The Eden Express (26 page)

Energetic and tough as nails as I was, there were several things worrying me. One was what had gone on in all those blanks. I knew about the picture window, running around naked, and a few other antics, but had I seriously hurt anyone, possibly even killed them? Had I unforgivably insulted anyone? Those blanks could have been filled with anything.

Was medical information being withheld from me for my own good? A brain tumor? Something incurable that was going to land me in the bin over and over again and again no matter what I or anyone else did or didn’t do?

And what had happened to the rest of the world while I was away? Was there news about my family or friends or the world situation that I’d be told about as soon as they decided I could take it?

Would everybody be afraid of me?

And still in the back of my mind was the suspicion that, crazy as I had been, there were some very real and valuable things back there, and just what did that mean?

 

It was a lovely day for a ferry ride. So nice to walk around without nurses and ass-busting orderlies everywhere.

Simon and good old Car Car were waiting in the parking lot at the Works. The place had changed ownership, which upset me some. I wondered about the wonderful waitress I was sort of in love with. I wondered if she was unhappy about it, though I figured she’d do just fine wherever she was, whatever happened. The mill stacks were, per usual, spewing forth their poison puke. B.C.’s prime minister called it the smell of money. The world’s largest pulp mill, using three times as much water a day as New York City. What kind of neighbor was that for Eden? Just one more thing my going crazy hadn’t managed to put much of a dent in. Nixon was going to visit China. That was a step in the right direction, but there were just as many cars on the road as ever. My parents were tentatively getting back together, but I didn’t really know whether I wanted that or not. Bengalis were still starving. I don’t remember what the Dow Jones was doing. Virginia was treating me with a new respect, a new caring. Maybe something good would come out of all this.

We went out to Prior Road. Virginia and Simon got into his car and I into mine. It was the way I wanted it. Being trusted to drive my car alone was a big step. They drove behind me, which bugged me slightly. I wondered if they had planned it.

Zeke was waiting for us at Prior Road, in exile from the farm
because Tanga was in heat. He was suitably excited and thrilled to see me. Did Virge think I was faking it, working at appearing beautiful by loving my dog? Fuck you, Virge. If you can fuck Vincent, I can play with my dog. I’m jealous? I’m competitive? I’m brakes? I’m holding you back? This feeling ain’t just in my head. You yourself have admitted how sane I am. I said nothing but resolved not to bury it any more. If this was to be the new age of honesty, etc., I’d be fucked if I was going to play straight man to everybody else’s liberation any more. Especially Virginia’s.

I was a little wary about Simon. What was in those blanks? I knew he had been with me through most of them. What did he think: Was he afraid of me? Disgusted with me? Could he trust me? What was our new relationship to be like? He seemed pretty free and easy and I was greatly relieved.

We were each other’s complement, which was why we had made such a good team going backward in time. No points of friction. If I felt like stomping Vincent it was because he struck me so much as a parody of myself in questionable taste.

Prior Road. What did they know? What did they think? It felt good to be back. Back to a wood stove, back on my turf. Back with my people. When Virginia and I took a little walk she told me she wasn’t comfortable there. She was worried that the folks there might consider her responsible for the hell I had been through.

 

NICK FROM COLORADO. There was this guy Nick. Nick was from Colorado, which he announced like it was important somehow. The first time I looked at him I felt the hair on the back of my neck start to rise. This guy was trouble. He had blue eyes, which didn’t help, and long red hair like Columbus, who had fucked this continent in the first place. He was skinny as a rail and didn’t smoke cigarettes. I tried my best to treat him like everyone else, but the case against him kept
building and building. He wasn’t like everyone else. For one thing, he was the one guy there who had just mysteriously showed up. Everyone else I had met before or was well known by someone I knew. They all had good credentials. But who the hell was this cat and what was he doing here?

His body was terrifyingly skinny. When he took his shirt off I had seen more flesh on pictures out of Auschwitz. There was an utter lack of compromise in him, no give. Some set purpose. But here he was in the middle of nowhere. What was this purpose, this resolve all about?

His hair was halfway down his back. His beard hadn’t been trimmed for at least a year. He was only eighteen. What caused those lines on his face?

I was sure he didn’t eat white bread, was fairly sure he ate no meat. With a body like that, I wasn’t sure he ate at all. Lean hungriness. Was he what Virginia had wanted me to be? Was this the revolutionary fervor I lacked, the strength that would have kept me out of the nut house? Was this the young buck come to take on the old, tired, compromised, weakened stag?

I knew there was no way I could talk about these feelings without Simon and Virginia getting scared that Mark was going crazy again, but it wasn’t just my head, any more than dreams are nonsense.

 

There was a meal and some chatting about spring coming and what sort of future we could expect for our communities. A little shop talk about seeds and fertilizer, etc.; talk about cooperation among the various groups that were in the area. Little by little, people drifted off to various places to sleep. Some to the barn, some to tents, some to different rooms in the main house. There was a double mattress right in the main room, where we had eaten. Virge and I decided that since no one else wanted it, we would sleep there.

It was our first night together in some time, the reunion I had worried
about so much just before I cracked. Then it was just wondering about what her having slept with Vincent would do to our relationship. But now so much more had happened.

She started getting menstrual cramps. Transparent and I almost said so, but the old rules were coming back. We just laughed a little about our lousy timing as far as getting back together. All the progress wiped out, all the pluses out the window. Back at ground zero. Any feeling that my craziness was a positive thing, that it was a chance to start fresh, began to sour in my mouth. My sexuality, which I had clung to so desperately, atrophied under the accusing wither of her pains in the gut.

It seemed like cyanide frosting on an arsenic cake.

If I had succeeded at least partly in putting Nick from Colorado out of my mind for just a minute or so, what he proceeded to do took care of that in a hurry. He came into the room with a lantern and started fumbling around. I think he grunted something like “Got to work on my boots.”

At this hour of the night? In this room? I looked at Virginia with a funny look on my face, like is this happening or am I nuts again? Is this weird or am I weird? This is our first time alone in more than a month and this joker comes in to work on his boots. As if we didn’t have enough shit to deal with.

But how long can it take him to work on his boots? The answer comes to that: about two hours. After which he blew out the lamp and lay down to sleep, maybe all of three feet away from us, where he groaned and sighed for a while and then got into some heavy snoring. If Nick, as I was trying to believe, was a regular, real person, he sure wasn’t starting off on the right foot.

Well, that pretty much shot any chance Virge and I had to talk about much. But we felt a community of having been intruded on. There was good will between us.

I didn’t sleep much that night, but it wasn’t panicky, I’m threatened, something awful is going to happen, pay attention, no time for sleep, and it wasn’t the euphoric breakthrough of having no need for sleep. I dozed off every once in a while but kept waking up again and looking around and thinking some more. It was so nice to wake up somewhere other than the hospital. Not sleeping probably had a lot to do with the fact that I wasn’t on all that medication any more. It would probably take my system a while to get used to not having all that Thorazine fog to overcome.

 

The next morning brought a swell piece of news. Nick was coming up to spend some time with us on the farm, maybe forever. He had asked Simon if he could come up, and Simon had said sure.

Mostly I just couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that Simon could be so dumb. I was very tired. I didn’t want any trouble, any argument, any friction. I just wanted to get back to the farm, where I could relax and let all the shit in my system work itself out. It seemed there was plenty for us all to do without throwing a stranger in the pot. The soup looked plenty thick already.

It was going to be tough enough to try to reestablish my life with people to whom I had been close. People I could explain something to in a few words. Getting to know someone is hard work. With anyone it would have been tough, and Nick from Colorado wasn’t just anyone.

Simon, can you really not see what’s in that cat’s eyes? Would you please wake up, Simon? Didn’t I teach you anything?

Early that day, Simon, Virginia, Nick from Colorado, and I headed up the lake.

 

Without Nick it might have been different. Who can say? I might have been able to relax and live happily ever after at the farm. But relaxing and feeling at home around him was about as likely as…? The stream
flowing up the mountain? Why not? Had to use some image and the stream did just that a few days later anyway.

Bea was at the marina. Did she know I had been locked up in a mental hospital? About the things I had said and done? It would break my heart to have Bea be afraid of me. She was my second mother. She had been warm and good to us and obviously wished us well.

There was no fear in her face, but a deep motherly concern. I must have looked fresh out of the grave.

“Mark, I haven’t seen you for a while, you look like you’ve been sick.”

“Ya, Bea, a little flu and then one thing led to another. I was pretty sick but I feel a lot better now and everything’s going to be fine. It’s nice to be back.”

She obviously wanted to take me home and fatten me up some and didn’t think I was ready to go back up to the farm, but she said nothing more.

Virginia and Simon let me play captain. I was grateful, as I had been grateful for their letting me drive my car alone. Nick didn’t say much. His face was as clueless, as warmthless as ever. He seemed to be looking at me contemptuously, wondering what the hell I thought I was proving, waiting for me to show my weak spot, for me to fuck up.

Just ’cause I’ve been nuts, just ’cause I weigh a hundred and thirty pounds, don’t get any ideas that I’m not still someone to be reckoned with.

Jumping gracefully to the dock and moving well and organizing the boat, packing exactly right. If just Simon and Virginia had been there I might have acted very differently. But here was this new element, this unknown who felt like bad news. I piloted the boat perfectly, docked it without a mistake, sprang ashore and tied it up.

Up the beautiful path to the beautiful farm. Back to life, back to my dreams. Back to home and friends. Back to where I was before I was so rudely interrupted.

Kathy was there alone. Jack was in California and she had held down the farm all by herself for a couple of weeks.

She hadn’t been off the farm since before I cracked up. For the first time she really felt that the place was home, that she belonged there. She was radiant. It was good to see her that way. She deserved it.

 

BRAKES. Maybe Nick was there to make me behave. Brakes. The same way Virginia had, the same way I had hoped getting to town with Simon when I had so obviously stopped behaving would. I wasn’t supposed to be in Eden. Something didn’t want me there and there was obviously nothing in myself that would hold me back, so I needed brakes. I had given up or thrown away my own brakes a few years back. For one thing, Virginia and other things were such good brakes that mine had just sort of atrophied. It was a nice feeling that I could rely on others’ brakes. It was a little unfair to them but they didn’t seem to mind, or maybe they just didn’t notice. So I just set my sights on Eden and put my foot on the floor.

To get to Eden with Virginia and Simon and Kathy, I really didn’t have to start from very far away. So much was understood. We were pretty close to the take-off point, where the acceleration gets pretty hairy. But with Nick there it was back to ground zero and lots to be filled in, lots to be established before I got anywhere near take-off again. That many steps away from being an organism, from Eden, from cosmic orgasm. Simon’s brakes, Kathy’s brakes, Virginia’s brakes? I had burned them all to frazzles. They couldn’t have stopped a toy truck going uphill.

So it was getting to know you instead of getting to Eden. How old are you? Where are you from? Did you go to school? What made you drop out? Etc. Very safe stuff.

 

In a way, I felt like a diabetic who had to explain to those around him what they should do if he went into a coma. It was trickier than that.
Much less for sure is known about my thing than diabetes, and I knew just about nothing then. Dale had been planning to fill me in when he got back from Hawaii. I knew that if I could eat three times a day and get to sleep every night it would help. I knew I had been given heavy doses of vitamin C, vitamin B
₃
, and other vitamins. I didn’t know how they worked if they worked at all, or whether they were just a shot in the dark. I didn’t know whether these were things I needed to take just in rough spots or all the time. The tranquilizers were another mystery. I hated Thorazine. I figured it was just a chemical straitjacket to make me less trouble to the staff.