by Lewis Shiner
She’d been back to the disco a couple of times on her own—Callie didn’t dance, and thus neither, now, did Alex—and it had provided some small release. When she wasn’t on the dance floor, however, it seemed impossibly hard to justify the hours away from her textbooks, the lost hours of sleep.
Beyond the loneliness, beyond the guilt over Callie’s show, beyond the chill of the big city, she was exhausted. She had turned in her last paper the day before, completing her fifth year of full-time school and nearly full-time work at the gallery. In the spring she would receive her master’s; she would then face four more years, minimum, to get her PhD. In a field that was not her own. Followed by five years to work off her commitment to Kindred, by which time she would be well into her thirties. No, not well at all. Badly into her thirties.
She was in danger of crying. She declared the experiment in Christmas cheer a failure—another failure—and walked to 5th Avenue to catch a cab.
As the cab pulled up in front of her building, she noted with a mix of empathy and discomfort that a homeless person was standing in the snow near the entrance. Long hair protruded from a black watch cap, and most of his face was hidden by a light-brown beard. He had a cheap guitar case and a knapsack, both dusted with snow, and an Army surplus jacket that was inadequate for the weather.
She paid the driver, took out her key before getting out of the cab, and walked quickly toward the door. Then something made her stop and look again. Boots. He was wearing cowboy boots.
The man was moving toward her, looking into her eyes, and she felt the key slip out of her limp hand and heard it clatter on the marble step.
“Dear God,” she said. “Cole?”
*
Cole left Woodstock with the clothes on his back, a toothbrush, and 47 dollars in his wallet. He and Laramie hitchhiked to Wytheville in three endless, hot August days, dozing fitfully in back seats and the beds of pickups, eating from vending machines in truck stops, stoned on lust and lack of sleep and their own recklessness.
They arrived in red-brick, two-story downtown Wytheville late Thursday morning, in time to see a heavyset man in a beard, long hair, and overalls put a bag of seed into the back of a 1940s-era pickup truck that was held together by several coats of fading lavender house paint.
“Hey!” Laramie called from half a block away. “You know Sugarfoot?”
The man turned, squinted, and looked them up and down. Then he nodded and beckoned them over with a slow crook of the wrist.
The three of them crowded into the cab, the broken springs of the seat groaning with their weight. In his exhaustion, Cole registered only fleeting images as they drove—clapboard mansions on the edge of town, a winding uphill road, deep green forests of oak, maple, and pine, a wooden bridge over a swollen river, a rusted metal gate, a dirt road through fields gone to weeds and saplings.
The truck pulled up at a two-story Victorian with a sagging porch, a couple of cracked windows, and most of its paint peeled away. A sign over the door read eden farm. Sugarfoot sat barefoot on the front steps, still shirtless, still in his leather cowboy hat, and when he saw Cole and Laramie step out of the truck he did a little dance in the dirt, waving his hat around and laughing. “I can’t believe it!” he said. “You made it!”
The house smelled musty and the edges of the linoleum in the kitchen had curled. Mice in the walls and loose nails in the floorboards. A propane gas tank for cooking, kerosene lanterns, running water from an Artesian well. No phones, no electrical wiring. A battery-operated cb radio for emergencies, toilets that flushed into a septic tank. The usual posters on the walls: “You have not converted a man because you have silenced him,” “War is not healthy for children and other living things,” Hendrix in his vintage military jacket.
The tepee was pitched a hundred yards from the back porch, and most of the people slept there. Sugarfoot said that Cole and Laramie could stay in one of the bedrooms for a couple of days while they got their wind back. Three women were in the kitchen cooking and a few guys sat in the living room, one of them noodling on a harmonica. Cole said hello but didn’t retain any of their names.
Sugarfoot showed them their room and found Cole a pair of overalls and some clean socks and left them alone. They bathed and ate and spent the rest of the afternoon and night making love and sleeping, Cole fighting hard to stay in the moment and not think about what he’d done or what was going to happen next. As in the Vince Guaraldi instrumental that Cole had heard a hundred times going into the news at the top of the hour, he had cast his fate to the wind. And having had that thought, the tune played in his head all night long.
In the morning, Sugarfoot called a meeting.
“As many of you already know, it’s August.” They were sprawled in the field between the porch and the tepee. The sun was already blazing, and half a dozen dogs raced around and through them, barking and nipping at each other. Cole counted 21 men and thirteen women, including himself. Most were Cole’s age, a handful in their late 20s or early 30s, all the way up to one guy who looked to be in his 50s. Not enough people for the work ahead of them, and Cole suspected the gender imbalance would create its own share of tension.
In the silence, Cole heard the electric hum of cicadas in the distant trees. Shaking his head, Sugarfoot said, “That was a joke. I expect even Donnie and Carl to know what month it is.”
Next to the harmonica player was another kid who looked like a serious doper, who laughed and shouted, “It’s Octember, right?”
“The thing is,” Sugarfoot said, “it’s too late now to plant much of anything. We have to somehow get through a long, cold winter before we can turn this place into a working farm. Now, I’ve got a plan, and some of y’all are probably not going to like it. That’s okay, we can discuss it, but I want you to be cool and hear me out before anyone starts pissing and moaning.
“And there’s one more thing I want to say up front. I want us to make decisions as a group as much as possible, and I want everybody to know that they can speak freely and raise all the objections they need to. But at the end of the day, somebody has to be in charge, and that somebody is me. I’ve thought long and hard about all this, and what it comes down to is, I’m providing the land and the vision, and I reserve the right to a final say. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but if it does, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The guy who drove them in from Wytheville held up his hand. Sugarfoot said, “Chuck, if you’ll bear with me, I want to get through the rest of this, then we can have questions. Is that okay?” Chuck nodded and put his hand down.
“There are only two major rules for living here. They’re kind of like mathematical postulates. They’re the things we grant as assumptions that all the theorems, all the day-to-day rules, are derived from. I’ve talked to most of y’all one on one and I think you’re all down with them, but I want to make sure they’re clear to everybody.
“The first postulate is, ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’ Which means there’s no private property here. Everything is held in common, and everybody is responsible for taking care of it. It means the Golden Rule, putting the good of the community ahead of personal desires, all of that.
“The second postulate is no violence. That doesn’t just mean no fighting and no non-consensual sex. It means we don’t do violence to animals either, so from now on we’re all vegetarians.” Cole flashed back to Sunny’s exotic meals at the Castle and had a pang of homesickness. “It’s healthier,” Sugarfoot went on, “it’s more economical to eat lower on the food chain, and it changes you as a person in really good ways. No violence also means no poisons, which includes insecticides, chemical fertilizers, cigarettes, and any booze stronger than beer or wine, or beer or wine to excess.”
He waited a few seconds, looking around to make sure nobody was freaking out, and then went on. “Now, we’re going to need a lot of things to get through the winter, and the number-one thing is money. We’ve got no crops to sell, an
d unless somebody’s keeping a secret, there are no trust funds among us. So what I’m proposing is that those of us who can get jobs in town do so, at least from now until spring, and we pool our earnings. Are there any carpenters here?”
Cole raised his hand, as did the old guy and two others.
“Plumbers?”
One young guy raised his hand. “Apprentice for a year.”
“Good enough,” Sugarfoot said. “Electricians?”
The old guy put his hand up again and Sugarfoot nodded. “We’re going to need as much work from y’all as possible. You’ll have the easiest time getting day jobs, and on top of that we’re going to need to build a bunkhouse, and chicken coops, and do some repairs on the Big House. If you’re willing to pitch in, you’ll be first among equals. You’ll sleep in the Big House and you’ll be first in line for chow. If everybody follows Rule Number One, there’ll be enough for everybody.
“One last thing. Those of you going job hunting.” He seemed seriously uncomfortable for the first time. “The reality is we are in the South. If we go into town in long hair and bell bottoms and love beads, people are going to be hostile. I’m not defending that attitude, I’m just pointing out that it’s there. If any of y’all are willing to cut your hair and shave and wear straight clothes and basically take your freak flags down for the duration, it could make a big difference to the economic prosperity of our enterprise. This is not a mandate, this is just something I’m asking y’all to consider.”
He took his hat off and scratched his long, thinning hair. “I guess that’s it for now. Questions?”
The questions and comments went on for over an hour. Most people came down on the side of optimism, believing that love and hope would get them through. Some were hushed and incredulous, as if they’d closed on their dream house only to find cracks in the foundation. A few potential dissidents worried that Sugarfoot had set himself up as some kind of Maharishi, living off of other people’s work, screwing all the women, dispensing wisdom from on high. Sugarfoot assured them he would be getting a haircut and a job and sleeping in the tepee like everybody else.
The old guy, whose name was Phil, wanted to know how they were going to do massive building projects without power tools, and Sugarfoot said that they had a gas-powered generator in the barn.
One of the women wanted to know about birth control pills, and another asked who was going to do the laundry, and how. Sugarfoot dutifully wrote down the questions in a spiral notebook and said he’d get back to them.
Somebody asked about dope and Sugarfoot said he’d set aside a growing field a couple of miles away that was accessible only by foot. “Like I said, this is the South. We have to be aware that some of the locals are going to want us out of here, and if we’re not extremely cool with the dope, we’re giving them a weapon to use against us.”
After the meeting, Cole and Laramie took a walk toward the tree line. “I can get a waitress job,” she said. “I’ve done it every summer since eleventh grade. Show some cleavage, get good tips. But if that’s all this is, waitressing and hiding our dope and a crappy place to live and boring food, I’d be better off back in Chicago.”
“It’s just for the winter. Besides, you’ll be bunking with me in the Big House. Rank has its privileges.”
“You can make more money playing guitar on weekends than from working all week in construction.”
Cole was not at all sure that was true. He pretended to write it down in an invisible notebook. “I’ll get back to you on that.”
“Is this all a joke to you?”
Cole shrugged. “I don’t know what my expectations were, if any. I don’t want to be that guy on stage at Woodstock anymore, knowing I’m fucking up, knowing I’m not reaching anybody. I don’t want to have to think a lot or be responsible for anybody else. Being a carpenter in rural Virginia is fine right now.”
“Is this how we change the world?” Laramie asked.
“I guess it’s where we start. Ask me again in a year.”
Cole’s one-on-one with Sugarfoot came the next evening. They sat on the front porch in a couple of peeling Adirondack chairs as the sun went down on the other side of the house.
“How did you come to own all this land?” Cole asked.
“My parents own it. What I have is a notarized document leasing it to me for ten years for the sum of one dollar. My great-grandfather owned this place, and they have their own spread about five miles up the road. Nobody else wanted it, and if I hadn’t taken it over, it was going to rot away. We’d pretty much stopped talking to each other until I came up with this idea. Now I’m at least in proximity, and farming again, and I guess they saw it as their last, best hope for reconciliation. That after I fail at this, I’ll want to keep farming and come back home.”
*
Cole was not surprised when some of Sugarfoot’s principles crashed and burned against the brick wall of human nature. Electric guitars and a drum set appeared in the barn, and the generator ended up powering jam sessions, record players, and an old console black-and-white tv. People were allowed to hang on to their clothes and a few personal possessions like watches, jewelry, posters, keepsakes. The kitchen was occasionally commandeered to cook up lsd or psilocybin tea.
Even so, they lost half their people over the winter. Some of them simply disappeared overnight with no goodbyes. Others left over ideology. A guy in his 30s named Mike, hard-working and previously quiet, stood up in a meeting and announced that socialism wasn’t doing it for him anymore. He and Jean, his girlfriend, had been living in a curtained-off corner of a 16 ✕ 32 Army surplus tent, and they wanted to keep half of what they earned so they could buy a used trailer and have their own space. Everybody should keep half of what they earned, he said, to give them some incentive. Everybody needed a little luxury now and then. He pointed out that people were pocketing money anyway, and the only way to stop it was to legalize it.
Cole knew this to be true. Phil, the old guy, had ended up working with Cole on several construction gigs. He had hamburgers and Cokes for lunch, negotiated kickbacks with the foreman, and put part of his pay in his shoe every Friday. He didn’t try to hide it from Cole, and thought Cole naïve for not doing it himself.
Sugarfoot offered a compromise. He would set some money aside in an entertainment fund, and everyone could vote on how to use it. Mike and Jean were not satisfied, and as they left with their meager belongings, another couple joined them. A week later, a hardline hippie chick who called herself Sirocco complained that it was hypocritical to claim to be vegetarian and still wear leather. She found Cole’s boots offensive and objected to the leather tool belts that the commune had funded for the construction workers, including Cole. Sugarfoot explained that he made a distinction between leather, which you could salvage from a cow or goat that died of natural causes, and meat, which necessitated killing.
“It’s about drawing lines,” he said. “We’ll be giving our chickens vegetarian feed, but I will tell you from experience that there is no way to keep a hen from eating a bug or a frog that gets in that coop. If you say no leather, do you also say no to manure? That compost pile in the shed is not going to be enough, and we for sure don’t want chemical fertilizers. The point is, unless you compromise somewhere, you end up with nothing.”
The debate went on long after it ceased to be interesting, until Sugarfoot called for a vote. The pro-leather contingent handily won, perhaps in backlash against Sirocco’s personality. She fled the room in tears and was gone two days later.
Laramie left in January. She had trimmed off the last of her blonde hair the week before, marking the end of her transformation, and it turned out that Cole and Sugarfoot were part of what she was leaving behind. Cole borrowed the pickup to drive her into Wytheville. Sugarfoot had taken it on a run to some neighboring stables that morning and the bed still smelled of horse manure. They both cried at the bus station, though afterward Cole felt mostly relief. She had never, Cole thought, made an effort to kno
w him. Her years of being constantly uprooted had taught her to form quick attachments with shallow roots, and to move on when her interest waned. Cole sympathized, though his similar upbringing had led him to get as deep as possible as quickly as possible. Their lovemaking, while physically pleasurable, had never given him the emotional satisfaction he’d felt with Madelyn. That lack had made him withdraw, and she’d done the same.
Madelyn was never far from his mind. He’d given up, under the weight of his guilt, all the letters he’d started. Though the Silvertone acoustic was now commune property, Cole took it up to his room on weekends for an hour or two to keep up his calluses. His attempts to write a song for Madelyn turned out no better than his letters.
In February the remaining nine men and six women met in the living room of the Big House to vote on whether to go on. Six inches of snow lay on the ground outside. The inside temperature varied from blazing hot next to the wood stove to bitter cold near the exterior walls. They had a lantern lit though it was midday. Between the chill in the two indoor bathrooms and the limited hot water supply, people tended to bathe no more than once or twice a week, Cole included, as was all too obvious from the aroma in the room.
Sugarfoot’s confidence was unshaken. “We can’t quit now. We are more than nine-tenths there. The bunkhouse is mostly done. The chicken coop is ready for chickens. In a month we can plant spinach and lettuce and collards. By summer, once the word gets out, people will be flocking here.
“We’ve weeded out the ones who don’t share our vision. We’ll make sure that the new recruits are on the same wavelength as us. Those of us in this room are the seeds that are going to sprout into a whole new civilization.”
