by Lewis Shiner
“I’ve got some decisions to make,” Sugarfoot said, “and none of them are going to be easy.”
“First one’s got to be accommodations for the winter,” Cole said. He’d gotten unused to the sound of his voice, which came out low and Texan.
“Yeah. We can throw up some tarpaper shacks, or we can build some sturdy housing with concrete slabs and wood stoves and running water, and we’ll be in danger of going broke by spring.”
“That bad?”
“People are showing up with empty pockets. The harvest’s been good, but we can’t turn that into cash.”
“What about the roadside stand?” Cole asked. In May, he and Phil had knocked together a tin-roofed shelter with no walls and long tables where the commune land intersected the county road. One of the women had painted signs promising “Fresh, Organic Produce.” They’d sold three hundred dollars’ worth of vegetables on their opening Saturday, and the next day Wythe County Sheriff P. J. Mackie had shut them down. “Are they still jacking you around over the permit?”
“Now they’re saying the city council has to take it up at the September meeting. Meaning no chance of income this year.”
“They’re looking for la mordida,” Cole said. “Grease for the palms.”
“I dropped some hints. I think it’s more a case of fucking over the hippie freaks.”
Cole remembered the schooling Alex had given him. “Offer them ten percent if you can reopen the stand this weekend. Tell them it’s for the civic improvement fund or whatever worthy cause they think is appropriate. Be sure to tell them that you’re making this donation because you care about our neighbors and want to be a contributing part of the community. If they don’t go for it, raise it to fifteen, or even twenty. If that doesn’t get it, start to walk out and they’ll come around.”
“Where did you learn that?”
“Living in Mexico. Mexico is like the future, after the collapse of civilization.”
“Assuming that works, what about the housing?”
“Do it right,” Cole said. “If we start thinking short term, we’re sunk. What are you smiling at?”
“You said ‘we’.” They walked on, past the end of the fields, up a low hill covered with live oaks and a few Winesap apple trees they’d planted in June, six feet tall and severely pruned, still a few years from making fruit.
“There’s this other thing,” Sugarfoot said, looking at his feet. “It’s, uh, more personal. I mean, I guess it’s, like, totally personal.”
“Spit it out, man.”
“I’ve been… I mean, kind of for the sake of keeping everything…I haven’t…” He heaved a huge sigh. “I’ve been celibate since we got here.”
“For god’s sake, nobody expects that of you. The opposite, in fact.”
“It’s not that simple.” Sugarfoot’s discomfort was so extreme that it was contagious, making Cole awkward and anxious himself.
“Why not?”
Sugarfoot stopped, ground the toe of one boot into the dirt. “Because I’m gay.” When Cole stared, he said, “Queer. Homo.”
“Really?” Cole said. He was lost for an intelligent response.
“You hadn’t suspected?”
“Not at all. Who else knows?”
“There’s a couple of the new guys who I think suspect. Because they’re, you know, interested. I think.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Don’t be naïve. Are people going to sit still for me making decisions if they’re thinking ‘faggot’ in the back of their minds?”
“You’ve got to live your own life,” Cole said. “If anybody’s uncomfortable with it, I can’t believe they’d say anything, it would be too incredibly unhip. It would be like saying something racist to Big Easy.”
“Big Easy is one of the ones I was talking about.”
“The ones who are interested?”
“Yeah.”
Cole, hating himself for his own lack of hipness, felt like the ground had shifted under him. “I guess I really am naïve.”
“It’s kind of charming, actually.” Sugarfoot paused, then turned and started back in the direction of the Big House. “Sirocco was saying that the other day.”
Now Cole was embarrassed. “You guys were talking about me?”
“Only good things. We were talking about who should take over if anything happened to me. I should have an heir apparent.”
“Oh no,” Cole said. “Not me. No way. The only person other than you who can possibly run this place is Sirocco.”
“A chick? Never happen.”
“Then what are we doing here? Seriously. If we can’t have a smart, capable woman in a position of authority, if you have to hide your sexuality, if we have to keep working day jobs, what’s the fucking point?”
“We are fighting one battle at a time, is what we’re doing. And that battle is against capitalism. That’s going to take everything we’ve got. That’s like the root of all evil, that’s the addiction we’ve got to kick. If we can get past that, everything else will fall into place. My grandmother was Russian, and she used to say, ‘The man who chases two rabbits catches neither.’”
They were back to the plowed fields. “You won’t tell anybody, will you?” Sugarfoot said. “About my… secret?”
“Does Sirocco know?”
More embarrassment. “Yeah. She, uh, kind of propositioned me a while ago, and when I turned her down, she guessed why.”
Cole knew Sirocco’s terms. Still, this was the first time he’d had to face up to them. “She’s got a lot of self-confidence.”
“She said y’all have an understanding.”
“I understand the way she needs things to be,” Cole said.
“Sorry, man.”
“It’s never simple, right? Not for anybody.”
Sirocco came to him that night. He’d had it in his mind to put her off, maybe to politely send her away. He needed to grant himself some power, if only the power to deny himself what he wanted. Then he woke to the pressure of her breasts on the soft skin of his stomach, her hot breath and tongue on his nipple, and the transition from sleep to desire was instantaneous and undeniable.
As they lay together afterward she said, “Did Sugarfoot talk to you?”
“About me being his second? It should be you, and you know it.”
“In an ideal world, maybe. If you had the title, we could still work together.”
“You calling the shots, me as the mouthpiece?”
“No, as partners. Is something bugging you?”
“Sugarfoot said you came on to him.”
She sat up in bed facing him, no longer touching him. “That was always the deal. From the start. I don’t want to rub your nose in it, but I’m not going to lie to protect your feelings.”
“Jealousy is a pretty normal human response in the circumstances.”
“Is it? I’d like to think we can be better than that.”
“I’m not sure that ‘no attachments’ is actually better.”
“‘No attachments’ doesn’t mean I don’t care.”
“If you really cared, why would you want to be with anybody else?”
“Then where do you draw the line? Would I be allowed to kiss anybody else? Hug anybody else? Talk to anybody else? Let anybody else see my uncovered hair, like the Moslems? It’s a matter of principle.”
“And to me it’s a matter of emotion.”
“Is this an ultimatum?” Her eyes glistened. “You’d rather give up what we’ve got than compromise?”
“Why am I always the one who has to compromise? No, don’t tell me, I already know. Because you’re right and I’m wrong.”
He saw the hurt on her face and knew he’d gone too far. She was openly crying as she pulled on her clothes and gathered up her glasses and diaphragm case.
“Sirocco…” She turned her back as he reached for her. She left his door open and ran down the stairs.
*
In early September the tassels of the c
orn turned brown. They spent two long days harvesting it, then replacing it with soy beans that would end up in the “soy dairy” that Sugarfoot had promised. The corn was the last to mature of the “three sisters” that they’d planted in succession, starting in late spring—corn first, then pole beans to climb the corn stalks and put nitrogen back in the soil, then finally squash, to hold in moisture with its broad leaves. They sold half the crop at the reopened roadside stand, and boiled most of the rest and cut the kernels off for freezing. After the third night in a row of corn on the cob and collards for dinner, threats of mutiny consigned the rest of the harvest to seed.
With the fall, Cole and Phil and a few new recruits were sent back to their construction jobs during the week, and spent the weekends building new family housing units and latrines.
Cole knew by the occasional sudden silences when he sat down to a meal that rumors were going around. He assumed at least some of them concerned Sugarfoot, since people considered Cole to be in Sugarfoot’s confidence. Some of the gossip was about Cole himself, he knew from the way a few of the unattached women had been looking at him since his split with Sirocco.
Dating didn’t fit well with the realities of Eden Farm. Dinners were strictly communal, no movies, no concerts. When the weather permitted, couples could walk in the woods. On the other hand, it was a post-sexual-revolution crowd, and preliminaries weren’t as necessary as they used to be. None of Cole’s experiments got very far. One woman wanted to have babies as soon as possible, another failed to engage Cole’s intellect, another told him cheerfully the next day that she wasn’t “feeling any chemicals” with him.
Sugarfoot and Big Easy kept their relationship discreet, though Cole had a pretty good idea of when it had been consummated by the smiles on both their faces the next morning, Big Easy a bit smug, Sugarfoot relieved. Cole heard only a single explicit reference to it, and that came when he and Phil were hanging sheetrock together. “I hear Sugarfoot’s buttfucking the nigger boy,” he said. “I wouldn’t have thought he swung that way, but what do I know?” Cole at this point had not been talking to Phil for several months, and Phil had yet to notice. Shortly after that a few people left, though it was impossible to know whether it was related to Sugarfoot’s sexual preferences or simply the beginning of the winter exodus.
Cole himself held out until December, at which point he cornered Sirocco in the barn and told her he wanted her back in his bed, under whatever terms she needed. She had looked away, tears coming up in her eyes, and said, “Good. I missed you.” Then she got herself under control, smiled, and said, “I’ll see you tonight.” Without ever conceding anything, she began to show up more and more often until she was there nearly every night, usually falling asleep and staying until morning.
The fall had been difficult in other ways. In the space of a single month, between September 3 and October 4, three of his fellow Woodstock musicians had died from overdoses, first Blind Owl Wilson from Canned Heat, then Hendrix, then Joplin. The night after he heard about Joplin, he lay awake thinking about the lounge at the Holiday Inn in Liberty, her flirting with him, her kissing him on the lips. The loss seemed greater than three musicians. It seemed like a cosmic shift, as if the Aquarian Age had been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.
Meanwhile the war ground on and on, killing 6000 US soldiers in 1970 and uncounted Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians. Peace talks continued in Paris and got nowhere. In November Nixon proposed a cease fire, in terms the North couldn’t accept. And on and on it went.
At Eden Farm, at the low ebb in February of ’71, they still had 67 people, 18 of them kids. Five of those had been conceived and born on the farm and were known as “creoles” in the farm’s private slang. Ten more women were in various stages of pregnancy, and Sirocco’s midwife team now made themselves useful throughout Wythe County, doing wonders for public relations.
Cole gradually relaxed into the rhythms of the farm. Short hair and clean shaves and for-hire carpentry in the winter, long hair and beard and agriculture in the spring and summer. Eating food that tasted better and made his body feel better than anything he’d ever eaten. Living in a community that had the closeness of a rock band multiplied ten times over, that did yoga together, that shared politics and musical taste, that hugged each other frequently. Having regular sex with a woman who turned him on physically and mentally, despite his occasional jealousy and her occasional barbs about his boots.
It all peaked in the summer of 1972. The commune was 150 strong, kids underfoot everywhere. People lived in anything they could scavenge, barter for, or convince Sugarfoot to assign the construction crew to build. The roadside stand made as much as the day jobbers had brought in over the winter. Sheriff Mackie, who Sugarfoot now called “P. J.” behind his back, came around personally every Monday. He was tall and sunburned and pushing 60, with a pearl gray Stetson that had a sweat stain above the hatband. After he collected his 20 percent, he stayed for a home-cooked lunch where he said, more than once, “Y’all folks ain’t near as bad as some try to make out.”
“Yankees,” Cole liked to tell him. “Spreading lies.”
Mackie had in fact warmed to the point that when a couple of deer hunters stumbled onto the pot fields that November and called the law, he went straight to Sugarfoot. This was the Friday after Thanksgiving, and he had the courtesy to run his lights and siren when he drove up so that he wouldn’t surprise anyone smoking a joint. Sugarfoot sent for Cole and Sirocco, and the four of them sat at the round laminated table in Sugarfoot’s office. Sugarfoot told Mackie how shocked they were that someone would use their land to grow illegal drugs. “Since this has been brought to my attention,” Mackie said, “we have no choice but to burn the fields. Any plants we find there, oh, say, next Monday, will have to be destroyed.” Everybody at the table managed a properly somber demeanor, and as soon as Mackie’s car disappeared in the distance, every available hand was diverted to an emergency harvest. Even so, enough was left on Monday that the burning was very well attended, and the ravenous deputies were all invited to lunch at the farm.
In the outside world, 11 Olympic athletes were murdered by Palestinian gunmen in September. In November, peacenik George McGovern was trounced by Nixon, despite evidence that Nixon had been involved in spying and dirty tricks. Rain gave way to snow, and then more snow.
Cole, for the first time, found himself restless. He brought the communal Silvertone up to his room and played it every night. The heat between him and Sirocco had cooled, and more nights than not she fell asleep to his guitar without their making love.
The spring of ’73 got off to an ominous start. In late March, a host of timber rattlesnakes took to sunning themselves in the dark soil of the fallow fields. Sugarfoot refused to kill them, which outraged the parents with small children, a number of whom pointed out that the snakes themselves were violating the prohibition against violence. “Only if they have no other option,” Sugarfoot said. “If you leave them alone they’ll go away.” The ensuing arguments were loud and long, and ended with the creation of a Snake Relocation Team. They scored bag sticks from the hardware store and collected nine adult snakes between three and five feet long. They dumped them in a screen wire enclosure, which a herpetologist from the State of Virginia came to collect.
The rancor from that confrontation had barely subsided when a reporter from wdbj in Roanoke showed up, wanting to bring out a full news crew to do a story. At the inevitable company meeting to discuss it, Sirocco was adamantly opposed. Sugarfoot argued that not only could it boost sales at the produce stand, it could help send a positive message and further the Revolution. He carried the vote by a substantial margin, though Cole voted with Sirocco. Despite severe rationing, most of the farm continued to be seduced by the fake glamor of tv. The crew spent a full day doing interviews and shooting people at work while Cole, Sirocco, and a handful of other dissenters stayed upstairs in the Big House and played Monopoly. On the day of the broadcast, most of the commune gat
hered to watch it in the barn, again excepting Cole and Sirocco. Sugarfoot came to the Big House afterward to admit that it had been a travesty. “Outhouse jokes, implications that everybody was having sex with everybody else, screen time for both Donnie and Carl so we’d look like a bunch of stoned-out idiots. The interviews were invariably with the dirtiest, hairiest people they could find. Then when they put P. J. on at the end, saying how we weren’t ‘near as bad as some tried to make out,’ it made him look like an idiot too. I wouldn’t be surprised if it cost him the next election.” Sirocco had the grace not to say anything. Sugarfoot apologized to her anyway, and to Cole, and left in a black mood.
By May they averaged two or three people at the front gate every day, due to word of mouth alone. In ’70 and ’71 the few applicants had been idealists, earnest back-to-nature types in overalls and beards and second-hand granny dresses, wanting to be part of something bigger than themselves. In ’72 came the followers, in headbands and leather vests and peace symbols, the hippie as fashion statement, looking for dope and free love like they’d seen in the Woodstock movie. By ’73 it was the dregs, the speed freaks, the mental patients, the scammers, everyone who was no longer welcome in the straight world, looking for whatever they could get away with.
Sugarfoot had appointed an ironically-named “Welcoming Committee” who tried to talk the visitors into leaving. Those who insisted could stay for two days. If they failed to show serious promise, they were gently escorted to the highway.
That was how “just Keith” made it inside the gates in mid-June, against the Committee’s instincts. Cole happened to see him as they took him on his introductory tour. Pale skin, stringy unwashed black hair, Fu Manchu mustache, black T-shirt too small for his scrawny frame, black jeans, motorcycle boots, silver concho belt, leather bag slung over one shoulder. Eyes small and bloodshot. Cole’s first impression was that he was a dangerous psychopath.
Early the next morning, Sugarfoot brought Cole and Sirocco to his office and told them that “just Keith” had made aggressive advances to a number of women during the night, two of whom came to Sugarfoot to complain. Also during the night, a number of personal items had gone missing—jewelry, a baggie of now very scarce pot, a pair of women’s panties. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this guy,” Sugarfoot said.
