Summer of Love, a Time Travel

by Lisa Mason

  Hexagram 29, The I Ching or Book of Changes

  Ruby eases the Mercedes up to the barricade that says, “Park Here,” and slowly drives down the dusty gravel lot. She knows about other country communes: Drop City in Colorado, Strawberry Fields in L.A., the Illustrated Farm in Mendocino, Gorda in Big Sur. Morning Star Ranch is the closest country commune to the Haight-Ashbury. The Diggers have posted signs in Ruby’s shop, giving directions and a map.

  Everyone knows how to get to Morning Star Ranch. Everyone knows anyone can go and stay there. It’s free.

  Night closes over the countryside. A couple of street lamps smudge the parking lot with light. Moths whirl and dart in the dimness.

  A squat black woman in a stained pantsuit staggers up to the Mercedes and peers in at Ruby. “Hey sister, hey sister.” Her breath reeks of fortified wine. “Got any spare change for Bad Annie, sister?”

  “Here you go, sister,” Ruby says, handing her a quarter. “You take care of yourself, Bad Annie.”

  People swarm around the Mercedes: a suburban runaway with a starving face, a bearded man in free-box clothing, a fellow with dirty blond bangs hanging over his eyes, two black men in tattered suit coats. They plead, palms held out. “Spare change? Got any spare change?”

  “No,” Ruby says, waving them away. “No!”

  “Beat it,” Gorgon says.

  Bad Annie guffaws and lets loose a stream of obscenities. The starving runaway turns and vomits spittle on the gravel. The free-box man wanders away. The blond bangs hacks with a racking cough. The two black men weave across the lot to a bumper-stickered van pulling up.

  Ruby parks in the shadows on the far side. In the city, darkness hides thieves. Here, out on the land, darkness may be her friend.

  They all pile out of the car. Starbright slings the canvas bag with their bedding over her shoulder. She hands the picnic basket to Chi. Ruby locks the Mercedes. This is the second time tonight she’s turned a key with a sense of dread.

  The four of them creep across the lot.

  “I’m goin’ up to the big house,” Gorgon says and sprints away. “See if I can find Rainbow.”

  Isn’t that just like Gorgon, Ruby thinks. Abandoning her. She seizes Starbright with her left hand, Chi with her right. The kid and the young dude cling to her as if she knows what the hell she’s doing. They climb a steep ridge and down to a small house. Pitched tents, lean-tos, and teepees surround the house. Pinwheels whirl in the breeze. Homemade flags flap along with laundry on clothes lines. Odd constructions of wood and feathers adorn roofs and lopsided gables. Sandalwood incense makes Ruby sneeze, in spite of the chilly country air.

  They find a square of paved stones. People lounge about on the square, some seated in lotus positions. Ruby finds a sheltered spot on the edge where she can get her bearings.

  A bushy-haired swain approaches them. “Hi, I’m Marcus Aurelius. I’m from the Bronx, my ma kicked me out an’ I got adopted by some junkies on the Lower East Side. I shot shit when I was twelve. I love to boost, don’t you? I went to juvie for a while an’ fifty hotel rooms later I’m in Frisco strung out on horse, playin’ beatnik. Then I dropped LSD, it’s like an atom bomb goin’ off in your head, innit? Ka-BOOM. I’m droppin’ acid every day till I become God, aren’t you? Hi, I’m Marcus Aurelius.”

  “Are you hungry?” says a suntanned woman with a long, gray braid. A silver ring pierces her left nostril. “I’m afraid dinner’s over for tonight. But if you go up to the big house, you might find some leftovers.”

  “We brought our own food,” Ruby says.

  The braided woman nods, vastly relieved. “We’ve only got twenty folks workin’ the gardens. But on weekends? We feed, like, two hundred people.”

  A barefoot girl in a ragged shift sidles up to Starbright. “Watch out, chick.” She speaks through the corner of her mouth, as if her face is half-paralyzed. Her jaw looks askew. “Two bikers beat me up and banged me the first night I got here.”

  “Didn’t anyone help you?” Chi asks.

  “Oh, sure,” the barefoot girl says. “Some people took me to the hospital, and the doctor gave me a shot.”

  “Didn’t anyone call the police?” Starbright exclaims.

  People turn at the sound of “police.” Their faces twist with anger and fear, hatred and paranoia.

  “Shit, no!” the barefoot girl says.

  “We would never go to the pigs,” says the bushy-haired swain. “We would never, we would never, we would never ever go.”

  “We can’t go to the police,” the braided woman say sadly. “They would bust us.”

  Bang bang bang!

  Gunshots shatter the night.

  No one pays any attention.

  Starbright squeezes her hand so tightly, Ruby has to shake loose of her grip and take her hand again.

  “Let’s go see if they’ve got any fresh vegetables left over,” she says.

  They climb the next ridge to the big house and head for the kitchen. They step inside and a stench of wood rot and dog waste assaults Ruby. Enough dirty dishes for an army lie stacked everywhere. In the half-light, things crawl through the kitchen sink.

  Chi looks so unhappy, Ruby wonders if he’ll yank out one of his plastic wraps and plaster it over his face. She wishes he’d give her one, too.

  They venture into a spacious dining room. A patriarch presides at a huge dining table as they walk in. His dark eyes glisten over a beak of a nose. His bushy black beard is threaded with gray.

  Ruby has never seen the patriarch before, but another dude standing before the table she knows only too well. A biker troublemaker with voodoo eyes who calls himself Crypt, he’s flanked by half a dozen other bikers, all of them sweaty and bleary-eyed, in leathers and colors, dangling whiskey bottles in their fingers. Crypt sways on his feet, holding himself steady by a grip on the table’s edge.

  Four men in hip regalia stand on the other side of the table. “These SOBs drink and make trouble for everybody,” says a man in beads. His eyes are bloodshot, he reeks of pot, and he sways on his feet, too. “Their heads are going nowhere, man. We want them off the ranch.”

  “Lew,” Crypt says, restraining one of his comrades who’s ready to take a swing at Mr. Beads. “Listen to this shit, man. We’re the people, man. You always said you would never kick the people out, Lew. Now ain’t that true?”

  The patriarch rubs his brow and grimaces. He looks as if he’s about to weep. “That’s true, Crypt. I can’t turn the people away,” he says to Mr. Beads. “I just can’t.”

  “They’re the reason we’ve been served with a cease-and-desist order, Lew,” says Mr. Beads.

  “Like the heat is all our fault,” Crypt says. “The pigs is just after honky runaways, man.”

  “We’re tryin’ to create a New Community here!” Mr. Beads shouts. “You’re all screwed up. Go back to Fresno.”

  “Go back to New Jersey,” Crypt says and guffaws.

  “No, no, no,” the patriarch says. “This isn’t about one man’s way or another man’s way. I can’t say one or another is wrong. There are no judges here. You’re all my guests. You’re all my brothers. I can’t turn anyone away from Morning Star Ranch.”

  The patriarch rises from his chair, shaking his head. At the door, he turns to Ruby. “Please excuse me, milady. I’m tired.”

  “Throw them both out,” Ruby advises him.

  His dark eyes are troubled. “I’m just a musician. I bought the ranch so I could write my music in peace.”

  The patriarch wanders away to some private room.

  “This isn’t over, brother,” spits Mr. Beads.

  Crypt grins. “No, it ain’t. One night, I’m gonna off you, brother.” He punches his fist in his palm in front of Mr. Beads’ face. He and his comrades swig from their bottles and stagger from the room.

  “Let’s get out of here.” Ruby leads Starbright and Chi out of the big house. “I don’t know who these losers are. They weren’t here when I came up in May. The people who c
ame to live on the land must be out back, somewhere.”

  They hike in near darkness lit only by an occasional lamp. The waning moon is no help. A pond here, a pine tree there, and Ruby recognizes the path winding through the woods into the back acres where her sculptor friend pitched his tent for solitude.

  Bang bang bang shatters the night.

  Ruby stumbles over a log, steps on something squishy smelling of mold. Starbright and Chi follow, holding hands. Chi takes the canvas bag from the kid’s shoulder, slings it over his. It’s about time, Ruby thinks.

  At last they come to a clearing and a neat circle of teepees around a flickering campfire. A freckled woman with a grim face and disheveled chestnut hair steps out of a teepee, brandishing a shotgun. A chocolate-brown puppy bounds out after her, tail wagging furiously. After the puppy, Leo Gorgon steps out, zipping up his jeans.

  Uh-huh, Ruby thinks with a pang. Why oh why does she keep falling for bad dudes like him?

  “It’s cool, Rainbow,” Gorgon says to the freckled woman, laying his hand on the shotgun’s barrel. “This is Ruby and Starbright and Chiron. They’re cool.”

  “Is Stewart here?” Ruby asks.

  “Stewart left last week,” Rainbow says. “Left his sculptures, too.”

  Sure enough, in the campfire light, Ruby glimpses the car-chrome man clutching his hammered-steel lover. The red hose between his legs is limp. Stewart had wanted to install the sculpture someplace with good plumbing. There’s no good plumbing here. No plumbing at all.

  Now more people duck out of the teepees. Men with hair to their waists and beards trailing down their chests. A woman with a baby suckling her breast. Other women in long dresses or jeans. Some of them carry shotguns, too.

  They crouch around the campfire. Rainbow adds kindling, building the flames. “Raisin, come here, Raisin.” The puppy frolics, bounding from person to person for a pat on the head or a kiss on the snout. Rainbow hangs a huge iron pot on a tripod over the fire, bangs on a lid.

  Ruby passes around her bottle of Napa burgundy. No one drinks except a guy with Einstein hair who shares with her. She passes around the food she brought. Everything is divided up and devoured before she and Starbright can get their share. She and the kid watch wistfully. Ruby is very hungry. The kid must be, too. Chi watches, impassive.

  The teepee people eat ravenously. They are all painfully thin, a patina of grime on their faces and hands, their clothes as fragile as the wings of the moths circling the campfire.

  Rainbow rises and takes the lid off the iron pot. Steam rises from a fragrant bubbling stew. She dishes hot stew into wood bowls, giving the first servings to Ruby, Starbright, and Chi. The stew is mostly brown rice, with a few diced onions, carrots, and zucchini. Ruby wishes there was more salt and a lot more spice, but the stew is fresh and good. Just about anything would taste good now.

  Chi sets his bowl on the grass for Raisin. The puppy practically inhales the stew, snuffling and sneezing.

  “We had to send Filly and Pink to the hospital,” Rainbow says. “Hepatitis. Guess we messed up, digging the latrine ditch so close to the campfire. We dug a new outhouse downwind, fifty feet out. Plus, I got a lid for the pot to keep out the flies.”

  “Duh,” Chi whispers, and Ruby elbows him in the ribs.

  A man brings out a guitar, begins to strum. The tart herbal scent of marijuana blows over the campfire. People rise to their feet and dance in the shadows. A woman sits next to Ruby and Starbright, takes out a piece of white cotton onto which she’s embroidered a peacock. She’s sewn human eyes on every green and blue feather.

  Starbright smiles, but she’s watchful, silent, glancing over her shoulder now and then, eyes wide. Raisin snuggles in her lap, but she’s too tired to give the puppy much attention.

  Chi is inscrutable, but he cocks his head, too, listening.

  Gunshots? More gunshots?

  The teepee people’s paranoia is contagious, as paranoia usually is. Ruby hauls herself to her feet. “We’d best be going.” Better to find a roadside rest stop and sleep in the car. The vibrations here are too weird.

  “No, let’s stay a while,” Gorgon says. He can’t take his bloodshot eyes off Rainbow.

  “You stay, Leo.” Ruby retrieves the canvas bag and the empty picnic basket. “Find your own way home. We’re gone.”

  Rainbow comes and wraps her arms around Ruby, planting a kiss on her cheek. “Thank you for bringing food and wine and your good energy.” Her eyes are bottomless, filled with sorrow. “It was beautiful of you to visit us. We have so little good energy here anymore.”

  Ruby nods. “You all take care of yourselves, you hear?”

  “We’ve got a garden out back, behind the teepees.” Rainbow retrieves a flickering kerosene lamp. “I’d love to show you. The cabbages are beautiful.”

  In the lamplight beneath the waning moon, Ruby and Starbright and Chi follow Rainbow out behind the teepees to see the garden.

  And Rainbow is right. The cabbages are beautiful.

  July 27, 1967

  Rumors

  10

  Dedicated to the One I Love

  Susan lounges with Cyn on the grass in the Panhandle, keeping an eye out for cop cars. She takes a mauve chalk from her box of pastels and draws two eyes on the sidewalk. The police have been busting sidewalk chalk artists on the charge of defacing public property, not to mention sweeping hip girls off the street on suspicion of being runaways. It’s strange and exciting to feel like an outlaw, drawing chalk pictures on the sidewalk.

  “Did you hear about the concentration camps?” Susan says.

  Cyn, the ninety-pound white-blond runaway, shakes her head.

  “They say it’s happening in Tule Lake and Tuscon and Oklahoma City. The FBI and the Defense Department are doing it. I heard this building contractor went to a priest for confession. He was all in a panic. He confessed they hired his company to refurbish World War Two detention centers. They’ll be able to detain up to forty thousand people. Anti-war protesters and anyone cool. We’ll all be arrested if there’s a National Security Emergency this summer.”

  “I believe it.” Cyn is from Texas. She’s got a whispery drawl and ends nearly every sentence as if she’s asking a question even when she isn’t. She gazes at Susan’s artwork with her palms lying open on her fragile knees. Cyn never looks anyone in the eye, not even Susan.

  Susan loves to draw eyes though she well remembers when she also was afraid to look in people’s eyes. Eyes seemed too personal, too revealing. The meekest checkout clerk at the grocery store used to scare her. It didn’t help that her mother never, ever looks her in the eye. It was Daddy who knocked her aversion to eyes out of her one day. He was yelling about something or other, his face in her face. “Look at me when I’m talking to you, young lady,” is what her father said. And that’s when she learned how to look someone in the eye and not let him see her soul.

  She draws her trademark star-pupils and abundant lashes. Twiggy eyes. Goddess eyes. Ideal eyes. This is dedicated to the One Eye Love. Groovy! Oh, little I, who peeks at me, what do U see? Over the Summer of Love, Susan has developed a new view of eyes.

  Morning commuters in their business suits and big-finned cars stream downtown. The sky is the color of a mourning dove’s wing, the air chilly and damp. Susan feels good lounging on the grass, drawing on the sidewalk. How good it is to wonder about things. She never got to wonder in school, she was always so busy memorizing. She feels free, even though she owns no more than an overnight bag and less than fifty dollars, not counting the hundred bucks Stan the Man still owes her. She feels freer than the commuters hurrying off to their jobs where someone will probably yell in their faces about something or other.

  “I heard the Vietcong got cannons hidden in North Beach,” Cyn says.

  Susan laughs. “I don’t think that’s true. I mean, people can barely hide a nickel bag from the Man, let alone cannons in North Beach.”

  “I heard the Vietcong’s gonna bomb Union Square
.”

  “I heard the CIA is putting rat poison in acid,” Susan says. “They want to kill the heads.” She squirms, thinking of Stovepipe’s accusation.

  “I heard the CIA killed President Kennedy.”

  “Well, there you go. If they can kill President Kennedy, they sure can kill the heads, if they’ve got a mind to.”

  Cyn nods. “I heard bikers have taken over Morning Star Ranch and are bangin’ the chicks.”

  “Now, that is true.”

  Susan leans over her drawing, a bit sore in her belly. She woke with cramps and a rush of dampness. For the first time in her life, she’s happy to get her period.

  Chi sits apart from them, leaning up against a tree trunk, his long legs stretched out. He smiles warmly when she glances his way. Susan thinks this is very enlightened of him, letting her do what she wants, rap with people, but always being there. His eyebrows and lashes are as strawberry-red as his hair. She’s never seen anyone with facial hair so perfectly matched to the hair on his head. Yet the rest of his face is as smooth as an eggshell. She feels funky and crude beside him. He’s so perfect.

  She doesn’t mind Mr. True-Blue Eyes watching her anymore. For one thing, he’s started being cool. Always helpful. More than friendly. But he doesn’t put the make on her, which makes him easy to be around. And also makes her wonder. Doesn’t he think she’s pretty? She finds herself taking his hand before he takes hers, letting him look down her blouse, bumping into him accidentally. It’s really stupid, but there you go. She’s never spent so much time around a guy who’s so… .good.

  Chi is forever muttering to himself and gazing at the palm of his hand. She’s seen the lavender light. So has Ruby. Ruby says Chi may be a spy, after all, like in Goldfinger, which she and Nance saw when they snuck in the back door at the Cedar Center Theater and which devastated them both. Nance painted her whole hand with gold enamel and was starting in on her arm when her skin began to itch and she got an awful rash. Susan isn’t sure what Chi’s mission could possibly be. What in the Haight-Ashbury would attract the likes of James Bond? Well. Aside from half-naked girls. Chi tries to peek at the lavender light when he thinks she’s not looking, but then he becomes so absorbed, only an idiot wouldn’t notice.