Sleeping Where I Fall: A Chronicle

by Peter Coyote

  Berg returned at sundown, elated with the discovery of abundant cattail shoots. Steamed in the sheath, they are delicious and taste like asparagus. The air was tangy with sage. The children plashed contentedly in the river, and when we weren’t lazing away the time discussing alternate economies and self-sufficient communities or how to reconfigure cities to be biologically continuous with their larger environments (versus the present condition of obliterating and poisoning them), we cleaned the campsite for hundreds of yards in every direction as our ritual of respect for the place, gathering the discarded beer cans, cardboard boxes, disposable diapers, tangles of abandoned fishing line, and bottle caps that thoughtless campers had jettisoned.

  Sam was cranky and complained that she was not doing what she wanted. When I inquired what that might be, she said, “Hunting,” so I prepared the lever-action .22 rifle I’d had since I was a boy and sent her off to hunt jackrabbits while I spent the day fooling around with Ariel. Dora came by and told us that the tribal council had refused our request. We decided to wait and see what their next move would be.

  At dusk Judy Goldhaft was cooking Navajo fry bread over the coals when a police car pulled up. A short, squat, reservation cop with a buzz cut and a tough face squeezed his pistoled, belted, and black-sticked body out of the vehicle and sauntered over. We acknowledged him casually but said little. The first move was his. We observed him eyeballing our camp and were confident that it was tidy. He noticed Judy’s fry bread and inquired after it, took a piece and seemed to enjoy it, offering that his mother used to make it too. We chatted a while. He told us that he’d received some complaints about our being there but could see that we were camping nicely.

  We explained that we didn’t want to go over to the official campground and set up next to the tourists and the mobile condos and the TVs on the picnic tables—all part of the culture we were fleeing. We suggested that in lieu of site fees, which we could not afford, our cleaning and care of the area might be considered payment enough, and we showed him the sacks of garbage we had collected as evidence of our intentions. None of this seemed to strike Phoenix (actually his name) as out of the question, but he explained that he did not possess the authority to make policy. He confessed a bit sheepishly that he was under orders to tell us to come to the tribal council office to discuss our occupancy.

  After he left, Suki, Kevin, Ariel, Aaron, and I walked over to visit Stone Mother, a large, dome-shaped rock formation at the edge of the lake. At the top of the rock are man-sized holes that made me wonder if they might have been used as meditation chambers. From inside these holes, the horizon-to-horizon arc of the sun’s passage is visible. Pelicans glided unperturbed around us, and as we left, a formation of five crows flew low overhead. Kevin raised a stick into which he had stuck a crow feather. He whistled and one of the birds broke away from the pack and soared directly over him. I tipped my hat and saluted them, and another rolled out and did the same to me. They followed us most of the way back to camp. I no longer cared what the tribal council had to say—we had been made welcome by the spirits of the place.

  The next day we followed Phoenix into town, a slow and dusty place with streets too hot to walk on barefoot. An old-fashioned, sweating Coke cooler with a heavy lid dominated the porch of the general store, floating its thick glass bottles in icy water.

  We met with Teddy James, chairman of the tribal council, a pompous bureaucrat in a crisp polyester plaid shirt and spanking-new cowboy hat, whose attitude informed us that he did not suffer hippies at all. He talked only about money and could not or would not find a place for us in his imagination. When we proposed our trade of groundskeeping for fees he became indignant. “Are you saying that Indians don’t keep their lands clean?” he demanded, as if insulted.

  I debated showing him the the fifty-gallon sacks of trash we’d hauled into town with us, but I knew it was a lost cause. We should have known better than to use the word pilgrims with a man who was still pissed about the landing at Plymouth Rock. He told us to pay up like everyone else or get out.

  As we walked back to our trucks, Phoenix, silent during the chairman’s harangue, caught up with us. He didn’t look at us directly but addressed the landscape, saying, “That guy never leaves the office. You people are welcome here as long as I’m the cop.” It was comforting to know that we had been recognized.

  Still, it was time to go.

  Outside of Austin, Nevada, after crossing a seven-thousand-foot summit and a flat alkali valley, we stopped at a Texaco station called Middle Gate where a rugged-looking man with a gentle manner named Vance made us feel very much at home. Among the five or six Indian men sitting on a bench, gazing over the flats, was a Shoshone named Irwin who knew Rolling Thunder. Irwin volunteered that he disagreed with R. T.’s use of peyote, but he seemed to like us enough to share directions to a favorite campsite called Cottonwood Creek.

  Such casual generosity occurred so often on our travels that I am surprised I never took it for granted. Life “on the road” must touch archaic memories for Americans, so many of whom are either descendants of migratory pioneers or personally able to remember their own travels during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression days. Let one example suffice for many:

  During an earlier road trip, our group had paused at the edge of a medium-sized highway town: clusters of gas stations, car washes, and industrial restaurants, the kind of place where disappointed locals are surfeited with strangers. Our kids were cold, overtired, and hungry from a long day’s haul when we pulled into a House of Pancakes, one of those plasticine roadhouses with Formica counters, twin dispensers whirling industrially colored liquids masquerading as “punch” and “lemonade,” and pies and confections that appear to be made from hair gel, resting agelessly in chrome-edged glass cases.

  Our group had filled all the counter space and the adults were conferring, pooling small amounts of loose change to determine what we could afford. The kids’ heads were swiveling, ogling the oleaginous pies and steaming plates of burgers and fries passing tantalizingly near them en route to flusher customers.

  Our counter waitress was a hard-bitten, apparently humorless woman who’d served the migratory public for too long. Her face was set in a permanent scowl, and her “don’t give me any shit” attitude was clear as a warning flag. I was irritable and tired myself and the thought crossed my mind that she might be an easy mark for some teasing to entertain us and distract the kids from their glasses of hot water their mothers were mixing with ketchup to make almost-tomato soup.

  Our discussion concerning what we could afford must have continued longer than I thought, because it was interrupted by plate after plate after plate of pancakes and eggs and sausages in front of each and every one of our places, accompanied by frothy glasses of orange juice, steaming mugs of coffee, and hot chocolates peaked with whipped cream for the children. Some ghastly error had occurred; some child must have spoken out of turn or something, because I knew that we did not have the money to pay for such bounty. I envisioned a confrontation and the summoning of police when the bill was presented.

  I hastened to inquire about the mistake and practice some evasive diplomacy, but the crusty waitress read my intention from six feet away and held up one hand to stop me.

  “It’s on me,” she said. “I got a kid out there somewhere too.” Then she smiled—a whipped, ironic, commiserating wrinkle of lip—refused the little money we did have, and shuffled off to take care of some paying customers. I was left with the coppery taste of shame in my mouth, considering by what a minuscule chance I had missed targeting her as the butt of a cheap joke. It requires only one or two such experiences before you realize that on the road, assumptions are a handicap, best left in the rest stops with the trash.

  We continued across Nevada. A lovely couple from nearby McGill, Chuck and Beverly Hansen, dropped by our camp at Cave Lake. They’d liked my singing the night before and returned in the morning to offer us two brown and three rainbow trout for our breakfast. Sa
m spent the morning tanning a badger skin I’d taken from a roadkill the day before.

  Later in the day, the campsite swelled with weekend campers, expanding like popcorn in a closed pan, and we were collectively inspired to leave. Occupants of Winnebago City watched in amazement as our sprawling amalgam of tents and laundry, kitchen hearths, cook pots, kids, and dogs disappeared into three trucks, leaving only a pristine beach behind.

  As I collapsed my tent, I caught a small brown snake resting beneath it. I told him aloud that I’d let him go, but (as in the fairy stories) he must first tell me something I needed to know. I talked to him calmly until he stopped struggling, then I tested our bargain by opening my hand. He remained coiled on my palm, flicking his tongue and fanning his gaze left and right across my body, gauging my intentions toward him, which were good but deliberate. I had asked a question respectfully, but I expected an answer.

  The snake turned away and then back, regarding me fixedly. My thoughts stopped completely and a clear image formed in my mind: red letters wriggling against a black background forming three distinct words—“Anger is panic.” The words were appropriate to domestic difficulties I was experiencing with Sam, difficulties that according to her, resulted from my insistent and inadequately suppressed anger. I said, “Thank you,” released the snake, and have dedicated some of my time since to regularly considering exactly how his injunction might be appropriate to me.

  We camped our way across Utah, following Highway 180 toward Provo and then Highway 40 east through Heber. Torrential creeks thrashed beside the road. The Uintas, spurs of the Rockies attempting to reach Idaho, were rich, green, bristling with quaking aspen, pine, and fir. The mountains appeared to have stubbed their noses against something at high speed, since the strata flex at ninety degrees to the horizon.

  Near Strawberry Lake, at the edge of a fine grassy valley sheltered by aspens, I called my mother from a phone booth and learned that my father was ill. This had been such a common experience in my life that I paid no mind to it. My father often escaped the stresses of work by checking into the hospital with an armload of books, the way some people check into health spas. When we made excuses for him at family functions, my uncles winked and said, “Bullshit” to my stories about his “not being well.” However, something about my mother’s anxiety this time left a residue on my mood.

  Sam and I stayed up late struggling with domestic problems. She announced that her work in the world was learning the uses of plants to heal people. Since she had never broached this subject before, I was suspicious and short with her, distracted by the news about my father. I told her about his illness, and she confided a dream of the previous night, in which my father was offered the choice of dying or living damaged; he chose to die.

  The next morning I awoke to see Cheryl Lynn Pickens’s face pass by framed in the window of a truck. The rest of the caravaners had arrived from the Red House, tired of staying behind. They were rolling up the road in a long line of gaily painted vehicles, canvases flapping, buckets tinkling, motors roaring, drivers and passengers saluting and cheering our reunion. So much for a delicate entrance at Libré.

  Bob Santiago and Nichole appeared a day later, and Sam’s bile rose. Her pique was prophetic: the next afternoon, Nichole and I sneaked away to go swimming together. After an invigorating splash, a catch-up visit, and a romp of bare-assed desert bouncing, we returned to the water’s edge to retrieve our clothes and discovered them gone. Nichole and I were stranded; our only option was to walk back to camp buck-naked. So much for my attempts at discretion. When we returned (with what I considered a great deal of aplomb, considering the circumstances), Sam’s expression of hostile triumph made it clear who had stolen our clothes.

  Sam’s ability to detect my dalliances with other women was uncanny. No haymow was secluded enough, no grove, streamside, tent, closet, or hilltop aerie safe from her sudden appearance. A few nights later in this caravan summer, in the mountains above Boulder, Nichole and I tiptoed into the forest long after everyone was asleep. This was, after all, the pre-AIDS sixties, and the mores of our community decreed that if two consenting adults wanted to pair off for sexual research and development, there was little reason why they should not. Feelings of anger and jealousy were the legacy of a decadent bourgeois heritage and were not to be acknowledged—unless of course, they were one’s own feelings, in which case their status was immediately elevated to critical importance.

  My personal sexual behavior must have been inspired by our country’s scorched-earth strategy in Vietnam. “No survivors” aptly describes my dedication to have sex with all the women I wanted. While post-AIDS realities have rendered such experimentation terminally dangerous, at that time the risks seemed minimal, and my recollection is that both sexes found fun, random tenderness, and thrills in such encounters. This is not to suggest that there were never any karmic kickbacks, however.

  On this particular night, Nichole and I prepared a bed far from camp in a breezy glade of firs. We were in the gaspy near-crescendo of lovemaking when Sam appeared in a ghostly white nightgown with wind-whipped hair, trembling, like Lady Macbeth, with rage and jealousy. Her antennae, even in sleep, had somehow locked onto my arousal with unerring accuracy. Her presence made continuing difficult, certainly tasteless, and probably dangerous, since Sam is not a woman to turn your back on when she is angry.

  Nichole put her arms around Sam, and the three of us sat together in the suddenly chilly night, trying to pick our way through the emotional rubble of conflicting loyalties and desires. Finally, after an hour or two of tortured explorations, confessions, and recriminations, everything suddenly appeared stupid, and we began to laugh hysterically at the improbable slapstick idiocy of the incident.

  A day or so later, the caravan pulled into Speedmaster’s motorcycle shop on Pearl Street in Boulder, where Julie Boone’s lover Carl was working and where we were to rendezvous with friends. We hobbled in, fatigued and cramped from long hours of driving. Julie was standing by the far wall to greet us: lovely Julie, lusty, voluptuous Motorcycle Julie, who had aroused such ardor in Hell’s Angel Hairy Henry that he had built a beautiful chopper especially for her. She looked at me and tipped her head back quizzically.

  “Oh, Peter,” she said casually, as if she’d just remembered something, “Morris died.”

  I looked at her blankly. I felt nothing. My father? Such a thing was beyond comprehension. How could a man of such vitality and power pass through the veil without creating some celestial disturbance, some ripple? She must be mistaken. There would have to be a rent in the sky, a rush of wind—at least a tattered sheet flapping beside the road as a sign I might later recall and think, “Ah, that was it.”

  I turned away and lit a cigarette. I saw her telling others. Berg came over and threw his arms around me. I felt nothing. I was in a motorcycle shop in a strange city, and a beautiful woman, a lover and friend, had just informed me that my father had died—and I felt nothing.

  I found a phone and called my mother. She was distraught. Morris had already been buried. The police had searched the country for me for days and could not find me. Ruth hadn’t even known what state I was in. “How could no one find you?” she demanded, as if that were the entire source of her problem. Yes, she was all right. Yes, relatives were with her. I told her that, of course, I would come home. Did she need me immediately? I would have to drive. I told her I had some affairs to settle up. I didn’t know what I should do. I knew I should be there, but Morris was already gone, my mother was in good hands, and I felt I had to finish what I had traveled this distance to do. I was spinning in place. I had no father. The ground had eaten him. I was 50 percent closer than a moment ago to being an orphan.

  I hung up the phone and breathed in and out. For a long time afterward, my life felt as it did in that moment: detached and out of touch, just breathing in and breathing out. Perhaps it was the cocktail of drugs I was always imbibing, perhaps the defenses I’d erected as a boy, or the impossibilit
y of feeling loved by him. Some chamber where clearly expressed feelings might live and flourish within me had been sealed tight as a bank vault. The combination to open the locks and spring those heavy doors was not to be commanded by anything as commonplace as a death.

  It has been my experience as an actor that the more particularly and specifically a personal experience is relived, the more universally it may be appreciated. Individual events are hardly personal property; they participate in something larger and more profound that people share, understand, and can empathize with. Consequently, my behavior, when learning about my father’s death, while apparently bizarre, has antecedents and root causes that may be quite ordinary and not at all surprising to others. Recurrent memories from childhood intrude into the present, overwhelming it—

  I am sitting at a desk puzzling over a series of incomprehensible high school math problems. A large, dangerous man, my father, is screaming, “You stupid, dumb son of a bitch!” at me. And then, again, I am being twisted, pummeled, bent, suffocated, and choked under the guise of instruction in self-defense.

  Even though my body, as I experience these memories, is the storehouse of all that charged information, I cannot describe what the incidents felt like. I can describe the chalky green blotter on my desk, and its patterns of pressed concentric squares where I directed my attention during these homework diatribes. I can describe the gossamer curtains and cherry spool bed, the patterns and textures of my father’s clothing. I can recall the mélange of scents in the purple and beige patterned carpet my face was ground into when “wrestling.” But I cannot remember feeling anything other than numb—and perhaps an itch of anger, banked like hot coals deep in my muscles.

  The nightly drama of homework, for instance, is indelibly imprinted but stripped of emotional content. It was as predictable as a dance. “Let’s see what you’re doing here,” Morris would mutter casually, walking into my room to check on my progress. He would talk his way aloud through the problem I was daydreaming over. Since his calculations were impossibly fast, I was an audience, reduced to muttering “uh-huh” and nodding like a drinky-bird bowing over a cup of water. Inevitably he’d make a mistake, correct himself, then challenge me, “Why didn’t you see that? Are you paying attention, or what?”