Starbird Murphy and the World Outside (30 page)

A VW bus brought three Family members from the Bellingham Compound who took stacks of Ben's flyers and staple guns and hit all the telephone poles in a five-block radius. When that was done, they stood on the sidewalk, inviting people who walked by to eat at the restaurant and come back when the cider was ready.

That's when my day stopped feeling like a plane on the runway and took off. Customers started arriving in large groups, filling in both sides of the street with cars. Soon, the restaurant was full and I had to start a waiting list, encouraging people to explore the cider press while in line for a table.

I helped Indus and Caelum load the first batch of clean apples into the mill, where we chopped it into a fine mush called cheese. When the cheese was ready, we packed it into wooden trays and let the kids watching help turn the crank that would press those trays down with the heavy metal arm. Within an hour, we had pressed our first batch, the precious juice running down through the trays and collecting in a pan where it was funneled into glass bottles. A crowd of thirty people gasped and clapped with their gloves on as the juice sloshed into the first jar. Then, as fast as that jar filled, someone bought it. Ben worked the sales table with Fern Moon.

Running the press was demanding physical labor, and the boys all stripped down to their T-shirts even though the morning was chilly. Lyra Hay was supposed to be arranging and selling pumpkins, but instead she was buzzing around Caelum and Indus like a fly on fruit. Even when we were working together on the press, I barely got to talk to Indus beyond “Hand me another jar” or “tell Adam we need more apples.”

And if I thought the demands of being a waitress were bad, they were nothing compared with managing an event.
Starbird, where can I find a ladder? Did anyone make a sandwich board for the intersection? We're almost out of one-dollar bills. Tell the kitchen we need more hot cider, and where did you put the paper cups?

Felicia was the worst.
Do you expect me to manage your waiting list while you make cider? Am I supposed to go outside and scream their names when their table is ready? There are too many people here for two bathrooms. Do people understand that only some of this is pasteurized? If the health department comes, I'm pointing at you.

V started running interference, physically blocking Felicia every time she tried to get to me. Once I heard V say, “Go count your tips again,” and turn Felicia around toward the office.

And the crowds grew. As fast as I could weed names from the waiting list, more sprouted there. People walking past noticed the crowd and stopped to see what was happening, then ended up buying cider. We started a second pressing right after the first one, without even stopping to taste the product.

Ben was amazing at the cash box. Despite the throng of people that swarmed around him, the line never got longer than four families as Ben totaled merchandise and made change at an electrifying rate. Every time I came over to bring him small bills or take a collection of large bills back to the office, I overheard Farm women doting on him. If Eve wasn't bringing him a piece of apple bread, then Adeona was commenting on how smart he was. I heard Ben ask my mother if he could have another chai. “Thanks, Fern, I love chai,” he said.

At ten o'clock, as I was flying past the farm table on my way to check the pasteurizing juice, I heard Fern say, “Ben, could you help these folks get two large pumpkins to their car?”

I was stopping to help him carry them when I heard Rory's voice from the sidewalk. “I'll help,” she said, dropping her bag in the grass and running over to Ben.

“I got it,” Ben said. Then he grabbed each pumpkin by the stem and hefted them onto his shoulders like they were filled with air.

Rory and I both watched him carry those pumpkins to the car. So much for Ben not being up to physical labor.

I gave Rory the receipt book and put her at the table. I didn't make it back to the cider press again after that because I had to answer the phone and run between the office and the sales stand. By noon, we had our first open café table of the day. By one o'clock, I was racing off to set up lunch for our volunteers in the small parking lot out back. Paul and Devin had fixed sandwiches and salads the day before, which Eve and I arranged on a folding table just outside the back door. Family members brought out lawn chairs and camp stools. The VW bus from Bellingham pulled its side door open and people climbed inside to sit and eat.

Whatever I was doing, I was always aware of my proximity to Indus. In the back parking lot, there were two doors and forty-seven footsteps between us. At the cash register, one door and nineteen footsteps. Standing at the sales table with Fern and Ben, Indus was ten footsteps and no doors away.

“You should take a lunch break now,” I told Fern as she arranged the tablecloth under the gourd display. “We just put out sandwiches in the back.”

“Ben should go before me,” she said. “He hasn't stopped all morning.”

“I'll go with Ben,” Rory offered.

“Yeah, okay,” I said.

As Ben and Rory walked off, Fern said, “Your Outside friends make a cute couple.”

“They're not a couple.”

“Well, maybe they're on their way.”

A rose garden bloomed across my chest.
Jealousy
. I shouldn't be feeling that way about Ben, especially not when Indus was finally in Seattle, at the cider press, seven footsteps away. Not since Indus saw the way I had changed. I forced myself to feel happy for Ben and Rory. Let them fall in love and get married. Let them have smart, unusual babies. They were both Outsiders. They would be good for each other.

A man placed three bottles of cider and a loaf of zucchini bread on the table. I totaled his purchase and gave him change.

“You handle money now,” said Fern.

I put a fistful of fives into their compartment. “It's no big deal.”

We stood in awkward silence beside a pyramid of pumpkins.

“Are they feeding you well at Beacon House? Does V cook for you?” she asked.

“We all cook together,” I said.

“You all cook? Could you imagine that on the Farm, the way we would all bump elbows trying to work?” Fern playfully bumped elbows with me. I stiffened.

“It feels strange to be working out here today. I've been working in the farmhouse kitchen for fifteen years,” said Fern. “I didn't start there until after you were born, because it was too hot for me in the kitchen when I was pregnant with you. When I was pregnant with Doug, I worked as a waitress at a restaurant like this one.” She turned to look at the facade of the cafe. “Can you imagine doing that job when you're waddling around with a huge belly?”

“You never told me you worked at a café.” I felt guarded, afraid I would find out more things my mother had lied to me about, or just neglected to tell me. Fern rarely talked about her life before the Family, other than to say that EARTH had saved her.

“My mother had kicked me out.” Fern fussed with the gourds on display, rearranging them as she spoke. “She said it was my own sin that had cast me into the darkness. The boy wouldn't admit the baby was his, even after I called his mother. I didn't push for a paternity test. I wasn't much older than you are now.”

“Three gourds and two gallons of cider,” a man said, handing me two twenty-dollar bills. I gave him change.

“I didn't tell the restaurant I was pregnant when they hired me, but after three months, big sweaters weren't hiding it anymore. A friend's parents agreed to let me stay in their guest room, but I had no idea how to pay for a baby. I guess I hoped my parents would come around. EARTH and Uranus came to eat at my restaurant and sat in my section. Isn't that a miracle?” Fern finally turned toward me, her eyes holding the question.

“Farm people are trying to do their own dishes and Sun is getting pissed,” Felicia yelled from the café door, her arm pointing into the restaurant.

V was right behind her. “I've talked to them, it's all worked out. Table two wants bread,” she said, pushing Felicia back inside.

“I was the third woman to give birth on the Farm with only a midwife in the room,” Fern went on. “EARTH wanted to give my child a biblical name, but I begged him not to. So EARTH named him Douglas Fir, and gave us a place to live, work to do, a family.” A red ring formed around each of Fern's eyes. “When Doug ran away, I thought I would go crazy. But I still had you.”

“We finished eating, so you should take a break now,” Ben said. He and Rory were suddenly behind me. I didn't know how much they'd heard.

I handed Ben the cash box and Fern followed me through the café and out the back door to the parking lot. Family members were sitting around eating, their legs hanging out of the bus door and windows. I turned to Fern.

“Why are you telling me this now?” I said.

“You're exactly the same height as me,” she said, brushing my long bangs away from my eyes. “When did you get to be so tall?” A fat tear rolled down my mother's face and fell onto her sweater. Another followed it. Then her face was covered in tears, and so I started crying, too. And then we hugged each other, tears falling down our cheeks and onto each other's shoulders, and I was aware again of how much I missed my mother, whose room and sleep and thoughts I had shared for sixteen years of my life.

“I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the birth certificate,” she whispered into my shoulder. “I was worried about you going Outside. How could I know you were capable of all of this?”

The awareness came suddenly. My mother was not just my mother, but also a separate human being, with a past and a future that didn't entirely involve me. She was my age once and pregnant. Did she love that boy who was Doug's father? Did she ever love any of the men on the Farm the way I loved Indus? Did she love EARTH? Did she love Iron?

Indus appeared from the café door, seven footsteps away. “Three o'clock total,” he announced, “is two hundred gallons.” People sitting around cheered, and a few hooted. Adam jumped up and clicked his heels together, and two men from Bellingham beat the VW bus like a drum. Those who didn't benefit directly from the café were cheering as loudly as those who did. “Crowd's thinning, but we've got apples left. We're going to press more for Family members,” Indus said. That brought another cheer.

Then he walked over to me. “Want to take a walk?”

 
 

Indus Stone and I walked down the alley, away from the café. The event seemed to be handling itself for the moment, but more important, I was finally alone with Indus. It was happening. I was afraid my eyes were still red from crying with Fern, and I had to keep sniffling.

“How's Fern?” he asked. “You know she's been depressed ever since you left?”

“She has?” Guilt played around in my stomach.

“Yeah, everybody misses you,” he said.

“Everybody?”

“Well, mostly the chickens.” He smiled. We were several feet from the café now. The sun was a dim bulb in the sky and would stay that way until spring.