11

JUST BEFORE SEVEN, I WAS standing outside Milward Books. It was locked, but through the window I could see Breeze, diluted to a vague watery shape by the glass, fiddling with something at the counter. I knocked. She looked up and waved, then hurried through the shop to open the door.

“Hi.” She glanced left and right. “Where’s—Sorry, I forgot her name.”

“Carly-Rae? She had to leave. Some problem at home.”

“Oh, that’s too bad.” But she was instantly more relaxed. She quickly locked up. “OK, we’re going out to Denny and Oak’s place.”

“How far is that?”

“Not far. Just ten minutes in the old Clunker.” She pointed to a decrepit Toyota, its paintwork dulled to a sickly mauve.

We got in. When she switched on, the engine made a deep-throated noise like a racing car, and the loose exhaust thudded against the floor. She reversed out into the path of a delivery van, which had to brake violently to avoid hitting us. The driver lowered his window and yelled,

“Stupid bitch! No one ever tell you to look where you’re going!”

She didn’t reply, but set off slowly along the street, the van driver honking in her wake.

“You better lighten up, friend,” she said to his red-faced reflection in the mirror. “Or one of these days, you’re going to give yourself a heart attack.” She shook her head. “Crazy the way some people live.” She hesitated. “So you and Carly-Rae . . . are you a thing?”

“No, I told you. Or she did. We’d only just met.”

She nodded. “I didn’t want to say anything, if you were, you know, like . . . But actually, I think it’s better she’s not here.” She turned left over a bridge, then on to a road running alongside the river. “I put the word out, told everyone you were coming, they’re all real excited to meet you. But Carly-Rae really wouldn’t have fit in. She’d done her golly-gee routine with Oak, he’d have had her for breakfast.”

“That sounds a bit intimidating.”

“Oh, you’re going to be fine.” She clapped a hand over my knee. “They’re all going to love you.”

“So who’s going to be there?”

“I can’t tell you for sure. You know the way some people are: they don’t get back to you, they just show up. Or not. But there’ll be a few, I guarantee it.”

“Any of the Bone family?”

She half-turned towards me, then stopped and made a show of looking in the rear-view mirror.

“Why you ask about them?”

“Oh, it’s just, you know . . . you can’t help being curious, can you? Given that Evan Bone is now pretty much—”

“Yeah, whatever happened to him, huh?” She hesitated. “Actually, he seems to have taken off someplace, did you hear that? Like it’s all gotten too much for him. Being the richest guy on the planet, or whatever he is.”

“Third richest, apparently. Are his parents still around?”

She shook her head. “No, they took off years ago.”

“Do they keep in touch?”

“Uh-uh. That’s what money does. You got enough of it, you forget about your friends.”

“Were they rich?”

“They are now. Last time I looked, their son was worth $12 billion. You don’t need too much of that to buy yourself a nice straight lifestyle. The pool, the maid, the trips to Europe. If that’s your thing. Which evidently it was.”

“Hmm.”

She frowned at me. “What?”

“Oh, I’m just a bit surprised, that’s all. I heard that Evan and his dad didn’t get on?”

“Who told you that?”

“I don’t know. It was just . . . just the impression I got.”

“Who else is going to give them that kind of money?”

She looked at me sharply. I shook my head. After a couple of seconds she relented.

“The whole thing was weird,” she said. “I mean, Jesus, they were the ones that had the vision. Found the land, then spent two years hustling to raise enough to buy it, a dollar at a time. So’s we could all get away from all that bourgeois shit. And then they just walk out on it, like it meant nothing to them at all.”

I nodded.

“Course, it didn’t just come out of the blue,” she said. “There were reasons. Things had been pretty tense at the Fork for a while before that.” She glanced across at me. “You hear about that?”

“I know there was a fire. Did they ever find out who started it?”

“They never charged anyone. But everyone knows who it was.” More business with the rear-view mirror. “They’re just scared to say. Case people think they’re racist.” She hesitated. “Anyway, let’s not go there right now. I did my time in Angryville, and it’s not a good place to be.” She lifted a hand from the wheel, fingers wide, as if she were releasing a butterfly. “Point is, there’s a lot of people didn’t like what we were doing. Spread lies about us. Which is why it’s so great that you’re here. ’Cause you”—jabbing my thigh—“are going to tell the world what it was really like.”

“Well, let’s see how it goes, shall we? You may decide I’m not the right person for the job.”

She shook her head. “You just have to trust life sometimes. It’s not going to send us the wrong guy. I know. You know how? ’Cause life and me go back a long way, and I’ve seen it coming through for us time and time again. Things you wouldn’t believe. So don’t worry about it, OK?” She paused. “What I suggest is, tonight you just meet people, get to know them a little, hear where they’re coming from. And then tomorrow, we’ll go through the archives. See what everyone looked like twenty, thirty years ago. Sound good?”

She turned away from the river, down a narrow road dotted with clusters of trees and little houses. Halfway along was a sprawl of cars and pick-ups, strewn at odd angles on the grass verge, like unwanted toys chucked into a drawer.

“Looks like they’re all pretty much here already,” she said.

She cruised past the huddle of vehicles and pulled in beyond a huge, dust-covered monster the color of rust.

“There you go, Clunker,” she said, patting the car dashboard. “Your old friend the Red Dragon.” She turned to me. “Red Dragon’s kind of an institution. Everyone’s owned it, one time or another. Don’t know who has it now.”

Oak and Denny’s house was a small, modest, single-story affair—not unlike Ginny Voss’s, except that it was better cared for, and clad in spruce white-painted clapboard rather than aluminum. Through the living-room window I could see a rocking chair with a wishy-washy watercolor landscape above it. If I hadn’t known, I’d have guessed the place belonged to some sober, unassuming pillar of society—a teacher, say, or a school bus driver.

Instead of heading for the front door, Breeze entered a narrow gulley between the house and the garage. It emerged into a long rear garden, where fifteen or so people stood talking in little groups. Most of them were in their fifties or sixties, but there were a couple of younger adults and a handful of small children. Beyond them, above the line of mountains on the horizon, the sky was smudged by a huge billow of black-veined grey smoke.

“God, is that the forest fire?” I asked Breeze.

She nodded. “But don’t worry. It’s still way off. That’s up by the Fork.” She raised her voice. “Hey, people!”

Everyone spun round, smiling uncertainly, curious, but not sure what to expect. Behind them ran a line of outdoor tables, spread with dips, plates of raw sliced vegetables, slabs of orange cheese. Three ice-boxes on the ground were packed with cans and bottles. On a decked porch at the rear of the house a barbecue was starting to smolder. The whole scene—apart from a couple of droopy joints and a t-shirt reading Why Don’t We Do It in the Road—might have been a church picnic.

A woman came forward to greet us. She was about Breeze’s age, with a thick mane of almost-silver hair clasped tightly behind her head. She wore a billowy dress like an off-duty hot-air balloon, and a pair of big glasses that sat at an angle on her nose, giving her a goofy look.

“Well, hi!” she said, taking both Breeze’s hands in hers. She turned to me. “And you must be . . . I don’t want to get this wrong . . . Robert, is that right?”

I nodded.

She retrieved her right hand, wafted it in front of me until I took it. “Welcome. I’m Denny. Breeze told me all about your project.” She shivered ecstatically. “That’s so exciting. A journalist flying all the way from England to write something about us.”

“That’s the idea. But it’s only fair to warn you, it may not come to anything. Publishing’s hard at the moment. I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.”

“Oh, but you’re here. That wouldn’t have happened unless it was meant. Anyway, I think”—glancing at Breeze—“you know what I’m going to say, don’t you?”

Breeze smiled and nodded.

“I think it’s just peachy.”

“There you go,” said Breeze. “Peachy. That’s Denny’s word.” She looked round the garden. “So where’s Oak at?”

“He’s still inside.”

Breeze raised an eyebrow. Denny nodded.

“I’ll go in and say hi,” said Breeze. She tugged at my sleeve. “You take care of this guy, OK?”

“Sure. You care for a drink? Beer, or a soda?”

“I’m fine for the moment, thanks.”

“OK. I don’t think I ever met a writer before. Not a British writer, anyway, that’s for sure. That must be such a wonderful gift to have.”

Oh, God: the big unsuspecting eyes, the klutzy off-kilter glasses. I steeled myself. I couldn’t afford to feel guilty. I had a job to do. I was here to avenge Anne, Carter Ramirez, Hazel Voss, to strike a blow against the tyranny that had destroyed them.

“Feels more like a disease sometimes,” I mumbled. “Or a life sentence. Where you’re condemned to go on producing things nobody wants.”

She mock-slapped my hand. “Oh, come on now! I’d love to be able to do what you do. I did try once. Just, you know, a kind of little, I don’t know what you’d call it, about my life.”

“A memoir?”

“Memoir makes it sound too fancy. I just thought, you know—same as you, I guess—that someone ought to write something about the commune before it was too late. And the best way for me to do it, I figured, was to tell my own story. How I ended up there.”

“Sounds like a good plan.”

“Yeah. But man, when I tried, it was like when you turn on the faucet, and all that comes out is a few little drops, you know? Hi, my name’s Denny. This is where I was raised. Here’s what I did when I was sixteen. Now I live near Milward, California. The end. Just a lot of little bits and pieces. I couldn’t find the thread would tie them all together.” She laughed. “So what’s the secret? Or maybe there isn’t a secret? You either have it or you don’t?”

“OK. Here’s my advice. Imagine you’re sitting in a bar—”

“What?”

“A bar.”

“I don’t go to bars.”

“OK. You’re in your own back yard, then. And you’re telling someone about your life, in person. A British guy called Robert, say.”

She flashed me a tentative half-smile, not sure if I was serious.

“Honestly,” I said. “I’d love to hear about it. That’s exactly what I’m here for.”

“All right,” she said doubtfully. “Well . . . I’m from New Jersey originally. Pretty much your standard kind of sixties John and Janet home. You know, Dad goes to work in the city. Mom takes pottery classes, does stuff for the Christmas fair, makes costumes for the local amateur dramatic club. Weeknights she fixes Sloppy Joes or Chef Boyardee. Sundays, if we’re lucky, we get a roast. And on birthdays, special occasions, a Betty Crocker cake.”

“See?” I said. “You’ve already given us some nice detail. I’ve no idea what Chef Boyardee is, but I love the sound of it.”

She gave me a quick grateful nod. “And to me, that just seemed like . . . well, you know, normal. The way things do when you’re a kid. I mean, I knew there were poor people out there, someplace, but I never saw them, so it was like they weren’t real, not the way you and me are real. And then there were movie stars and rock stars and billionaires. But they weren’t really real, either, ’cause the only place I saw them was on TV. And everyone else . . . well, I just thought they were like us.” She held her hands either side of her head, like blinkers. “And I’d have probably gone on thinking that. If it wasn’t for Vietnam.”

“Vietnam? You can’t have been more than a kid then?”

“I guess I was what you’d call an afterthought. My brother’s eight years older than me. So he goes off to college and gets involved in the anti-war movement. And then when he comes home for the vacations, we sit up late, him and me, and he tells me about it. And that’s when I started to see things differently. I realized, this whole world I’d grown up in, it was all a fake. You know, kind of like The Truman Show or something. Everyone I knew, my parents, the other kids at school, we were all just bits of this huge machine that was destroying everybody else. And destroying the planet too. So I began reading these underground papers he brought home, Berkeley Barb, The Rag, stuff like that, to find out what was really going on. And that’s where I saw this article about Hambone, how he was trying to raise the money to get a piece of land someplace where people could forget all the consumerist shit and live real lives, respect the earth, respect each other.”

“Who’s Hambone?” I said. “Evan’s father?”

Her eyes narrowed, as if that seemed a perverse way of putting it. “Yeah. Jim. Jim Bone. That was his straight name. We called him Hambone.” She paused. “So anyway, when I heard they’d bought Coyote Fork, him and Jen and a few others, and they were starting to build houses, I decided to come out West and check it out.”

“Did you tell your parents?”

“You kidding me? I was sixteen. I left them a note, telling them not to worry. Then I cleared out my savings and bought a Greyhound ticket as far as Redding. The last bit I hitch-hiked.”

“That was brave.”

She shrugged “And the first person I met when I got there was Many Rivers. You know about him?”

“He was a medicine man, is that right?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t like being called that. He was an Old Spirit.” She saw my perplexity and laid a finger on my arm. “You don’t know about Old Spirits?”

“No.”

“Means he’s been around since the beginning of time. You know, in different forms. A Druid. An ancient Egyptian priest. He was amazing. He looked at me, like this”—boggling her eyes—“like he was actually inside my head, knew exactly what it was like being me. And he just went on looking for the longest time. And then he said, in this deep voice, ‘Welcome home.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean, home? I never been to California before in my life.’ And he said, ‘Not in the body, maybe. But in the spirit. I can sense it. This is where your spirit belongs.’ And he was right.” She smiled and gave another little quiver of emotion. “Proof is, I been here ever since. Nearly thirty years in the commune. And the rest close by.”

She broke off suddenly and looked up. A huge, perfectly choreographed aerial display of geese was darkening the sky, wings threshing the air in unison. For maybe a minute, everyone watched in silence. Then a hulking, bearded man with long hair said, “Wow! Beautiful, or what?” and there was a burst of spontaneous applause.

“Course, we had our ups and downs,” said Denny. “Who doesn’t? But I still believe that’s how everyone ought to live.” She hesitated. “Do you ever get lonesome?”

It was as if she’d suddenly pulled off my shirt, leaving my skin exposed to the cool evening breeze. Ruth must be on her plane now, the invisible band connecting us drawn thinner with every second. I tried to conjure up her face, but already it was fading. Soon she’d be unlocking the door to her empty house, stepping inside, swallowed up by the darkness.

“Yes, of course,” I said. “Everyone does, don’t they?”

“Not at Coyote Fork.” She turned and pointed to the crowd strung out across the lawn. “These people are my family. And I’m not talking about Janet and John. I’m talking about folks you share everything with. Half the problems in the world are because people think you can only love one person. It simply ain’t so. A body’s just a body. What matters is where your spirit’s at. And our spirits were full of love for each other.” She paused, counting under her breath. “I can only see two guys out there I never slept with.”

I winced. It was like hearing your grandmother say fuck.

“I don’t do it anymore, of course,” she went on hastily. “Oak and me, we moved on to a different stage. But all that closeness . . . it doesn’t go away.”

“OK?” said a voice at my shoulder. I turned. Breeze was back. “She looking after you?”

“Yes, thanks. She’s been telling me about her life.” I smiled at Denny. “That was fascinating. See? All you have to do is write it down, the way you told me.”

She blinked slowly through her glasses. “Thank you.” She glanced at Breeze. “Man, this guy’s incredible. I’ve learned so much.”

“Great,” said Breeze. She turned to me. “Come say hi to Oak. He’d like to meet you, before we do the circle.”

I followed Breeze across the lawn and up the steps on to the porch. A thin man in jeans and a checked lumberjack shirt sat on a chair by the door. His close-cropped grey hair looked like iron filings stuck to a magnet. Leaning against an empty chair next to him was an acoustic guitar in a case. Underneath his own chair was an unglazed hand-made mug with Oak, in big looping black letters, incised into the clay.

“This is Robert,” said Breeze.

We shook hands. His expression was grave and wary—not unfriendly, exactly, but preoccupied. His brown eyes were pouchy and rimmed with red, as if he had been crying.

“You want to write something about us?” he said.

“That’s the plan.”

He removed the guitar, waved me to the chair. “Tell me about it.”

I sat down. I repeated, more or less word for word, what I’d told Breeze the day before. But Oak was a tougher proposition: he listened without so much as a nod, and jaded tabloid editor raised not the faintest smile.

“And you figure you’re the one to tell people the truth, do you?” he said, when I’d finished.

“I hope so.”

“You ever even been to a commune?”

“No. But I’m a travel writer. It’s my job to go to places and explain—as truthfully as I can—the lives of the people living there, in a way my readers can understand. Show—despite all the apparent differences—their humanity.”

He considered that for a few seconds, squinting at a knot in the wooden decking. Then he looked up and nodded.

“And you think you’d be allowed to do that, do you? With us?”

“Yes. It’s just a matter of making a strong enough case to a publisher. Why it’s important.”

He ran his fingers through his short hair, as if checking it was still there. “Except the problem is, all the publishers are owned by big corporations, aren’t they?”

“Most of them, yes. But—”

“And they’re the exact same people used a load of dirty tricks to shut us down. So all they’re going to want to publish is more lies.”

It was the first note of complaint I’d heard, the first hint of paranoia.

“Can you elaborate?” I said.

“What does that mean?”

“Tell me more. Explain.”

He reached down for his mug. A strong smell of cloves wafted towards me. He took a leisurely sip. “You’re a Brit, right?”

I nodded.

“I read some place, years ago: once upon a time you guys ruled one fourth of the world. How the hell’d you do that? One tiny little island, ruling one fourth of the world?”

I shook my head.

“I’ll tell you. It’s what the Romans did. What everybody does, when they got power and they’re scared they’re going to lose it. Divide and conquer.” He took another sip. “And that’s what happened to us. We were divided and conquered.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“Because we were capitalism’s worst nightmare, that’s why. People who don’t need anything, don’t want anything, except what they produce themselves. Never watch TV, never throw anything out and buy a new one. I mean, shit, people content with what they got? If that caught on, the whole system would collapse, wouldn’t it?”

I nodded.

“Plus, we were getting all the sex we wanted. Man, that must’ve really hurt. These guys, sitting in their big air-conditioned offices like kings, thinking they own the world. But they want to fuck someone other than their wives, they got to lie and cheat. Pretend they’re working late, have this really important meeting to go to. And they look at us, and they think: Jesus, how did that happen? These people are total losers. But when they’re feeling horny, they don’t have to go through all that shit I do. Maybe I missed something.”

He gave a quick harsh laugh, like a machine running low on oil. But his jaw was set hard, as if he couldn’t trust the rest of himself to go along with it. After a moment he waved a hand towards the garden.

“I see all these people there and I feel a pain”—touching his heart—“right here. Thinking about how it could have been. The tragedy is, the world needs places like Coyote Fork more than ever. We thought it was bad back then. But Christ, it was nothing compared to the way it is now, with the internet. You can’t take a breath without somebody trying to sell you air. It’s like no one believes they can live any more, unless they’re plugged into something that tells them what to buy, how to act, what to think. That’s not being human. That’s being a chicken in a battery cage.” He leaned towards me, studying my face. “You a chicken in a battery cage?”

“No.”

“No. What you are is a spirit. Like me and that tree over there and the rocks and the ocean. But when people forget that, then we’re all in a whole world of shit.”

Ruth’s voice harrumphed in my head. I ignored it. “Yes. Absolutely.”

He went on staring for a couple of seconds, then nodded and sat back, looking more relaxed. I’d passed some test, evidently. For a moment the defenses were down.

“So how did it happen?” I said, seizing my chance. “The split in the community?”

He sighed. “I still find it kind of hard to talk about.” He laid his hands on his knees, clenching and unclenching them. “Anyone ever mention the name Beth McGregor to you?”

Through the thudding in my ears I heard myself say,

“No.”

“How about Evan Bone?”

“The Global Village man?”

He nodded. “You know he was born out at Coyote Fork? Raised there?”

“Yes, I think I did read that somewhere.”

“Well, when he went away to school, to Stanford, he met this girl called Beth McGregor. Next thing we knew, they were dating. A lot of us were surprised to hear that. I mean, Evan Bone, he was like this alien. We used to joke about how some little green guys with eyes on stalks must have landed and stolen Hambone and Jen’s kid and left Evan in his place. He never even spoke to a girl before. Never looked a girl in the face, when he was in the commune. And now suddenly, wham, he has a girlfriend. It didn’t seem right.” He sipped his herb tea again. “And in the end, it turned out it wasn’t right.”

“You mean she actually wasn’t his girlfriend?”

He shrugged. “She played the part OK. The guy may be a math genius, but he’s pretty dumb at everything else. So he didn’t realize what was really going down.” He reached into the pocket of his shirt and drew out a rumpled joint. He lit it, inhaled luxuriously, then offered it to me. Ever since university, cannabis had played cat and mouse with me, appearing unexpectedly in awkward social situations all over the globe, but I’d always managed to avoid it. Now it was inescapable. I took a first tentative puff. Instantly, my temples started to ache, as if someone had clamped them in a vice.

“Fact was,” said Oak, “he was being used.”

“To do what?”

He made his hand into a blade, guillotined the air with it. “Phweeoo. You heard of Cowrie Industrials?”

I shook my head.

“They’re pretty much up there with Dow Chemical, McDonnell Douglas, GE. Get these big, big government contracts, specially for defense. Plus they own a whole load of mining companies. I guess most of us Forkers must have protested them, one time or another. Coyote Fork itself was a way of saying, hey, there’s a different way to live. With each other, with the earth.” He retrieved the joint, took another lungful of smoke. “So it turns out—we only discovered later, when it was too late—Beth McGregor’s grandfather founded Cowrie. And it just so happens she starts dating the son of the guy founded Coyote Fork. This total geek no other girl would look at. You think that’s just a coincidence?”

He stared at me.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t?” He cocked a skeptical eyebrow, distancing himself from my naiveté. “Evan didn’t even want to bring her to the commune. But she was a princess. She always got her way. So she shows up with him, and she’s like a leech. Gets right in there and won’t let go. Divide and conquer, divide and conquer. And pretty soon there’s a civil war going on.”

He handed me the joint. I took a drag. The vice on my temples tightened, then suddenly loosened again, opening up a space between me and the exterior world.

“A war about what?” said my voice, from somewhere outside my head.

“Some people call themselves the Shoma Indians. Lived a couple miles from the commune. They said Coyote Fork belonged to them and they wanted it back. So Many Rivers—you know about Many Rivers?”

I nodded.

“He talked to the spirits of the ancestors. And they told him the Shoma were a bunch of phonies, just hoping to make big bucks by selling the land to some corporation. But Beth McGregor got together with some Shoma dude, a guy named Joe Chess, who said that Many Rivers wasn’t even a real Indian, that he was the phony. And Beth and him—Joe Chess, I mean—they managed to persuade some of the Forkers that we ought to close the commune and give it back to the Shoma, that they were the guys really knew how to live with the land. And it got pretty rough there for a while. Till Many Rivers finally did his thing and drove them out.” He made a cross with his fingers, like a vampire-hunter keeping Dracula at bay.

“Do you think he really did?”

He looked puzzled.

“Drove them out, I mean?”

He shrugged. “I never saw them again.”

“There could be some other explanation for that.”

I watched him closely, for evidence that I might have struck a nerve. But he didn’t turn away abruptly, or force himself to hold my gaze, or fidget.

“I know,” he said. “A lot of straight folks don’t believe this stuff. They don’t want to believe it. But if you’d ever met Many Rivers, you’d have realized. You could feel it. The power he had.”

“So where did they go?”

He pulled a face. “I don’t know, man. If there’s anyone does, I guess it’d be Joe Chess’s mom. But she’d as soon stick a knife in you as tell you.”

“Why?”

“Doesn’t want anyone going after them, I guess. Anyway, point is, by then it was too late for the commune. The damage had been—”

“How’s it going?” called a voice from the garden.

We turned and saw Denny climbing the steps to the porch. Oak nodded at her.

“Now you had a chance to talk to this fella,” she said, pointing at me, “people are saying it’s time for the circle. Show him what Coyote Fork was all about.”

Oak pondered for a moment, then nodded again. “OK, people!” he called, standing up. “Let’s do this!”

I watched as the disparate little knots of ex-communards started to coalesce into a single group in the middle of the lawn. A primeval horror of audience participation made me shrink back. But Denny grabbed my hand and dragged me down into the crowd.

“Come on. No outsiders. That’s the rule.”

We made a large circle, with our arms draped round our neighbors’ shoulders. Then, at a nod from Breeze, everybody intoned:

“Life is a circle.”

The group shuffled round counterclockwise, moving from South to East.

“We are a circle.”

Another forty-five degrees, East to North.

“We are many.”

Now North to West, presumably. Yes, it wasn’t hard to figure out, even half-stoned.

“We are one.”

And finally West to South again.

“Life is a circle.” A pause. Suddenly, like a building wave, everyone’s voices rose into a collective roar that lasted for perhaps fifteen seconds, bringing me out in goose pimples. In the silence that followed, we were all perfectly still.

And then it was over. The crowd dissolved, laughing and smiling, and re-formed into smaller groups. I sensed a change of mood, such as you see in a church service after communion. I suddenly felt a rush of light-headedness, a reckless urge to venture out of my solitary confinement and join in the fun. I went over to the nearest ice-box and prized out a sweating beer bottle. Instantly, the broad-shouldered geese man bore down on me. Close to, I could see that he was older than I’d thought: his hair had evacuated the top of his head and re-grouped around the sides, making a kind of grey-streaked curtain. He flourished an opener at me.

“Need a church key?”

“Thank you.”

“You got good taste man,” he said, handing the bottle back. “This stuff’s nectar of the gods. Made by a friend of mine, started his own micro-brewery over in Milward.”

I sipped it. A golden tide of spice and bitterness spread across my tongue.

“God, you’re right,” I said. “Thank your friend from me, will you?”

“I sure will. So you’re Mr. Writer Man?”

I nodded.

“It’s so cool you doing something about Coyote Fork.” He held a hand out. ‘I’m Denny, by the way. The other Denny.” He tugged at his beard. “Not too hard to tell the difference, huh? You care for a burger?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

He nodded towards the barbecue. “Come on, I’ll fix you one.”

For the next hour or so I drifted from one encounter to another, buoyed up by the general sense of goodwill, the exhilarating hum of energy generated by people who delight in each other’s company. Everyone seemed happy that I was there, and eager to tell me about life at Coyote Fork. But there was no propaganda, no hard sell: just a series of more or less humorous anecdotes, most of them featuring the same names: Oak; Hambone; Breeze; the two Dennys. At some point, Oak picked up his guitar and started singing, in a yearning, unexpectedly high-pitched voice. The music was unexceptional, and I could only pick out a few of the words; but it fitted the mood as perfectly as a well-judged film soundtrack.

Why had I been so prejudiced against these people? Partly, of course, it was because I was there under false pretenses, which made me feel like a spy in the enemy camp. Partly it was the lurid account Stewart Crothers gave me of Bone’s upbringing—which could easily, given all I now knew about Bone, have been no more than self-serving invention. But mostly, I realized, it was Ruth, who’d led me to expect—at best—a bunch of self-indulgent, self-deceived rich kids who’d never grown up. And, of course, some of what they’d said—to an outsider, at least—sounded ridiculous. But that wasn’t enough to explain her vitriol.

We were getting all the sex we wanted. That was what really rattled her lapsed-Catholic soul: everything else was just displacement activity. If she didn’t poison my mind against them, I might succumb, allow myself to be seduced by the lure of free love.

The mix of alcohol and cannabis and adrenalin was having its effect, displacing me from my own head. But still—from the outside looking in—I could see a paragraph starting to assemble itself:

What if it turns out that, after all, they are right? What if it really is possible—for some people, anyway—to transcend jealousy and possessiveness, to remove the elaborate system of walls and drawbridges we all unconsciously erect around ourselves and live in a kind of Cubist world where everyone is them and us at the same time . . .

I looked about me. As far as I could see, there were eight women. Two of them had obviously found their bed partners for the night. Of the rest, three—including Breeze—seemed, to my eye, reasonably attractive, and for the time being unattached.

All you have to do now, I told myself—except the words seemed to be coming from a few feet away—is walk over to one of them and say, I want to go to bed with you . . .

And then, suddenly, I noticed a fourth. She had obviously only just arrived, because she was so striking that I knew I’d have remembered if I’d seen her before: tall and slim and upright, with a plait of thick coppery hair coiled behind her head. She wore a white blouse, jeans held in place by a studded belt, cowboy boots. A pinpoint of silver flashed at her throat.

From my chemically-induced exile I found it difficult to read the body language. But something was awry. Her smile was too bright, her hi there’s too forced. And, instead of reciprocating, the crowd shrank back to let her through, like an organism closing itself against a hostile virus.

When she reached the middle of the group, she stopped suddenly, and—sensing my stare—looked directly at me. I forced myself to hold her gaze. She smiled and nodded as if she recognized me, then started tacking her way towards me. The next moment I noticed Breeze moving quickly in the same direction, as if to head her off. They finally coincided a couple of yards away from me.

“Hey, honey,” said Breeze. “This is a surprise.”

The younger woman flushed.

Breeze turned to me. “This is my daughter, Ripple.”

Ripple and I helloed each other.

“I was just coming over to see if you were ready to leave?” said Breeze. “I’m guessing you’ve probably had pretty much as much as you can handle for one evening?”

Ripple caught my eye and gave a secretive little smile. She would say that.

“And tell you the truth,” said Breeze, before I had a chance to reply, “I’m kind of bushed myself. So—”

“Where you staying?” Ripple asked me.

“The Eagle’s Nest.”

“I can drop you off there later, if you want.” said Ripple.

“Uh-uh,” said Breeze. “That’s way out of your way.”

“It isn’t far—”

“And anyway,” said Breeze, “Robert and me got plans to make. For tomorrow.” She clutched my elbow, squeezing so hard that it hurt. “Coming?”

She’s going to ask you stay the night, said the outside-my-head voice as we made our farewells. She saw her daughter moving in on you and decided to stake her claim.

But when we got back to the Clunker, all she wanted to talk about was what I’d made of Denny and Oak and Denny, and what time I should come round the next morning to look at the archive. Even so, as we approached the bookshop, I half-expected her to say, You want to come in for a minute? Instead, she sailed past, as if she hadn’t noticed where we were. And when we reached the hotel, she could barely wait for me to shut the door before calling, Good night, and driving off.

The effect of the chemicals was starting to fade. By the time I got back to my room, I’d taken up residence in my own skull again. The bed, still rumpled from where Ruth and I had made love; the lingering scent of her soap and shampoo, gave me a vicious jab of grief. I was overwhelmed with the urge to confide in her, to be part of us again.

I switched on my phone, then realized that it must be the middle of the night in Ohio. But as I put it down again, I saw there was a text from Ruth:

I miss you so much. xxxxxx

I lay on the bed and wept.