The Last American Man

by Elizabeth Gilbert

  A few more sips of whiskey, and Eustace will talk about Dorothy Hamilton, the black woman who came running out of the fast-food restaurant in rural Georgia when the Long Riders rode by, flapping her apron and kissing the Conway boys and demanding to talk into their tape recorder journal. She knew the Long Riders were riding all the way to California—she’d seen them on TV—and she had a loud message for the West Coast: “Helllloooo all you surfers out theah in California!” Eustace keens away in his cabin, summoning up this woman’s joyful voice. “This is a big hello from yo’ friend, Dorothy Hamilton, the girl in the CHICKEN shop!!!”

  One night, Eustace and I walked down the holler in the snow to visit his dear old Appalachian neighbors Will and Betty Jo Hicks. Will and Eustace set to talking about some old “double-burl” shotgun Will used to own. I tried to eavesdrop, but realized, as I do on every visit to the Hickses that I can’t understand one word in ten that Will Hicks drawls. He says “hit” for “it” and “far” for “fire” and “veehickle” for “car,” but I can’t decipher much more than that. Between his missing teeth and his backcountry euphemisms and his molasses inflection, his speech remains a mystery to me.

  Back in Eustace’s cabin that night, over a bottle of whiskey, I complained, “I can’t make any sense of that damn Appalachian accent. How can you communicate with Will? I guess I just need to study me that Appa-language a little closer.”

  Eustace howled and said, “Woman! You just need to Appa-listen harder!”

  “I don’t know, Eustace. I think it’s gonna take me an Appa-long time before I can understand the likes of Will Hicks.”

  “Heck, no! That old country boy was just tryin’ to teach you an Appa-lesson!”

  “I reckon we can discuss this Appa-later,” I said, giggling.

  “You’re not Appa-laughin’ at old Will Hicks, are you?” Eustace said.

  By this time we were both Appa-laughin’ our fool heads off. Eustace was busting up, and his big grin was gleaming in the firelight, and I loved him like this. I wished to heaven I had ten more bottles of whiskey and as many hours to sit in this warm cabin and enjoy watching Eustace Conway let go of his fierce agenda and Appa-loosen the hell up for once.

  I said, “You can be so much fun to hang out with, Eustace. You should show people this part of yourself more often.”

  “I know, I know. That’s what Patience used to tell me. She said the apprentices wouldn’t be afraid of me all the time if I’d let them see my spontaneous and fun side. I’ve even considered trying to figure out how to do that. Maybe every morning before we start work, I should institute a practice of having five free minutes of spontaneous fun.”

  “Five minutes of spontaneous fun, Eustace? Exactly five minutes? Not four? Not six?”

  “Argghhh . . .” He gripped his head and rocked back and forth. “I know, I know, I know . . . it’s crazy. See what it’s like for me? See what it’s like inside my brain?”

  “Hey, Eustace Conway,” I said, “life isn’t very easy, is it?”

  He smiled gallantly and took another long swig of hooch. “I’ve never found it to be.”

  There is still ambition in Eustace. He’s not finished yet. Back when he was really young, back when he first walked around Turtle Island with his girlfriend Valarie, he pointed out, as though reading from a blueprint, what he would make of his domain. Houses here, bridges there, a kitchen, a meadow, a pasture. And he has made it so. All over his land now, standing physical and real, is the evidence of what Eustace had originally seen in his mind. The houses, the bridges, the kitchen— everything is in place.

  I remember standing with Eustace over a nearly cleared pasture on my first visit to Turtle Island. It was nothing but a field of mud and stumps, but Eustace said, “Next time you come here, there’ll be a huge barn in the center of that pasture. Can’t you see it? Can’t you picture all the grass growing up green and healthy and the horses standing so pretty, all around?” The next time I went to Turtle Island, there was, as though by some enchantment, a big beautiful barn in the center of the pasture, and the grass was growing up green and healthy, and the horses were standing so pretty, all around. Eustace walked me up a hill to give me a better view of the place, and he looked around and said, “Someday there’ll be an orchard right here.”

  And I know the man well enough to be certain there will be.

  So, no, he’s not done with Turtle Island yet. He wants to build a library, and he’s looking to buy a sawmill so that he can produce his own lumber. And then there’s his dream house, the place where he’ll live. Because after all this time—after more than twenty years in the woods, after working himself numb to acquire a thousand acres of land, after building more than a dozen structures on his property—Eustace still doesn’t have a home of his own. For seventeen years he lived in a teepee. For two years he lived in the attic of a toolshed. And recently he’s taken to living in a small rustic cabin he calls the Guest House—a fairly public place, where all the apprentices and guests gather twice a day for meals in the wintertime when the outdoor kitchen is closed. For a man who claims to want, more than anything, isolation, he has never given himself a truly private space on Turtle Island. Everybody else, from the hogs to the apprentices to the tools to the books,must be housed first.

  But there is a home he has been designing in his mind for decades. And therefore you can be sure that it will exist someday. He made the first drawings of it when he was in Alaska, stranded on an island for two days, waiting for the rough seas to subside enough so that he could kayak safely back to the mainland. And when I asked him one afternoon if he could describe it for me in detail, he said, “Why, yes.”

  “The fundamental philosophy of my dream house,” he began, “is similar to my feeling about my horses—you go beyond the necessary because you have a love for the aesthetic. This house is a bit showy, but I’m not going to sacrifice quality for anything. If I want slate shingles, I’m going to have slate shingles. Also beveled glass, copper trim, hand-forged ironwork—anything I want. The house will be built with large wooden timbers, and I’ve already picked out some from the woods around here. Big logs and lots of stone, with everything overbuilt for strength and longevity.

  “When I open the front door, the first thing I’ll see is a stone waterfall that goes up over thirty feet, with a stone pool at the bottom of it. The waterfall is powered by solar electricity, but also heated, so it contributes to the heating of the house. There will be a stone or tile floor, something that feels good to the eye and feet. The main room looks straight up to a cathedral ceiling over forty feet tall. At the back of the room will be a big sunken fire pit, made of stone, with stone benches built into it. I’ll make fires in there, and my friends can come over on cold winter nights and warm their bodies and backs and butts on those warm stones. To the left of the great room is a door leading to my workshop, twenty feet by twenty. The exterior wall is really just two massive doors on five-foot-long iron hinges that swing out wide and open into the outdoors, so when I’m working in my shop during the summer, I’ll have the air and sun and birds singing.

  “Next to the great room are two glass rooms. One is a greenhouse, so I’ll can have a plethora of fresh greens and vegetables all year. The other is a dining room, simple and perfect. There’s a place for everything, just like on a ship. A big wooden table and benches and a wraparound couch. And windows everywhere so that I can look down into the valley,where I’ll see the barn, the pastures, and the garden. Behind the entrance to the dining room is a door leading to the kitchen. Marble countertops, handmade cabinets with antler handles, open shelving, wood-burning stove—but also a gas range. Sinks with running cold and hot water, all powered by solar, and all kinds of handmade this and hand-forged that and cast-iron cooking ware. And there’s another door leading to an outside kitchen, where I can cook and eat in the summertime, with a sheltered deck and a table and outdoor sinks with running water and shelves and stoves, so that I don’t have to keep going inside all the
time for supplies. The deck looks out over a beautiful drop-off in the ravine, and there’ll probably be propane lighting out there.

  “Upstairs are two small loft bedrooms and—this can be seen from the great room—a balcony opening out from the master bedroom. The master bedroom is the size of the workshop below, but it won’t be all cluttered. Just open space, clean and beautiful. Down the hall from the master bedroom is a composting toilet and a sauna and the loft bedrooms. There’s also an outdoor sleeping porch with a bed on it, but if I have to sleep indoors, there’s a king-size bed with a skylight over it so that I can look at the stars all night. And, of course, there will be huge walk-in closets.

  “There will be art everywhere in my home. Over the balconies will be hanging Navajo rugs. It’ll be a little like that Santa Fe style everyone likes so much these days, but full of real and valuable art—not the art-i-fakes people collect because they don’t know better. This home will have lots of art, lots of light, lots of space, peaceful, safe, underground on three sides, useful and beautiful. I’m telling you, Architectural Digest would love to get its hands on this place. And I know I could build it myself, but I won’t even break ground for it until I have a wife, because I will be damned if I’m gonna build this house without the right woman beside me.”

  He stopped talking. Sat back and smiled.

  I myself was unable to speak.

  It wasn’t that I was wondering where the hell Eustace had ever picked up a copy of Architectural Digest. It wasn’t that I was shocked that Eustace, who has preached for decades about how little we need in the way of material surroundings to live happily, had just described his desire to build a rustic mansion suitable to the aesthetic standards of a retired millionaire oilman. It wasn’t that I was contemplating how much Eustace suddenly sounded to me like Thomas Jefferson—a civic-minded but solitary idealist, momentarily letting go of his obligations to the Republic in order to lose himself in the decadent reverie of designing the perfect home away from society. It wasn’t even that I was wondering where those thirteen kids Eustace keeps planning to sire are going to sleep in a house that has only two spare bedrooms. I could handle all that. Didn’t faze me one bit.

  My shock was much more basic.

  It was merely that, despite all the surprising twists of character I’d come to expect over the years from this most complex and modern of mountain men, I still could not believe I had just heard Eustace Conway utter the phrase “huge walk-in closets.”

  Here is Eustace Conway, looking down the burl of the shotgun that is age forty. If the actuary charts of the insurance industry are to be believed, he is halfway finished with his life. He has achieved much. He has seen more of this world than most of us will ever read about. He has, about seventy-five times a year, done things that people told him were impossible to do. He has acquired and protected the land he always wanted. He has paid attention to the laws of the universe, and that attention has rewarded him with proficiency in a dazzling range of subjects. He has instituted an organization of teaching and preaching founded in his exact image. He has become a public figure of considerable renown. He is venerated and he is feared. He’s at the top of his game. He even calls himself a Type-A Mountain Man, and, indeed, he has become a Man of Destiny in action, the World’s Most Public Recluse, the CEO of the Woods.

  But there are cracks. And he can feel the wind blowing through them. Just as when he was thirty, he can’t seem to make his relationships with other people work as well as he would like. The folks he labors with at Turtle Island are always angry with him or misunderstanding him. Virtually every apprentice I met at Turtle Island ended up leaving Eustace long before his or her time was officially up, and usually in tears. Even Candice, who was fiercely determined not to become just another Disgruntled Ex-Turtle Islander, left the mountain abruptly as a DETI, frustrated by Eustace’s refusal to give her more control over the garden.

  And Eustace fares no better with his family. Foremost in his consciousness, of course, is that disparaging father—looming over his every breathing moment, critical and disgusted and angry. Forever it has been the case in Eustace Conway’s life that when he looks for love and acceptance from his father, he goes nearly snowblind from the blankness he sees there.

  Although something strange did happen this year.

  Eustace called me on his thirty-ninth birthday. We had a normal conversation, talking for an hour about Turtle Island business and gossip. He told me about his new apprentices and about work on the barn and the birth of a beautiful new colt named Luna.

  And then he said, in a strange tone, “Oh, there’s something else. I got a birthday card this week.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I asked. “From who?”

  “From my father.”

  There was a long silence. I put down the tea I was drinking and found myself a chair.

  “Tell me,” I said. “Tell me everything.”

  “I’m holding the card right here in my hand.”

  “Read it to me, Eustace.”

  “It’s kind of interesting, you know? My dad . . . um . . . he drew the card himself. It’s a drawing of three little balloons floating up to the sky. He drew the balloons with a red pen and drew a bow around the strings of the balloons with a green pen. He used a blue pen for the message.”

  “What message?”

  Eustace Conway cleared his throat and read: “It’s hard to believe that thirty-nine years have passed since you were born and started our family. Thank you for the many blessings you have brought us over the decades. We look forward to many more. Love, Daddy.”

  There was another long silence.

  “Run that by me again,” I said, and Eustace did.

  Neither one of us spoke for a while. Then Eustace told me that he’d received the card two days earlier. “I read it once and folded it up and put it back in its envelope. I was so upset by it, my hands were shaking. It’s the first kind thing my father has ever said to me. I don’t think anyone can know how that makes me feel. I didn’t look at it again until right now. It took me two days to get the courage to open it up again and read it over. I was afraid to even touch it, you know. I wasn’t sure it was true. I thought maybe I dreamed it.”

  “Are you OK?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Oh, my God, I don’t know how to open my fearful heart and even think about it. I mean, what the hell is this about? What does this mean, Dad? What the fuck are you up to, Dad?”

  “He may not be up to anything, Eustace.”

  “I think I’m going to hide this card away for a while.”

  “Go ahead,” I said.“Maybe you can read it again tomorrow.”

  “Maybe I’ll do that,” said Eustace, and he hung up.

  This tiny but startling thaw between the two Eustaces reminded me of an obscure word I’d learned recently. I’d discovered it one day when I was paging through a dictionary on a whim, trying to find Eustace’s name, to see if I could learn its derivation. There was no Eustace in my dictionary, but I did discover Eustasy, which is a noun. And here’s what Eustasy means: “a worldwide change in sea-level, occurring over many millennia, triggered by the advance or retreat of glaciers.”

  A slow and epic melting, in other words. Which is what it would take, I suppose, to effect even a marginal alteration on the level of an ocean.

  And then there are the other members of the Conway family to consider. Eustace’s relationships with them are unsettled, too. He adores his mother, but he mourns her sad and arduous married life with an intensity that corrodes his own ability to seek happiness. He cares for his little brother Judson more than he cares for anyone, but it’s cruelly obvious to the most casual observer that the brothers are not as close as they had once been. Not since the Long Riders journey. Judson lives near Eustace now, residing just over the holler from Turtle Island in a small log cabin that he built himself and now shares with his totally kick-ass fiancée (a tough and independent soul who hunts for deer with a bow and arrow, and who works as a lumberj
ack, and whose name is— get this!—Eunice). Judson could easily ride his horse over to visit Eustace every day if he felt like it, but he doesn’t feel like it. The brothers rarely see each other. Eustace wants much more access to Judson than he is offered, but Judson carefully and affably keeps an arm’s length between them.

  “I saw it when we rode across America,” Judson told me. “Eustace is like my dad. He’s too fucking intense and hard to be around. He and my dad both pride themselves on being great communicators. They think they operate at this higher level of intelligence and communication than anyone else. At least Eustace does try to listen to people, and he comes across all gentle and equal, but the bottom line’s the same—he has to get his way all the time, and there’s no talking through it. Hey, I love my brother, but I don’t know how to deal with that. That’s why I keep my distance. I don’t have any choice. And it makes me really sad.”

  Walton Conway, the middle brother, also lives nearby, less than an hour from Turtle Island. Brilliant and multilingual and reserved, he lives in a comfortable modern home, his bookshelves filled with Nabokov and Dickens. Walton teaches English and writes quiet fiction. He runs a business out of his home, importing and selling handmade crafts from Russia. His wife is a generous and lively woman with two daughters from a previous marriage, and they’ve since had another daughter. Walton’s life is tranquil now, but he did a good bit of rough traveling in his youth. Back then, he was always writing letters home to his big brother Eustace, whom he admired deeply and whose respect he so clearly wanted.