The Last American Man

by Elizabeth Gilbert

  Twig came toward us with the plow, churning up a wobbly path of soil.

  “You’re doing a good job,” Eustace told him. “Much better than I expected.”

  Eustace delivered the compliment with an expressionless face and an even tone. But underneath the praise I could hear the scary traces of controlled anger and impatience and disappointment that I usually hear in Eustace’s voice at this time of evening, when the sun’s going down and the chores haven’t been done and somebody’s screwing up again. Around this time of evening, it’s pretty obvious that what Eustace really wants to do is line up the lot of us in a neat row and bitch-slap some sense into our stupid heads.

  Of course, he would never . . .

  “Nice work, Twig,” he said instead. “Thank you for your focus.”

  Eustace regularly gets apprentices who have never before held a bucket. He’ll give them the simplest task in the world—go fill this bucket with water—and then he’ll watch in horror as they try to carry the filled bucket. They don’t know how. They hold the heavy bucket as far away from their bodies as they can, keeping their arm stretched out in front of them, parallel to the ground, wasting energy and strength just holding their burden. It makes him wince in pain to watch it. Or hammers. Eustace gets young people up at Turtle Island who have never before met a hammer. They have no sense of how a hammer works. They come to him because they claim they want to live “self-sufficiently,” but when he asks them to hammer in a nail, they grab the hammer in a tightened fist, way up by its head, and then they punch at their target.

  “When I see that,” Eustace says solemnly, “it makes me want to lie down and die.”

  When he’s teaching young children in public schools, he sometimes tries to play this old Indian game with them, where you roll a hoop and try to throw sticks through it as it tumbles along. But he finds again and again that whole classes of American children are incapable of figuring out how to roll a hoop.

  “It’s a crazy thing for a child not to know how to roll a hoop!” he rants. “I show them how to do it and I hand them the hoop and they drop it. They kind of randomly throw the hoop and, of course, it lands flat on the ground, two feet away from them. So they stare at it. Why isn’t it moving? They don’t get it. Even after I’ve showed them once, they can’t figure it out. After a long time, some child might figure out that a wheel needs momentum to roll, and if I’m lucky, some genius might think, Ah! Let’s try to spin it!

  “I see this played out over and over. I watch these kids and I think, ‘Can this unbelievable crisis be real?’What kind of children are we raising in North America? Listen, I can guaran-damn-tee you that every child in Africa knows how to roll a fucking wheel. It’s a question of understanding natural law. The world is ruled by a few basic physical laws—leverage, inertia, momentum, thermodynamics—and if you’re out of touch with these fundamental principles, then you can’t hammer a nail, carry a bucket, or roll a wheel. That means you’re out of touch with the natural world. Being out of touch with the natural world means you’ve lost your humanity and that you live in an environment that you completely do not understand. Can you even begin to imagine my horror at this? Can you begin to comprehend what’s been forgotten in just a few generations? It took mankind one million years to learn how to roll a wheel, but it only took us fifty years to forget.”

  We’ve forgotten, of course, because of the oldest natural law on the books: Use it or lose it. Kids can’t manage the simplest tools because they have no need to learn. It serves no purpose in their comfortable, well-appointed lives. Their parents can’t teach them this kind of physical dexterity, because they, by and large, don’t have it, either. Don’t need it, never learned it, no call for it anymore. But we know things weren’t always this way. Even a century ago, for instance, there wasn’t a man in America who didn’t carry some kind of knife with him at all times. Whether it was for skinning bears or trimming cigars, a man needed a knife as a basic tool for living, and he knew how to take care of it and sharpen it and handle it. Who needs a knife now?

  For that matter,who needs a horse? Who even needs to know what a horse is? Eustace found on his horse journeys that it was the people in their seventies and eighties who were likely to be comfortable around the animals, having grown up with working livestock as children, or hearing stories about it from their parents. But to each successive generation the idea of a horse was increasingly foreign, exotic, unthinkable. The younger people had no idea how to behave around the animals, how to protect themselves, how to grasp the concept of another living being.

  “And what will their children think?” Eustace wondered. “Twenty years from now, a horse will look like a camel to people, like some crazy zoo animal.”

  So it is that the incompetence widens with each generation. Still, Eustace feels he could handle this incompetence if it weren’t for the one big flaw he sees in modern Americans of all ages: people don’t listen. They don’t know how to pay attention. They don’t know how to focus. Even if they claim that they want to learn, they have no discipline.

  “The hardest thing is to get young people to trust me and do as I say,” Eustace said. “If I have four people up here working with me and I say, ‘OK, everyone. Let’s roll this log on the count of three,’ one will start rolling the log immediately, two will pull the log on the count of three, and the fourth will wander off somewhere and pick his nose. And they’re constantly questioning my authority. They always want to know Why are we doing it this way, why are we doing it that way? Listen, I know why, and that’s all that matters, and I don’t have time to explain every decision. They never believe me when I say I’m right. If I say I’m right, then you can be sure I am right, because I don’t make mistakes. If I’m not sure of something, then I’ll say I’m not sure of it, but most of the time I am sure. People get mad and say, ‘Eustace thinks his way is the only way.’Well, that’s true. My way is the only way. And I believe the best work is done when people surrender to one authority, like in the military. That’s the most efficient and streamlined way to produce labor. If I was the general of an army, for instance, the discipline would be more organized and I could insist that everyone do exactly what I said, and then things would run properly.”

  To make Turtle Island function, Eustace ends up taking control—as his grandfather did with his campers and staff—of every aspect of his apprentices’ lives.

  “It gets to the point,” said one apprentice, “where you feel you have to ask Eustace’s permission to take a shit. Because God forbid you should be off in the woods taking a shit when he needs to teach you how to use a foot-pedal grinder or forge a horseshoe.”

  Yeah, Eustace wouldn’t deny that. I’ve heard him lecture his apprentices on the proper way to tie their shoes, because why should people waste time having their shoes come untied when there’s so much work to be done? But that’s how American utopian communities—the ones that lasted more than a week—have always been run. Discipline, order, and obedience make them endure. In the bedrooms of female Shakers, back in the nineteenth century, you would have found this instructive sign:

  “Each person must rise from her bed at the sound of ‘first trumpet.’ Kneel in silence on the place where you first placed your foot when getting out of bed. No speaking in the room unless you wish to ask a question of the sister having the care of the room. In that case, whisper. Dress your right arm first. Step your right foot first. At the sound of ‘second trumpet’ march in order, giving your right side to your superior. Walk on your toes. Fold your left hand across your stomach. Let your right hand fall at your side. March to the workshop in order. Ask no unnecessary questions.”

  Lord, how Eustace Conway would love that kind of order around Turtle Island. But there’s only so much control he can assert each day. For now, it’s all he can do to get his apprentices to roll a log on the count of three.

  Most of the apprentices live in fear of Eustace, to be perfectly honest. They talk about him whenever he’s out of earsh
ot—hushed and somewhat desperate conversations—huddled like courtiers trying to read the king’s motives and moods, passing on advice for survival, wondering who will be cast away next. Too intimidated to deal with Eustace directly, the apprentices, unsure of how to please this demanding master, seek advice from Eustace’s girlfriends or brothers or close friends, asking these privileged associates: What does he want from me? Why am I always in trouble? How can I keep him happy? Eustace knows this chattering goes on behind his back, and he loathes it. He considers it the ultimate of insubordination.

  That’s why he nailed this letter on the Turtle Island community bulletin board in the summer of 1998:

  “Turtle Island staff, residents, and associates. I, Eustace Conway, am pissed off. My girlfriend Patience has been here for five days, and she has been approached by many of you in discussion about your problems with me. This is a challenge and an unnecessary burden for her and our young relationship. I resent this approach to ‘reaching me.’ If you have a problem with me, approach me with it, NOT her. If we can’t solve it or you can’t find satisfaction, DON’T work through her. If you can’t stop talking about negative aspects of your relationship with me, please resign or leave now. I am intolerant of this behavior. I am hurt, saddened, and full of grief that such would ever happen. I personally would rather beat the living shit out of you than have you work your problems with me through Patience. If this seems overreacting, well, that is a social-emotional burden that I will carry. I hope I have made myself clear of my need. Grateful and respectful of your consideration, humbly yours in trust, Eustace Conway.”

  No Shirt. No Shoes. No Fucking Backtalk.

  It might seem from all this that the only people who could survive on Turtle Island are those who have no self-will, who are wimpy and easy to push around, who will meekly do as they’re told for months without a peep of complaint. But this isn’t true. Wimpy people crumble here and they crumble fast. They try hard to please Eustace, and when they realize they’ll never get the validation they crave, they break down in mourning, devastated by how violated they feel. (These apprenticeships generally end in tears: I gave and gave and gave, but it was never enough for you!) The only people who crumble faster than the wimps are the cocky individuals with chips on their shoulders who stubbornly refuse to bend. They’re the ones who believe they will be personally exterminated if they have to live under someone else’s authority for even a minute. (These apprenticeships generally end in a big fight: I am not your slave!)

  But the people who thrive here—and there aren’t many of them— are an interesting species. They are among the most quietly self-aware people I’ve ever met. They have in common a profound psychic stillness. They don’t talk a lot, and they don’t seek praise, but they seem confident of themselves. They are able to make themselves vessels of learning without drowning in it. It’s as if they decide, when they come here, to take their fragile and sensitive self-identity, fold it up tight, tuck it away someplace safe, and promise to retrieve it two years later, when the apprenticeship will be over. That’s what Eustace Conway’s all-time star apprentice Christian Kaltrider did.

  “I came here in a very humble state,” Christian explained, “but also extremely fired up and interested, and I was a big-time sponge. It was my intention to learn, and that was all. Eustace would teach me something, and I’d go off and do it. I didn’t spend any time talking—just listening and watching and doing what I was told. Of course, he had control over me all the time, but I didn’t let that frustrate me. I told myself, ‘I am letting him have this control for the purpose of my education. And he is in control only of my education, not of my identity.’ That’s a subtle distinction. Are you giving yourself to Eustace, or are you letting him take you? I made the decision to give myself over as a student, and that’s why my experience was so different from the experience of many others who come here. Other people come here worshipping Eustace. They want to please him, so they let him take over their entire selves, and that’s when the resentment starts to build. It builds slowly, over time. What wears people down here isn’t the physical labor but the psychological stress of losing their identity. I was never in danger of that.”

  “If you don’t protect yourself from Eustace,” explained Candice, another Turtle Island apprentice determined to make her experience successful, “then he’ll suck you dry. You have to keep some part of yourself—your ego, I guess—where he can’t reach it. And you have to be quietly stubborn about it. I’ve made my decision. I’m staying here for the full two years of my apprenticeship, no matter how hard it gets. I refuse to become just another DETI.”

  “ DETI?” I asked.

  “Disgruntled Ex-Turtle Islander,” she clarified. “Look, I came here to learn, and I am learning. And I find Eustace to be fair and patient, even when I’m an idiot. I try to be quiet and private, and that’s the only way to do the work around here and get something from it. He’s the boss, and you do have to accept his decisions. You have to take his leadership seriously, but you can’t take it personally.”

  It’s the same thing that makes a good soldier—not mindless obedience, but mindful obedience. Which is probably why one of the most successful Turtle Island apprentices was a young woman named Siegal, who, before coming to North Carolina, had served in the Israeli military. Perfect training! Siegal survived Eustace Conway the same way she survived her military service. “You must make yourself very small,” she explained, as if that’s such a simple thing to do.

  It’s not at all simple, though. Not many people can subdue their egos. The talent for submission is especially hard for modern American kids, who are raised in a culture that has taught them from infancy that their every desire is vital and sacred. Their parents, their teachers, their leaders, their media, have always asked them, “What do you want?” I used to see this when I was a diner waitress, of all things. Parents would interrupt ordering food for the entire table to hover around their toddler and ask, “What do you want, honey?” And they’d stare moon-eyed at the child, waiting desperately for the answer. Oh my God, what will he say? What does he want? The world holds its breath! Eustace Conway is right on target when he says parents did not give their children this kind of power a hundred years ago. Or even fifty years ago. I myself can declare with all honesty that on the rare occasions when my mother and her six Midwestern-farm siblings ate in restaurants as children, if any of them had dared to make a personal demand of their father . . . well, they just wouldn’t have.

  But Americans are raised differently now. And the “What do you want, honey?” culture has created the kids who are flocking to Eustace today. They undergo enormous shock when they quickly discover that he doesn’t give a shit what they want. And between 85 and 90 percent of them can’t handle that.

  And then there’s the food.

  One of the things that makes a Turtle Island apprenticeship challenging is that the food up on the mountain can be . . . well, inconsistent. I have enjoyed some of the finest meals of my life there, after a day of steady labor and an invigorating wash in the creek, sitting around the solid oak table with my workmates, eating fresh produce from the garden and a flank off one of Will Hicks’s famous pigs, all sopped up with hot cornbread out of a cast-iron pot lifted right off the coals. It’s nice. I have eaten gorgeous handfuls of wild morel mushrooms at Turtle Island, irritating Eustace to the point of madness by saying, after every bite, “Do you know how much these things cost in New York?” (“No,” he says. “Do you know how delicious these things taste in North Carolina?”) But I also spent a week at Turtle Island in January when we had the same venison stew for three meals a day. And it was skanky, old, tough venison. Heat it up every night, try not to taste the burn and rust from the bottom of the pot. And the only other ingredients of the stew were apparently an onion and five beans.

  While the paying guests—the special groups and the young campers who visit Turtle Island—get excellent food served by wonderful cooks hired for the occasion, no suc
h arrangements are made for the apprentices, so the food situation can get pretty grim sometimes, especially in the winter. The squash, for instance. Squash is the staple of the winter diet of the apprentices. They turn squash into everything they can imagine—squash bread, squash pie, squash lasagna, squash soup. And then they give up and eat squash mush until the garden starts up again in the spring. It’s as if they’re sixteenth-century sailors and the squash is their hardtack, their last provision. There have been mutinies over the squash alone. There have been tearful meetings where apprentices who have endured every other physical challenge will wail to Eustace, in a unified protest, “The squash must stop!”

  They don’t get a lot of sympathy from him, though. Because it’s not as if he’s holing up there in his cabin sucking the marrow out of duck a l’orange while his long-suffering apprentices shovel more squash down their gullets. If squash is all there is to eat, it’s what he eats, too, and let there be no whining about it. There is—as with everything at Turtle Island— nothing he asks of his apprentices that he himself will not endure. (He’s no Peter Sluyter, the utopian shyster who ran a strict Labidist homestead in seventeenth-century upstate New York. Fire was forbidden to his followers, though Sluyter always had one roaring comfortably in his own home.) No, Eustace Conway is cold when his people are cold; he’s hungry when his people are hungry; he’s working when they’re working. Although he’s usually also working when his people are asleep, for that matter. Eustace has been in hungry places in his life, places where squash mush would have been an epic feast, so he’s not too sympathetic. Anyhow, if they get really desperate, they can always head down into Boone for some Dumpster Diving.

  Dumpster Diving is a Conway family tradition. It’s something (maybe the most fun thing) the Conway boys learned from their father. Big Eustace Conway is a lifetime salvage artist. It appeals to his sense of frugality and of adventure to pick apart the garbage of others. There is no garbage too foul for him to look through in search of a great find. Eustace and Walton and Judson inherited the skill from their father, but they refined it to the point that they learned to look in other people’s garbage not only for old record players and air conditioners, but for food. Delicious, decadent food. The Dumpsters behind the huge super- markets of the American dream, it turns out, are the free-as-the-wind buffets of the truly resourceful.