A Nation of Mystics

by Pamela Johnson

  “Carolyn? I thought he and Kathy …”

  “Yeah, well, I think they’re working on it as a threesome.”

  “I’m going to have to learn some of this boy’s moves. So, how’s Kathy doin’?”

  “I thought you didn’t care?”

  Alex shrugged.

  “Antsy.” Richard told him. “Stuck in a hospital bed. Missing Marcie. Confused about Larry.”

  “Did you finalize any business deals?”

  “Yeah. Fifty keys every two weeks until we want to increase our order. Seems they want us as much as we want them.”

  “Are we still going to fly it back?”

  Richard nodded. “Until Kathy’s out of the hospital. Merlin and I will be taking turns.”

  “What does Kathy have to do with anything?”

  “When she recovers, it’s her business again. That was the deal.”

  “Wait a minute. We’ll be doing all the work.”

  “Only for a few weeks. Look, she did us a favor keeping the connection open. She called me, and she didn’t have to do that. She could have let us sit it out for six weeks. Besides, why do you want the job of bringing keys from Tucson? Your energy can be used somewhere else. Let Kathy make a living.”

  “She’s too loose.”

  “She brought Kevin, David, and Larry to us, for starters. Not to mention any number of out-of-town customers.” Richard pointed to the radio. “Listen to that song. Jimi’s right. Experience. That’s all she was doin’, man, gettin’ experience.” His body moved sensuously with the music and the smoke. “You should have screwed her that first night before Felix got to her. Gotten it all out of your system.”

  “Sure. That’s the problem—me not screwing Kathy.” Alex stood, irritation still heavy in his voice. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Listen, be careful traveling the streets at night. Don’t carry anything with you—money or product. Things are … dicey. Are you going over to David’s?”

  “Yeah. He’ll want to know we’re on again. When can we expect the first shipment?”

  “I’m sending Merlin tomorrow, so the next day. It’s a quick turnaround.”

  At the bedroom door, Alex stopped and turned back to him.

  “Richard, if we’re going to be partners, don’t take off like that again without telling me.”

  Then he was off without waiting for a response, his footsteps echoing on the wooden hallway floor.

  Richard sat on the edge of the bed, relieved that Alex’s response hadn’t been worse. As he began to roll a fresh joint, he considered the huge risk he’d taken in going to the ranch. How could he explain to Alex that he’d followed his intuition, an intuition Alex simply didn’t have?

  He had just placed the rolling box back on the shelf in his closet when the front door opened and crashed hard against the wall.

  “Richard!” Marcie shouted.

  “Jesus, what is it?” He cried quickly running from the back room, his face and lips pale. “I thought we were getting busted, or maybe the tact squad was kicking in the door.”

  “My test! My test from the clinic came back positive. We’re going to have a baby!”

  Stunned momentarily, trying to process the words and think past them, a slow grin spread over his face. Grabbing Marcie, he spun her around and around until they fell, dizzy, to the mattress on the floor. At that moment, he knew they would leave the Haight.

  Kevin and David had already settled in Marin County and both were pushing him to move. Kevin had suggested a house in Fairfax. Richard had seen it—wood and glass and a view from the living room windows of meadows, hills, and Mount Tamalpais. Instead of jumping on the lease, he’d hesitated. The Haight was his spiritual birthplace, and he’d felt an obligation to attend community meetings working to find solutions.

  But a baby changed everything.

  Within the week, the lease on the new house was signed.

  Richard picked up a last box in the empty front room of the Ashbury flat.

  “What do you think? Do we have everything?”

  “Just about,” Marcie sighed. “There might be something else. I’ll check.”

  She stepped down the hallway, past the rainbow painted on the wall, her footfalls hollow in the vacant flat. He followed her to the back bedroom where she stood quietly looking around.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “I think so. There’s this one last bag.” She reached down, picked it up, and took his hand. “This place has been good to us with its flower-covered walls and bright paint. So many trips and memories.”

  “Come,” he said softly. “There’s a future waiting.”

  At the front stoop, he pushed in the lock button and pulled the door closed. No going back. The bag found a nook somewhere in the back seat. Marcie ducked underneath the mattress tied to the top of the car and slid in next to him, her chin trembling.

  “I love you, you know,” he said, wiping a tear from her cheek. “Can you believe we got all our possessions into the car?”

  Starting the engine, Richard headed north toward the Golden Gate Bridge. Greta and Merlin would share the house with them, and a room would be made up for Kathy. She was healing and would return. But Alex … Alex had decided it was time to move off on his own. Taking Honey with him, he’d found a house in another part of Marin, in Woodacre, preferring to live away from Richard.

  MARCIE AND RICHARD

  THE FAIRFAX HOUSE, MARIN COUNTY, CALIFORNIA

  NOVEMBER 1967

  Marcie loved their new life in Marin. Already, the county had sprouted natural food stores and vegetarian restaurants, yoga and meditation groups. Small shops imported Indian clothing, brass objects, religious statues, carved wooden tables, and incense. In the first month, Marcie and Greta took advantage of the import shops and fabric stores to make pillows for the floor. Richard brought home a large Bukhara, a thick Asian carpet given in payment of a debt. Green plants went in every corner. Posters previously thumb tacked into the wall went into frames. Kevin and Debbie brought a Tibetan thangka of the Buddha as a housewarming gift. Larry sent a treasured Navajo blanket.

  But Marcie’s greatest delight was the discovery of a new practice—natural childbirth and home delivery. After hearing horror stories of the humiliating and dangerous procedures of hospital births—forceps, forced expulsion to accommodate a doctor’s convenience, numbing drugs, Staph bacteria, a cold metal table and stirrups—she knew she wanted to be aware and awake for her baby’s birth. The birthing bed would be the one she and Richard shared. The child would emerge into Richard’s hands.

  Although Marcie may have tripped several times before knowing she was pregnant, she stopped taking the heavier psychedelics but decided to continue smoking. The high was good for the child, she thought—a way to develop the heart chakra before birth and to sensitize an awakening spirit. But Richard continued to trip; business depended on it. He had to know what he was selling. At times, Marcie was jealous of his psychedelic experiences, wondering how far he traveled, what he was learning, and if she would ever be able to catch up.

  On a cold and rainy day in mid-November, Richard walked into the house, triumphant.

  “Take a look at this,” he told Marcie, holding out a small, two-inch bottle with a black screw top between thumb and forefinger.

  “What is it?” Marcie asked, looking at the white crystals. “Coke?”

  “No,” Richard shook his head, his lips set in a very satisfied smile. “It’s acid—our first crystal gram. What do you think?”

  “Richard,” the word was a sigh. She knew what this meant to him—his own trip, its color and dosage chosen to distinguish it from other sources. Carefully, she turned the bottle over to see fluffy crystals catching sparkles of color from the light.

  “Here, let me have it before you get stoned. Just carrying it around’s enough to get you high.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Buff it out and cap it. Greta and Merlin will help, and Alex is
on his way over with Honey. We’ll probably have to work all night. Do you know what this means, Marcie? If we can keep this channel open, we’ll never have to guess at the quality of crystal again. We’ll have marketing control. We can make up special orders.”

  “Do you know if it’s Owsley acid?”

  “That’s what I’m told, and there’s no reason to believe Mark wouldn’t be truthful. I think he’s getting it from some guy named Christian. Whoever Christian is, he’s pretty protected. I’m sure Kevin knows him, but he won’t say a word about him.”

  The glass doors to the living room slid open, and Alex and Honey walked in.

  “Hey,” Alex called, ambling into the kitchen. “Did you read the papers this morning?”

  “No. What’s up?”

  Honey held up the paper. “More news on Stop the Draft Week. Thousands of people are still blocking the Oakland Induction Center.” She laughed. “If you really want to have a physical, you’ve got to climb over the protestors to get into the building. Lots of people are handing out leaflets encouraging the draftees to join the protests instead of going inside.”

  “But the big headline,” Alex said, “is that Joan Baez was arrested for joining with other women in the sit-in.”

  Richard took the paper from Honey, reading quickly down the page, his smile gone, his eyes concentrated. In the crowd around Joan and the women, posters stood out: Blessed Are the Peace Makers, Babies Are Not for Burning, Let Children Live, We Come In Peace. Facing the lines of women was a phalanx of heavily armed Oakland and Berkeley Police, Alameda County Sheriffs, and MPs, the whole drama staged in front of the building where the fate of thousands of lives was being decided—Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, and American.

  Richard set down the paper and paced the room. “What we’re doing in Vietnam is insane. Inhuman. The men at the top, the ones jockeying for power—do they ever stop to think of what they’re doing to the innocent? Marcie, if we have a son, I’ll do everything I can to keep him from going into the army. I’ll teach him the morality of pacifism, of finding other ways to solve problems so that the innocent will never have to suffer.”

  Alex, looking uncomfortable, as he always did whenever Richard’s anger replaced his usual self-assurance and logic, said, “Maybe we should just get to work, huh?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” Richard rubbed the back of his neck. “Unless anyone wants to postpone the capping in favor of a drive to Oakland.”

  “Richard,” Marcie said quietly. “Handing out acid is as important as handing out a leaflet.”

  “You’re right,” he said, forcing a smile. “Okay, you get to choose. What color should these caps be?”

  “Make them orange—the color of the Buddha’s robe in the thangka Kevin gave us.”

  They would need to make five thousand caps; each of the finished capsules would contain approximately 200 micrograms of LSD. Richard mixed a small amount of DCP, dicalciumphosphate, an inert substance used as a preservative, in a large plastic jar with the gram of acid and orange food coloring, gradually adding milk powder and shaking the jar until he thought there was an even consistency. Each time he took off the lid, a small cloud spread across the room. He tried not to inhale the powder, but it was impossible. As he measured out the mixture onto five plates, he was having trouble speaking. “Okay … uh … let’s … get started.”

  He gave each person a box of gelatin capsules and a plate of acid.

  “Try to keep the powder on the table,” he mumbled, “so all we have to do to clean up is take the table outside and hose it down.” He held out a hand to the closet door laid atop cinderblocks to make certain they knew which table. “Use the spoons for pushing the powder into piles. It might make things easier.”

  “Listen to that!” Merlin gave his giggling laugh, pointing to the radio. “Eight miles high. Oh, yeah.”

  For a while, the music held Richard together as he began pulling the empty capsules apart, dabbing one end in the powder, and replacing the empty lid. But within the hour, he had difficulty remembering what he was doing. Acid was going through the skin of his fingertips, onto his face from a careless brush of the hand, into his nostrils with each breath. Everything became unbelievably funny. Greta started licking her fingertips, and Merlin responded by eating off his spoon. Alex decided to show them all and stuck his face right into the plate. Then he was all over Honey, rolling with her on the rug, kissing her, giving her a mask of powder to wear as she laughed and weakly tried to push him away with arms of rubber, forgetting anyone else was there. For a long while, the room echoed with shrills and hoots and the sound of music.

  Richard’s vision was filled with diamonds and paisleys, weaving and entwining, awash in a sea of light, reminding him of illusion, of the millions of games, teaching him to focus his energy to create his own reality.

  Marcie. Upstairs. Somewhere. But here. In me.

  Reaching out with his mind, he touched her, held her close, loved her. He would always know her. On whatever planet, through life and after death, their spirits would be entwined. He had only to think of her, and she would be there for him, real.

  Greta and Merlin called to him. Throwing back his head, he laughed loud and lustily, then lifted his arms to hold them and dance, reveling in the nearness of their bodies. Laughter and tears filled the room, the two so much the same, held together by a thin thread, one changing into the other, pain and pleasure all at once, the sensation of orgasm, positive and negative, the eternal Tao.

  Not until they heard birds singing in a dimly lit sky, and twenty hours after beginning the process, did they even begin to return to the idea of a self. Spirals still twisted in midair as Richard looked around the room to assess the damage. He was peaking, moving into that place of energetic clarity. The orange powder was everywhere … spread across the table, on pillows, the floor, walls, everyone’s clothing.

  “God, what a mess,” he mumbled, grinning.

  “Well, one thing about acid,” Merlin reminded him, “you can’t get off for a while if you’ve just tripped.”

  “The capping … we didn’t get much done,” Greta said, and sitting down, began to scrape up piles of powder.

  “How many caps do you think we got done the first hour?” Alex asked.

  “Maybe between five and eight hundred,” Merlin answered.

  “You know,” Honey took a seat next to Greta, “this is probably the way we should have done it. Maybe the only way. Drop, get through it, and then do it. Maybe now, we’ll be able to work without our fingers shifting.”

  By noon, what was left of the powder was capped. The plates and spoons were washed, and the tabletop went outside with Alex and Merlin so the heavy rain could hose it down. Greta mopped the floor. The project over, they were exhausted and spaced but with the ancient awareness that comes at the end of a long trip.

  Outside, the winter storm beat against the windowpanes, hard, relentless. Richard walked upstairs. Through the sliding glass doors, he could see gray fog heavy on the hills. Occasionally, a patch of misty green would peek between swirls of rising mist. White-gray and bright green, softly mingling colors, cold and wet.

  By the time everyone had showered, Marcie had a fire going in the living room, hot herbal tea ready, and bowls of brown rice and vegetables. One by one, the warmth drew them, and they huddled around the fireplace, eating, the music quiet now, the colors of the changing flames and the notes of a piano holding together the threads of their consciousness.

  Richard moved to sit on the rug next to Marcie.

  I have everything anyone could ever need, he thought. And who am I to be blessed with so much while others have so little? This room’s simple, a rug, pillows, and low table, wooden bowls and chopsticks, vegetables and rice. What more do I need? What more does anyone need? Instead of being satisfied, man uses his precious finite energy to gather material things, more than he can ever use, even when he knows that by taking too much, others will not have enough.

  A vision of the
hungry, the homeless, the alienated, the crippled, the sick, engulfed him, until he could no longer bear the thought. Misery, so easy to solve if we realize we are responsible for one another, if we each share our abundance, turn from greed and the need to dominate, walk hand in hand with all men on our journey together.

  Marcie watched his face. “Eat,” she said, standing and touching his hands. His fingers were gripped around the wooden bowl, but he was not moving.

  Instead, Richard put it down and hugged her tightly around the waist, as if she might disappear, somehow vanish. “I missed you terribly.”

  “Richard,” she said quietly, stroking his hair, “I will always be right here. Whenever you need me.”

  On the following day, Alex arrived at Richard’s house early, his face concerned.

  “Here.” He handed Richard a bag. “Take a look at this. Guess how many caps there are?” And without waiting for an answer added, “A little over four thousand hits.”

  Richard took the bag, weighing it in his hands. “You mean …?”

  “Right. We ate about a thousand caps of acid between us.”

  “That certainly explains the way I feel this morning—cosmic.”

  Alex shook his head. “We didn’t exactly eat that much. I’d feel better if we had. A lot of it got thrown around the room, wasted. Our little capping party cost us about two grand.”

  “That’s alright,” Richard told him. “We’re going to do something about it.”

  “Like?”

  “Mark mentioned he has access to a tabbing machine. I thought capping would be cheaper. He laughed at me. Now I see why.”

  “Does he have a machine for sale?”

  “No. But apparently he has a machinist who’s making them.”

  “Can you handle going over there today?” Alex asked. “Or should we wait until tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow. This fire feels pretty good. Do you want some of this roach?”

  “Thanks.” Alex took the tiny tip of the cigarette and held it to the candle flame on the table. “I’ve got some coke, if you want.”