The rest of their conversation had been desultory. Had she held her audience spellbound at her session? Not exactly, but it went all right. He hoped she’d found time to enjoy Montreal despite her busy weekend. Not so, she said. She’d slept poorly and needed to catch up.
He said he loved her and let her go. Lloyd Chalmers was not mentioned.
He lay in bed awhile, trying to switch gears, wondering how he’d so quickly lost that placid, floating state that had carried him through most of the weekend. It seemed delusory now, a mirage. What had caused it? The gluten-free cookies — had Wholeness and Wellness impregnated them with some kind of love-all-things potion? That was ridiculous.
Back to reality. Get more seeds, a second planting of peas was due. Buy more netting, the robins were in the strawberries. Fill that goat-cheese order for the Legion benefit. Drop by the food bank with new-laid eggs.
§
He set out on foot to the general store for his gardening supplies. He was leery of taking the Fargo, with its bad muffler and the threat of being hauled over by unforgiving Constable Dugald.
As he neared the Hopeless Bay turnoff, Nelson Forbish came chugging behind him, his ATV piled high with bundled copies of the latest Bleat. He pulled over, tossed Arthur his copy. “If no news is good news, then all I got is good news. I’m late for the post office.” He sped on to Hopeless Bay, looking harried.
Arthur glanced through the little tabloid as he descended the winding road to the shoreline. Featured in the “Who’s Who on Garibaldi” column were the two fully geared cyclists Forbish interviewed last week. Joanne and Henry, he called them, not having got their last names. One a nutritionist, the other an osteopath. “This daunting duo cycled all the way from Los Angeles, driven by a fervent desire to meet Baba Sri Rameesh.” Joanne hoped to “complete unfinished parental issues,” and Henry wanted to “cleanse away his layers of negative patterns.”
The “What’s Comin’ Up” column: “Stay attuned, the next issue will give the inside scoop on the Transformation Mission, your Intrepid Reporter having enjoyed the hospitality of Mr. Jason Silverson (a truly mouth-watering pork roast — they’re not vegan!) and being offered a ‘no-holds-barred’ tour this week of the inner workings of their intriguing experiment in alternate lifestyles.”
Arthur could hear Silverson dictating those phrases, slowly, over canapés, so Forbish could take down all the adjectives. The guru, anxious about rumours of drugs and debauchery, would be assured of a complimentary review by serving another hearty meal as part of the tour package.
Arthur arrived at the store to find Forbish behind the post office counter — Makepeace had deputized him to distribute Bleats to the boxes while he attended to customers. Arthur was second in line, behind Taba Jones, the potter, whose coffee mugs adorned the shelves of Blunder Bay. An attractive redhead, sharp of mind, blunt of tongue. Cropped hair and a potter’s strong hands. Despairing mother of Felicity, whom Silverson was transforming.
Forbish was whining: it wasn’t fair, this wasn’t his job.
“I don’t have time to post your so-called newspapers.” Makepeace was shrill. “You got junk mail rates, so don’t complain.” Makepeace held a slim envelope up to the light, before handing it to Taba. “Money order for five hundred from some gallery in Seattle.”
“Thank you. Let’s broadcast it to the world.” She quickly checked her copy of the Bleat, flourished it at Forbish, bent over his labours. “Why isn’t my letter to the editor in here?”
“About the Transformers? I could have been sued and bankrupted. ‘They’re not from this planet’ is one phrase I remember.”
“You sell-out. Wined and dined. A VIP invitation.”
Arthur chimed in: “Yes, Nelson, it looks like you and Jason have become quite the loving couple.”
Nelson rose and turned to face them. “Contrary to false rumour, I think we got to give them the benefit of the doubt. They want to be accepted, they’re having an open house in a few weeks and they actually ordered a half-page invitation to all comers to see for themselves about their vision for a sustainable and loving future.”
“They’re not from this planet,” Taba snapped. She was clearly in a temper about Felicity.
With great effort, Forbish heaved himself up to full height, defiant. “A lot of what Jason says makes sense, we got our values all screwed up, we’re mortgaging our future on frivolous things. I’m going to do an op-ed to correct the erroneous gossip, people should give them more respect.”
“Your brains have been sucked out, sweetie. I’m not looking at Nelson Forbish, I’m looking at a zombie.” Taba grabbed the rest of her mail and marched off.
Makepeace couldn’t reach around Forbish to get at the Blunder Bay mailbox, so Arthur leaned across the counter and snaffled his letters and magazines, thus pre-empting the postmaster’s traditional examining of Arthur’s mail. It seemed a fetish, this fondling of other people’s correspondence. Doubtless, the lonely bachelor got little mail of his own.
Makepeace began to moan about Arthur’s effrontery, his flouting of Canada Post regulations, but was cut off by a woman’s loud call from outside, the parking area: “Just do it!”
“Just do it,” another woman chirruped. Laughter.
Arthur paused on his way to the gardening section to look out the store’s big plate window. A VW van, the kind one used to see in the sixties: peace symbols, slogans in praise of love. To Arthur, the homage to summers of love seemed manufactured. The van had disgorged two women of indeterminate age: dark glasses, shaggy hair, peasant dresses.
Arthur carried on, found some netting, then picked through the racks of seed envelopes. He arrived at checkout bearing a few groceries as well and watched the two women wander about, admiring the century-old store. One was working a video camera.
“Funky!”
“It’s so retro.”
“And the locals!” Hushed but not enough.
“Hey, ask this old-timer.”
Arthur was heading for the Brig when they converged on him. Bangles, beads, possibly cosmetic surgery, a suspect plumpness of lips.
“Go back up the hill,” he said, “take the first right and the third left.”
In the parking lot, he spied Kurt Zoller’s orange Hummer parked behind the VW van. He was out of uniform, jotting down its licence number, a California plate. A few minutes later, as the retro-hippies drove off, he bounded up to the Brig’s sunny patio, where Arthur was sipping his midday tea.
“I followed those hippie ladies from the ferry.” He leaned in close, conspiratorial. “My mission: bust them.”
“The hippie ladies?”
“The Transformers. My information is very hush-hush. Say no more.” That vow was quickly abandoned. “We have reason to suspect certain salacious practices are being practised, lewd sex, hot tub orgies. A credible informant says they use a mind-altering herbal remedy called gupa. Your ears only.”
Gupa. Maybe that’s what they’d fed the editor of the Bleat. Maybe that’s what was in those oatmeal cookies. Arthur chuckled. What nonsense.
He didn’t invite Zoller to sit but felt compelled to ask how he planned to bust the Transformation Mission.
“I have my ways.”
“Yeah, you nail those creeps.” Taba Jones, behind Kurt, caused him to jump. “Don’t screw up this time.” She was holding a glass of something fizzy. Arthur rose and pulled out a chair for her.
Zoller showed annoyance. “This is top secret.”
“Yeah, you told me,” said Taba. As Zoller retreated down the staircase, she said, “Did he tell you about the gupa?”
“And the orgies.” They watched Zoller drive off. “I think he plans a surprise raid on the hot tub.”
“Felicity claims that’s bullshit, the orgies bit. There’s normal healthy sex but they call it sharing. I think I’m going to throw up.”
Felicity had reached adult age, but Taba just couldn’t give up trying to correct her wayward ways. Arthur suspected she harboured the guilt of a single mother. After Felicity’s father ran off, she’d remained uncoupled, dissatisfied with Garibaldi’s inferior selection of male suitors.
She was well put together, but her most commendable feature, at least to Arthur, was her ample bosom, a bounty not on offer from his life companion, or from his willowy ex. Arthur suspected this minor obsession of his had to do with having been poorly breastfed.
Forbish was now outside, his nose in a bag of Cheezies as he helped direct a familiar green Ford Econoline van into a tight parking spot. Morg was driving. Silverson was the first to climb out, and he slid open the side door to liberate four women: Felicity Jones and three of her baseball mates, all in “Just Do It!” T-shirts. They looked stoned, staring blankly at a heap of boxes waiting outside the store — groceries and sundries they’d presumably ordered in advance. Maybe they were waiting for a truck or delivery van to mysteriously appear.
“Zombie invasion,” said Taba. She called down to her daughter and waved, somehow managing to smile through gritted teeth.
Arthur waved too, but earned only Morg’s empty stare: unearthly, trance-like.
Forbish said something that earned him a friendly punch from Silverson and a cuddle from one of the girls. The scribe seemed a short step from joining their infatuated ranks.
Arthur worried that if he got too close to them he’d catch it too, some kind of contagion spread by touch or by gupa on the breath. He warned himself not to succumb again to feeling near-bliss. He must stay on top of himself. Maintain his healthy cynicism.
§
Hefting his heavy pack, Arthur emboldened himself for the trek home, but was met in the parking area by Taba. Heroically, he declined her offer of a ride — Blunder Bay was miles out of her way — but she stayed him, a hand on his arm. Silverson was approaching.
“Don’t leave me alone with him. I might kick him in the nuts.”
Silverson came close, favouring Arthur with his mint-scented breath and sparkling teeth.
“It would be an immense pleasure, Arthur, if you’d let me show you around our homely little scene. This afternoon. Along with your lovely companion.” His eyes lingered for a moment on her bust. “It’s Taba, isn’t it? I don’t believe we’ve formally met.”
She avoided his extended hand by foraging in her bag for her keys. The guru casually turned and aimed his video camera at the Easy Pieces as they struggled to squeeze boxes into the back of the Ford van, then on Felicity as she approached.
Clipping his camera to his belt, Silverson turned back to Taba. “You must be very proud of your daughter. So beautiful, so open to experience.” A slightly mocking tone, though still that blinding smile. “But do come.” A glance at Taba’s pickup. A disarming grin. “Save us an extra trip.”
The real reason for the invitation: half a dozen boxes of food, tools, and other miscellany remained by the van, which was stuffed, hardly room for passengers.
Felicity grabbed her mother’s arm. “Come on, Mom, join us, they do a divine herbal tea. It’s a really radical scene.” She already wore the Starkers mask, the enduring smile. “Just do it, Mom.”
Taba looked at Arthur. “What the hell.”
Arthur shrugged. He had time to kill and was curious to see their radical scene.
WHO WE ARE IS WHO WE ARE
It remained a sunny, shirtsleeve afternoon as Arthur joined Taba Jones in her rattletrap pickup for her promised ride home by way of Starkers Cove. The day would have been even more agreeable were it not for the twitchiness Arthur felt, prompted by a concern — ridiculous, of course, but felt nonetheless — of being infected, transformed. Ensnared in an enduring state of happiness.
“You’ll be my excuse not to stay,” Taba said. “They spook me. That ogre Morg with his stupid, staring eyes. The hot guru with his gushy, fake smarm. Be honest, Arthur, don’t these cheesers make your skin crawl?”
It would be unmanly to admit to such dread. “I merely regard them as bizarre and pretentious.” And, he might have added, spurred by mischievous intent. Surely the Transformation Mission was an elaborate cover for a scam. The bilking of well-to-do Californians had emerged as a motive. Those middle-aged hippie pretenders — they obviously came from money.
Potatoes, oranges, and soup cans skidded from their bags and rolled about in the bed of the pickup as Taba turned onto the humpy, curling Lower Mount Norbert Road. Arthur had difficulty keeping his eyes off her breasts, as they bounced in tandem with the clanking old Chev.
The hot guru, the ogre, and Felicity and her pals were ahead in the van, and it was kicking up dust, so Taba let it gain distance.
“Felicity isn’t saying, but I know Silverson is fucking her.” Mimicking him: “‘So open to experience.’ She’d better not end up having another abortion.”
They were descending now and had a view of the Salish Sea and in the foreground the placid waters of Starkers Cove and its small sandy beach.
On a bench of rock overlooking the cove were a lodge and a dozen guest houses, built for Starkers Cove’s earlier incarnation as a nudist resort — a risky, ill-financed operation that went broke. Silverson and his group snapped it up several months ago on a bankruptcy sale. According to Postmaster Makepeace — the source of all local knowledge — it had recently been put in the name of the Personal Transformation Mission Society, newly registered.
The whole area was surrounded by a tall fence of stacked split cedars backed by chicken wire. An enormous pile of fresh manure sat outside a sturdy wooden gate, and when Arthur got a whiff of it, he understood why it had been deposited far from any living quarters.
The Ford van pulled up to the gate, and Silverson sprang out, swung it open, and focussed his camera on Taba’s pickup as it moved forward. Arthur took in the roughly painted sign above the gate: “When you realize there is nowhere to go, you have arrived.”
Taba idled until Silverson closed the gate. He bent to Arthur’s window, swept an arm about. “Our sangha, our oasis from the chattering world.”
His upper body was profiled by a golden aura, and Arthur felt his flesh crawl. Two possibilities came to mind: one, he was hallucinating; two, Silverson truly was Christ returned. Then he realized his host had placed himself in front of the lowering sun, its rays framing him.
The stench of the compost followed them until the pickup reached a tin-roofed barn and a newly finished building that had the look of a dormitory. Carpenters stilled their hammers and saws to smile and wave. Arthur recognized the man on wheelbarrow detail: Garibaldi’s eternally depressed school janitor. He looked serene, improbably content.
A housing crisis had been temporarily met with several tents and translucent structures of industrial plastic sheeting. The latest arrivals, the two women in the hippie van, were pitching their own tent. Happy workers in the fields, fencing, digging, planting. Chickens and rabbits free-ranging all over the place, amid a smorgasbord of other livestock: Jersey cows, llamas, guinea hens, and emus. The Farm Fantastic.
“Who designed this zoo?” Taba said. “Someone obsessed with the Whole Earth Catalog?”
The sturdy log-built lodge offered rooms for lodgers on two floors, all with views of the cove. Tossing grass seed about its grounds was yet another Garibaldi recruit, a retired teacher. She waved them down and approached Arthur’s window with a Madonna smile.
“I hope you’ll find what you’re seeking here, Arthur. You won’t find it unless you turn off your head. It’s easy. Just do it, Arthur.” Henrietta Wilks, before she fell under the sway, had been a reasonably normal person, a buyer of Blunder Bay’s eggs and goat cheese, but she’d had a crackup after a relationship went sour.
“Ah, yes, thank you, Henrietta. Thank you, indeed.” He leaned away from her — it could be catching; he could end up spending the rest of his days coll
ecting emu eggs and planting kumquats at Starkers Cove. Doing so happily. Loving all things.
Felicity was by the van, and she directed her mother to back up to the lodge’s wide, timbered door. Already parked near the door was the orange Hummer of Kurt Zoller, who was in uniform, talking with Silverson and Morg. Obviously Zoller had sped here from the pub to gather evidence of lewd sex practices, and Silverson had arrived to find him snooping.
“Maybe, Arthur, you can help him with advice,” Silverson said, “about how to find his way out of here.” And abruptly he joined Morg in unloading supplies from the van and the truck.
Despite feeling co-opted into donating legal services, Arthur drew Zoller aside. “This is not a good time, Kurt. Nor the right tactic. Jason thinks you’re being unfriendly.”
“I only asked if I could check around and see everything’s according to code, and he and Morg took up umbrage.”
“You don’t have a search warrant and you don’t have probable cause. Therefore you’re trespassing.”
Flustered by a show of incompetence now obvious even to him, Zoller altered tack. “That plastic sheeting is so transparent you can see everything they’re doing. I seen a lady taking off a brassiere. Are you going to say indecent exposure isn’t a crime neither? And group sex?”
“Kurt, no one here is filing any criminal complaints.”
Arthur had difficulty seeing these cultists as Dionysian revellers — certainly not the locals, like Henrietta and the school janitor. Nor most of the American recruits, old and new, who seemed too bourgeois beneath the façade of hippiness to have had much experience with scandalous behaviour. Most of Silverson’s original group, the thirty he’d brought across the border, seemed well into middle age: long-haired, paunchy men; women in ragged cutoffs or peasant dresses; long strands of beads; peace symbols; a pretence of youth; a blatant evocation of a decade Arthur had somehow missed.
Absent from this assemblage were children of any age. Presumably persons under the age of consent were either not encouraged or not allowed.
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