Lotion. You stand warned.I slept badly that night. I sleep badly every night. I woke up as refreshed as I ever get and crawled out from under my blouses.
I looked at the dashboard clock: 6:00. I wake up at that time every morning, except Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. The fact that this was a Saturday did not contradict the hypotheses. “Saturday” is just a word. The fact is, I always wake up at 6:00 A.M. when I have something to do. Sometimes it’s cab driving, sometimes it’s rescuing people, sometimes it’s laundry, usually mine.
I adjusted my love beads, made sure my headband was squared away, yanked my Mexican shirt down to cover my bellybutton, and put on my sandals. The sandals sort of hurt where the straps had rubbed against the skin during the previous day. I should have worn my tennis shoes after all. But I decided to wear the sandals again. Maybe the subtle but ceaseless pain would remind me to think better.
I put on my sunglasses, shoved the doors open, and slid out of the rear of the van. I performed the final step of my wake-up ritual by adjusting my jeans. It is literally impossible to effectively adjust your jeans when you’re lying prone. Maybe scientists will invent a method someday, but until then humankind will have to rely on the thumb-yank combined with the primitive technology of the “gravity-tug.”
I shut the doors and walked around to the front of the van and saw hippies moving about. They were walking with a step that I would have described as “lighthearted” if I was being interrogated by the police. And why not? The solstice is to hippies what Christmas is to normal people. Ergo, Christmas comes twice a year for hippies. It kind of makes you want to become a hippie, doesn’t it? Just think: you would have to buy double the number of presents, and you would get to see your relatives twice a year instead of once every twenty years.
I was scratching the general area around my wallet when Windsong stepped out to the front porch of the big house and looked at me. I quickly pulled out my comb, gave my hair a quick sweep, and put the comb back. Everything was copacetic.
“Good morning, Doctor Lovebeads,” she said. “Did you sleep well?”
“Like a top!” I chirped. I placed the tip of my right index finger on my scalp and did a little dervish whirl to show her that I was a zany flower child. It worked. Windsong laughed. I assumed it was a real laugh and not a forced laugh. Believe me, I’ve ruined enough keggers to recognize a forced laugh as the guests walk out the door.
“One small problem though,” I said.
“What’s that, Doctor Lovebeads?”
“I need to use the facilities.”
She smiled and pointed across the yard. I looked in the direction indicated. I saw what I recognized from the movies as an “outhouse.” A half-moon was carved into the door.
Let’s jump ahead ten minutes and try not to think about it.
As I was returning to my van, I saw Otto and Brent sauntering toward me. Otto was grinning. “Hey man, happy solstice,” he said, raising his right hand. I could see what was coming: the hippie handshake.
“Right on!” I said, and clasped his hand in the ninety-degree angle javelin-grip. “Windsong told me that nobody works on the solstice, so I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna throw my doors open and let your guests take whatever they want for free. I’ll be heading back to Taos by sunset anyway and the less weight I’m pulling, the less gas I’ll need.”
“You are one heavy dude, man,” Otto said.
Brent just stood there smiling. He stank of marijuana. It made me think of coffee. That had never happened to me before.
“I don’t know if I’m out of line here, man,” I said, “but when I’m on the road I usually start the day off with a hot cup of coffee. By any chance do you have any here at the ranch?”
“Tea,” Brent suddenly said.
“How’s that?” I said.
Brent did not extrapolate.
“We drink tea here,” Otto said, “but no coffee.” He grinned. “I’m a coffee drinker myself.” He shrugged. “The women here do make an especially strong herbal tea that might fool you.”
“Hey, I appreciate it,” I lied. I wondered if there was a crossroads town near the ranch that I could drive to for some take-out joe. Right at that moment I was willing to bet Otto could be bought cheap. But I didn’t want to step too far out of character. Hippies were supposed to be people who gleefully went along with whatever kick was happening at the moment. Or was that looters?
Otto went into the big house. Windsong came out a little later with a clay cup filled with something hot and dark and wet. Use your imagination. I stood there drinking the liquid bark until I heard the grind of gears. I looked off in the direction of the metal gate and saw some cars trundling along the two-track. The invasion of the guests had begun.
I was surprised at how well I took it, but then this was Christmas in June. I knew everything I ever wanted to know about Christmas, since I had gone home to Wichita for the previous one. My sisters had husbands who were about as well known to me as the people who would be arriving during the next few hours, and I had discovered that by not talking to the husbands I wouldn’t get to know them even better. I decided to use that strategy among the bedouins who showed up for the festival. This would be made extra easy by the fact that I was in disguise, so even if they did get to know me, it wouldn’t be me, it would Doctor Lovebeads.
In a way this reminded me of a costume party I once attended. I was looking for only one girl at that time. This was the girl that I later murdered according to the wisenheimers at Rocky Cab. I never even touched the girl, except when she kissed me—but I’m getting the order of events all mixed up. Let’s drop it.
I opened the driver’s door and got into my van and popped Butterfly into the 8-track. I’m talking “Gadda.” I kept the sound low enough to qualify as background Muzak. But I felt uneasy about bringing electronic technology into the “rain forest.” By this I mean that hippies drank tea and smoked certain organic roots, but they also listened to acid rock, most of which was produced in studios, meaning the sounds were unnatural and could not be created without a complex mechanical device such as the cardboard tube that John Lennon sang through to get a “hollow” sound.
I got out and walked around to the side of the van and slid the door open for the big giveaway.
Mi casa, su casa, nature boy.
I hated to do this because it had taken me twenty years to collect a lot of the dusty books that I had never opened, not to mention the LPs I never listened to. I must’ve had thirty dollars worth of collector’s items in there. But I felt that in order to establish trust among the flower people I had to make it look like I didn’t care about making money. The fact that I actually didn’t care about making money didn’t seem adequate unto itself.
I may have misled you when talking about making millions of dollars off best-selling novels. All I ever really wanted was enough money to pay my rent and eat. Books I can get at the library. Clothes, hell, there’s clothes scattered all over Denver. And TV? I already have one. Maybe cable cuts into my budget, but who really needs cable? I own a VCR, and tapes are cheap. People sometimes accidentally leave VHS tapes in the backseat of my taxi. Okay. I might as well come clean here. I take the tapes home and watch them before I turn them in to Rollo.
But in the final analysis, the only thing I ever really wanted out of life was to not get out of bed in the morning and go to a job. But I practically didn’t do that already. Depending on whether I still had a job the following Monday, I might have to stop not doing that and not do something else. But I would worry about that then. The Birds said it best: ”… To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven …”
Wait. I think Pete Seeger said that. Or wait. Maybe it’s from the Bible. Well, somebody said it best. For all I know, I said it best: “It doesn’t matter.” That’s the Cab Driver’s Prayer. A cab driver says it when things start getting so bad that he stands back and takes the long view of things and reminds himself that his shift ends at seven.
A.M. or P.M.
It just doesn’t matter.
I gave my books and records one last wistful look, then shook my head. It was all for The Cause.
I picked up a plastic flute that I had bought at SA, sat down cross-legged inside the van, and started randomly tooting. I was just a hippie entrepreneur now, and my flute was my billboard.
I counted the vehicles arriving at the Smith
Ranch as I tooted the flute. By ten A.M. four vans, two pickup
trucks, and three automobiles had pulled into the property and
parked at the outer edge of the front yard. It was old-home week, I
could tell. Lots of hippie handshakes and lots of hugging. I myself
am not from a hugging family. I don’t know if this is true of
Irish-Catholics in general, or just we Murphys, but overt physical
expressions of affection within the Murphy clan consist of
perpetual handshaking. If you ever show up at a Murphy party,
saints preserve us, make sure you prepare your right hand. I
recommend Corn Huskers Lotion. You stand warned.
