A Nation of Mystics

by Pamela Johnson

  Myles turned away, walking to the window, his gaze settling on the trees he could see below. The thought that his father would someday die was … shattering. He’d never known a time when his life had not been overshadowed by this larger-than-life figure, a man who held the respect of generations of scientists.

  When Myles did not answer, Philip added, “And Myles … try not to upset your mother.”

  At this, Myles turned back to him, looking directly into his father’s eyes. “You can count on that.”

  For a few flickering moments, the two were once again united. Alice Corbet was the sustaining rock for both of them—encouraging Myles through the dark moments of childhood and his unreasonable terror at failure; attending the department lunches and dinners; hosting the necessary gatherings for foreign scholars; serving on the board of the Berkeley Botanical Gardens; never a complaint over the months alone while Philip was away on expedition or the hours of solitude as he locked himself in a room to write his field notes, journal articles, books.

  Philip turned his gaze briskly to the paperwork on his desk, his voice a shade or two cooler. “When are you going to see Dr. Miller?”

  “This afternoon. After I take the film in for developing.”

  “Would you tell him I’ll see him after my three o’clock meeting? We’ll talk more about your travels at dinner. Promptly at 7:00. Oh, and Myles, did you remember to register for the ROTC program? The war, you know. Every man has a duty.”

  And Myles knew the conversation about his father’s heart condition was over before it had even begun.

  In the weeks that followed, Myles had his summer school class work, as well as the responsibility of typing up his African field notes and giving the oral and written reports the grant demanded. By the Friday evening of Jerry’s party, he was absolutely certain he could not assimilate another fact, write another word, or address another problem. In fact, he knew he desperately needed some downtime.

  The evening was late, beer cans were everywhere, and only a few people still sat in the living room smoking and drinking and talking quietly under the yellow light of several lamps. Alone in the small kitchen, away from the others, Myles and Jerry sat on close chairs around the tiny table, casually passing a joint.

  “How did you find this cozy cottage?” Myles asked. “Housing’s difficult.”

  “A friend of my mom’s. There’s a second bedroom, a crawl space attic, and a cool basement. Even a garage if you’ve got a car the size of anything built in the 1920s. Do you think you’d like to take the second bedroom? It’s small, but it’d be great to share rent with someone I can actually live with.”

  Myles felt himself tense and wondered at the invitation. He wasn’t sure his father would approve of his leaving home before his career actually began, before admission to Berkeley’s graduate program. His father wanted him focused.

  Instead, Myles looked at a few of the photos of the African trip lying on the table between them and said, “You really liked that experience with the Bwiti tribal members, didn’t you?” He leaned closer to Jerry, their knees almost touching. “I loved the way you danced.” And he laughed, almost a giggle, once again staring at Jerry’s wild movement in the picture. “If you want to call it dancing.”

  Jerry, regarding the photos, remembering, unexpectedly turned his sensitive, stoned eyes to Myles. “That journey with the iboga was … very emotional. My father was with me once again.”

  In the sudden, serious silence, Myles ventured, “I’m really sorry about your dad passing, Jerry. None of us knew what to do. It all happened so fast.”

  “Yeah,” Jerry answered softly. “Too fast. Thanks for being there when I needed a friend.”

  Maybe I’d like to be something more, Myles considered, his uncontrolled and spacey mind drifting to the forbidden topic, the nagging question as to just what kind of attraction he felt toward Jerry.

  Trying to focus on the conversation at hand, he passed the joint. “How was your dad with you on the iboga?”

  Jerry paused, thinking, struggling to put what he was remembering into words. “I felt a sense of well-being after eating the root. An understanding of all my past experience. Not just with my father, but with … everything. I don’t know. What about you? What did you think?”

  “If you’ll remember, I only took a taste, and it was everything I could do not to vomit. By the way, the lab reports came back on those specimens of Cannabis we brought back. Dr. Miller confirmed that the equatorial Cannabis is all sativa. But the big news is that some Cannabis specimens he just received from India may be a new species. Cannabis indica, he’s calling it.”

  “A new species. You’re kidding!”

  “Nope. And even better, he just got new grant money to study different psychotropic plants with the people who use them. There may be some medical benefits.”

  “Wait a minute … do you think he could use a research assistant?”

  “Well, if you’re serious, you’ve already got your foot in the door. It’ll be a lot of extra work. Can your schedule handle it?”

  Jerry thought for less than a second. “I’ll make it work. What about meeting me on Monday? We can meet with Dr. Miller together. You might find the work interesting yourself.”

  On impulse, grinning, Myles held up the small roach he was holding between his thumb and forefinger. “I’m too busy to take on anything else, but I’ll go with you after ROTC drill, if I can have a few joints.”

  Before leaving for the evening, Myles rolled two joints and carefully placed them in his wallet so they wouldn’t get torn.

  On the Monday afternoon of the interview with Dr. Miller, Jerry met Myles in the ROTC locker room after drill. Myles slipped out of his uniform and quickly into jeans, and together, he and Jerry started toward the Life Sciences Building, the two teasing each other, pushing shoulder-to-shoulder, wrestling as they had always done, laughing the whole while, running over the wide lawns of the Berkeley campus.

  Dr. Benjamin Miller was young to be a full professor. Perhaps his dark curly hair was a bit too long among members of a conservative faculty, and more than one eyebrow had been raised at his blue work shirt, jeans, and hiking boots attire, but even so, no one could deny the importance of his work.

  “Sit down,” Dr. Miller offered, smiling and removing his dark-rimmed glasses to peer closely at the young men. “It’s good to see you both again. I’ve read your notes from the African trip. Thank you! It’s making my own paperwork easier!”

  The talk was of Africa and the village, of the natural laboratory in the surrounding forest, of the men and women who had pointed out plants and told of their uses. Dr. Miller explained once again his interest in the sociology of the family, of local architecture, art and song, daily life, worldview, explaining that plant use could not exist in a vacuum, that plant and culture were intimately entwined. They spoke of the variety of ecosystems within a short distance of the tribal settlement, how plants were collected on the basis of need, of the approach to illness, and the religion and culture that had evolved surrounding the extraordinary Tabernanthe shrub.

  Dr. Miller selected one of the several round Tabernanthe fruits and rolled it on his desk, rubbing his fingers over the smooth skin. He looked carefully at Jerry and asked, “Would you be willing to share your participation in the iboga ceremony? At the time, I had the feeling your experience may have been very personal.”

  Jerry cast a brief glance in Myles’s direction, wondering what Myles had already mentioned. “Dr. Miller, if I am granted permission to join your team, I think we will all need to pool our experience and knowledge. The kind of work we’ll be doing is very personal.”

  Then, leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped, he said, “The ceremony had many stages. The photographs we took—especially the ones Myles continued taking after the ceremony started—can help tell part of the story.”

  “How much of the plant root did you eventually eat?”

  “The Bwiti
say they use the root to meet their ancestors. I would say I ate enough to do so,” and he grinned, suspecting that Dr. Miller would know what he meant.

  “Ancestors? What does that mean? Your ancestors? Tribal ancestors?”

  “I mean,” Jerry searched for words, “that I faced a part of myself that was at the same time larger than myself. I learned things. Valuable things. Not just about me, but about all that exists. My father was a part of the experience. Not physically, but he was there. A part of what I am. It’s … it’s very difficult to put into words.”

  “Jerry,” Dr. Miller leaned forward in his chair, “I’m interested in understanding whether psychotropic substances give a common experience to men of different worlds. Do you believe your visions to be the same as those of the Bwiti? Different?”

  “I think that would take some time to learn, Dr. Miller. One of the points of our research.”

  Dr. Miller smiled broadly. “And that is exactly what we’re going to do with the new grant money I’ve received—take the time to learn. What about you, Myles? What did you think of the ceremony? Didn’t you tell me that you also tried the root?”

  Myles shook his head. “One bite. I would have had to take a larger amount to understand what Jerry’s explaining. But I think that makes a point. The ceremony is completely experiential. No description brings me any closer to understanding what happened to Jerry that night.”

  “I’m beginning to believe you’re right. The only way to truly understand how the plant influences culture is to experience it for yourself.”

  Only when Myles noticed the fading light at the window did he realize that they had continued to talk through the late afternoon, much longer than anyone had expected. Suddenly, Dr. Miller’s voice softened, and he turned his gaze directly on Jerry.

  “One of the reasons I accepted a position at this university, Jerry, is because of your father. Dean inspired some of my work and helped me find my way once I was here. If you’ve no problem traveling out of the country, I’ll be glad to have you on the team. I think he would be pleased to know we’re working together.”

  “Thank you, sir. I can’t think of anything I would rather do.” Then, pushing back sudden hot pinpricks of tears that would have embarrassed him beyond belief, Jerry found the further voice to answer, “I think my father inspired a good many people, Dr. Miller. He was an extraordinary human being.”

  Clearing his throat, Dr. Miller added levelly, “I want you to meet my graduate assistant from the anthropology department, Barry Hume. We’re getting ready to go to Cuernavaca in Mexico for six weeks in August and September. We’ll be back for October classes. Any reason you might not be able to make the trip?”

  “No, sir.” And suddenly smiling, Jerry asked, “Does this mean I have the job?”

  Dr. Miller nodded, his smile as broad as Jerry’s. “We’ll be studying ritual and Cannabis sativa. I’m told the locals pinch the leaves into urn shapes that eventually become covered with a copal-colored resin. Copal, of course, is sacred in Mesoamerican culture. How would you like to see your name on the publication?”

  “I would like that very much,” Jerry laughed.

  Working with Dr. Miller would be his ticket to the career he’d set his heart on since he was eight years old.

  ROTC drill. Max Wilkes once again ordered Myles to keep in step, and once again, Myles grimaced. Wilkes had escalated his merciless bullying in the last two weeks. Myles had spent years achieving high standards, and to have someone of Wilkes’s mental stature reprimand him in front of an entire platoon was an embarrassment that was becoming harder to endure—even if there were others forced to bear the brunt of whatever ire Wilkes decided to dish out on a particular day. The man was mean.

  “Corbet!” Wilkes barked again.

  Later that afternoon, after the secretary had left the Life Sciences building, Myles turned his key in the door lock of his father’s office. Rifling through the stack of blue books from last quarter, he found Wilkes’s name on the final exam, and next to it, a bright red D. If Wilkes wanted credit, he would have to repeat the course. Wilkes had never seen the comments written on the final—This doesn’t follow, Refer to Stevenson, Where’s the research? and Impossible!—had only seen the final course grade the university had given him on a small rectangular piece of paper. Obviously, it didn’t matter to Wilkes that his exam had been read by one of the teaching assistants. The hazing was payback for the simple reason that Myles shared his last name with his father.

  That night, Myles went to the vacant locker room where he dressed for ROTC and stapled the exam to the bulletin board. Wilkes would get a chance to see his final exam. As would a couple of hundred other guys. The next day, when he went back to recover the blue book, all that remained were four scraps of blue paper still attached to the staples on the corkboard.

  The taunting stopped.

  On an afternoon a few weeks later, Myles was changing back into jeans and a T-shirt after drill, when he once again looked at the bulletin board and smiled. He simply couldn’t help himself. Those blue corners stapled on the board generated undisguised glee, a feeling of victory. He brought one foot to the bench and began to tie his tennis shoe lace.

  “Hey, Corbet!” one of the men cried enthusiastically. Bert Jones sat down on the bench next to him, watching as Myles finished a knot and began shoving a few last items into his book bag. “How’s it goin’?”

  “Good. You?”

  “Better. Now that Wilkes has stopped harassing the squad.”

  “You noticed, too, huh?” Myles said grinning. “Think it has something to do with those blue tabs on the bulletin board?”

  “I figured that was you,” he laughed.

  “Me? I think someone just got sick of his games. Someone else decided to play. And win.”

  “Slick. We were all fed up with his attitude.”

  “Doesn’t he graduate soon?”

  “I hear he’s shipping out at the end of summer. Vietnam. At least he’ll be out of here.”

  “He’s taking his commission?”

  Suddenly, Myles felt sorry for the guy. Wherever he was going, he wouldn’t do well.

  “That’s what I hear.” Bert stood and turned to go. “I’ll catch you around.” Then he stopped, turned back, and lowered his voice. “Say, man, you got anything to smoke?”

  “Nope. Sorry. Don’t smoke.”

  “I mean … to smoke.” Bert’s eyes widened knowingly.

  Myles laughed again. “Sorry. None of that either.” He opened his book bag and removed his wallet, ready to place it in his back pant’s pocket.

  “Wait a minute,” he said impulsively. He took the two joints out of his wallet that had sat there for weeks. “You can have these. I’ll never have time to smoke them.”

  “Thanks. Let me know if you ever need a favor.”

  When the phone rang, Myles impatiently picked it up. He was busy. But his voice changed when Colonel Nunes, Commanding Officer of the ROTC program, demanded that Myles appear in his office at 2:00 that afternoon. Myles replaced the phone with a sour taste in his mouth, suddenly wondering whether his hotshot idea of posting that exam had been so smart after all.

  Promptly at 2:00, Myles knocked on Colonel Nunes’s door and entered the office, registering the Colonel behind his desk. He groaned inwardly as he saw Wilkes. Other men were in the room—two men sitting in chairs near the window—and someone behind Wilkes. A few more steps into the room and he recognized the man: Bert Jones.

  “Corbet,” Colonel Nunes’s voice interrupted his speculations, “we have a serious accusation against you. We understand you’ve been passing marijuana to the men on your drill team.”

  “Sir?”

  “We also understand you were in Africa at the beginning of the summer. Lieutenant Wilkes has suggested that’s where you got the stuff. You used the trust of your position with the university to smuggle it through customs.”

  “That’s simply not true!” Myles exploded.

&
nbsp; “Are you willing to swear that you brought no marijuana into this country?”

  “Only as part of scientific research.”

  He turned to give Wilkes a sideward glance and saw from the way his body visibly relaxed that surprise had caused him to make a fatal error. Something was going on here that Myles didn’t understand—a game of high stakes. The cards were being turned over, and he still hadn’t really paid much attention to the ante.

  “Have you any idea how detrimental the use of this drug is?” the Colonel continued. “What happens after this? How many of the men who smoke marijuana will go on to use heroin? Don’t you know we are a country at war, soldier?”

  Myles couldn’t answer. He was still trying to see the hand he was being dealt.

  “Lieutenant Wilkes claims you passed this drug to one of the men in the platoon.” He held up the two rolled joints. “It was only after Jones returned to their fraternity house that he realized the rolled cigarettes contained marijuana. Did you or did you not, Corbet, pass these marijuana cigarettes to Jones?”

  Myles looked at the joints, then into the waiting eyes of Jones and Wilkes. His breath came a little harder. “He … he asked me for them,” he murmured in a shaky voice.

  “I asked for something to smoke, sir. I thought they were ordinary rolled cigarettes.”

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” he nodded to Jones and Wilkes. “That will be all.”

  They saluted and left the room.

  “Corbet, this use of marijuana passed in the military has to be nipped in the bud. I’m afraid I’m going to have to make an example of you. This is Lieutenant Hanson of the Berkeley Police Department,” he nodded toward a big man wearing a suit and hat, “and Supervisor Dolph Bremer, Northern California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement. I’m sorry, Corbet. I know your father will be disappointed.”

  Supervisor Bremer was probably forty, a bit flabby in the gut, almost six feet, with dark hair and darker circles under his eyes. “You’re under arrest, Corbet,” Bremer told him with disinterested finality. “Felonious possession of a narcotic drug.”