The Shasta Gate

by Dick Croy

  “Me too—in spite of all my efforts to prevent it.” She told him how the flashback of her father had come about and this time included the insight concerning Eugene that had come to her on the motorcycle.

  “Maybe we should both stop struggling so hard,” he said.

  She met his eyes. “That may be easier said than done.”

  Chapter 34

  The gang was havin’ a ball: two Sacramento school-teachers, filling in for the wife and manager of the KOA campground, who had run into the bikers in town and invited them out to party.

  That afternoon Pretty Boy and the others had arrived back in town at the same time from opposite directions. His busted jaw had saved the Leader’s ass. After riling the gang up and taking them all the way out to Whitney Falls—most of the time spent on the trail, by people who normally used their feet for little more than shifting gears or braking—to find only the cold remains of a campfire...the Leader figured his luck and his instincts had run out on him at the same time. On the way back to town it was only custom that kept him in front of the others. He wasn’t sure whether the heat on his back was from the late afternoon sun or their collective anger and disgust.

  Then Pretty Boy, his jaw swollen and rearranged, had met them with his version of how it got that way, and the Leader was assured of another day or two to carry out his vendetta. Successfully executed, that would keep him in the lead driver’s seat for a while longer. The teachers they met in the same bar Eugene had been in earlier were icing on the cake. With a place to party and these two to provide some fresh entertainment, the gang was glad to postpone the mutiny Becky had been so fervently hoping for.

  The ladies had rented a Winnebago for a month, and all night long it had been sitting there rocking and swaying as if it were negotiating 70 miles an hour of bad road. An unsteady stream of revelers staggered back and forth between the combination store and office, and the contemporary prairie schooner in which these two hardy pioneers had set out to extend their sexual frontier. They had plenty of willing guides, men and women alike. It was a one-wagon train, and the only ones who weren’t on it—except for Jerry, who felt that when you’d seen one orgy you’d seen ‘em all and who’d learned to sleep through anything—were Becky and the Leader.

  He was lying back full-length on his motorcycle looking up at the full moon, alone and aloof as usual. She was off politicking. He knew what she was up to of course, but somehow he just didn’t care anymore. He was trying to get a fix on the whereabouts of Catherine and Eugene. That’s all he cared about right now and he couldn’t even concentrate on that. The last few days his mind just hadn’t been working for him the way it should; he couldn’t seem to focus or reach out with it as he was accustomed to. He couldn’t even remember exactly when this frustrating condition had begun. Christ, was he over the hill already?

  Becky noticed the Fool and mechanic drive off together and stormed over to where Helen and the intellectual were sharing a pint of Mezcal.

  “This whole trip sucks!” she snarled.

  “It’s a clear case of obsession if you ask me,” said the intellectual.

  “The wordman’s right for once,” Becky said to Helen. “I think it’s time for a fuckin’ mutiny.” When neither of them responded favorably, she shook her head with a sneer and walked off.

  “Think she’ll get anyone t’ go with her?” Helen asked.

  “Nah, it takes more than words,” he replied.

  “You should know.”

  “We scribes do not ascribe to diatribes against the tribe—unless it suits our purpose of course.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” she said contemptuously.

  “A physical impossibility, my dear Helen, face that lunched a thousand Trojans. Engaged in embattled intercourse with the Greeks—or was it Greek intercourse without a Trojan. That’s gamy lunch meat for m’lady.”

  As Helen walked away in disgust, the intellectual continued to hold forth, gesticulating like a tenured professor with the pint of Mezcal: “Or ‘gaming’ if one considers the risk involved. Rushin’ to infinity, gambling with the grim reaper in a game of Greek roulette.”

  An hour later, Becky heard the Fool and mechanic return and walked out to meet them. They were each carrying a couple of six-packs.

  “Where you been, dudes?”

  “Hey, lady, that’s fer us t’ know and you t’ wonder about,” said the Fool. “Ain’t that right, my man?” The mechanic merely grunted. If the conversation didn’t relate in some way to motorcycles, he didn’t relate very enthusiastically to it. “What’s wrong—you miss us, honey?” asked the Fool, opening and handing her a beer.

  “You guys and the Chinaman are the only ones with the balls to get us outa here,” she said. “This whole trip sucks! I’ve fuckin’ had it.”

  “Yeah, well don’t say nothin’ t’ me about no Chinaman, Becky—ya hear? Don’t go comparin’ him t’ us!...What’d ya say, man?” he asked in response to the mechanic’s barely audible mumble, then guffawed: “Yeah that’s right—especially when the subject is balls. The only balls that bastard’s got is eye balls. He probly comes when he blows his nose. Haw Haw.” The mechanic allowed as how this was pretty funny, but Becky had no sense of humor.

  “I don’t see how you can both just sit here and continue to take this shit! The dude’s insane! He’s obsessed with wastin’ those two, and we’re just up here chasin’ our own asses. I wanta get outa here! Don’t you?”

  “Hey, relax, babe. What’s the difference whether we’re up here or somewheres else? Sure, we’re all gettin’ a little tired a this runnin’ around, but I don’t have nothin’ better t’ do. You got a better idea, tell us—maybe we’ll go with ya, Whattaya think, man?” The mechanic shrugged.

  “You mean that?” Becky asked, her whole attitude brightening—“you’d ride with me if the trip was right?”

  “Honey, I’d ride with anybody if the trip was right, because who ya ride with ain’t what the trip’s about. Know what I mean? Ain’t that right, dude?...’Go ahead, tell us what you got in mind, only make it quick. My batteries is about charged up again; I wanta make me another little trip over to the Bago an’ get me some more a them teachers’ education.

  * * *

  Catherine and Eugene were lying next to their fire, looking up at the stars, her head supported by his arm. She couldn’t remember when she’d felt such contentment. Yet if this morning someone had told her she’d be lying next to this man tonight—and feeling like this...

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked, snuggling against him.

  “Mmmm.” He hugged her with the arm in which she was cradled. “About what Roberta said: that if enough people believe in something, they’ll make it come true.”

  “That sure agrees with what you said about creating our own realities.”

  “Doesn’t it? But until tonight I’d never thought much beyond the personal application. What she’s talking about is so much bigger than that. What is she saying...that there’s really no such thing as objective reality at all, it’s all in our minds? The material world really is just maya—some kind of grand illusion? I mean, it’s one thing to read that in a book on Eastern philosophy; it’s something else again to think of it as being the actual reality we’re dealing with every second of our lives.”

  “Maybe she’s doing the same thing you were talking about. This whole business about stories is just her way of making a point. That makes a lot more sense to me than actually believing it.”

  “Like a zen master’s koan maybe.”

  “What is the sound of one hand clapping?’”

  “Right—or, ‘Thinking neither of good nor evil, what was your original aspect before your father and mother were born?’ But a koan doesn’t have to be a riddle or question; it can be a story too. A zen master will do anything to help a student reach enlightenment: scare him, beat him with a stick...”

  “So maybe her story about...what did you call it—the Shasta Gate?—is just her version of a
koan?”

  “Maybe. But it’s more fun to think of the other possibility. Besides, what she says is true to a certain extent. Three hundred years ago, Newton shows how the universe is like a great machine, and the world goes crazy creating machinery. Then Einstein manages to convince a few forward-looking physicists that two of the most important elements of Newton’s machine-like universe, space and time, are relative rather than fixed—and all of a sudden we’re in a brand new ball game. Now we see the universe more as a process than a machine: and not only changeable but relative to how we view it. And yet Newton’s version was fine, up to a point. Without it we’d never have got where we are today.”

  “That’s right, blame it all on poor old Isaac Newton.”

  “Do you see what I mean though? Even though his model of the universe was technically wrong I guess you could say—or incomplete at least—it served its time very well. Then new needs brought about new explorations, which created a new model—after enough physicists agreed that Einstein was right. Doesn’t that sound at all to you like what Roberta was saying?”

  “...Maybe.” Catherine’s interest and enjoyment lay more in Eugene’s enthusiasm, the way he talked and the sound of his voice, than in the subject of this one-sided conversation.

  “You know,” he continued, “it’s not enough just havin’ your facts right. You’ve gotta have the right people behind you. The world and the graveyard are full of scientists with new information people didn’t want to hear about. Look at Nikola Tesla: maybe the most brilliant scientist-visionary of all and died a broken man with a pigeon his only friend.

  “Most revolutionary scientific discoveries are intuitive. Maybe they spring from the same source as myth—when the time is right and the need is there. In one case you’ve got theories and in the other the stories Roberta was talking about. Hell, if science can start with theories and effectively recreate the world around us, maybe we can do the same thing with myths. Maybe we do it all the time and we’re just not aware of it.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but that all sounds pretty farfetched to me. And I don’t see how it relates to Roberta. Are you going to tell me she’s the next Einstein?”

  “Und vhy not, fraulein? Are you vhat ze Americans call ze chauvinist pig?”

  She laughed: “No, we need a woman to come up with a new scenario—if it’s not already too late.”

  “A little yin to balance out the yang huh?”

  “About 5,000 years of it.”

  “Maybe the principle of relativity, the opposite of rigidity and inflexibility, is the feminine counterpart to the universe as a machine. And where does relativity stop? If someone can come along and change the world’s opinion about something as fundamental as time and space, why does Roberta’s theory about how people create reality—if enough of them agree on it, like Einstein’s true believers—sound so farfetched?”

  Catherine sighed. “Eugene, God knows I’m no physicist, but I have a feeling that what you’ve got here is a bad case of mixed metaphors.”

  Now it was his turn to laugh. “You’re probably right,” he admitted. “But we can’t leave something as important as the creation of reality to scientists can we? That’s partly what’s gotten us into the mess we’re in now.”

  “That’s for damn sure. But as far as Roberta’s concerned, it seems to me that all she’s doing is keeping the myths about Mt. Shasta alive. Those are just variations of the stories Ram’s been telling me ever since I was a little girl.”

  “Well, if she’s successful in doing what you said: getting us to look inside ourselves, instead of blindly following the herd or the first guru that comes along, I’d say she was accomplishing a lot.”

  “I guess if that is what she’s doing I question her methods. They seem a little unorthodox to me.”

  “So what?” said Eugene. “What’s more important right now? When you don’t have any heroes anymore—when you don’t have people you can turn to as examples, or for inspiration—you have to inspire yourself. That may be the most important thing we can do right now, when we’ve got the basics of survival taken care of.”

  Catherine wasn’t buying this. “What makes you think the average person, looking inside himself, is going to be inspired by what he sees, even if he is able to see himself honestly? The closer I get, the less I like.”

  “Oh, Catherine, I don’t think you’re looking deep enough then, or with enough understanding. And I certainly don’t say that from the delusion of thinking I can do it any better than you. I don’t like a lot of things about myself either.” He chuckled: “There’re things about you I’m not too crazy about too.”

  “Well thank you!”

  “But don’t you see, that’s not because there’s anything wrong with you. It’s because of me—my own hangups.”

  “Why do you say that? You’re right about your hangups of course, but how can you be so sure about me?”

  “Because I know that at heart you’re an incredibly beautiful person. And Roberta would probably say that’s where we create reality: in the heart. Think of yourself and others as basically good and you’re going to act that way, and see good in the actions of others—or at least give it credit for being there, whether you can actually see it or not. And if we see ourselves as weak helpless victims, or assholes, and the rest of the world as just out to get what it can...”

  “Well it sounds great; I wish I shared your optimism. But I really am screwed up in some ways. And the world is out to get what it can. Open your eyes and look around!”

  “That’s what I’ve been doing the last two or three years, Catherine, believe me.” Eugene’s voice had assumed an almost pleading quality. “I catch glimpses of people all the time now whose faces have something in them I never used to see before. Maybe because I didn’t know to look for it. A look of such confidence and trust—and you just know it wasn’t won at the expense of someone else. An ‘inner light’—that’s what it really looks like, even if the words do have a gospel ring to them. Have you read anything by Teilhard de Chardin? She shook her head. “You should, especially The Nature of Man. He writes so convincingly about how we’re evolving a global consciousness, that will eventually bring the whole human race together.”

  Surprised by his sudden fervor, Catherine joked, “What do we have here, a born-again biker?”

  “Every day of my life when I’m really cookin’,” he said. “When it’s workin’ and I’m makin’ it work, I’m a newborn babe every morn.”

  She was reassured by his hyperbole. “You had me worried there for a minute. I thought you were startin’ to preach salvation at me.”

  He rolled over and fished a beer for each of them out of his backpack. “I was beginning to sound a little preachy wasn’t I. That probably comes from tryin’ to convince myself. When I’m really as certain about all this as I sound, I’ll be able to talk about it in a normal tone of voice.”

  “Or stop talking about it altogether.”

  When he handed her the beer he pulled her toward him with the other arm and kissed her gently though with a thoroughness that aroused them both. Then he pulled away, knowing that his forbearance would enhance his own desire and trusting that it would hers as well. He took a healthy swig of the beer and leaned back with a sigh of satisfaction.

  “I know this may all very well be delusion,” he said—“but if it is, it’s a divine delusion. You know how Jean-Luc Godard defines ‘cinema’? To him it’s not the movie up on the screen, but the interaction of the audience with it: what they’re thinking and feeling, remembering, realizing.

  “Well I think what we call God isn’t a thing either, so much as the same kind of interaction. Between ourselves and the creative consciousness that undeniably underlies and directs nature and keeps the whole universe, or universes, humming. There’s no question that some form of creative energy, grander than we can even begin to imagine, runs the show. We can ignore that, take it for granted, refuse to get excited about it...or we can gratefully wors
hip the miracle of being alive and experiencing all of this. Religions have always been so hung up on who or what God is. But reverence doesn’t require an object. Right? The point shouldn’t be whether or not we believe in God, but what our attitude is toward the miracle that we exist.

  “Do you ever get to that place where for just a moment you stop taking for granted the fact that you’re alive and realize the enormity of that simple fact? We didn’t have to be put here—nobody owed us anything. We could just as easily never, ever, have existed. You know what I mean?”

  Catherine’s voice was small, almost a whisper. “Yes, I’ve experienced that.”

  “And yet it’s possible to ignore that realization or consider it inconsequential rather than fundamental, and live with the attitude that the universe is either so much bigger than we are that we don’t matter, or is as ‘accidental’ and meaningless as a little stellar gas here and there. Dogshit on the lawn.

  “So listen,” he said, “here’s the cosmic joke: A person who has lived this way is a few seconds from croaking—and the last thought he has is, ‘Aha! I was right, goddamnit, and I never weakened once—I never broke. I lived my whole life knowing it was totally meaningless and that the whole fucking world is just a swamp, with big fish eating little fish eating insects eating other insects. And crocodiles devouring the lot.’ That’s his final reward. That and pride in his ‘mental toughness’.”

  “Meanwhile, another guy down the street is also about to kick off, and the last thought he has is: ‘Well, it’s been magnificent, fantastic—miraculous! God, or something, made all this and put me right smack in the middle of it. And now He’s gonna take me out of this worn-out body. He’s gonna rearrange me somehow—since we all know energy can’t be destroyed—and He’s going to send me back out in a new form at a higher level of being. And I’m just going to go on and on like this, getting closer and closer to the perfection of the Absolute Source’, whatever that is.