A Nation of Mystics

by Pamela Johnson

  By the middle of May, the early days of spring and the few weeks of mild weather had already given way to intense summer heat. The semester was nearly over. Kathy and Marcie concluded the year’s political activities, wrote down ideas for the fall, and turned toward their books and research papers. For Kathy, the extra time was a godsend, and the amount of work she was willing to give to her classes after the new ideas she’d discovered in New Orleans was surprising. Human knowledge all fit together in some glorious way. The only problem was the race against time: so little time, and so much to do to catch up.

  On a night close to the end of the term, Marcie put down the book she was reading and looked wearily at the clock. “Why are you studying so hard?” she asked, peering across the dorm room. “And something like biology. Really, Kathy. Biology? Who cares?”

  “I do. I want to be back in school in September. I love it. School, I mean. Thank God for places like universities where ideas can be exchanged. What would happen to all these small town kids without this place?” She looked up. “How can you find time to read a novel with finals so close?”

  “It’s not a novel. It’s Dylan Thomas.” Her eyes glistened with tears.

  “Why, Marcie …” Kathy pushed back her chair and came to sit next to her on the bed, wondering at her raw emotion.

  “You know,” Marcie said, the tears suddenly falling down her cheeks, “with the semester ending, I feel as if we’re coming to the end of some long emotional marathon.”

  “Is this about losing your virginity? Aren’t you glad you’re no longer a virgin?”

  “Partly.”

  Kathy looked closely into her face. “Have you been smoking pot?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” Marcie whispered back, wiping her eyes. “It’s delicious.”

  “You’ve got to pass the semester!”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll pass. Maybe not with your grades. School just isn’t important to me. I just want to write poetry and music.” Suddenly, just as quickly as the tears had appeared, she was rolling between the sheets, giggling hysterically.

  “Marcie, calm down!” Kathy whispered. “Do you want the dorm mother in here asking why we’re making so much noise? The girls in this wing would just love to put in a complaint! Listen. I’ve decided I can’t go home when the semester’s over. Can you see Jim picking me up for a date?” She nervously ran fingers through her hair. “I’m eighteen years old. I think it’s time I took control of my life.” She took a deep breath. “I’m going to ask Jim if I can move in with him.”

  The next morning, Kathy left the biology lab certain she had a B going into the final. Too bad she hadn’t started to study earlier for all those quizzes. Now there was only one person she wanted to see, and, happily, she walked to Jim’s apartment.

  “Hi.” She leaned over to kiss him. “I aced a bio quiz this morning! What’s going on here?” About twenty boxes were stacked in the corners of the living room.

  “I’m packing,” Jim said absently, looking through papers.

  “Packing?” Kathy felt her heart tighten, her mind numb to the words.

  “Yeah,” his voice held a wry smile. “HUAC has opened an investigation on me. They say I’m a Communist.” Jim looked up and saw her shocked reaction to the news. “Come on. It’s not that bad. I’m actually flattered.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Mexico. To visit some friends at Lake Chapala, near Guadalajara.”

  “But finals are in two weeks. Are you going to blow away the whole semester?”

  “No,” he shook his head. “I’ve already talked to my professors. I’ll send them my work.”

  She swallowed. “When are you leaving?”

  “Day after tomorrow.”

  “I … I don’t want you to go.”

  He finally looked up to give her his full attention. “I told you at the beginning—I can only do so much in one place, then I’ve got to move on. I was going to talk to you.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as I saw you. Where’ve you been hiding?”

  “I’ve been studying. And thinking. I don’t want to go home.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “Can’t you wait a couple of weeks to leave? Until the semester’s over?”

  Slowly, he moved closer. “I have to go now. Before I get arrested or summoned on some trumped up subpoena.”

  “Then I’ll meet you in Guadalajara,” Kathy told him. “I’ll find a way to get there!”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” she demanded, watching him intently.

  “Because I’m going alone.”

  “Please!” she cried, the seed of desperation growing in her voice. “Please. What’ll I do without you? Where will I go? I love you!”

  “Kathy, if I take you with me now, you’ll have gained nothing. You need time to stand by yourself. You’re just a babe.”

  “Can’t you take me for the moment?” she insisted. “Isn’t that what you said? Day to day? Moment to moment?”

  “It wouldn’t work.” He began stacking books, obviously trying to avoid her eyes.

  “Jim, please! Look at me!” she demanded, her voice hoarse and breaking on a sob. “I’d make it work. You’d never be disappointed!”

  He turned to her and shook his head.

  It’s over, she thought, watching the bitter finality in his eyes. He doesn’t want me.

  She blinked furiously, trying to gain control.

  “Kathy …” he tried putting an arm around her, but she pulled away, deliberate and angry.

  “Don’t touch me. Ever again! I can’t talk to you now. I think … I think I hate you!”

  With a furious rush, she turned and left, slamming the door, walking blindly, not caring where she stumbled.

  I hate him! God, but I really hate him! she screamed silently, running, fumbling for a tissue in her purse. How dare he leave me when he knows I have nowhere to go!

  Several minutes passed before she recognized the aimlessness of her direction, and several more, before a sad and lonely anger stopped her tears.

  “So, how’d it go?” Marcie asked as Kathy stomped into the dorm room. “Uh oh. Not so good, huh?”

  “He’s going to Mexico the day after tomorrow and won’t take me with him. Something about leaving before getting investigated by HUAC. But I’ll tell you something,” Kathy hissed angrily, throwing her books on the bed. “I’m sick of hanging onto his shirttail. And I’m not going home. I’m tired of being told what to do. I’m going to California, Marcie. I’m going to spend the summer learning more about political activism. Next year, I’ll run the Student Liberal Federation.”

  “California!” Marcie cried. “Where will you get the money to do that?”

  “We’ll pool our last money. We’ll hitch.”

  “We?” The blue of Marcie’s eyes deepened.

  “Come with me! Remember that line of poetry you wrote about us. We have courage. Out of all the other women in this dorm. Come with me, Marcie!”

  “You’re not going to tell your folks?”

  “What could I say to them? I’ll call them when we get there. What do you say? Are you with me?”

  For a long moment, Marcie said nothing, then slowly, she began to grin.

  When Kathy finally settled down at her desk and the room was quiet once more, her eyes only grazed the words on the page. Instead, her mind wandered back to the scene at Jim’s apartment. Anger had combined with a new sense of humiliation. She held her face closer to the book, trying to understand her shame.

  Rejection, she admitted, that’s certainly a part of it. But begging him! Where was my dignity? Why did I throw it away on a man who doesn’t love me?

  Never again, she promised. I’ll never beg a man for anything. Certainly not for any part of himself.

  At eight o’clock in the morning on the day after the last final, the two girls stood alone on the highway at the edge of the city.

  “Kathy,” Marcie asked nervously,
“are you sure we know what we’re doing?”

  “Yeah,” Kathy shrugged. “We’re goin’ to check out California. If Jack Kerouac can do it, so can we.”

  Even in early morning, the sun was hot, promising to get warmer. Already sweating in the humid air, Marcie picked up the small suitcase and guitar and moved into the shade.

  Fifteen minutes later, a student on his way home after finals stopped for them. They agreed to help him drive all the way to Houston.

  MYLES CORBET AND JERRY PUTNAM

  BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

  JUNE 1967

  Myles Corbet walked down Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, reminded of how much he loved the city in summer, particularly now, with warm, clear afternoons of 80-degree weather. Just back from a two-month field trip to Gabon, West Africa, he was also struck by how much the city had changed in the month he’d been gone. Sure, ever since the Free Speech Movement, the campus had taken new directions. Students asked more probing questions about national and global issues. But as he looked around, he noted a new element, youths who had flooded the city and weren’t part of the UC community, who panhandled money for food, played music, slept in doorways, and blatantly offered their drugs for sale.

  Leaving the Ave, he walked underneath the Sather Gate arch on his way to the Life Sciences Building. As he moved, he hefted the camera bag with its precious rolls of undeveloped film higher onto his shoulder, his mind still in the tiny village in Africa. Without warning, he laughed aloud at an image of Jerry plunging headlong into adventure with the villagers, dancing in a line with others, following the drums and Ngombi harp.

  Jerry Putnam was more than a fellow student and colleague on the recent journey. With both of their fathers university professors with interests in botany, the boys had been sleepover buddies since third grade—camping together in the mountains while collecting specimens, playing on the same sports teams, and competing against each other in school science fairs. Whereas Myles had always prepared his botany projects as meticulous displays, everything printed neatly and well organized, Jerry’s theories had been tested by growing plants, his presentations often taking up large spaces and including many pots of dirt. Even when they were children, Myles had marveled at Jerry’s ability to lose himself to new ideas. Not content to merely reason them out, as Myles preferred, Jerry used his whole body to understand something. Myles simply loved the man.

  In Africa, the expedition headed by Professor Benjamin Miller had set up a field lab in a small village surrounded by tropical rainforest. Jerry had been at his side at every moment, botanist and best friend, speculating, recording, and collecting. One remarkable night, they had witnessed a ceremony of the Bwiti religion, the very rite that had set Jerry dancing.

  On the morning before the healing ritual was to begin, Myles had carried his camera, following the shaman and recording as the shaman pulled the roots of the Tabernanthe iboga plant, stripped the outer layer of bark, and chopped the roots into small pieces. A woman of the tribe who had been ill was to be the focus of a ceremony in the evening. Not content to merely observe, Jerry had asked if he might eat some of the root with the members of the tribe. Myles had tried to taste the root with him, but one mouthful and he had retched. Instead, he’d continued recording with his camera.

  But not Jerry. Jerry had eaten what he could, held it down for as long as possible, vomited, and had spent the rest of the night dancing, following his own rhythm, calmly accepting the experience, and making notes the next day.

  At the heavy door of the Life Sciences Building, the grin disappeared from his face. Myles stopped and tried to focus, his lightheartedness fled. The feel of the cold brass of the door handle reminded him of his real reason for coming to the biology offices. At a faculty meeting six months before, his father, Dr. Philip Corbet, Biology Department Chair, had fallen to the floor in a dignified slump. He’d been rushed to the hospital, and after a number of extensive tests, had been informed that he’d have to make some life changes, among them, adjustments to his schedule at the university. His heart needed rest and some quiet. At the time, everyone agreed.

  Everyone, except Dr. Corbet himself.

  Practicing what he would say to his father, Myles continued up the large staircase to the second floor of the building, his steps echoing in the stairwell. In the department office, he smiled at the secretary, slipped down the hallway, and quietly knocked at his father’s door.

  “Myles, welcome back!” Philip Corbet stood, smiling, genuinely happy to see his son. “You were sleeping when I left this morning.”

  As Myles watched his father regard him closely, he knew his father was looking for changes that a month away and the responsibilities of a field trip must have made. Although Gabon wasn’t Myles’s first expedition, the trip was the first on his own. In fact, Myles had begun to travel with his father on collecting expeditions from the age of ten—several sorties into the jungles of South and Central America, once to a rainforest in Mexico, and two trips to Africa. On several of those excursions, Philip had also invited the equally gifted Jerry Putnam to accompany them, not only as a favor to a colleague, but also because Philip knew that Jerry was a worthy companion for his son.

  Now, Myles wondered just what his father saw in the late morning sunlight that filtered through the office window. Surely the old Myles—close cropped wavy brown hair, brown eyes, bright smile, and his uniform of collared shirt, blue jeans, and tennis shoes—but he also hoped his father could also sense his new confidence, maybe even note the growing fullness in his chest.

  Studying his father with equal scrutiny, Myles was pleased to see there was color in his face, far different from his white countenance and colorless lips in the hospital a few months ago. His mother had stood at his bedside, equally pale and afraid to give voice to the difficult questions she had. Naturally, her first concern was for Philip’s health, but she also feared the practical ramifications that a changing lifestyle would mean to a man who had dedicated his life to his career.

  “The trip to Africa? Successful?” Philip asked.

  “Enormously successful,” Myles answered quickly, shrugging a shoulder to dispel the image of a broken man lying in a hospital bed, tubes erupting from his arms. He smiled to reassure his father. “Wait until you see the slides I took. I’m on my way now to have them developed.”

  “How were things with Dr. Miller? Was he a good supervisor?”

  Dr. Benjamin Miller had joined the UC faculty two years ago, moving to Berkeley from the University of Chicago. He was young, approachable, and, Myles thought, exactly at the forefront of new methods in teaching. Rather than pushing his students into a canon and a particular way of looking at the world, he encouraged each to see the world through personal experience. By doing so, Dr. Miller had generated a wealth of theory and possibility that not only forged new roads into botanical research, but also promoted radical ways of perceiving the world and man’s place in it. Although Dr. Miller had guided the summer project in Africa, he had left a great deal of decision making about the direction of the expedition’s research to Myles and Jerry, granting time for trial and error, and carefully listening to their ideas. He never told either of them what to think or drew any conclusions from their work; rather, he asked questions, giving each of the young men time to ponder the answer. His teaching philosophy had been one of the things Myles had been forced to consider on the journey. Myles wasn’t sure his father would like what he might consider an undisciplined approach.

  “Great,” Myles told him. “And Jerry couldn’t have been a better choice of colleague.”

  “I had no doubts. Jerry’s been special for as long as I’ve known him. And since Dean Putnam’s death, well … you know. So, how’s your own research going?”

  “Beginning to take real shape. I’ve got a good start on an outline for a paper. If I can get publication,” and here, he raised an eyebrow in a silent plea for his father’s influence, “I think my grad school application will look extraordinary.” />
  “Were you able to collect all the samples on your list? What about those items Dr. Miller wanted?”

  Myles nodded, setting down the camera bag on the chair before the desk. “All of them.”

  Then, Myles cleared his throat nervously. His father had never had any patience with sentimentality. “Dad, I have to say thanks for the support and the grant money. We couldn’t have put the trip together without either.”

  “You earned it,” Philip answered brusquely, brushing off the thanks with a wave of his hand.

  Sitting again, the chair creaking with his weight, Philip’s voice unexpectedly softened. “You know, Myles, you’re exceptional, even among the country’s best students.”

  The praise both surprised and frightened Myles. His father wasn’t generous with compliments. In fact, his standards were such that Myles had struggled for as long as he could remember, wondering if he could possibly meet them. For a long moment, he remembered a lifetime of anxiety surrounding report cards, performance expectations, foreign language proficiency, and comparisons to other students. His father had always expected perfection. But now this?

  Is Dad feeling his age? Or his illness?

  Using his father’s esteem as a springboard, he leapt, knowing his responsibility to ask, but also knowing that he would destroy this brief moment of goodwill.

  “Dad, I talked to Mom this morning. She says you’re going to make the trip to Guatemala. Do you think it’s wise to bet your life to fulfill the terms of a grant?”

  As he’d predicted, the smile faded from his father’s face. “I’ll be taking it real easy. No lifting, no digging. Just giving directions and making decisions. No one has a nose for it like I do. I won’t do anything that may put stress on my heart. Myles, surely you can understand that this is my life?”

  “But the details of the trip. The organization of a thousand necessary items. The strain of travel …”

  With both frustration and anger in his voice, Philip told him pointedly, “I have to go. I’m committed.”