by Sheena Kamal
“Nice grip you got there, Nora. Vik didn’t tell me that.”
“We didn’t shake hands.”
She glances down. “You have working hands—that’s good. We get a lot of yoga types this way, who’ve never done a full day’s work in their lives. But I get the feeling you know what hard labor is. That’s the kind of woman we need at this farm, to be honest, though we’d never turn anyone away. As long as you’re willing to work, you’ve got a place here. Roof over your head and food in your belly. A place to quiet your mind.”
“That’s what I’m looking for.”
She grins. “Good. This is where you’ll find it. After dinner, come to the fire pit with us. We do a nightly circle, for those who want some company.
Dinner is buffet style and not well attended. The children have all eaten by the time I get a plate. A handful of hippies trickles through, casting curious glances my way. But nobody attempts conversation. Cheyenne and Vikram are the only people who join me, and I get the sense that this is by design. The woman who’d slipped away after leaving Cheyenne with the groceries returns. She has neat dreads to her shoulders and a suspicious look in her eye whenever she looks in my direction. For a moment I think she’s going to come sit with us, but she takes a seat several tables away and begins reading through files as she eats.
Cheyenne notices my interest in her. “Have you met Wanda?”
“No. I saw her come in with you earlier, though.”
“She’s the GM of this place,” Vikram informs me. “Does all the admin work and posts the schedules. She’s also my ex-wife.” Seeing my surprise, he laughs, which is starting to get on my nerves. All this innocent laughter for my benefit.
“If it works for you all,” I say.
Cheyenne kisses Vikram on the cheek. “Oh, it does. Vikram and Wanda have known each other since they were kids, but their marriage didn’t work because they were never more than friends.”
“It’s nothing like what me and Cheyenne have. That’s why we’re getting married this fall. I’m with the woman of my dreams.”
By the way she’s deliberately ignoring us all, I can tell the woman of his past has heard everything. She keeps her head down, but her spoon pauses midway to her mouth. Then she continues eating, as though nothing has happened.
Vikram continues the verbal gymnastics from earlier. He elaborates and manufactures. Cheyenne sits there and nods. She believes Vikram, every word, and that is a testament to the power of love, because the only thing that is true about this story is that she might be the woman of his dreams. Everything else that comes out of his mouth is a lie.
Cheyenne is unperturbed at the lies, or maybe love has blinded her to them. Maybe it’s because I’m a little numb myself, so I don’t pay them too much attention. I wait a polite enough amount of time before I excuse myself. “You’ll be at circle tonight, won’t you?” Cheyenne asks.
“At the fire pit, right?”
“Yup!” Vikram beams at me. “We’ll see you soon!”
In the women’s quarters I walk down the hall, checking rooms as quietly as I can. There are no locks here. As far as I can tell, of the six rooms in this section, only three are occupied. And that’s including my own. This confirms what I saw in the dining room, too. In the height of the summer, this place is all but empty. I pause in the doorway of my own room and feel, instinctively, that something is wrong. Someone has been in here while I was busy in the kitchen, living the vegan life. Nothing has been taken from my backpack, but someone has clearly been through it, leaving behind a few strands of dark hair on the ground beside my things.
About an hour later, gathered loosely around a fire pit with a half dozen hippies and a few children, I look over at Wanda. She looks right back at me, not tearing her gaze away or backing down. I remember watching her enter the women’s quarters from the back window of the kitchen and come back out twenty minutes later. From what I saw, no one else went in there. Despite what the happy couple Vikram and Cheyenne think, Wanda doesn’t seem as settled as everyone else. As happy, either.
There’s a beat-up old Gibson nearby, and with Vikram’s nod of approval, I pick it up and begin to tune it by ear. The Gibson feels good in my hands, and is still a nice instrument. The people around the fire begin to relax at my handling of the guitar. They want to hear me play, but only the children let themselves enjoy it when I start to strum idly. It’s possible they want me to play something corny, some happy kumbaya song, but I refuse on principle. I start playing Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s “Rock Me,” because there was always a kind of joy to her music.
The kids, they clap and dance, forgetting they’ve been told not to trust strangers like me, because nobody ever told them that a stranger with a guitar is the most dangerous kind around. Kids can say no to candy or junk food of any variety if they’re taught to respect the warning signs. But a guitar on a cool summer evening? When the salty ocean breeze passes through the trees and lifts your hair and your spirits to the sky? Nobody can resist that.
The human species has evolved to want music, to crave that connection with the things you can feel in your soul. And I’m okay with a guitar. More than okay, even though it’s been a while since I’ve picked one up. If you have an ear for it, it’s one of those things you can’t lose even if you tried.
I play a little from “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” because I was warned this could be a sex cult, and love songs seem more appropriate than the blues I prefer. Then I set the guitar aside because mostly everyone is gone. Someone’s come around with hot cocoa, and it’s cool enough out that the thick, bitter chocolate feels good going down my throat. There’s some clapping, some loosening of the group’s attitude toward me, so much that Cheyenne doesn’t notice when her son, Trevor, the little boy I’d seen in the schoolhouse, slips from her side and edges toward me. “How do you do that?” he asks, looking at the Gibson.
“Let me show you.” I position the guitar in his hands, which are small but surprisingly strong. I can feel Cheyenne from across the fire, as she comes alert. So, very carefully, I show Trevor how to play the first part of “Can’t Help Falling In Love.” He’s a quick learner.
Cheyenne finds her way to our side of the fire. While her son gets used to the guitar, she smiles at me. There’s something indefinable in her gaze, something maybe a little sad. “Put an instrument in a black kid’s hand, or a basketball, and that’s all the world will ever see of him.”
“He might be good,” I say, nodding to the guitar. “He might like it.”
“He might be good and he might like it, but sometimes that’s all people will see. Maybe he’s got more in him than that.”
More in him than the gift of music? Whoever wanted anything better than that? I understand her position, but I’ve never had much to recommend me but my musical ability. Maybe Trevor has something better to offer the world. Cheyenne thinks so, at least.
“Trevor,” Vikram calls, from the path. “Time for bed, buddy.”
Something flashes in Trevor’s expression, just a flicker of heat, then it’s gone. Trevor puts the guitar down and joins Vikram. There’s an unmistakable tension in him as Vikram squeezes his shoulder. It was the same reaction I had when Vikram put his hand on my shoulder earlier. A friendly gesture, but an unwelcome one. I don’t know what Trevor’s reaction is about, but I know I don’t like it.
Ken Barnes was right. There is something strange here.
“You ever been here before? To Salt Spring?”
With great difficulty I pull my attention back to Cheyenne, as Vikram and Trevor disappear up the path. “No. First time.”
“Ah. You may not know, then, that this was a place of refuge for the black community fleeing oppression and discrimination in California. They came here and to Vancouver Island, too.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“People think it’s all retirees and hippies—well, there’s lots of them, too. But black folks have had roots here going back to the mid-eighteen hundreds
. A long time ago my family on my mother’s side made a home in Victoria, but I like Salt Spring better. I’m hoping it will be a home for Trevor. His dad’s a big-shot lawyer, but I don’t want that life for Trev. It can be if he wants it, later on, but I think kids these days need to know what a simple life can be. A place like this, they can learn to be happy with themselves. That’s a kind of skill that many people these days don’t have. His dad certainly doesn’t have it.”
“But Vikram does,” I say.
“Vikram is a master at it. It’s part of the reason I love him so much. He is who he is. He cares about being happy, being at peace.”
“Right,” I say, wanting to point out that we are all who we are, because that’s how life works.
Movement catches my eye near the kitchen, which is just barely in view. A group of six people, by my count, leaves through the back entrance, lit by the single outdoor bulb over the door. Where did they come from? None of them look our way and the hippies at the fire don’t look over at them. It’s as though they don’t even exist. What kind of harmonious living is this?
“Finish your cocoa,” Cheyenne says. “And I’ll walk you back to your room.”
“I’m done.” I pour the rest of the cocoa into the fire, about half the mug, and turn to Cheyenne. “Where do you stay?”
“In private quarters with Vikram and Trev. But don’t worry, you won’t be alone. Wanda and Shoshanna, our schoolteacher, will be there to keep a look out for you. Tomorrow I’ll show you the yoga retreat. We’re having a session there in a couple days, but for now it’s free.”
About half an hour later, in a small but surprisingly comfortable single bed, I lay awake with the curtains open. It doesn’t matter that anyone passing by can see me in bed, fully clothed. What does matter is that I’m suddenly lightheaded and feeling nauseous. I try to ignore it by thinking about why Vikram and Cheyenne felt they needed to hide a group of brown people entering the kitchen hours after everyone else had eaten, and why the other hippies around the fire did not give a flying fuck.
Chapter 4
The feeling of nausea persists. Living as a vegan clearly isn’t for me. Something I ate isn’t sitting right, and the lightheadedness just won’t go away. I’m shivering now, so I put on a dark blue jean jacket with a happy-face button pinned to it. The jacket isn’t mine. I borrowed it from Stevie Warsame, Leo’s surveillance guy, because somebody from somewhere once left it behind in his car and it had offended his personal sense of style. But it’s the perfect disguise for somebody trying to join a commune and, according to Leo, looks cute when you put some buttons on it.
I feel terrible, but I get the sense I might be kicked out of Spring Love sooner rather than later, so I force myself to get moving before dawn. I’m hoping everyone has fallen into their REM cycles, as nature intended. That’s the only explanation I have for the complete freedom I feel walking through the corridor of the women’s quarters, around the schoolhouse, past the fire pit, and down toward the fields. The narrow path I noted during my tour with Vikram is still as isolated as ever, snaking through the trees, so that the fieldwork happens out of sight. Again, this doesn’t seem all that harmonious to me, but I must have different standards.
It should feel nice, being out in the cool night, feeling the summer breeze tickling the hair at the nape of my neck. I should feel better than I do, but I am strangely unsteady on my feet and I can’t help but let my thoughts wander. Here in the dark, on this path, I long for the city. I live in the basement of the office on Hastings, and there’s always something happening out on that street. When it’s not the sound of people moving about, car engines starting, the wailing of fire trucks and ambulances, it’s the whispers of poverty that I hear. Hushed voices of people huddled together. The slide of bodies in sleeping bags. The quiet sobs. The drug-addled moans of euphoria, then, on its heels, despair. These are the sounds of my city at night, and I miss them so much right now. I can’t remember the last time I felt so alone and I hate myself for the thought. I also can’t remember the last time I allowed myself to think like this.
I focus instead on the moon, which seems bigger and brighter than it should be now that morning is almost upon me. Am I going insane?
The path opens suddenly and there in front of me are the fields. There’s a building to my right, a kind of refurbished barn. A single light is on inside. A toilet flushes. Moments later, the light goes out and the building goes dark. I wait a few moments, feeling an odd sense of panic, then shake it off and move toward the building. It doesn’t look like the photos of the yoga retreat I saw online. There are few windows and the ones I see are high up on the second floor.
The door closest to me is locked, so I skirt around to the door on the opposite side of the building. That one is locked as well. But just a few feet away, a window is open. Just a bit, but it’s enough for me to lift it up the rest of the way. A glance inside tells me this is a bathroom, hence the window, and somebody has been careless. Or maybe leaving this window cracked was deliberate.
Somebody approaches from the trees off to the side, not the path, but I have no time to duck or hide or pull myself through the window and into the building.
There’s a moment of surprise and a teenage girl materializes in front of me. Her build is slight, though she’s quite tall. Taller than me, anyway. We stare at each other for a moment. The girl’s expression is startled, then becomes terrified. I hear a footstep behind me and am about to turn when the girl lashes out with a fist, the contact inexpertly light. But that doesn’t hide the fact that any strike to the eye hurts like hell. There’s a moment of blindness, then a streak of red beneath the lid. I don’t know what to do. I’m not one to shrug off a blow, but I hesitate because something about this girl’s features reminds me of my daughter Bonnie. Of the photographs I’d seen of her. She would be around this girl’s age. Why am I even thinking about this now?
This moment, barely a split second, takes the momentum out of me.
I feel arms come around me from behind and grab my shoulders. I kick out behind me and there’s a pained cry as my foot connects with a knee. It’s a male voice, but belongs to neither a child nor a man. Someone in between, maybe the same age as the girl who hit me. The arms behind me slip, but a hand digs for purchase into my shoulder. Pain sears through me and I stumble.
The door behind me opens and, in the breaking light of the dawn, I count four more faces as they descend toward me.
There are questions spoken in languages I don’t understand. The hand still presses into my shoulder and the pain is too great to be believed, even by me. And I’ve felt enough physical pain in my lifetime to know. I’m grabbed and hauled into the building. Are they trying to help me? I try another kick but find no purchase, only managing to upset everyone’s balance and knock my own head into a wall. I don’t see stars, but I see faces, triple the number I’d seen outside the building when they picked me up. I remember, far too late, that I haven’t taken any painkillers since the ferry ride over here. Someone’s hands falter and I’m dropped to the ground. With a surge of strength that surprises even me, I stand and stumble toward the open door in front of me.
But it’s not the exit, as I imagined. I fall halfway down a set of stairs, and realize that I’m in a basement. In the dark. Hearing the bolt slide on the door I’ve just barreled through.
Chapter 5
I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but it feels like I’m dying of thirst. It’s been a few minutes or several hours, I can’t tell. I force myself to start paying attention. A woman hums quietly on the other side of the door. Another person hushes her, but forty-eight seconds later she starts again. The pain in my shoulder is starting to recede, but I can’t help blaming myself for it anyway because it’s really my fault I got shot there in the first place. I assume it’s my fault because, although I don’t remember getting shot, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself over the years it’s that I’m not a woman who takes a bullet by accident.
/> Also my fault is that I allowed myself to be distracted by the teenage girl who used my hesitation to punch me in the face. This would never have happened a year ago. My reflexes were better then. But just a few months back, Bonnie had gone missing. She’d been adopted almost as soon as she was born and I was not part of her life until very recently. Jury’s out as to whether I’m part of her life now. I’ve begun to think about her again and this madness has put her at the forefront of my mind. So much that I let myself be distracted when facing another teenage girl, one with a decent right cross. If I hadn’t been on the receiving end of it, I might have even been impressed.
Every now and then footsteps pass over me and, if I listen carefully, I can hear people talking in the hall. What I can hear of the whispers is that most of them are in accented English. The accents aren’t the same, though, which makes me think that English isn’t everyone’s first language but it is the common one. Also common is the subject matter—namely, me.
I’m able to pick up snippets of hushed conversation.
“Cop—” says a woman. Something in her voice is familiar. She must be the woman who couldn’t stop humming.
“They call them RCMP here—” says a young man.
A young woman snorts. “Not all of them are RCMP.”
“I’m not RCMP,” I say loudly, through the space at the bottom of the door. “Not any other kind of cop, either. Can I get some water?”
“Shut up,” another person says. Someone new.
I lose track of the speakers for a moment, as they begin to argue.
“You can’t tell a police officer to shut up.”
“But she just said she wasn’t a police officer!”
“Use your brain! That’s exactly what police would say.”
“She didn’t look like police to me.”
My head spins and, for a moment, it feels like I’m on a boat. I clear my throat and try again. “Because I’m not.” I realize why my captors have been nice enough to let me listen in on their conversations. It’s because they don’t know what they’re doing.
