“What’s your name?” Earth Mother said.
“Doctor Lovebeads,” I replied.
“Is that your real name?”
“It’s as real as it gets. What’s your name?”
“Tammy.”
I almost choked. I immediately knew how old she was. “Tammy” was a popular name when I was eight years old, thanks to Debbie Reynolds. During the late fifties, America became overrun with Tammys. By the late seventies, America was overrun with Heathers. I don’t know what actress was responsible for that atrocity.
“But I am now called Windsong,” Tammy said.
“After the perfume?” I said.
“No,” she said. “I was named after the music the wind makes when it passes through the treetops.”
I cursed myself. I don’t know how it is that my mouth is able to ask questions before my brain gets in gear. It’s almost as if I have two brains, The Idiot and The Snoozer. I crossed my fingers and hoped I had a third brain in there somewhere that could keep an eye on the others. It was plain to me that a tripartite-intellect was my only hope of succeeding at not being me.
“These are great beans,” I said. “Do you grow them here?”
“No,” Windsong said softly with a smile. “You can’t grow beans up here.”
Tell me about it.
“Good bread,” I said. “Do you guys make it yourself?”
“Yes.”
I nodded as I chewed. I was out of my element when it came to dinner conversation or anything else you can name. The thing is, I hate eating. By this I mean that making a ritual out of eating gives me the willies. What’s the big deal about food? Get it in and get it out, that’s my motto. I suppose that back when cavemen roamed the earth, eating was a big deal, since searching for food was the only reason for living. So making a sacred ritual out of eating was understandable. But thanks to fast-food joints, we no longer have a reason for living.
I have a theory though. I think most people are embarrassed to eat, primarily because they like the taste of food. They’re so ashamed of their “secret vice” that they try to talk as many people as possible into doing it with them so they won’t feel like outcasts as they pop that last French fry down their gullet. They gather friends and even strangers together to take part in a shameful debauchery that is transmogrified by unspoken consent into socially acceptable behavior. Okay. I’ll admit it. That’s why I buy drinks for people at Sweeney’s—although we never say grace before we get blotto.
“Where are you from, Doctor Lovebeads?” Windsong said.
“Den …” I said.
I gripped my Adam’s apple with a thumb and forefinger and pretended to choke on the homemade bread. “Excuse me,” I said. I had almost said Denver. “Penn,” I said. Then I said, “Sylvania. Also Georgia, Ohio, and California. I lived in San Francisco for a year. I’ve been all over. But I live in Taos now. I dig it there. It’s very mellow.”
“I know,” she said. “I lived there for three years back in the seventies.”
I gripped my throat again. I wasn’t pretending. I began choking so hard that two boys came over and began pounding my back. I could barely breathe, I was dying, and yet their pounding felt good. It must have been the de Sade I read in college.
After the crumb of bread was dislodged from my gullet, I wiped a few death tears from my eyes and nodded to the boys. “Thanks, dudes.” I looked at Windsong. “I guess I’m just not used to eating rich food. I eat at a lot of fast-food joints when I’m on the road selling my stuff.”
Windsong shivered noticeably.
“But …” I continued, examining the slice of brown bread which had lumpy bits of healthy crud in it, “… we live in a plastic society where even the food has been co-opted by greed-head conglomerates, so it’s hard to find a cafe that doesn’t sell meat.”
Specious reasoning was one aspect of myself that I clung to.
“How long have you lived in Taos?” Windsong said.
I want to emphasize here that whenever Windsong spoke, it was almost as if she was singing. Her voice rose and fell softly like someone who was idly humming—as for instance, a woman alone at a river washing clothes. It gave me the creeps.
I shook my head and idly waved my right hand. “The day I arrived in Taos I threw away my wristwatch and my calendar,” I said. “And do you know what? I didn’t die. Ever since then I’ve let the sun and moon keep track of time. I’m too busy living.”
“It sounds like you’ve lived there a long time,” she said.
“Probably.”
“In what part of Taos do you reside?” she said.
I finished up swallowing the last bit of bread. I’ll admit it. One thing I do like about eating is that you can use chewing time to make up answers without appearing to be stalling. But I was out of bread.
“It’s a place east of town.”
“Does it have a name?”
“Home,” I said.
Everyone nodded.
“I lived near Pilar,” Windsong said. “Were you ever there?”
“I passed by it a few times,” I said, which was true. I had been to Taos in my mid-twenties. This was during a spring break when I was in college. I don’t really want to talk about it, except to say that getting there involved a quart of tequila and possibly a Greyhound bus.
The girls began rising and collecting the plates and spoons from the boys. I felt foolish handing my plate to a girl. Nobody had done dishes for me since I left home, unless you count KPs.
“Would you care to join us up at the pond now?” Windsong said to me.
“I can’t swim,” I said so fast my teeth rattled.
She smiled sweetly. “We’re not going to swim. Not so soon after lunch. We gather at the pond each afternoon for our self-criticism moment.”
I swallowed hard. I couldn’t decide which was worse—swimming nude or being honest.
“Sounds groovy,” I said. “But if I start criticizing myself we’ll be there all day.”
“It’s not quite like that,” she said. “We don’t tear ourselves down, and we do not tear each other down. Rather, each individual describes one aspect of his or her personality that he or she dislikes, and then we discuss how he or she might improve himself or herself.”
I never thought she would make it through that sentence alive. As an English major I didn’t know whether to applaud or denounce her deft use of pronouns. But I did know one thing: I wanted out.
Two girls were missing though. I smiled at Windsong. “Let’s do it,” I said. “If there’s one thing I never get enough of, it’s self-improvement.”
As we rose, I began dusting off the seat of my pants and looking around the commune. I was “acting casual.” I was secretly looking for the pickup truck. It was nowhere in sight. I noticed that the road continued on up past the pond and into the trees.
“Is this everybody?” I said, waving at the kids as they began to form into a loose platoon for the short hike. “Or will there be more people at the pond?” This was my casual way of trying to find out how many people lived at the ranch.
“There are others,” Windsong said. “They won’t be joining us now.” That was all she said. She motioned me to follow.
I noticed that every step I took in this place seemed to be in the direction of up.
We made it to the top of the next plateau. The pond was large but I couldn’t see the source of the water. The sky, I supposed. The pond was three feet deep, very clear, no fish. “Can you drink from this pond?” I said.
Windsong smiled at me. She smiled at everything I said. “That’s not advisable.”
“But what if you were dying of thirst?” I wanted to say. I like to explore the parameters of everything. I want to know just how far I can go before free will turns into a mistake.
There was another circle on the ground at one edge of the pond. I didn’t know whether it was the east edge or west edge. After a person gets into the Rocky Mountains, everything is pretty much west. The kids began sitting on the ground, although a few logs were placed here and there for people who had not entirely weaned themselves from the bourgeois concept of chairs. I sat down on a log next to Windsong.
There was a bit of chatter, but after everyone got settled they went silent and looked at Windsong. She smiled at them and clasped her hands together like Miss Jeannie on Romper Room.
“Everybody,” she said, “I want to introduce our guest to you. This is Doctor Lovebeads, a salesman from Taos, New Mexico. As all of you know, I lived in Taos for many years, so I would like all of you to personally welcome him as a brother.”
“Welcome, brother,” the kids said in unison.
It swept over me like a warm wave. Everyone was smiling at me. I felt like I “belonged.”
“Well thank you very much, I appreciate that nice welcome,” a voice said. It was mine. I felt completely disembodied. It was exactly like driving a taxi. “And I want to thank you for sharing your food with me. The beans were excellent, and I have never tasted such fine homemade bread. But that’s what I like about traveling around our country as free as a bee. Meeting new people, eating new foods, and …”
I paused. Suddenly I found myself searching for a denouement to this prattle. I was choking in the clutch. Where were those fourteen years of cab driving? My Univac advised me to stop lying—I had never liked anything about traveling around the country as free as a bee. I had lived in cities both big and small during my checkered past, but I never stayed too long in one place. I called it “itchy feet,” although my lawyers called it “flight to avoid prosecution.”
“… and spreading the message of love,” I quickly finished.
The kids all hollered “Yaaay!” in unison. Some of them clapped their hands. I felt like Robert Preston. I’m not kidding. I submit as proof the things I proceeded to say during the next five minutes.
Windsong raised a palm. “Why don’t we begin by taking hands and singing a song?” she said. She posed it as a question but I could tell it was SOP.
It felt good to take Windsong’s hand in mine, but I wasn’t as thrilled about holding hands with the hippie boy seated on the ground to my left. For some reason it made me think of my army physical. But I focused on that thought because I instinctively knew it was the only way I was going to get through their rendition of … yes … “Kumbaya.”
By the time the last verse faded into the trees, the army doctor was telling us to put our pants back on.
We released hands, then Windsong turned to me with a smile and said, “Maybe Doctor Lovebeads has a song he can share with us before we begin our self-criticism moment.”
I went through a lot of changes during that sentence. When she suggested I offer a song, I crawled into the retreat mode, but then, when she mentioned the self-criticism moment, I dashed back into the clearing.
“The fact of the matter is, I do have a little song I’d like to offer,” a voice said. Again, it was mine. This was the first time in my life that I wasn’t annoyed with my vocal chords. Rather than try to control them, I just sat back and watched the show. I saw myself rise from the log and begin speaking to the kids while moving my forearms like Professor Harold Hill. He was a by-god spellbinder.
“Let me tell you kids a little something about what it’s like to travel alone through this great land of ours,” my voice said, as I stepped to the middle of the circle. “A man gets lonesome.”
I paused and looked around.
“When you’re out there with nothing but a thousand miles of empty road, you get mighty lonesome. You start asking yourself, What am I doing on the desert or in the mountains or on Highway 1 along the coast of California with no one to talk to? You just can’t help but notice that the road is mighty empty. But then you start thinking—Hey, somebody built this road. Somebody cleared the rocks and leveled the ground and drove the stakes and carved a path out of what had been wilderness. A path that allowed tired and disillusioned and even scared people to leave the cities and look for something better. Those people built themselves a friendly road. If you look real hard as you travel down the road, you can see the ghosts of the working men who laid down the sand and asphalt, and you realize that you’re not alone after all. As long as you travel that road, you’ll never be alone and you’ll never be lonely. And you know what happens next?”
I looked around, looked into the kids’ faces, looked into their eyes. Objectively speaking, I would have to say I had them spellbound—although I am willing to admit that they might have been flabbergasted.
“What happens next?” a girl said.
“You start singing,” I replied. “You start singing the old songs, and the next thing you know, the ghosts of the road start singing along with you. The men laying down the asphalt stand tall and wipe their brows, and the women bringing them water pause in their labors to join in. You sing the songs of the open road. And when you run out of old songs, you make up new songs. That’s what happens to me when I’m driving Doctor Lovebeads Cosmic Wonderbus and Mobile Mercantile. I make up songs. And there’s one particular song that I’ve never shared with anybody before. But since there’s so many of you here, I was thinking it would be nice if I could get you to sing it along with me. It’s a simple song, and I could teach it to you real fast. Whaddya say?”
They began nodding eagerly. This was a new one on me. I grew frightened of myself.
“Teach it to us, Doctor Lovebeads!” a girl hollered.
“Yeah, teach it to us!” they chanted.
After everyone quieted down I said, “It’s called ‘Parking in a No-Parking Zone.’ I made it up when I was driving from Memphis to Saint Joe four years back after I bought my van and headed west looking for something the city didn’t offer. It’s kind of a political song. Sort of anti-establishment. I hope that’s all right with you. It’s no ‘Kumbaya’ but it does express my deepest feelings about the phoniness of crass commercialism.”
They applauded wildly.
I commenced singing:
“Um um um,
ya know,
really
like, like, like.
“Um um um,
ya know,
really,
like, like, like.”
I paused in mid-song and said, “That’s sort of the chorus. That’s the part I want you kids to sing. While you’re singing that, I’ll throw in the anti-establishment part.”
The next thing I knew, two-dozen kids were singing the chorus of “Parking in a No-Parking Zone.” I actually did make up this song, but I had lied to the kids. I made it up while deadheading to the Brown Palace from DIA.
“Um um um,
ya know,
really,
like, like, like.
“Parking in a no-parking zone!
Parking in a no-parking zooooooone!”
I sort of yelled my lines. It was more like a rap song—or maybe “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” although not in terms of quality and genius. I rarely do things like that.
“Um um um,
ya know,
really,
like, like, like.
“I wanna get a job in retail sales!
I wanna get a job innnn retail sales!”
“Um um um,
ya know,
really,
like, like, like.”
“The number you called!
It cannot be reached!
The number you called!
It cannot be reached!
“Parking in a no-parking zone!
Parking in a no-parking zooooooone!”
This went on for a minute-and-a-half although it seemed like two. I was swinging my hands up and down like Professor Harold Hill and the kids were following the beat with a precision that would have amazed Mister Delonatta, my sixth-grade music teacher. Did I ever mention that I played the trumpet in grade school? I wanted to play the drums but Maw nixed that dream. I don’t want to talk about it.
I brought the song to a halt. The kids gave themselves a big hand. I avoided looking Windsong in the eye. I was afraid she might have noticed that the song had nothing to do with the phoniness of crass commercialism. I had taken a risk. But it was the only song I ever made up that could be sung in mixed company. Most of my songs consist of what I refer to as “colorful” lyrics. I sing them only when I’m alone, or else at Sweeney’s.