central
New Jersey. He’d blow them up or knock them down, then my cousin
and I would haul away the rubble. Vinnie operated the excavator,
I drove the truck. It was a small but successful family business.
Occasionally Uncle Rocco got jobs in Manhattan. I hated
working in New York. The driving was hellacious on those traffic-choked
streets, but my uncle always gave us a bonus for the extra hassle, so it
wasn’t all bad.
I made good money either way, which I supplemented by dealing
pot to friends. Notice I didn’t say “selling drugs.” I didn’t
sell drugs. I dealt pot. People who sold drugs back then sold
heroin, something I wouldn’t touch. Friends did the favor of selling
you a lid or two of marijuana. I was a friend, not a drug pusher.
We never thought of pot as a drug. It was grass, herb,
a non-addictive high that set your mind free and your spirit soaring.
Smoking a joint was a way of connecting with other young people.
If you got high you were cool, if you didn’t you were straight, and “never
the twain shall meet.”
The world was black and white and the issues were never cloudy.
That’s what revolution is all about.
Don’t listen to me. I don’t know what I’m talking about.
I’m a fool. I’m Chicken Little. I used to drive a dump truck
and sell drugs so I didn’t have to pay for my own. I don’t know anything
about revolution. I got suckered like everybody else my age into
believing we could change the world. I was one of a whole generation
of baby boomers whose sandbox was history. When I hear that term
The Revolution, I want to scream, “There was no such thing!” It was
mass hysteria like Orson Welles and The War of the Worlds. It was
a drug-induced fantasy. A day dream. A nightmare.
The cost was tremendous. I’m still paying for it.
Every day I wake up in a haze of self-hate. I’m so full of shame
that I wonder how I manage to stand upright. Some days simple gravity
is more than I can bear, and I haven’t even hit fifty yet.
Wait. I’ll just tell you what happened. And leave out the rhetoric.
My uncle got a job tearing down a small building near Times Square.
It was an easy job because buildings on either side already had been demolished,
giving us ready access. The only hitch was that the job had to be
done right away. The developers were facing some kind of bank deadline
that meant my uncle had to get the building down immediately. So
he took on extra help, including sub-contracting two more dump trucks so
we could expedite the clean-up.
That’s how I met Fred. Fred was in his early twenties,
obviously college educated from the way he talked. Very precise and
polite. Normally Uncle Rocco stayed away from college boys because
they never lasted. But this time he didn’t care. It was only
for a couple of weeks at most.
Fred was a flagger. He’d stand out on the streets and hold
up traffic while the trucks backed in or out of the site. It was
a job for a simpleton, so Uncle Rocco thought maybe the college kid could
do it.
Fred was very flamboyant about directing traffic. He stood
out on the streets of Manhattan as if he were some kind of air traffic
controller. He loved it, absolutely loved the simple power of stopping
traffic, then letting it go again.
“Now this is real,” he said the first day as he climbed into
the cab. It was the last load of the day and Uncle Rocco had told
him to ride with me. Fred had red hair and wore black horn-rimmed
glasses. He smiled a lot. “What’s your name, man?”
“My name is Robert Joseph Santoro. You can call me Bobby,”
I told him. “What alias do you go by?”
He flinched as if I had hit a nerve, studied me a moment, then
did this kind of mental shrug that I saw him do often, like he had decided
to let it slide. “My name is Fred. Do you get high, Bobby?”
“Every chance I get.”
“Good man.” He pulled out a joint and lit up.
We were instant friends.
It was at the dump that Fred first mentioned the Vietnam War.
He was very smooth, not pushy at all, just kind of feeling me out.
“So have you ever been to an anti-war demonstration?”
I laughed. “Fred, my uncle would fire me the very minute
I showed up at one of those demonstrations. Did you notice the flag
flying from the top of the wrecking crane? It’s not for decorative
purposes. Uncle Rocco personally coined the phrase ‘Love It or Leave
It.’”
Seagulls hovered overhead, their cries competing with the roar
of bulldozers leveling the mounds of garbage. It was a gray steamy
day in late September. The noxious smell of diesel mixed with the
nauseating odor of human refuse, so I kept the windows up as we waited
in line to dump the load.
“Does your uncle own your mind as well as your time?”
“Of course not.” I resented the implication.
“Then you can do whatever you want on your time off, can’t you?”
“Sure,” I insisted, then added with a chuckle, “just as long
as he doesn’t know about it.”
After work on Friday, Fred invited me to hang out with him at a townhouse
in Greenwich Village. “It belongs to the father of a friend of mine,”
he said. “He and his new girlfriend are away for the weekend.”
When we walked inside Fred introduced me to four or five friends
who were crashing there. I felt awkward at first. I was definitely
out of my league in this fine house with these older college kids.
But they were very friendly, made a point of making me feel welcome when
they learned that I worked with Fred.
“He drives the dump truck,” he announced as if it was a badge
of honor.
I couldn’t tell if he was laughing at me or making me into something
I wasn’t. I quickly brought out a plastic baggie of pot and started
rolling joints with Bambu rolling papers. It was good pot, and everyone
got very stoned.
Somebody turned on the radio to WBAI. A black man named
Julius Lester was rapping about honky this and honky that. I noticed
right away that the heads in the room were nodding in agreement, but finally
Fred said, “Hey, it’s Friday night! Let’s party a little.”
He changed the station to Alison Steele, the Nightbird, on WNEW-FM.
She was one of the first women disc jockeys to break the gender barrier
in New York radio. She had this breathy voice that sounded exotic
by comparison with male dj’s. That night she was reading love poems
and featuring music from San Francisco. The Jefferson Airplane.
The Grateful Dead.
A bottle of Mateus materialized. It was a sweet and mild
Portuguese wine that mellowed the whole scene. We laughed a lot,
then one by one people got up and went off into other rooms.
Fred disappeared, too, and I found myself alone with a very intense
girl named Janet. She had a wide mouth and serious eyes. We
talked for a while about life in Greenwich Village, which was new to her.
I rolled another joint and fired it up. She took a long hit and motioned
me to come close. When I did she put her wide mouth on mine and blew
the smoke deep into my lungs. She sucked it back out, then blew back
in again. It was very sensual, and I got quite high. Then we
started kissing and touching and undressing each other. I was a little
worried that Fred or his friends would come back in the room, which had
no door. It was my first time making love, and I was nervous, but
she said, “It’s okay. They’ll leave us alone.” Just like she
had read my mind.
I saw Janet a lot after that night, usually at an apartment in the Lower
East Side where she and the others normally stayed. They called themselves
a collective, a term that was new to me at the time. When she and
Fred learned I dealt a little weed, they asked me if I could score acid.
I’d never done LSD, but I pretended that I had. “Sure. How many hits
do you want?”
We tripped that weekend. The entire collective dropped
the acid together, then had an involved discussion about politics.
Finally Fred, Janet, and I went into another room. I lay back on
a mattress on the floor and kind of melted into Janet who was lying next
to me. Fred sat cross-legged on the floor next to us and went off
on this long rap about working class youth and the revolution. I
didn’t know what he was talking about, but his voice sounded magical.
I could see brave new worlds opening up to me in 3-D multicolor.
The Beatles’ White album was playing on the stereo. John Lennon’s
voice melded with Fred’s, singing You say you want a revolution / Well,
you know / We all want to change the world . . . .
I kept going back into Manhattan even after the job ended and Fred no
longer worked with us. The collective bought lids of grass from me
every week, which gave me a reason to be there. Janet didn’t mind.
We spent a lot of time talking and getting naked together.
In November bombs exploded in the Manhattan offices of Chase
Manhattan, Standard Oil, General Motors. That’s when she started
talking to me about the way things were. I listened and tried to
understand the terminology, which was all new to me. Imperialism,
class antagonism, racist infrastructure. Over the next few months
Janet loaned me some books to read, like The Autobiography of Malcolm X,
Abbie Hoffman’s Woodstock Nation, a newspaper called FIRE!
In early December two Black Panthers named Mark Clark and Fred
Hampton were killed in cold blood in their apartment by Chicago police.
“The pigs didn’t even try to hide what they’d done,” Janet said.
“It was an act of assassination, officially sanctioned at the highest level.
They’re overconfident. We’re going to change that very soon.”
I wasn’t exactly sure who “we” were, but it felt good to be included.
For the first time in my life I felt like I belonged.
One day she asked me, “Do you know where your uncle keeps his
dynamite?”
“Sure. Why do you want to know?”
“Just curious.”
It was early March of 1970. We were lying on her mattress
on the floor, having just made love. On one wall there were posters
of Ché Guevara and Huey Newton. There was a thin cotton Indian
bedspread on the mattress. It was cold, and I pulled Janet towards
me.
“I love you,” I said. It was the first time I’d ever told
a girl I loved her.
She laughed as if I’d said something quaint.
I’m not telling this very well. It sounds stupid. Like I was some pawn they were using in their nefarious terrorist plot. It wasn’t like that at all. They were my friends. They wanted some dynamite to wake people up to how seriously wrong things were in America. Uncle Rocco had plenty. He wouldn’t miss it.
But he did. “Who’s been getting into the dynamite?” he asked me
and Vinnie one Monday morning.
“What are you talkin’ about?” Vinnie said.
“There’s a whole goddamn box of dynamite missing, that’s what
I’m talkin’ about. Now which one of you little fuckers has decided
to go into business on his own?”
I had to get it back. Either that or Uncle Rocco told me he was
going to kick my ass then call the cops. I drove straight to the
townhouse where Fred had taken me the first night. Janet had told
me they were staying there again while the owners were on their honeymoon.
I got stuck in traffic inside the Holland Tunnel. I was driving my
uncle’s Cadillac, which he had loaned me for my little errand.
When I arrived at West 11th Street, I kept trying to find a place
to park. Finally a spot opened up near the townhouse just as I saw
Fred walk inside. I parked, got out, and started towards the townhouse
when the whole world trembled and shook. A flash of fire filled the
sky. The townhouse seemed to rise up, to grow bigger somehow, then
suddenly shrink inside itself. The blast blew a hole in the front
of the building, glass shards flying everywhere. It knocked me to
the ground. Two women ran out of the building, their clothes blown
off them. I recognized both. Neither was Janet.
A man next door who looked like Dustin Hoffman was carrying a
lamp from inside his building onto the street. The wail of sirens
filled the air. I picked myself off the sidewalk, then limped towards
the building, but the front was a heap of rubble as if Uncle Rocco had
been at work.
I ran back and forth, screaming “Janet! Fred!”
I started tearing at the bricks, trying to find a way into the
heap.
Arms grabbed at me and pushed me aside. Rescue workers
in uniforms dragged me away, shouting something about a gas leak, which
is what they thought had caused the explosion.
I knew better.
A crowd gathered.
Barricades were set up.
I leaned against one and wondered which side I was on.
I never went back to New Jersey, just left the Cadillac where it was
and walked away. Weeks later I found myself standing on a highway
in northern New Mexico. I had no idea how I’d gotten there.
I started walking down the highway.
That’s the way I spent the next four years, walking across America,
riding when someone offered, standing for long periods of time staring
at the prairie, the desert, the city skyline — wherever I happened to be.
My hair grew long, and I had a beard from not shaving. Hippies always
stopped to pick me up. They’d get me stoned, let me crash for the
night, sometimes drive me to a commune if they knew of one nearby.
I’d stay for a week, a month. I didn’t talk much, so people let me
be. “He’s cool,” they’d say. Sooner or later I’d wander off
in search of something. I didn’t know what.
I found a wallet once in a restroom in Indiana. It had
a driver’s license, social security card, some money. This was before
photo ID’s. The date of birth, even the height and weight, were close
enough to my own so that I kept the wallet. The name on the ID was
James St. John. Thereafter when people asked me my name, I answered
“Jimmy.”
I ended up in Miami in the fall of 1974. I was standing
on a street and saw a red emergency call box. It was the middle of
the night. I opened it up, picked up the receiver, said, “I want
to report an explosion.”
They thought I was nuts.
They were right, but for all the wrong reasons.
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20. Lost
I |
When it was clear I had finished talking, Odysea and Lucky quietly approached
the flat boulder where I sat. Without discussing it, they both took
one of my hands and joined their own. We held hands without speaking,
and once more I felt a force flow into and through me that was remarkable
for its power and grace.
Then Lucky did something out of character. I didn’t see
it because I had my eyes closed, but nonetheless I knew it was him.
He gave a great tug on my arm, pulling me off the boulder and into the
river. The cool rushing water was a shock after having sat in the
hot sunlight so long. I spluttered and roared, then began splashing
my two laughing comrades. They splashed back, then romped into the
river. We joined hands again and waded gingerly over slippery rocks
until we found a pool deep enough to submerge. Like schoolchildren
on holiday, we jumped up and down in the pool, giggling and laughing and
celebrating our joyous camaraderie.
When we returned to our boulders, Lucky took off his now soaking
jeans, while Odysea removed her goddess necklace and lay it on a rock so
that the fiber thong would dry. She turned to me and asked, “How
did you finally stop roaming?”
“When I got out of jail in Miami, I had no reason to stay.
I didn’t even know what had brought me there in the first place.
I started hitchhiking north on I-95 and got picked up near Orlando by some
hippies heading to Tennessee. They were going to the Farm, a commune
led by Stephen Gaskin, and they invited me to join them. I’d heard
of Stephen, who had this huge following of young people hungry for spirituality.
Stephen was an ex-Catholic, ex-Marine, hippie college teacher in San Francisco
who blended the more mystical parts of the world’s religions. One
of his books, Monday Night Class, was an underground classic. This
was after Baba Ram Dass had published Be Here Now, and about the same time
the Jesus Freak movement took off.”
“What was the Farm like?”
“It was pretty rough when I got there. People were crowded
into old army tents, and there weren’t enough privies or showers.
Yet it didn’t seem to matter to them. They were exhilarated at creating
their vision of a low-tech, organic, vegetarian community where people
worked at living peacefully.
“Of course I didn’t feel as if I belonged there. I still
felt the constant pressure to keep moving to protect myself and my secret.
“One day I met some people who had come from God’s Land in Kentucky
to check out the Farm. They told me they lived on liberated land
where anyone was welcome to stay. The deed to the land actually had
God named as the owner.
“By then the Farm was overrun with visitors and street people
fleeing the cities. There were more rules and structure than felt
comfortable to me. God’s Land sounded like a haven.
“I went back with them to Kentucky but didn’t stay. For
one thing, I couldn’t deal with the heat. It was so hot in both Tennessee
and Kentucky that I could barely breathe. And though I didn’t recognize
it at the time, I still was lost inside.
“At God’s Land I met a couple who were building a small cabin
on the side of a ridge. JC and Mary had moved from Vermont.
They mentioned another free-land situation along the Canadian border.
It was called Earth People’s Park. It had been started with money
the Hog Farm commune got for their work at Woodstock. So I headed
north.”
“Did you stay long at Earth People’s Park?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t remember living through a winter
there, but I may have. Things are very blurry for me about my time
there. I stayed in an old school bus with six other people.
We had one thing in common — each of us was running away from something.
There were two men avoiding arrest warrants in other states, two teenage
runaways from New York City, and a hippie couple fleeing the suburbs of
Boston. It was always a precarious community, right up to the end
when the state seized the land.”
“So how did you end up in Barnet?”
“I met Peter Baker at Natural Provisions in St. Johnsbury.
He and a monk were trying to convert an old farmhouse into a Tibetan Buddhist
retreat center. The idea appealed to me, and I offered to help.
They didn’t talk much, which meant they were comfortable with my long silences.
Their quiet company, the physical labor, the peacefulness of Barnet Mountain,
the simple but good food — all of it anchored me in a way I needed.
“I worked with them for over a year, at the end of which they
deeded me lifetime rights to ten acres on the edge of Milarepa. After
I built my cabin, I floundered for a while, wondering what to do next.
That’s when I heard about Woodbury College. The rest you know.”
“How did you come to Vermont?” Lucky asked Odysea. It was the
first time he had asked either of us a personal question. It signaled
to me a great change in our relationship, as if he finally felt secure.
Odysea told him that when she and Salina had parted, she had
moved to Northampton, Massachusetts, attracted by its large lesbian community.
Then she went to nearby Brattleboro when she’d found work at the Food Coop.
A couple years later she fell in love with a woman who lived in White River
Junction. It was after that relationship had turned abusive that
she and I met.
Lucky listened closely, then looked uncomfortable, as if he wanted
to ask something more but didn’t dare.
Always direct, Odysea asked him, “What would you like to know?”
“Is it different?”
“Do you mean loving womyn?”
He nodded his head shyly.
“Yes, it is different, or at least it is for me. Whenever
I had sex with men, I knew they were judging my body. I was too fat,
my breasts were too small, I smelled . . . there were a thousand and one
things wrong with me. Then I met Salina. She was a graduate
student and I was in my senior year at the University of Texas. She
was the instructor in a course I took on womyn’s literature. I think
I loved her from the first moment I saw her. Such eyes! They
are like deep brown pools filled with passion and fire!
“Salina is Tejano or Mexica — indigenous Mexican. Her ancestors
lived in what we now call Texas long before Europeans knew it existed.
She’s aristocratic and demanding and gracious beyond belief. She’s
also humble and self-effacing, almost to a fault. A very complex
and often contradictory womon. I suppose that’s what intrigued me
about her.
“When the course finally ended and the last paper had been handed
in and graded, we met one night in downtown Austin. She walked right
up to me and said, ‘I’m not your teacher anymore.’ ‘I know,’ I replied.
“That night we made love for the first time. It was the
most profound experience of my young life, very erotic and sensual, yet
spiritual, too. I floated in her embrace, unafraid, undaunted.
She set things free in me.
“With Salina I knew that she liked my body, that it was just
right, every part of it. It was like coming home after living in
a foreign land. Her affirmation made the whole experience totally
different. I felt as if I could love her back since I knew what it
was like to be in a womon’s body.”
Odysea grew silent, thoughtful, and a private smile played across
her lips. Then she came back to us and said, “I could go on and on,
but I won’t. I’m curious about you, Lucky.”
“About me? I don’t know about making love. I haven’t
had the chance yet. But I’m still hoping . . .”
We laughed, and Odysea said, “I wasn’t really asking about your
sexuality, though of course I’m interested in everything about you.
What I was curious about is how you came to Vermont.”
“My mother brought me from Connecticut when I was sixteen.”
So that’s who had been driving the car that the rest area attendant
had seen.
“Was she from Vermont?” I asked.
“She lived here just before I was born. It’s where she
met Jim. When she brought me back, she said Jim would take care of
me because she couldn’t anymore, that she was too sick.” His face
grew sad, and he added in a whisper, “She had AIDS. I never saw her
again.”
“I’m sorry, Lucky,” Odysea said. She gave him a few moments
before asking, “Did you live with Jim?”
“No. Jim turned me over to social services. He acted
like he didn’t know me.”
So Jim must have been the attendant who had called the cops.
During the entire time we had been talking, the weather had been changing.
We went from a cloudless sky to a few high flying puffs to massive thunder
heads in the west.
Odysea walked to the car to use the cell phone. She wanted
to call Salina to let her know that we were about to descend on Lone Woman
Mountain. Just as she returned to our spot, the temperature started
dropping, and suddenly a wind came up that had a bite to it. She
had to raise her voice to be heard.
“Salina insists that you use the cabins for as long as you’d
like.”
“How is she?”
“She sounds strong for someone who’s dying of breast cancer.
But I wouldn’t have expected otherwise.”
Each of us began gathering our things, though we were slow about
it. Leaving this serene spot spelled the end of our journey. No matter
what, our time together would be different from here on.
I remember I was pulling up my jeans when the claxon sounded.
There was no mistake what it was. Those things make a blatting roar
that shakes your bones. The signs at the parking areas had been clear:
Head for high ground immediately. Don’t bother collecting your stuff.
Just get out.
I grabbed hold of Odysea and started rushing along the river
bank, calling out to Lucky, “Come on!” He ran right behind us.
We were a ways from the trail that led up the side of the ridge, but it
didn’t take long to get there. When we did we ran up the sandy path
until we reached wooden steps and a platform with benches built into it.
It was there that Odysea pulled away.
“Stop, Jimmy! I’ve got to go back! I left my goddess
necklace on the rock!”
She nearly got away from me, but I grabbed her wrist and wouldn’t
let go.
The claxon roared like an angry giant and the wind blew stinging
sand at us.
“You can’t!” I shouted.
“Let go!” she screamed at me. “Kondor made the goddess.
It was the last thing she ever made. I have to get it!”
She struggled and nearly pulled free, but I wrapped both arms
around her and wouldn’t let go.
Above her pleading and the roar of the claxon and the screaming
wind, we heard a new sound. It was coming at us from upriver.
It was so loud that it made us stop struggling for a moment to turn in
its direction. When we did we saw Lucky far below us standing on
the boulder where Odysea had left her necklace. He held it high in
one hand so we could see the red clay goddess dangling from the thong.
Triumphant and proud, Lucky beamed at us.
Directly behind him came a churning wall of water, yellow and
gray, six feet high.
He never knew what hit him.
“You watch the river for any sign of him, I’ll call for help on the
cell phone!” Though I was standing right next to her, I had to shout
to be heard. She nodded her head, her eyes scanning the flood waters.
I ran off the platform and up the wooden stairs that led to the
parking area. I yanked open the door to the Audi and scrambled for
the cell phone beneath the car seat. The battery had been running
low, so I had plugged it into the lighter in the dash. As I clumsily
grabbed it, the cord came unplugged. I was frantically trying to
reconnect it when I saw flashing blue lights. There were two Texas
State Police cruisers and a Blanco County Sheriff’s car coming at high
speed into the lot.
Before I had time to flag them, the cruisers boxed in the Audi.
I was sitting half-in, half-out of the driver’s seat with both feet on
the ground. The trooper nearest me bolted to the open door.
I started to get out of the car to lead them to the river when he said,
“Mr. St. John, I believe.” I saw his arm swing back, then a fist
came towards me as if in slow motion. It was eerie, for what I noticed
was a huge ring just like my father’s. It bore the Masonic seal.
Just before his punch connected, breaking my nose and knocking
me unconscious, I heard him say, “Consider this a gift from Trooper Smalley.”
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