PART FIVE: GIVING

“Give to those that asketh thee, . . .”
Matthew 6:42

 



Lucky’s Dream

Y
ou 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.
      I know I should hurry, but I am tired and the way is steep and rocky.  I do not want to follow him.  He is wild tonight and I am afraid.  When we set out, his eyes darted this way and that, suspicious and wary.  Even now I hear him arguing with a spirit who wails in the chill wind that blows down the path.
      “Hurry!” he shouts back at me.  I walk faster but slip on loose rock.  I fall and scramble back up as he screams at the spirit.  I can’t understand what he says, but his resolve is weakening.  Soon the spirit will win.
      A cold mist rises in a stinging rain, pushing me back.
      I resist and climb higher.
      No sooner do I reach my father than a wall of darkness prevails.  It feels alive, so thick and vile I might be swallowed whole and disappear forever.  I consider running down the mountain, back to my mother and the fire.  But my father pulls me towards him and I cannot resist.
      He is an old man who begins his mornings with a song of praise to the rising sun.  The song is long and intricate, woven of many strands, including his gratitude for me.  He tells the sun that he never expected a child at his age.  That I am like a sun to him.
      Sometimes I can’t tell whether he’s saying Son or Sun.  He gets confused when he sings, as if the effort is too much.
      Tonight as we reach the top of the mountain, he makes me sit with him on a narrow ledge of rock.  We wait in the long dark moments before day.  I do not want to wait, I do not want to listen to his song, but he makes me.  Though his body is old and bent, his spirit is fierce.
      I cannot refuse him.  His will is mine.
      I hear him mumbling to the spirit.  “I will,” he says submissively, so I know it’s won.  “He is yours,” he promises again and again.
      The sky grows lighter and the mist thinner.  When the rain slows, then stops, I start to see patches of empty land far below me.
      By day we wander through it in search of a perfect garden my mother promises is there.
      By night she tells me the story of her childhood.  It’s a strange tale, one my father hints she made up.
      “I am the lost child of Evening Star, taken from her by Coyote’s pup on the day of my birth.”
      “Humph,” my father snorts, then pretends he is coughing.
      My mother sighs but continues.
      “Evening Star went to the Great Garden in search of the Secret of Life.  She entered without fear and left without remorse.  Because of this she was blessed by the Mother and pursued across the world by the Angry Gardener.
      My mother describes him to me, and I laugh at his clownish look; but my father warns me, “This is no clown!  Laugh at your peril!”
      I stifle my laughter, and my mother sighs again.
      “He has lost hope, but I have not, which is why we still walk in search of the Garden.”  She pauses, then smiles serenely and promises, “One day soon the Mother will welcome us as her lost children.”
      My father never snorts at this part.  I think he believes it, or at least he once believed.  For as long as I can remember he has followed her day after day through the bitter dry land.
      But he follows no more.
      Instead he listens to the spirit on the mountain who calls to him at night while we sleep.  He thinks only he can hear its booming voice in the thunder, but it isn’t true.
      It offers much: He will be the first of a great tribe spreading across a rich land of green promise.
      It asks little:  A single sacrifice of warm blood.
      My mother watches him when he thinks she’s sleeping.  She watches and tries to read his moving lips.
      I watch her watching him until my eyes close into sleep.

“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
e drove until nearly two the next morning.  By then it didn’t matter how many cups of coffee I sucked down, the caffeine had quit working.  Odysea and Lucky were snoring in tandem, and I sensed myself being lulled into their sleepy rhythm.  I resisted for over an hour, blasting the radio and constantly changing stations to stay awake, then felt sick I was so exhausted.
      Earlier in the evening I had napped in the back seat as Odysea drove us across New York State.  I’d fall asleep for a moment, then my skull would start buzzing from the road vibrations on the window, momentarily waking me up.  It was like dipping in and out of a shallow stream.  I kept falling into parts of Lucky’s dream, which were mixed with scenes from earlier in the day:  Trooper Smalley at the cabin, Diane behind Anthony’s Diner, Lucky in his ski mask throwing crackers to the gulls on Lake Champlain.  It all melded into a bizarre dream-movie replete with characters from South Florida State Hospital.
      When the Cuban shrinks started conspiring with Smalley, I forced myself awake.  We had just crossed into Pennsylvania.  I stretched and yawned and asked Odysea how she was doing.  It was then that Lucky offered to drive.
      “You don’t have a license, do you?”
      “I’ve got a license.”
      I almost laughed out loud at the idea of the Dog taking Motor Vehicle’s road test.  Then I realized I had to stop thinking of him as the Dog.  Obviously there was more to Lucky than his canine persona.
      “Is the license in your name?”
      “Of course.”
      “We can’t risk it.  If you get stopped driving for any reason, the police will run a record check on you, and we can’t take that chance.”
      He was disappointed.  Fortunately, Lucky wasn’t the sulking kind.
      I shifted the conversation to his dream.  I told him how much it had affected me.  “Your dream is powerful, even mythical.”
      “Especially mythical,” Odysea said.
      He wouldn’t respond, though we kept coming at it in different ways.  Odysea mentioned the similarities between the dream and the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac.  I talked about how the dream-mother had saved her son.  Lucky grew even more reserved.  I suspected that telling the dream out loud had taken too much out of him.
      At that point, which was near Erie on I-90, all he would say was, “I’m not ready yet.”
      When I persisted, Odysea said, “Let it be,” so I did.

      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
t was easy finding my own dance music, which was one of the few freedoms management gave us.  That and picking your persona.  You could be whoever you wanted as long as there weren’t too many other girls with the same character.  Management wanted us to keep it mixed.
      I chose to be Little Lori.  My breasts are small, so it made sense for me to be a young girl.  It paid off, too.  On nights when things were slow and the other girls sat staring into space or gossiping in groups, Little Lori danced.
      There are more popular songs than you’d ever guess that are about tempting young girls.  I use “tempting” in both senses:  my clients wanted to tempt me and they wanted me to tempt them.  In that respect it was a mutual dance, one I loved to perform because of the dual tension.  I had to strike the perfect balance.
      To do it right, I psyched out the customers as soon as they walked in the door.  I had to do it without them knowing.  As a young girl I wasn’t supposed to have the sophistication to see into their adult psyches, so if they caught me at it I lost my innocence.
      That was my persona, the ingénue/temptress.  I dressed in a short white crinoline dress over a frilly white slip.  I wore a bright red cape with a hood and carried a small wicker basket, trying for the Little Red Riding Hood archetype.
      I can’t tell you how many times a customer would howl like a wolf when I walked by.  Each one thought he was being original, too.  I’d make my eyes go big with fear, then giggle and skip away a few steps, glance back over my shoulder with a little girl look.  It’s all in the eyes.  Other dancers thought talking dirty is what turned the joes on.  But I knew it’s what you say with your eyes.  I’d give them that look, “You’re so bad and I’m so good!” and they’d follow me straight into the back like they were on a leash.
      The more clothes I wore the better.  I ran it per item, so much for each piece, the closer to my flesh the more it cost.  If I was good, if I got the joe totally excited, he’d pay whatever I asked to take off the next piece.
      I also carried a jump rope in the basket, which I sometimes used in my dance.  My dress and slip would fly up as I skipped rope, bringing back those playground scenes to my eager little boys.
      I braided my hair in pig tails and wore Mary Janes on my feet with white ankle socks folded neatly at the top.  My cheeks were rouged to look flushed and my eyes made up for a doe-eyed look.
      It worked like a charm.  A magic money charm.
      I cashed in from the first night, made more money than I ever dreamed possible.  It paid for four years at San Francisco State and trips to everywhere from Paris to Katmandu.
      On an average night I netted $300, but sometimes I walked away with $1,000 or more, and I didn’t have to give blow jobs or entertain a joe outside the club.  Then there were the gifts — rental cars, hotel rooms, cell phones with the bills already paid — and those were on top of the tips.  I’m talking about clearing a $1,000 over and above my fee to the club.
      There were no fees when I first started lap dancing, but now they range from $50 to $100 a night.  The club fee to dancers is one reason the newer girls are forced into offering sexual favors, as a way of keeping their customers coming back and tipping large.  There are some nights when girls actually lose money because of the fees.  It sucks, it really does, but it’s not my concern any more.

      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.

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16.  Lone Star

D
iane’s confession couldn’t have come at a worse time for me.  I recoiled from it as I might from a snake poised to strike.  Ironically, I was starting to believe that opening up was the right way to live, but being on the receiving end made me doubt the wisdom of baring one’s soul.  Moreover, I had passed the afternoon fantasizing about being with her again.  I didn’t know how or under what circumstances, but I’d had this hope that we might work things out.  She’d totally dismembered my image of her.  I don’t know why, but I’d never considered Diane with a past.  I mean of course she had a past, but not a Past.
      The person I knew was many things, all of them intriguing to me:  She was an articulate legal advocate for the poor, one who staunchly resisted the abuses of the State.  She was a respected member of the local bar who successfully promoted pro bono causes.  She was an alluring and beautiful woman who had been a tantalizing lover.
      And now she was one thing more — a former sex industry worker.
      At the end of the conversation, or I should say monologue, she asked me what I thought.  I didn’t know what to say.
      The spirit of my dead Italian grandmother wailed at me, You’re in love with a puta!
      Was she a whore?  Or was she a performing artist?
      Was I in love?  Or had I been seduced by Little Lori?
      My mind jumped over itself in six different directions until it stopped at our first meeting, which I now saw in an entirely different light.  No wonder she hadn’t covered her breasts when I had walked in unawares.  Standing naked in front of strangers was something she’d done for hire.
      And what was this garbage she put out about men?  I had no sexual interest in little girls.  How could she be so stupid to think that sex club habitués defined adult male sexuality!
      I was angry and disappointed and confused.  This woman I had respected now appeared manipulative and shallow and ignorant.  On the other hand I was embarrassed at how uncomfortable I felt about her past.  Why should professional erotic dancing be this disturbing to me?
      Then there was her marriage with Bob.  Was a ménage à trois how I wanted to live and love?  The humiliating scene with the water pistol flashed before me.  The prospect of getting caught between them again was daunting.
      “Why is it taking you so long to respond, Jimmy?”  I could hear the hurt in her voice.
      “I can’t answer you right now,” I finally blurted into the cell phone.
      “You have to, Jimmy.  You can’t leave me hanging like this.  It’s not fair.  I’ve just opened up to you, taken an incredible risk, and I’m not going to be left hanging.”
      “I don’t know what to say, Diane.”
      “Just tell me you love me.”
      I snapped shut the cell phone.

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.

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17.  West Texas

I
went to live at my uncle’s ranch when I was nearly fourteen.  This was in 1962, which was the year my mother died.  Only she didn’t die, she ran off.  And she didn’t exactly run off so much as escape with her life.  I understand this now, but at the time I felt betrayed and abandoned by her.
      I told anyone who asked, “My mother died,” so they wouldn’t gossip that she’d run off with a tool pusher.  At that time death was the only way people in West Texas allowed a womon to leave her family.  It was a do-or-die kind of culture, and a womon who put her own needs above her child’s was considered a coward and a fool.  My mother was neither.  She was a survivor.
      It was my uncle who came to my rescue.  He just showed up one day at my school and said, “You’re coming to live with us, Nancy.”
      I don’t know how he knew, but he did, he just knew that I had to get away from my father.
      We didn’t even go home for my things, we just drove straight to the ranch.  My Aunt Penny put her arms around me and hugged me till I thought I’d suffocate in her embrace.  She was a tall and bony womon who had a man’s strength.  I tried to pull away but she wouldn’t let me.  Then I started to cry.  I guess that’s what she’d been waiting for.  I cried until I sobbed, and after I had stopped sobbing I whimpered for a long time.  Aunt Penny held me all the while, saying “It’s okay, baby, you’re gonna be okay now.”
      They bought me all new everything.  New clothes, new comb and toothbrush, even a new frame for an old photograph of my mama they gave me.
      “I don’t want that,” I told Uncle Roy.
      “You may not want it this minute, but you’ll want it someday.  She’s your mother and my sister, and she belongs in your life.  Right now she can’t be with you, but don’t you think for one minute she doesn’t love you.  I know my sister, I know her like I know myself.  She did what she had to do.  You must honor your mother, Nancy.  You don’t have to like her, but you are going to respect her memory.”
      It was the one and only time he spoke to me about her.

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
ou must think I’m pretty dense,” I said to Odysea when she’d finished talking about her childhood in West Texas.
      “Why do you say that?”
      I snorted with self-contempt.  “Because it never occurred to me, not once, that it was your father who was the cop who — ,” I didn’t finish the sentence, couldn’t finish saying the words out loud.  In my mind I saw my friend as a frightened child who first had been abandoned by one parent, then attacked and terrorized by the other.  These were the people she was entitled to trust the most, making it the ultimate betrayal.
      A sudden sadness consumed me, and I felt overwhelmed with the misery of being human.  Why do we inflict such pain?  Why must we suffer so much?  I thought I was going to lose it right then and there as I drove down Route 290 heading west into the heart of Texas Hill Country.
      “Look up there, Jimmy.”  She pointed through the windshield at the Texas sky, which was vast and dome-like, very different from what we saw in Vermont.  “See the simple clarity of the blue sky?  It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”  Even though life can be bitter with its endless suffering, there is great beauty and joy.  Being human means experiencing both.  Being free means not getting stuck in one or the other.”
      She was right, I knew she was right, and though it helped, I still felt stupid and insensitive.  “How many nights did I lie next to you as you cried yourself to sleep?  I never once asked why.”
      “You’re too hard on yourself, Jimmy.  I could have told you all the gory details of being raped by my father, but sharing that secret was not what I needed then.  I needed comfort, and you gave it to me without my having to ask or explain.  It’s why I’ll always love you.”
      She reached across the seat and took my hand in hers.  We held on tightly, and I could feel a force pass between us that somehow made the moment more real than the simple act of holding hands allowed.  I wanted it to last forever, then I realized it would.
      “Thank you, Odysea,” Lucky said from the back seat.  They were his first words since the night before.
      “You mean for my ranch stories?”
      “Yes,” he said, “but more for keeping the keys that freed me.”
      Odysea smiled, and she looked radiant.  “I’ve been collecting those handcuff keys for more than thirty years, and all the time I wondered if there would ever be an opportunity to put them to actual use.  When we were at the Richmond bakery and finally found a key that worked, it was as if I was unlocking my own chains along with yours.”
      “Where did you get all those keys?” I asked.
      “Some I found at junk shops, others at locksmiths.  Some came with new handcuffs I buy occasionally.  I always destroy the cuffs and keep the keys.  It’s very ritualistic and healing for me to do that.  I also spend a lot of time chatting with cops at restaurants and coffee shops.  I’ve gotten quite adept at filching their keys.”
      “I’m shocked, Odysea!  What about the precepts you Buddhists are supposed to be bound by?”
      “This is the second time in less than twenty-four hours that you have imposed the Grave Precepts on me.  I didn’t turn to Buddhism for rules, I turned to it for liberation.  There’s an important saying I try to keep in mind:  ‘If you find the Buddha, kill the Buddha.’”
      “What the hell is that supposed to mean?  I thought Buddhists were pacifists.”
      “You’re getting caught in the words.  They’re a trap.  It’s the meaning that matters.  To me that saying means don’t fall victim to the pretensions of Perfection.  Be real.”

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.

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19.  Revolution!

W
hen I was a small boy my mother would entertain me with the story of Chicken Little, The sky is falling, the sky is falling!  I’d laugh out loud at silly Chicken Little who believed that a tiny nut dropping from a tree signaled the end of the world.  Chicken Little, Foxy Loxy, Turkey Lurkey — I’d laugh at them all and beg my mother to tell the story again, which she would, and then again.  I never tired of it.
      When I was nineteen I turned into Chicken Little.  I felt the world shake and saw the sky fall, but there wasn’t anything funny about it at all.
      I was driving a dump truck for my Uncle Rocco, who owned a demolition company in central New Jersey.  I spent all day driving to the dump, hauling jagged concrete, old brick, cracked porcelain from sinks and toilets — the detritus of whatever building Uncle Rocco had been hired to get out of the way.
      This was in the fall of 1969, and unless you lived through it I don’t think it’s possible to appreciate how broken America felt at the time.  It was like one of Uncle Rocco’s buildings as the wrecker ball busted it up — totally demolished.  I don’t mean that everything is fine and dandy now, because obviously it isn’t.  The difference is that in 1969 people were at each other’s throats, taking up sides and getting ready.
      We saw it all on TV:  Martin Luther King being assassinated in Memphis, Bobby Kennedy in LA.  Chicago erupting into street fighting during the Democratic National Convention.  On Channel 2 there’s the war in Vietnam, on Channel 4 the Black Panthers in Oakland, on 9 Woodstock, LSD, Weathermen.  Everyone is sure the shit is going to hit the fan any day.  The only question is which side of the barricades you plan to be on.
      I’m talking about the revolution.
      It was what people hoped for or dreaded, worked towards or against.

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
’m not sure what I expected to feel after revealing my secret, but I didn’t expect to feel calm.  Or normal.  Or unperturbed.  Yet I felt each of those things, and one thing more — relief.  Not the dramatic kind where a great weight has been lifted, just the simple relief that follows upon exhaling a breath held too long.  It was as if I could finally resume normal breathing, could pick up my life at the point it had been blown to pieces nearly thirty years before.
      As I had been talking, Odysea and Lucky had been watching me intently, ready to rescue me from the cliff-edge along which I tread so precariously.  From the start I knew I had to step off that cliff, to cross a chasm deep inside me, though I didn’t know how to do it.  With their help I took one step after another, telling the story a piece at a time.  When I described the explosion, I saw their eyes fill with tears as if the people inside the townhouse had been their friends, their first love.
      Their compassion moved me deeply.  It became the bridge by which I finally crossed the chasm.
      What did I find on the other side?
      I found my middle-aged self waiting with open arms to embrace the young and terrified Robert Joseph Santoro.
      In the long and comforting silence that followed, I felt unafraid and ready to live my life.

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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