FRIDAY EVENING. I was on the front deck with my dogs, continuing my laborious reading of Being and Time and listening to Gordon Lightfoot. Feeling a little melancholy. A girlfriend once told me I spent too much time thinking about things. It was true, but it only led to one of those ridiculous chicken-and-egg riddles. Did thinking too much cause my depression or did my depression cause me to think too much?
Tonight I was thinking about the fact that I was forty-four and had never been married. Troy had been married for fifteen years and had two kids. I hadn’t had a date in six months. I suppose some of that was my own fault. Plenty of people had tried to set me up, but I hadn’t met anyone who tripped my trigger. Once you’ve been in love, it’s hard to settle for mere companionship. I’d been in love once, but that was long ago and she wasn’t coming back.
The wind picked up, and I stepped inside to get a jacket. Nederland sits 8,236 feet above sea level. Though it was May, the evenings could still be chilly. When I returned to the deck, the song playing was “If You Could Read My Mind.” I’ve always been struck by one verse of that song:
I walk away, like a movie star who gets burned in a three-way script;
Enter number two.
A movie queen,
to play the scene
of bringing all the good things out in me.
Was that what I was holding out for? “A movie queen to play the scene of bringing all the good things out in me”?
This introspection was cut short by Buck’s sudden barking. Someone was walking up the path to my home. Tall and thin. Luther. “Hey, Pepper,” he said, “how you doin’?” There was no mistaking that laid-back Texas drawl.
“Fine, Luther, how are you?” Recognizing him as friend rather than foe, Buck trotted over and nuzzled him.
“I was just taking a walk and saw you out here.” He extended his hand and offered me a joint, but I declined. Don’t get me wrong, I had smoked dope periodically in college, I had inhaled, and I had enjoyed it, but these days my drug usage is generally limited to an occasional glass of red wine.
“Hey, Buck,” Luther said as he gave the dog a pat on the head, “you sure are a good boy.” Buck licked his hand, and Luther sat down beside me. I’d found two old rockers at a garage sale and refinished them using a rustic pine stain. “That dog always reminds me of Astro,” said Luther. “You know, from The Jetsons.”
“‘Rastro,’” I corrected him, using my best cartoon dog voice.
“Rastro,” he agreed.
Luther is one of the last hippies in America. I live in a newer log home on the edge of town and he lives in a small house a few hundred yards west of me. It was built in the thirties as a summer cabin, but they’ve added on to it. He and his wife own it, but others live there too and the composition of the group is constantly changing. I guess Luther and Missy are my next-door neighbors. Come to think of it, I guess they’re all my next-door neighbors. I don’t know how old Luther is, but he must be pushing fifty.
When I describe Luther as a hippie, I don’t mean to disparage him in any way. He’s one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met and he’s a great musician, but it’s the best word I can think of. He wears his increasingly gray hair in a ponytail, and his ragged jeans are covered with patches. He owns two vintage Volkswagen vans, one of which looks like it was painted by hyenas on acid. I’m not sure it runs, but I’ve seen people sleep in it for weeks at a time during the summer.
A lot of aging hippies live in Nederland. The town is nestled in the mountains fifteen miles west of Boulder. In the sixties and early seventies, Boulder was a happening place. There were regular protests, and everywhere you went you saw head shops and Marxist bookstores. Then Vietnam ended and Nixon resigned. With no cause to unite it, the hippie movement died. As more and more people flocked to Colorado, land prices skyrocketed and yuppies gained control of Boulder’s political machinery. Now all you see down there are gourmet coffee shops and New Age bookstores. The diehard hippies moved to Nederland. And now you know the rest of the story.
I moved here two years ago. I’d become increasingly disenchanted with the practice of law. Long hours, high stress, ungrateful clients. I hated all insurance adjusters, most of my clients, many of my fellow lawyers, some judges, and all the politicians who competed with one another to propose ever tougher drug laws while at the same time refusing to appropriate money for prevention or treatment. I was burned out. Then I found myself charged with manslaughter.
Though I was ultimately acquitted, that episode had been the proverbial last straw. Life’s too short to do something you don’t enjoy. I decided to leave law altogether. My partners were shocked, but they purchased my interest on favorable terms and the deal left me with a nice little nest egg. Interest rates were low and I had always wanted to live in the mountains. With my Marine Corps haircut and a business card identifying myself as a private eye, it took a while for people to warm up to me, but now it feels like home. Up here it’s live and let live.
Luther and I talked awhile, then sat quietly, enjoying the breeze and the scent of the pines. “Hey, Luther,” I finally said, “you know anything about fractals?”
“A little,” he said. “Missy’s a big fractal freak. She plays with them all the time on our Mac.” When she’s not reading tarot cards or consulting with other locals concerning various New Age forms of healing, Luther’s wife works as a freelance graphic artist. “She can do some far-out stuff.”
“Ever hear of anyone using fractals to make music?” In addition to whatever else he does, Luther plays lead guitar for a band called the Stress Monsters. They’re actually pretty good.
“Yeah, now that you mention it. You remember ELO?”
“Electric Light Orchestra?”
“Yeah.”
“I remember.”
“Their cello player was a dude named McDowell. He used fractal patterns to compose a ballet. It’s called ‘Tijuana’ or something like that. I’ve got it at home if you want to hear it.” I had nothing else to do, so I put Buck and Wheat inside and gave Luther a vague outline of the case as we walked through the pines to his home. “Freaky,” was all he said.
There are usually several dogs lazing around in front of Luther’s house, but tonight I saw just one. A shepherd mix. The front door was open, but the house appeared empty. I had been inside it only once or twice, so I wandered around while he searched for the tape. The sofa was ready for the Salvation Army and there was an air mattress on the living-room floor. His state-of-the-art sound system consumed an entire wall and I wondered how he could afford it. The Stress Monsters didn’t figure to have a great compensation package.
I made my way into the kitchen and noticed a Phish calendar on the wall by the back door. “Here it is,” Luther said as he returned to the living room. I sat on the couch and he leaned back in an old recliner. The music was soft and flowing. We could have fallen asleep, but Missy and a younger woman came through the front door before we got the chance. Missy wore an ankle-length skirt, the younger woman wore faded jeans. Both barefoot. “Hey, Missy,” Luther said, “what’s the name of this song?”
“Teawaroa.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It’s Maori,” she said. “It means ‘great river.’”