I guided the van along the dirt two-track toward the fallen tree. The grade grew steep. I eyeballed the narrow passage between the sectioned tree trunk. It was wide enough for the pickup to pass through, so I was only a little worried about scraping the paint off the sides of the van. If that happened, I was prepared to give Wally a batch of inductive logic.
No problem though. When I got close to the passage I could see that the van would make it unscathed. Plenty of wagon-room. Things were running smoothly. That’s when The Children of the Damned appeared. I had not even entered the walls of wood before the kids began filtering slowly across the roadway, blocking my path to the adobe plateau. I shifted into neutral and yanked the brake.
The kids were smiling, so they weren’t really like the children of the damned. They were more like The Stepford Wives, especially the boys. They strolled en masse between the trunks and slowly surrounded the front of the van. A hippie boy tapped on my window. I quickly rolled it down.
“You can’t drive up here,” he said.
Since I was older than everybody present I said, “Why not?”
“Pollution,” he said.
It was as if he had uttered a secret code word that immediately generated bleak images of exhaust pipes, clouds of smog, acid rain, leafless trees, gasping fish, and a suffocating world writhing in the throes of death.
“Oh.”
I squinted past the pond and said, “I saw Otto drive his truck up here, so I thought it would be okay.”
“No.”
He didn’t elaborate. I was deprived of the opportusnity to dismantle his system of logic point by point. I’ve always wanted to do that to somebody.
They obviously did not want me to follow the road to the end, but why? And how did they know to congregate and block my path? These were the thoughts I had as I backed around and drove down to the big house, where Otto and Windsong were standing on the porch watching me. I felt like I was driving toward nuns.
I parked in front of the house and climbed out.
“Where were ya headed there, Doctor Lovebeads?” Otto said amiably, standing at the top of the steps with his hands in his pockets. “A site for Transcendental Meditation!” I chirped. “Twice a day I find a quiet place to meditate, so I thought I would head up toward timberline and pick a lonely spot to sink into the deep recesses of my mind.”
“Oh wow, do you practice TM?” Windsong said.
“Ever since I was a junior in college,” I said. “According to the Maharishi, it takes ten years to arrive at cosmic consciousness, so I guess I’ve been there twice.”
“I’ve always wanted to learn that,” Windsong said. “Could you teach it to me?”
I frowned. “I don’t know if that’s advisable. They told me that I had to keep my mantra a secret, although they didn’t say why. But I wouldn’t feel right trying to pass along a mantra without official authorization.”
“I understand,” she said solemnly.
I was glad someone did.
Otto sauntered down the steps. “We don’t allow vehicles up on the ridge. It’s bad for the environment. I do drive up there every now and then to haul wood or whatever, but we’d prefer that you walk.”
“People used to take snowmobiles up there before we put a stop to it,” Windsong said, with a certain amount of umbrage. There’s no umbrage like hippie umbrage. I once knew a woman who tried to convince me to eat vegi-burgers. I don’t want to talk about it.
“If you’re looking for a place to meditate, why don’t you just walk up to the pond?” Otto said. “I’ll let the others know that you want to be left alone for awhile.”
“That would be groovy,” I said, as my heart sank. “It only takes about twenty minutes.”
“I’ll let them know,” Otto said. He pulled a two-way radio from his back pocket and spoke into it.
I grinned like a madman and turned away and began walking up the road. Fer the luvva Christ, now I had to act like I was meditating in full view of the entire world. Fortunately, I did know a little bit about TM, having attended an introductory lecture one evening at UCD while waiting for my buddies to get out of a Henry James seminar so we could go to a bar and get wasted.
I passed between the wooden walls with the grin still plastered to my mug, ready to say howdy to all the kids hiding behind the trunks. But after I came out the other side I found the plateau deserted. The saggy adobe watched me as I walked past. I wondered if the hippies used the adobe to sleep in at night. I wondered if the adobe had scorpions. I wondered if the scorpions were watching me. I momentarily forgot that I was in Colorado. I should do that more often.
I made my way up to the pond feeling like an idiot. I now had to pretend to follow through on something I didn’t want to do. I do that about three times a year. The last time I did it I was walking toward the front door of a hardware store, but at the last second I realized the store was closed for the evening and the door was locked. I started to turn around and go back to my car but a couple of total strangers were walking along the sidewalk toward me, so I continued on up to the door and stopped at a display window and pretended to examine a wide variety of pipe fittings as if that was the real reason I had approached the store and was not bothered in the least by the fact that the door was locked. I’ll admit it. I was too embarrassed to change my mind and turn around in front of people who didn’t know me. After the total strangers passed by, I rushed back to my car, got in, and sped away. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this to you, but I need some kind of goddamn therapy.
I walked up to the edge of the pond then looked for a dry spot. I checked the ground for scorpions. I sat down cross-legged with my back to the big house, held my head erect, closed my eyes, and began mumbling, “It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter …” I was “faking” a mantra. I don’t know why I put that in quotes. I really was faking it.
After five minutes, though, I started to feel strange. I felt like a molecule. I grew completely unaware of my surroundings. Twenty minutes later the molecule began to rise like a glob floating upward in a lava lamp. By the time it reached the light bulb, I had become conscious of my surroundings. I opened my eyes. I felt totally refreshed, alert, and full of energy. I felt as if I could run up the side of the mountain and nobody could stop me. It suddenly occurred to me that I may have stumbled across a way to make lots of money. All I had to do was scribble down the exact step-by-step process by which I had become a molecule and then submit it to the patent office. But I filed that under “L” for “Later.” I had less profitable things to do at the moment.
I stood up and studied the side of the hill. The road meandered into the trees and disappeared. I wondered what would happen if I started following the road. By this I meant would my lungs or my legs give out first. If you have never lived near any mountains, let me tell you something about walking up them: don’t.
I turned and made my way back down toward the fallen tree. I wanted to take a peek into the adobe and the trailer, but I kept on walking down to the big house. I knew that my every move was being watched. I had known that since the day I was born.
When I got back to the van, there was nobody around again. I couldn’t figure out where everybody kept disappearing to. Then I remembered the girl who had used the word “chores” during the self-criticism moment. Suddenly I got scared. Would I be expected to pitch in and help just because I had eaten their food? What had I gotten myself into? I hadn’t seen a cow yet, but if there was a cow here, it meant only one thing: hay. I’ve seen movies about people baling hay, and it can get ugly.
Windsong came out of the house then. So far, I hadn’t been invited inside. I wanted to go inside to see if Janet and Vicky might be there, but now that the word “chores” had wormed its way into my brain like an earwig, I started thinking about dirty dishes. Suddenly I didn’t want an invitation.
“Where is everybody?” I chirped, as she floated down the steps and came up next to me.
“They’re busy making preparations for the solstice celebration tomorrow.”
“Do you hold it right here?” I said, making a wide sweep with my arm indicating the front yard.
“Oh no, we hold the celebration up the hill.”
“At the pond?” I said.
“No. Higher up in the trees. You’ll see it tomorrow. They’re putting up the decorations right now. Didn’t you ever take part in a solstice celebration down in Taos?”
“I never seemed to be around during the solstices. I was always on the road.”
“That’s too bad. Well … I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time tomorrow. We’ll have lots of visitors.”
“I’m looking forward to it. Maybe I can make a few sales.”
She raised her chin and, basically, looked down her nose at me. “Nobody works on the solstice.”
I nodded. “In that case, maybe I can give away a few things. My sandals are kind of log-jammed.”
A smile broke across her face. “That would be wonderful.” Everything was “wonderful” with Windsong, unless it was “too bad.”
“Well, since I ain’t going back to Boulder today, maybe I should find an out-of-the way spot to park my van so folks won’t be stumbling over it in the dark. I guess I’ll just crash in it tonight.”
“You can park over by the side of the house, but you’re welcome to sleep in one of the hostels,” she said, pointing at the crappy shacks dotting the landscape. “That’s where the members of the family sleep.”
I nodded. I was thinking more in terms of the comfortable-looking robot trailer, or else the adobe.
“Who sleeps in the adobe cabin up the hill?” I said.
“Nobody,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s haunted.”
I nodded like an experienced man-of-the-world who wasn’t nonplused by weird statements. I had known a few women in college who were involved in Wicca. I learned to take that stuff seriously at keggers, where the other women arrived with dates.
“Who haunts it?” I said.
“We’re not sure, but we think it’s the ghost of a shepherd who lived there a hundred years ago.”
I stuck out my lower lip and nodded as if it all made sense. “I’m not afraid of ghosts,” I lied. “Do you think the shepherd would mind if I crashed in there tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“He lets us use it in the daytime, but at night we leave him alone.”
“Have you seen him?”
“No. But we hear him. The shepherd talks.”
“What does he say?”
“He whispers in Spanish, so we don’t really know what he’s saying.”
That was as far as I wanted to take this conversation. In college
I had failed the Spanish 101 class that I was actually registered for.
Windsong told me she had to go in to prepare food for the evening meal. I told her I would move the van to the side of the house. We parted.
I moved the van, then looked up the hill. Would Janet and Vicky come down out of the hills to sleep in the hostels later that evening? I hoped so. I was prepared to not spend the night in Wally’s rattletrap. If I saw Janet and Vicky, I was going to pull out all the stops and do my best to convince them to come back to Denver with me.
That evening a large group of hippies came marching home from the hills. I didn’t recognize any of them. At dinnertime there were twice as many strangers surrounding me. Windsong introduced me to the entire group as we sat on the ground with our plates of beans and mugs of milk. I was curious to know if the milk was as fresh as milk can scientifically get. But I was afraid I might be invited to learn how to obtain fresh milk, and from what little I know about milk, it happens before dawn.
I kept waiting to be introduced to Brother Chakra, but apparently he was not present. At that point in time I was still certain that Otto was Brother Chakra. A big campfire was built for the evening meal and the entire family took part in a rousing sing-along. Do you want me to describe it to you?
I didn’t think so.
After dinner I went to bed in Wally’s rattletrap. I fell asleep wearing my hippie clothes. It hadn’t occurred to me to bring a bedroll because I hadn’t planned on staying overnight. But that came as no surprise. Things frequently don’t occur to me. As a result, I created a “blanket” by covering myself with used blouses. When poor planning collides with hypothermia, only the strong survive.